Speaker 1: Pushkin. Late on blistering August afternoon in nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: fifteen men parachuted out of the wide Montana sky their
Speaker 1: mission to intercept and extinguish a forest wildfire. Within minutes,
Speaker 1: their mission had changed to just survive. These men were
Speaker 1: smoke jumpers, the wildfire fighting Elite. They landed near the
Speaker 1: top of Mangulch with the intent of digging a line
Speaker 1: in the ground in front of the fire, shepherding it
Speaker 1: towards an area where there was less to burn. It
Speaker 1: wasn't long before they realized the wind had turned and
Speaker 1: the fire was racing towards them, flames thirty feet high
Speaker 1: and gathering speed. There was no alternative to run, and
Speaker 1: on flat even ground wearing running a gear that would
Speaker 1: have been possible, but scrambling steeply uphill through rocks and
Speaker 1: long grass, and carrying heavy equipment it might be too
Speaker 1: much to ask. The men were making a lung bursting
Speaker 1: effort to reach the safety of the ridge top that
Speaker 1: the fire was gaining and gaining. The ridge top was
Speaker 1: just two hundred yards away. As the fire roared closer,
Speaker 1: Another two or three minutes scramble was their time. The
Speaker 1: smoke Jumper's foreman, Wagoner Dodge, realized with dread they just
Speaker 1: weren't going to make it, and so he did something
Speaker 1: that made his team recoil with astonishment and horror. I'm
Speaker 1: Tim Harford and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. This is
Speaker 1: one of our cautionary conversations. As usual, you'll hear a story,
Speaker 1: or perhaps more than one story of disaster. In fact,
Speaker 1: the story of Brave smoke Jumpers features in the book
Speaker 1: Think Again, by my guest Adam Grant. He's here to
Speaker 1: help tell this cautionary tale and to reflect on the lessons.
Speaker 1: Adam needs no introduction, but he deserves one, so he's
Speaker 1: going to get one. He's an organizational psychologist at Wharton.
Speaker 1: He describes that as trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: make work not suck. He's the presenter of two brilliant podcasts,
Speaker 1: Work Life and Rethinking, the creator of some of the
Speaker 1: best and most loved TED talks, and the author of
Speaker 1: several superb and best selling books, including Hidden Potential. In
Speaker 1: the book we're discussing today, Think Again, Adam, Welcome to
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales.
Speaker 2: Thanks. It's I have to say it's a little bit
Speaker 2: unsettling to be in a live cautionary tales. I'm so
Speaker 2: used to listening to it when I go to bed.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm sure you can preserve the spirits of cautionary tales,
Speaker 1: and I'd hopefully add a little bit of extra insight.
Speaker 1: And this story of the fire, I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: an inspiring story in some ways, it's a hellish story
Speaker 1: in other ways, And like Dante's Inferno, it's got multiple levels.
Speaker 1: You begin your book, think again with this story. What
Speaker 1: was it that Wagner Dodge did that so shocked his crew?
Speaker 2: Well, you think the foreman would be trying to run
Speaker 2: to the head of the line, right and guide everyone
Speaker 2: else to safety, And instead of running, he stops. He
Speaker 2: bends over and he takes a matchbook out of his pocket,
Speaker 2: And you can only imagine what's going through the other
Speaker 2: firefighter's minds. We're trying to escape a fire, right, not
Speaker 2: start one. What could he possibly be doing? But he
Speaker 2: starts lighting matches and throwing them in the grass. One
Speaker 2: of the crew thinks he must have gone nuts. That
Speaker 2: bastard Dodge is trying to burn me to death. And
Speaker 2: then he looks over and he sees Dodge waving his
Speaker 2: arms toward the fire and encouraging people to follow him
Speaker 2: into his fire. What in the world is he doing?
Speaker 2: The smoke jumpers don't know that Dodge has improvised a
Speaker 2: really unusual survival strategy. He's building an escape fire. He
Speaker 2: had no training in how to do this. It wasn't
Speaker 2: an idea that firefighters were aware of at the time.
Speaker 2: But out of sheer instinct in that moment, he's figured
Speaker 2: out that if he burns the grass in front of
Speaker 2: him and he lays down face down in the ashes,
Speaker 2: that the fire will burn right over him. Because if
Speaker 2: he burns the grass in front of him, the fire
Speaker 2: will not have anything to burn and it'll be forced
Speaker 2: to go around. And that's exactly what he does. He
Speaker 2: basically removes all the fuel for the wildfire to feed on,
Speaker 2: and he's a pouring water out of his canteen onto
Speaker 2: his handkerchief. He puts it over his mouth, and he
Speaker 2: lays face down in the charred area and survives there
Speaker 2: for fifteen minutes. There's enough oxygen on the ground that
Speaker 2: he can make it, and the wildfire literally runs right
Speaker 2: over him.