Speaker 1: Today we have Ron Friedman on the podcast. Doctor Friedman
Speaker 1: is an award winning social psychologist who specializes in human motivation.
Speaker 1: He has served in the faculty of the University of Rochester,
Speaker 1: Nazareth College, and Hobart and Williams. Smith Colleges, and has
Speaker 1: consulted for Fortune five hundred companies, political leaders in the
Speaker 1: world's leading nonprofits. His books include The Best Place to Work,
Speaker 1: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace, and
Speaker 1: most recently, Decoding Greatness, How the Best in the World
Speaker 1: Reverse Engineer Success. Doctor Friedman is so great to chat
Speaker 1: with you today. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. Scott.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So it's been quite some time since you've
Speaker 1: last been on the Psychology Podcast, hasn't it. It has
Speaker 1: six years maybe more. You're one of the early early
Speaker 1: guests of the show show. You know what it's It's
Speaker 1: always as pleasure to speak with you. But I have
Speaker 1: to applaud you for the incredible growth of this show
Speaker 1: and it's a no small measure. So I think your
Speaker 1: curiosity and your presence on these shows. So I don't
Speaker 1: know how much you want to speak spend talking about you,
Speaker 1: but I'm happy to do it all show along. Thank you.
Speaker 1: That was that was enough that I really do appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I really do appreciate it. I'm just I'm antsy and well,
Speaker 1: I'm eager to jump into your new book because it's
Speaker 1: an area of interest I've had for many years. I've
Speaker 1: you know, read, obviously read this topic, tried to study
Speaker 1: it scientifically. What are the ingredients of greatness? You know?
Speaker 1: And you have a very fresh take on it, which
Speaker 1: comes down to trying to reverse reverse engineer greatness. Can
Speaker 1: you tell me a little bit about what that means,
Speaker 1: reverse engineering greatness. Yeah. So, so let me take a
Speaker 1: step back and just give it some context. So there
Speaker 1: are two main stories that we've been told throughout our
Speaker 1: lives about what is required to achieve at the highest level.
Speaker 1: And those two big stories are Number one, that greatness
Speaker 1: comes from talent, and this is the idea that we're
Speaker 1: all born with unique strengths and that the key to
Speaker 1: finding your greatness is identifying a field that allows your
Speaker 1: inner strengths to shine. The second major story is the
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell story. It's the story of practice. It's the
Speaker 1: idea that if you just have the right practice regiment
Speaker 1: and that you have the discipline to execute against it
Speaker 1: for year after year after year that eventually you'll become great.
Speaker 1: But what I discovered in doing the research for decoding
Speaker 1: Greatness is that there is a third story about how
Speaker 1: people rise to the top of their professions. And it's
Speaker 1: one that's not often discussed, and we could talk about
Speaker 1: why that is, but it is strikingly common among artists
Speaker 1: and entrepreneurs and inventors, and that path is reverse engineering.
Speaker 1: And reverse engineering simply means identifying extraordinary examples in your
Speaker 1: field and then working backward to figure out how they
Speaker 1: were created. And there are all sorts of examples of
Speaker 1: this throughout history. So you know, in Silicon Valley the
Speaker 1: idea that of reverse engineering is very well known. There's
Speaker 1: a long history of coders who have deconstructing, deconstructed winning
Speaker 1: products to identify how they were created. It's how he
Speaker 1: got the laptop and the personal computer and even the iPhone.
Speaker 1: But it goes far beyond that, because what most people
Speaker 1: don't realize is that reverse engineering is how authors like
Speaker 1: Stephen King and Malcolm Gladwell learned their craft, and how
Speaker 1: painters like Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso became groundbreaking artists,
Speaker 1: and even how comedians like jud Apatow became remarkable, remarkably
Speaker 1: high achievers. So reverse engineering, working backwards from extraordinary examples
Speaker 1: to identify how they were created, turns out to be
Speaker 1: way more common that we've been led to believe. Amazing.
Speaker 1: You know, there's this idea in psychology when we're trying
Speaker 1: to understand the determines of greatness, like unders Erickson, who
Speaker 1: studied the expertise approach, will take experts and try to
Speaker 1: understand what does the experts have, you know, to explain greatness.
Speaker 1: But as a lot of scientists have critiqued that approach
Speaker 1: because it already weeds out all the predictors of it
Speaker 1: earlier on. You know, when you only look at those
Speaker 1: who have reached a certain threshold, you might be missing
Speaker 1: out on various characteristics and traits that were important in
Speaker 1: the earlier stages of things. So how do you get
Speaker 1: around that, critics? You know, I mean, like I could
Speaker 1: see a scientist hearing your approach and asking that question.
Speaker 1: I can hear their voice in my head. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what I frankly, it's irrelevant to my enterprise because
Speaker 1: what I'm interested in is what is the methodical approach
Speaker 1: to take extraordinary examples and figure out what we can
Speaker 1: learn from them. So I'm less interested in what made
Speaker 1: someone else great than I am in having a methodical
Speaker 1: approach for improving my own skills. And that's what decoding
Speaker 1: Greatness is about, is about the methods and the techniques
Speaker 1: that you can use to unpack extraordinary work. So one
Speaker 1: example I offer in Decoding Greatness is I show you
Speaker 1: how to reverse engineer the most popular tech talk of
Speaker 1: all time, and that tech talk belonged to Sirkin Robinson,
Speaker 1: who's no longer with us, And if you go online
Speaker 1: and you check out that talk, it's the one to
Speaker 1: talk about how school beats the creativity out of us.
Speaker 1: It's the idea that children are very curious at an
Speaker 1: early age. They arrive at school and then they're taught
Speaker 1: that there's only one a right answer, and that constant
Speaker 1: reinforcement of the idea that there's only one correct answer
Speaker 1: short circuits their interest in exploring different ideas in any event,
Speaker 1: Into coding greatness, what I do is I show you
Speaker 1: how to use various techniques to illuminate what he's actually
Speaker 1: doing there. So one of the techniques is to reverse outline.
Speaker 1: Reverse outlining is a twist on the traditional outlining approach.
Speaker 1: So when we outline, we bullet point what we're going
Speaker 1: to put into a finished piece. Reverse outlining is taking
Speaker 1: someone else's finished piece and then working backward to identify
Speaker 1: what that outline might look like. That's a technique that
Speaker 1: can help you identify what is happening over the long
Speaker 1: stretch of a talk and kind of give you a
Speaker 1: big picture of view of what's happening and so shows
Speaker 1: you the flow. But more importantly, what I do to
Speaker 1: his TED talk is I quantify different features, meaning I
Speaker 1: turn certain features into numbers, and I show you that
Speaker 1: over the course of this very popular, just a twenty
Speaker 1: minute talk, he shares a grand total of one persuasive fact.
Speaker 1: Now that's a remarkable statistic, because if I were to
Speaker 1: create a new TED talk, I would assume that I'd
Speaker 1: need to just really flood you with a lot of
Speaker 1: persuasive information to convince you of my point of view.
Speaker 1: He's got one persuasive fact. What's he doing a lot
Speaker 1: of He's telling a lot of jokes. He's got forty
Speaker 1: jokes in twenty minutes, and he is giving you a
Speaker 1: lot of personal anecdotes, and so just that short analysis
Speaker 1: that I've just shared with you in the last two
Speaker 1: minutes gives you a vastly different picture of how to
Speaker 1: craft a tech talk than you might have had and
Speaker 1: gives you directions so that if you're creating your own
Speaker 1: TED talk, you now have a template from which to work,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just staring at the blank page. And
Speaker 1: I think that's powerful, is just knowing how to take
Speaker 1: a part extraordinary examples turn them into a template to
Speaker 1: give you that that head start on crafting your own material,
Speaker 1: I think is invaluable. Ah yeah, yeah, I will. I
Speaker 1: love that TED talk, and I love that topic, you know,
Speaker 1: creativity among kids and may both sir Ken Robinson and
Speaker 1: Anders Ericson, who I mentioned earlier rest in peace. I
Speaker 1: have great respect for both of them. Yeah, contributors, Yeah
Speaker 1: for sure. Uh. You know, you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about how both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates reverse engineered
Speaker 1: the xerox to a certain degree or they and you
Speaker 1: make it clear. And I really liked your actually nuanced footnote.
Speaker 1: I think you should have put that footnote in the
Speaker 1: and the main you know thing. But you you have
Speaker 1: this footnote where you say you're not saying that they
Speaker 1: stole the idea, but that you know they definitely were
Speaker 1: inspired by it and then built upon it. Can you
Speaker 1: can you tell that story a little bit? Yeah, First
Speaker 1: of all, I want to applaud you for reading the footnote.
Speaker 1: I usually will prefer footnotes. Let me tell you right,
Speaker 1: let me tell a nerd. I'm a nerd. I'm on
Speaker 1: you know, fifty to one hundred podcasts. Now, I have
Speaker 1: a hard time with people reading the book, let alone
Speaker 1: the footnotes. So congratulations to you on doing the homework.
Speaker 1: So the story of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates is
Speaker 1: one that actually is the launching point for this book
Speaker 1: because it's probably the best and end most talked about
Speaker 1: example of reverse engineering and history. And it's the story
Speaker 1: of how the personal computer was developed. And many people
Speaker 1: assume that Microsoft made tremendous contributions, and so did Steve Jobs,
Speaker 1: and they did, but they the idea of the personal
Speaker 1: computer did not emerge out of the ether. Back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, if you wanted to use a computer,
Speaker 1: you had to use an arcane text based language to
Speaker 1: input your instructions known as syntax, and today, of course
Speaker 1: that computers don't operate that way. Today we can point
Speaker 1: and click, and that advance that allowed humans to point
Speaker 1: and click and use a visual display. It was called
Speaker 1: a graphic user interface. The graphic user interface was that
Speaker 1: big bridge that led computers to just explode all over
Speaker 1: the place because now they were so easy to use.
Speaker 1: You could just convey your instructions using a mouse. That
Speaker 1: advancement was the contribution of Xerox in the form of
Speaker 1: a computer called the Xerox Alto. Now most people have
Speaker 1: never heard of that computer, and it's because Xerox didn't
Speaker 1: think it had the potential to be a consumer product.
Speaker 1: They were trying to sell it into very large, very
Speaker 1: wealthy organizations at a price, an exorbitant price of over
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand dollars. And Steve Jobs and Bill Gates
Speaker 1: were both familiar with this idea, and they thought that
Speaker 1: Xerox was sitting on a gold mine and was underutilizing
Speaker 1: this really critical idea. And so what they did was
Speaker 1: they saw that example of this underutilized technology and then
Speaker 1: they reversed engineered, meaning they didn't copy the code, they
Speaker 1: didn't take it purchasing one and take it apart, and
Speaker 1: then duplicate the machine. Rather, what they did was they
Speaker 1: looked at what it did to work back or to
Speaker 1: understand how what might have been created, and then they
Speaker 1: took those insights into radically different directions. In the case
Speaker 1: of Microsoft, they looked to make computers affordable. In the
Speaker 1: case of Apple, they looked to make computers that were
Speaker 1: artistic and were easy to use, an intuitive and both
Speaker 1: made tremendous contributions. And if it wasn't for reverse engineering,
Speaker 1: it's a good chance we wouldn't have had we wouldn't
Speaker 1: be having this conversation right now over a computer. That's true.
Speaker 1: That's true. I love the story you tell about how
Speaker 1: they when when Steve Job thought Bill was stealing his idea,
Speaker 1: his idea, and you know, he brought up he brought
Speaker 1: Bill over the meeting to a meeting, and and Bill's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know what was the quote? You know, this is
Speaker 1: a great quote you stole. But I this is a
Speaker 1: tremendous showdown between these two entrepreneurial giants and Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: at the time, so I kind of glossed over this part.
Speaker 1: So Steve Bill Gates was an Apple vendor at the
Speaker 1: time when he released when he announced Windows. Steve Jobs,
Speaker 1: who's about to release the Macintosh, finds out that Steve
Speaker 1: Job that Bill Gates is about to release Windows and
Speaker 1: thinks that he has stolen it from Apple. What he
Speaker 1: didn't realize was that, in fact, Bill Gates knew about
Speaker 1: the alto just as Steve Jobs did. And so Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs calls Bill Gates over in his office, tears into him.
Speaker 1: He says, you're stealing from us, and Bill Gates coolly responds, well, Steve,
Speaker 1: there's more than one way to look at this. It's
Speaker 1: more like we both had this wealthy neighbor named Xerox,
Speaker 1: and I broke in to steal the television and found
Speaker 1: that you had already stolen it. And that was just
Speaker 1: a mic drop moment. And this is just a small
Speaker 1: sliver of their ongoing saga, which I then described Vibe
Speaker 1: in the introductory chapter of Decoding Greatness, where there are
Speaker 1: just constant battles between these two and more than one
Speaker 1: instance of reverse engineering leading to their greatest innovations. I
Speaker 1: sure wish there was a recording of that meeting, right, Wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well so okay, so let's let's just talk about some
Speaker 1: of these maybe counter and two of ideas in your book,
Speaker 1: because you did notice some things that they go against
Speaker 1: some of the standard canon of what determines greatness. You say,
Speaker 1: in a majority of cases, copying or over relying on
Speaker 1: established recipes is a losing strategy that rarely results in
Speaker 1: memorable outcomes. So how do you square that with the
Speaker 1: idea of the importance of reverse engineering? Because it seems
Speaker 1: like you're contradicting yourself on the surface, but obviously you're not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's a great point. So just to say that
Speaker 1: a little bit differently, what I argue in this book
Speaker 1: is that all you're doing is copying someone else's proven formula,
Speaker 1: chances are you will not succeed, and there are two
Speaker 1: critical reasons for that. The first reason is that the
Speaker 1: person who was successful with their iteration likely has some
Speaker 1: characteristics or personality traits, or attributes or experiences or reputation
Speaker 1: that enabled them to be successful the first time. So
Speaker 1: I gave the example of Sir Ken Robinson. He's telling
Speaker 1: forty jokes over the course of twenty minutes. I'm not
Speaker 1: a particularly funny person. If I got up on the
Speaker 1: TED stage and tried to tell forty jokes, it would
Speaker 1: be a disaster. It works because he's a funny guy
Speaker 1: and he's got a particular style of delivery. There's another
Speaker 1: reason why simply copying someone else tends not to work.
Speaker 1: It's because audience expectations shift with time. So in the book,
Speaker 1: I give the example of Twilight, and the book Twilight,
Speaker 1: for those who aren't familiar, is the story of a
Speaker 1: teenager who falls in love with a vampire. When that
Speaker 1: book came out, it exploded. It was on the bestseller
Speaker 1: list for quite some time. So that all these copycuts
Speaker 1: come out of people falling in love with vampires and
Speaker 1: they all fail miserably. And why do they fail. It's
Speaker 1: because audience expectations shift, meaning that the idea of what
Speaker 1: was once novel now feels, you know, like it's been done.
Speaker 1: It's no longer interesting. And so the key is to
Speaker 1: is to use reverse engineering to understand why something works,
Speaker 1: but then critically to evolve it just enough to make
Speaker 1: it your own things. So I talked about Twilight and
Speaker 1: how that failed originally, Well, what was successful? What was
Speaker 1: the next iteration of that? Abraham Lincoln is a vampire
Speaker 1: hunter that succeeded. Why because it was taking the idea
Speaker 1: of you know, chasing vampires and adding the level of history.
Speaker 1: So it's all about combining different elements and that's what
Speaker 1: tends to be successful. Is you know, we often I think,
Speaker 1: conflate and maybe this is something you want to get
Speaker 1: to get to Scott. I feel like we conflate the
Speaker 1: idea of originality with creativity. Those two terms are not
Speaker 1: the same thing. Just because you are are not original
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you're not creative, and just because you're creative
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you're necessarily original. And as it turns out,
Speaker 1: originality tends to backfire. So it's those, it's those, it's
Speaker 1: those iterations that are completely new and overwhelm audiences with
Speaker 1: originality that tend to fall flat. And it's because as
Speaker 1: a species, we tend to be distrustful of the new,
Speaker 1: and that distrust extends to the way we experience objects
Speaker 1: and experiences. So I talk about in the book about
Speaker 1: this study that was conducted by the Harvard Business School
Speaker 1: looking at the type of medical research grants that get funding,
Speaker 1: and that what they did in the study was they
Speaker 1: had objective raiders code the proposals for the degree of
Speaker 1: novelty that they each had, and then they look to
Speaker 1: see whether they whether the degree of novelty predicted receiving funding.
Speaker 1: And what they found was that the grand proposals that
Speaker 1: had them most originality tended to get rejected. The grand
Speaker 1: proposals that had no originality also got rejected. What got funding,
Speaker 1: it was the grants that had a minor dose of novelty.
Speaker 1: And the researchers refer to this as optimal newness. And
Speaker 1: I think what that teaches us and is really critical
Speaker 1: if you're someone who's in the arts or if you're
Speaker 1: someone who's even you know, in the business world, trying
Speaker 1: to introduce a new product or service, you don't want
Speaker 1: to overshoot the mark by overwhelming people with originality. You
Speaker 1: want what you want to do is you want to
Speaker 1: give them something that they have experienced before and then
Speaker 1: modified or combine it with an insight or an approach
Speaker 1: from a different field that makes it slightly new that
Speaker 1: you're you're far more likely to win popular approval and
Speaker 1: respect and admiration if that if you go with that approach. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's consistent with the creativity literature. The science of creativity
Speaker 1: literature usually Creativit is defined as both originality and meaningfulness,
Speaker 1: one without the other it doesn't creativity. So if you
Speaker 1: just wildly original like a schizophrenic word salad, but it
Speaker 1: has no meaning, it has no meaning. You know, like
Speaker 1: people aren't going to be like it's brilliant. You know.
Speaker 1: It has to you know, it has to fit into
Speaker 1: someone's pre existing schemas to least some degree, you know,
Speaker 1: at least some degree. Yeah cool, cool. I'm going to
Speaker 1: ask a very unrelated question, but what algorithms like Tinder
Speaker 1: teach us about improving our skills or is it restually related?
Speaker 1: It's related. Yeah, So this is this is another interesting story.
Speaker 1: This is in chapter two of Decoding grat and is
Speaker 1: where I look at what algorithms can teach us about
Speaker 1: finding hidden patterns. And the way that algorithms work is
Speaker 1: that they present. In the case of Tinder, they present
Speaker 1: users with a small sample set of potential mates, and
Speaker 1: they ask them to swipe right if they find them attractive,
Speaker 1: swipe left if they find them unattractive, and then it
Speaker 1: uses what Tinder algorithm does. It then uses the people
Speaker 1: you've swiped right on to look for commonalities that and
Speaker 1: then so for and there may not even be things
Speaker 1: that you are conscious of. So for example, Let's say,
Speaker 1: Scott that you've rated, you know, ten potential partners and
Speaker 1: five of them were attractive to you. What tinders algorithm
Speaker 1: will do is initially all redheads. Well, you've spoiled, you
Speaker 1: spoiled the big reveal. But they may maybe other things
Speaker 1: besides redheads. Maybe you're conscious of red heads, but you're
Speaker 1: not conscious of the fact that they all tend to
Speaker 1: like spicy foods, or they like the outdoors, or they're introverted,
Speaker 1: all of those types of features that may be hidden
Speaker 1: in their personality profiles that you may not be optimizing
Speaker 1: for on the conscious level, but in fact are the
Speaker 1: things that appeal to you. That's what enables Tinder's algorithm
Speaker 1: to then present new potential partners that share those traits
Speaker 1: and increase their chances of helping you find the right
Speaker 1: maten live happily ever after. But without that initial set
Speaker 1: of examples, Tinder's algorithm is fairly useless, and the same
Speaker 1: is true for all of us. If we're looking to
Speaker 1: find patterns in extraordinary work, what we need are examples
Speaker 1: of the types of work that we find resonance, which
Speaker 1: is why one of the first strategies I offer in
Speaker 1: this book is to become a collector. So if you
Speaker 1: want to get good at reverse engineering and learning from
Speaker 1: the best in your field, it helps if you can
Speaker 1: identify examples that you find resonant. And so I argue that,
Speaker 1: rather than simply passively enjoying experiences, start a collection. I
Speaker 1: can tell you you know, when we think about collections,
Speaker 1: we think about physical objects. We think about stamps, we
Speaker 1: think about rocks or gems or wines. But that definition
Speaker 1: of collections being only relevant to physical objects is too narrow.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I can tell you that presenters will
Speaker 1: collect presentation decks, copywriters will collect headlines. I'm a writer.
Speaker 1: I don't know about us cut, but I collect stories.
Speaker 1: I collect academic journal articles. I collect powerful verbs, all
Speaker 1: of the things that I will then draw from as
Speaker 1: I'm writing my next book or my next article. And so,
Speaker 1: when you have a collection of the works that you
Speaker 1: consider extraordinary, now you can start to unpack them for patterns.
Speaker 1: And it's by comparing the ordinary against the extraordinary, meaning
Speaker 1: the things you have in your collection versus the things
Speaker 1: that didn't make your collection. And now by comparing the two,
Speaker 1: you can't help but identify some of the ingredients that
Speaker 1: went into creating it. And so if you know, the
Speaker 1: question I often get is, well, how am I supposed
Speaker 1: to create this collection? It could be as simple as
Speaker 1: just starting a Google doc. You know of if you're
Speaker 1: a marketer, you can start collecting websites that you consider impactful.
Speaker 1: If you are a writer, you can use Google docs
Speaker 1: as well. If you are a designer, you can start
Speaker 1: collecting images on Pinterest. And again, it's just about having
Speaker 1: that personal museum that you can then go to and visit,
Speaker 1: not just for unpacking and reverse engineering those great examples,
Speaker 1: but also just to go somewhere where you when you
Speaker 1: want to be inspired instead of just simply looking at
Speaker 1: that blank page. If you're a writer, you can have
Speaker 1: a collection of powerful openings, scan them before you start writing,
Speaker 1: and I bet you it'll make your work a lot easier. Cool.
Speaker 1: You know, the secret easter egg of this podcast is
Speaker 1: you're actually teaching people how to learn exactly right, not
Speaker 1: just a code greatness, but word anything. Uh So, okay,
Speaker 1: so how did what does the Ritz Carlton hotel chain
Speaker 1: know about this? Because you you say they know a
Speaker 1: little bit something about how to improve it anything? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and so the Ritz Carlton is you know, if you've
Speaker 1: ever looked into high priced hotels, Ritz Carlton is usually
Speaker 1: at the top of the list. They're they're there year
Speaker 1: after year, one of the best at customer service. And
Speaker 1: how they got really good at customer services that by
Speaker 1: identifying a particular metric that they wanted to get really
Speaker 1: good at. And I use this example because in the
Speaker 1: first half of the Cody Greatness, I show you all
Speaker 1: these examples examples of how people are reverse engineering in
Speaker 1: different fields, and I show you how you can reverse
Speaker 1: engineer formulas and then also how you can modify their formula.
Speaker 1: Is just enough to make the winning formula original and
Speaker 1: novel to you. The second half of the book is
Speaker 1: about bridging the gap between your vision, in other words,
Speaker 1: the formula you're trying to execute and your current ability,
Speaker 1: because chances are at the beginning, when you're just starting out,
Speaker 1: your skill level won't be high enough to execute against
Speaker 1: the formulas that you've decoded, and so it's critical to
Speaker 1: know how to skill build quickly. And the first chapter
Speaker 1: in that section on bridging the gap between vision and
Speaker 1: ability is called the scoreboard principle. And the scoreboard principle
Speaker 1: is simple. It simply states that the secret to improving
Speaker 1: at anything is measuring. In other words, anything you measure
Speaker 1: you are likely to improve on. Measurement begets improvement. That's
Speaker 1: the measurement. Measurement, Yeah, measurement begins, that's improvement. That's what
Speaker 1: the scoreboard principle ultimately states. Measurement begets improvement. Anything you
Speaker 1: want to get at start measuring. And the Ritz Carlton
Speaker 1: is committed to one particular metric because they know it
Speaker 1: will mean everything for the success of their hotel. In
Speaker 1: the case of the Ritz Carlton, that metric is net
Speaker 1: promoter scores. Now, net promoter scores is just a fancy
Speaker 1: market research way of saying how many people who leave
Speaker 1: your hotel are likely to recommend the experience to a
Speaker 1: friend or a colleague. They don't just simply measure customer
Speaker 1: customer satisfaction, although they're interested in that, they're primarily interested
Speaker 1: in net promoter scores because they realize that if not
Speaker 1: enough just for people to have a good experience, you
Speaker 1: want your customers talking to their friends and colleagues, because
Speaker 1: then that's how you get your grow your customer base
Speaker 1: and get new customers. So they're interested not just in
Speaker 1: getting having people who have great experiences, they're looking to
Speaker 1: create raving fans, and so after you leave you Riz
Speaker 1: Carlton hotel, you'll get an email within twenty four hours
Speaker 1: asking you how likely you are to direct men the
Speaker 1: experience to a friend or a colleague. And the every
Speaker 1: Ritz Carlton is obsessed with this number. They share it
Speaker 1: with their staff on a daily basis, and it's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons they've uncovered leading indicators that improve the
Speaker 1: hotel experience for their guests. So in the case of
Speaker 1: the Ritz Carlton, one of the things they discovered is
Speaker 1: that one of the biggest drivers of net promoter scores
Speaker 1: is the extent to which you fulfill customer's unexpressed desires.
Speaker 1: So there's two things that people often use. They use
Speaker 1: expressed need is the thing you specifically ask for. So
Speaker 1: an example of this is if I call up the
Speaker 1: Ritz Carlton, I say do you have a cafe? The
Speaker 1: answer to that is yes. But if they want to
Speaker 1: go further and they want to address my unexpressed desire,
Speaker 1: they might say, and this they'll often do this to
Speaker 1: the Ritz Carlton is they'll say, yes, we do, sir,
Speaker 1: would you like me to text you the menu. You
Speaker 1: see how that's taking it one step further by trying
Speaker 1: to read into what it is I really want, not
Speaker 1: just what what I actually asked for. And they do
Speaker 1: this spectacularly at the risk why they become it's crafty.
Speaker 1: It's why they've become one of the best hotel chains
Speaker 1: in the world. In that context, is a good thing.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know how much you want to
Speaker 1: be going around your daily life. You know, maybe it's
Speaker 1: a good way to make friends, new friends, and lovers,
Speaker 1: but that's that's very strategic. Wow, Okay, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about I want to transition for second, talk about
Speaker 1: courage because that part of your book kind of blew
Speaker 1: my mind a little bit, right, because we're often told
Speaker 1: that growth requires courage, right, and the only way to
Speaker 1: improve is to get outside the comfort zone, learn from
Speaker 1: your risks, or take risks, learn for your mistakes. But
Speaker 1: you've found, you know, reverse engineering things. That's not always
Speaker 1: the case or necessarily the case. Right. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: look at the most successful businesses, they're taking risks all
Speaker 1: the time, but they're not necessarily putting everything on the line.
Speaker 1: They're being very strategic in the risks that they take
Speaker 1: by minimizing the impact if those risks fail. So a
Speaker 1: great example of this is and by the way, this
Speaker 1: is an approach we can all use in our own
Speaker 1: lives to improve our ability to grow new skills. And
Speaker 1: so one example I give is how businesses will often
Speaker 1: test with a small subgroup of their customers before releasing
Speaker 1: a new product out into the field. And so you know,
Speaker 1: there are all these examples of companies that you know
Speaker 1: test in small markets. Often they'll do it in less
Speaker 1: developed countries because the price of advertising there is lower,
Speaker 1: and so they're able to get some feedback that it
Speaker 1: then improves the product before they release into more expensive markets.
Speaker 1: We as individuals can learn from this. I give the
Speaker 1: example in the book of Tim Ferris and how Tim
Speaker 1: Ferriss came upon the title for his first book, The
Speaker 1: four Hour work Week. In the caps of Tim Ferris,
Speaker 1: he didn't have a huge audience at the time. He
Speaker 1: was a relative unknown, and so what he did was
Speaker 1: he took one hundred dollars out on Google ad Words
Speaker 1: and he tested the different titles he was considering to
Speaker 1: determine which title got him the most clicks. It cost
Speaker 1: them one hundred dollars. He didn't take, you know, and
Speaker 1: he was able to get some great feedback right out
Speaker 1: of the gate. What he didn't do was he didn't
Speaker 1: just release the book out and then you know, find
Speaker 1: his courage and hope that it worked out. He got
Speaker 1: some feedback and cost them one hundred dollars to do it.
Speaker 1: That's just one example is applying it with a small audience.
Speaker 1: So in the case of everyday individuals, if you have
Speaker 1: a new product you're considering, if you're working in a business,
Speaker 1: for example, instead of simply releasing that new product and
Speaker 1: hoping that it works, tested with a few customers or
Speaker 1: a few clients and get some feedback in advance before
Speaker 1: you invest some time producing it. We all have access
Speaker 1: to test audiences now on places like Facebook and Google.
Speaker 1: It doesn't cost a ton of money, and it gives
Speaker 1: you some immediate feedback to determine whether you're on the
Speaker 1: right path, so you know, for example, if you're considering
Speaker 1: writing a novel, why not run ads to it as
Speaker 1: if it existed and determine whether or not to get
Speaker 1: some clicks that'll tell you whether or not you're on
Speaker 1: the right path. Another great example of this, Scott This
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite examples of the book is
Speaker 1: selling first and then building later. This is what a
Speaker 1: lot of businesses do, is they will sell first and
Speaker 1: build later. And a great example of this is the
Speaker 1: story of Nix Windmerm. And nix Windmurm was in the
Speaker 1: turn of the century. He was living in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: He was looking for a pair of shoes with the mall,
Speaker 1: couldn't find them and thought to himself, man, there has
Speaker 1: to be a better way to buy shoes. And so
Speaker 1: what he did was he opened up a website. And
Speaker 1: he didn't have any money to build a shoe warehouse.
Speaker 1: So what he did was he went to his local
Speaker 1: shoe store and he took photos of their shoes, and
Speaker 1: he came to an agreement with the manager and said, look,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take photos of your shoes, and if anybody
Speaker 1: buys them, i'm gonna come to your store. I'm going
Speaker 1: to physically give you the money and I'm gonna ship
Speaker 1: it to them in the mail. And the manager's like okay.
Speaker 1: And Nix Windmurm is one of the founders of Zappos,
Speaker 1: and it's a great example of how he he did not,
Speaker 1: you know, try to have raised trendous amount of funds.
Speaker 1: He didn't find his courage and invest his life savings
Speaker 1: into a shoe warehouse instead of what he was very strategic.
Speaker 1: He sold first and he built later. And again that's
Speaker 1: an approach that any of us can use now on
Speaker 1: Kickstarter or places like that, where you can test out
Speaker 1: your ideas, take big swings, take lots of big swings,
Speaker 1: because that's how you're going to learn. But just don't
Speaker 1: put everything on the line. And if you are feeling
Speaker 1: hesitant because you don't have the courage, chances are you're
Speaker 1: not necessarily minimizing the risk involved. And that's a far
Speaker 1: better approach to success is find ways of testing your
Speaker 1: ideas without putting everything on the line. Makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense, makes a lot of sense, and sometimes that
Speaker 1: takes courage. Though sometimes that is courage being able to
Speaker 1: withstand the feedback you know of in order to grow.
Speaker 1: It does take us. I don't deny the importance of
Speaker 1: courage at all. What I don't think is true, and
Speaker 1: I think this is kind of like the thing that
Speaker 1: we've been led to believe is like we should all
Speaker 1: at is more courage, or all it takes is perseverance,
Speaker 1: Like sometimes it's a limit to those things. And we're
Speaker 1: far better off optimizing by reducing the impact of having
Speaker 1: courage or taking risks than we are in just elevating
Speaker 1: our courage. I got you, I got you. Yeah, good point. Well, so,
Speaker 1: in terms of how we learn, why is repetition just
Speaker 1: the repetition model not necessarily the way to go? You
Speaker 1: know what, can I go back a second, beau? I
Speaker 1: feel like there's one other thing I want to say
Speaker 1: about it. Oh yeah, I feel like this is an
Speaker 1: important discussion. And you know, when we talk about courage,
Speaker 1: part of the reason why the impact of failing is
Speaker 1: so difficult to stomach is because we've over invested in
Speaker 1: a particular aspect of our life. And so one of
Speaker 1: the things that businesses do, and this is another one
Speaker 1: of the strategies I discuss, is they have portfolio businesses.
Speaker 1: They have a wide array of products and services in
Speaker 1: different fields and industries. So if any one particular thing
Speaker 1: doesn't work out, they're okay because they've got a million
Speaker 1: other things. The same is true for all of us.
Speaker 1: If you put all our eggs in one basket, in
Speaker 1: the career basket, for example, and that one career thing
Speaker 1: doesn't work out. Let's say you've invested two years in
Speaker 1: writing a novel and that novel isn't selling. That's disaster.
Speaker 1: But if you have a novel and you also have
Speaker 1: a consulting business, and then you have a podcast on
Speaker 1: the side, then all of a sudden, that novel that
Speaker 1: you've invested time in not working out is still painful,
Speaker 1: but it's not quite as devastating. And the same is
Speaker 1: true for human relationships. If you have two or three
Speaker 1: close friends and you get into a fight with one
Speaker 1: of them or things aren't going well, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you know, it's devastating. You feel like you need to
Speaker 1: do everything to fix that relationship. But if you have
Speaker 1: ten close friends and when one's not going well, you
Speaker 1: can give give them the space, you know, to get
Speaker 1: back and maybe touch base with them after things have
Speaker 1: cooled off after a few months. You know, I've had
Speaker 1: some interesting conversations with high school friends during the previous election,
Speaker 1: and fortunately that election now over and we can talk
Speaker 1: about other things and we're still friends and that's totally fine.
Speaker 1: And I just feel like if they were my only
Speaker 1: friends in life, I would either have to change my worldview,
Speaker 1: or I would just be really depressed for a while.
Speaker 1: But because I fortunately have a good network of people,
Speaker 1: it was okay to have those uncomfortable conversations, set them aside,
Speaker 1: and then come back to them. I love that. That
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense. Cool. Thanks, Thanks for further
Speaker 1: elaborating on that. Well, do you want to talk about
Speaker 1: that expertise idea, you know, with the repetition. I think
Speaker 1: that a lot of people have this idea that the
Speaker 1: way to get better is just to practice practice, practice, practice,
Speaker 1: meaning repetition. Yeah, but I'm happy to talk about this.
Speaker 1: It's funny to say this to you because you've written
Speaker 1: about this extensively and quite well, so the idea of
Speaker 1: simply practicing. So, in other words, if I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to get better piano and I'm just going to play
Speaker 1: the same song all the time and not push myself
Speaker 1: to focus on the parts of the song where I
Speaker 1: have tremendous difficulty, I'm likely not going to improve. And
Speaker 1: part of the difficulty with practice is that the human
Speaker 1: mind is constantly working to automate things, meaning that you know,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons we're able to now drive or
Speaker 1: brush our teeth while thinking about what we're going to
Speaker 1: have for dinner or what we're going to do the
Speaker 1: next day. Is because we're not consciously thinking very carefully
Speaker 1: about those physical activities. We've now automated it. And on paper,
Speaker 1: automaticity is wonderful. It allows you to multitask and do
Speaker 1: lots of different things. But when it comes to improvement,
Speaker 1: automaticity is a barrier because you're not paying careful attention.
Speaker 1: And unless you're paying careful attentions, chances are you're not
Speaker 1: going to identify those parts where you're struggling, and you're
Speaker 1: not going to push yourself to improve on them. And
Speaker 1: so that's one example of how practice actually gets more
Speaker 1: difficult with time. And the solution comes to us from
Speaker 1: the work of ANDREWS. Erickson, where he talks about deliberate
Speaker 1: practice as being one pathway to overcoming the challenges of automaticity,
Speaker 1: which involves identifying those parts where you're struggling and you
Speaker 1: well and repeating just those parts, and also increasing the
Speaker 1: level of difficulty at times so that you're constantly stretching
Speaker 1: and forced to pay attention. I also give the example
Speaker 1: of the book about being strategic with your hobbies. One
Speaker 1: of the ways that you can improve is to identify
Speaker 1: a hobby that has overlapping skills with the with the
Speaker 1: with the primary work that you're trying to get good at.
Speaker 1: And so this is a form of cross training. So athletes,
Speaker 1: for example, football players will will often do practice martial
Speaker 1: arts in the off season because getting really quick hand
Speaker 1: movements will help them with their with their tackling and
Speaker 1: with their what's the word scott when they when they blocking.
Speaker 1: That's right, with their tackling and with their blocking. For professionals,
Speaker 1: if you're having if you're trying, for example, let's say
Speaker 1: you're a salesperson and you're trying to get really good
Speaker 1: and comfortable with the idea of being on the spot
Speaker 1: and presenting in front of large groups. That can be intimidating.
Speaker 1: But if you take up the hobby of karaoke singing,
Speaker 1: where you're also pushing yourself to be a little bit uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: that can actually help you be a better presenter when
Speaker 1: the time comes for you to present in front of
Speaker 1: a large group. And so the idea is to identify
Speaker 1: hobbies that make you better at your job and invest
Speaker 1: in those. And another great example of this, and you
Speaker 1: might you're probably familiar with this as well, which is
Speaker 1: that a lot of executives are now really interested in
Speaker 1: improv comedy. And it's not because there's suddenly captivanded with
Speaker 1: the idea of being funny. It's because they realize that
Speaker 1: there are a lot of overlapping skills. In order to
Speaker 1: be good at improv. You need to be really present,
Speaker 1: and you can be a great listener, and you need
Speaker 1: to think on your feet, and those are the same
Speaker 1: skills necessary to become a better executive. And so again,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't when we think about improving, we
Speaker 1: often think about how we spend our time when we're
Speaker 1: at work, but we may be better off thinking about
Speaker 1: how we utilize our free time in our hobbies in
Speaker 1: order to ultimately reach our goals. Yeah, I love that,
Speaker 1: and you know I love improv. Yeah I do. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about the role of visualization, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, or visualizing success. You some people, you know,
Speaker 1: think that they swear by that, but you're you found
Speaker 1: not only doesn't not work, but it might make you
Speaker 1: less likely to succeed. Is that right? Right? That is correct?
Speaker 1: That is correct? So, oh exactly, so I live in
Speaker 1: my imagination. Well, visualizing success can be fun in the moment,
Speaker 1: but what it won't do is it won't make success
Speaker 1: more likely. And there are all these great examples of
Speaker 1: celebrities who swear by visualizing success. So probably the most
Speaker 1: best known example is Jim Carrey, who wrote himself a
Speaker 1: check for ten million dollars when he was back when
Speaker 1: he was a struggling artist and a sturgling actor, and uh,
Speaker 1: as it turned out, just before that check was about
Speaker 1: to expire, he got the role in Dumb and Dumber
Speaker 1: that transformed his career. Another great example is Andrescu, who's
Speaker 1: a Bianca and Drescu a phenomenal tennis player who won
Speaker 1: the US Open. She wrote herself a check for the
Speaker 1: prize money for the US Open long before she succeeded,
Speaker 1: and she went on Good Morning America and made a
Speaker 1: statement along the lines of I believe we control reality
Speaker 1: with our minds. Now. That is a common sentiment online,
Speaker 1: and it's an appealing one. The idea if you just
Speaker 1: you know, you get that vision board out and you
Speaker 1: start clipping images of where your life is going to
Speaker 1: be in ten years, then you're going to get there.
Speaker 1: And I think there's some value to having goals, for sure,
Speaker 1: But the challenge with visualizing success is it actually what
Speaker 1: the research tests does actually makes you less likely to succeed.
Speaker 1: And this is a study done at the UCLA where
Speaker 1: they took in introductory psychology students and they divided them
Speaker 1: into three groups, and this was just before the midterm.
Speaker 1: Group one was asked to visualize themselves achieving a high
Speaker 1: score on the tests. That was the visualizing success condition.
Speaker 1: The second group was asked to visualize themselves studying for
Speaker 1: the test, and the third group was simply asked to
Speaker 1: report how often they studied for the exam. And what
Speaker 1: they found was that the group that visualized themselves succeeding
Speaker 1: and achieving a high score did worse than either of
Speaker 1: the two groups. The group that did best was the
Speaker 1: group that visualized themselves studying for the test. And it's
Speaker 1: because forcing yourself to identify when and where and how
Speaker 1: you're going to study leads you to front load some
Speaker 1: pretty critical decisions like where are you going to be,
Speaker 1: what books are you going to need, where you're going
Speaker 1: to put your phone, all of the decisions that are
Speaker 1: required to study effectively. And when you frontload those decisions,
Speaker 1: you're better prepared to actually execute against your goal. If
Speaker 1: then thinking and so what that? The key takeaway here
Speaker 1: is that if you want to get better, visualization can help,
Speaker 1: but far better to visualize yourself doing the actual activities
Speaker 1: necessary to succeed rather than simply visualizing the outcomes. Dualized
Speaker 1: process not outcome. And it can work in anything, can
Speaker 1: work in public speaking, can work with studying for a test,
Speaker 1: It can work for a job interview. Visualize the process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's really good advice. That's that's actually really good advice.
Speaker 1: When I was very when I was very young, I
Speaker 1: used to just daydream about being an NBA star and
Speaker 1: that didn't didn't lead to that also didn't help that
Speaker 1: Kobe Bryant was on our basketball team. What do you
Speaker 1: mean your high school team in middle school? No kidding,
Speaker 1: no kidding, no kidding, or mare in high school and
Speaker 1: Balkino middle school. So that didn't help, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe no amount of visualizing process either, it would have
Speaker 1: gotten me to beat him on the court. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I want to just circle back to like the very
Speaker 1: beginning question I asked you, because I do feel like
Speaker 1: it's the elephant in the room with this discussion, and
Speaker 1: that's the role of talent. You know, I noticed you
Speaker 1: didn't have a chapter on like decoding greatness. I noticed
Speaker 1: that talent really, really it matters, because the thing is,
Speaker 1: the talent gets weeded out at that stage. You know
Speaker 1: that no longer is at the predictor of things. So
Speaker 1: how do you know that by decoding greatness? By looking
Speaker 1: at those who are great? This is the same criticism
Speaker 1: that's been, you know, leveled against Ander's work, and I
Speaker 1: think rightfully so Anders really underplayed the role of talent
Speaker 1: because he was looking at those at stages of the
Speaker 1: development of the expertise process of world class expertise, where
Speaker 1: talent was no longer the biggest predictor, but it was
Speaker 1: a pretty big predictor earlier on. So what do you
Speaker 1: see as the role of talent there? The talents is
Speaker 1: certainly plays an important role, there's no question. And so
Speaker 1: does practice. If you practice effectively, you're going to get better.
Speaker 1: If you are born with a particular set of strengths
Speaker 1: that lend themselves to your particular field, that's vital. But
Speaker 1: I guess I'm less interested in identifying the true causes
Speaker 1: of greatness than I am about identifying the tools that
Speaker 1: any schlub off the street can use to improve their
Speaker 1: skills quickly. That is a far more interesting to me. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I've often thought about, you know, other people
Speaker 1: in our space, Scott about you know, there are people
Speaker 1: who are really interested in identifying what the top top, top,
Speaker 1: top top people in the world are doing and then
Speaker 1: popularizing that. And I think that's interesting work. I follow it,
Speaker 1: I read it. I'm not interested in that, as you know,
Speaker 1: like I'm not interested in microdosing LSD. That's not for me,
Speaker 1: that's not for most people. What I am interested macrodos right.
Speaker 1: More interesting to me are the tools and techniques that
Speaker 1: everyday people can use right now to get better. And
Speaker 1: I think that this is a vital and overlooked approach
Speaker 1: that people don't talk about. Now. We didn't touch about
Speaker 1: why why it is that people don't talk about it.
Speaker 1: I think this is important. I think the reason people
Speaker 1: don't talk about reverse engineering, even though a huge number
Speaker 1: of people at the top of their fields do this,
Speaker 1: I think that they're secretly ashamed. They're ashamed that they
Speaker 1: are copying. I think they think that they're maybe they
Speaker 1: think this, maybe they don't. I'm going to argue that
Speaker 1: reverse engineering is not copying, and even if it were copying,
Speaker 1: copying would make you more creative. And so this is
Speaker 1: one of the most important findings I think in this book.
Speaker 1: One of the most important, most interesting findings is how
Speaker 1: if you actually do take the time to copy someone
Speaker 1: else's work privately, not passing it off as your own,
Speaker 1: just simply you know, the copy work is an idea.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've discussed previously on the show. It's the
Speaker 1: to To give you an example of what that means.
Speaker 1: It's simply taking a finished work and then trying to
Speaker 1: reproduce it, whether it be a painting or a blog
Speaker 1: post or a book, reading a page, trying to recreate
Speaker 1: it for memory. That process actually makes you more creative,
Speaker 1: not less. And this is not just me saying this.
Speaker 1: There's research out of the University of Tokyo. This is
Speaker 1: creativity experts who brought people into the lab. These were
Speaker 1: amateur artists. They divided them into two groups. Group one
Speaker 1: was asked to create original artwork every day for three
Speaker 1: days straight. Group two was asked to create original artwork
Speaker 1: on day one. On day two, they were asked to
Speaker 1: copy the work of an established artist, and then on
Speaker 1: day three, they were asked to resume creating original works.
Speaker 1: And what they were looking at with the experimenters were
Speaker 1: interested in is which of the two groups was most
Speaker 1: creative on the final day of the experiment, And so
Speaker 1: they brought in objective raiders and they had them code
Speaker 1: and rate the artwork produced on the final day of
Speaker 1: the experiment, looking at the level of creativity. And what
Speaker 1: they found was that the second group, the group that
Speaker 1: had paused to copy the work of an established artist,
Speaker 1: was significantly more creative on the final day of the experiment.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't simply by replicating the approach that they
Speaker 1: had learned from on the second day of the experiment
Speaker 1: by copying the established artist. It has been going off
Speaker 1: in completely different directions, by doing things that had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the work that they had observed. And
Speaker 1: so the question is why why does copying make us
Speaker 1: more creative? And it's because when we do that copy
Speaker 1: work exercise that I described earlier, where you're copying someone
Speaker 1: else's established work and trying to reproduce it for a memory,
Speaker 1: what that process does is it forces you to compare
Speaker 1: your instinctive inclinations against the decisions of a master and
Speaker 1: often what that does is when you're comparing your instinctive
Speaker 1: inclinations to the work of a master, you are enlightened
Speaker 1: and you open your eyes are open to all these
Speaker 1: different possibilities that are hidden in your work that you
Speaker 1: had been ignoring until now. And so far from dismissing
Speaker 1: the idea of reverse engineering or studying the work of
Speaker 1: someone else's someone else's work really closely as something that
Speaker 1: only hacks do, I think we need a better approach
Speaker 1: for learning from the best in the world so that
Speaker 1: we can not just elevate our skill level but also
Speaker 1: enhance our creativity. That felt like a good place to
Speaker 1: end you say you say in your book, no matter
Speaker 1: what your field, your capacity for achieving at a high
Speaker 1: level need not be defined by whether or not you
Speaker 1: were fortunate enough to be born gifted, or happen to
Speaker 1: receive the guidance of an expert. I do think that
Speaker 1: reading your book can help any any schlub, maybe not
Speaker 1: become a genius, but certainly learn faster, learn better, and
Speaker 1: and maybe even have a better quality of life. So
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being on my podcast today
Speaker 1: and sharing your uh, your your great uh, your great wisdom.
Speaker 1: Oh my my, great pleasure, and thanks for the great questions.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to react in some way to something
Speaker 1: you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion
Speaker 1: at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. Also, if you'd prefer a completely ad free experience,
Speaker 1: you can join us at Patreon dot com slash psych Podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show,
Speaker 1: and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity.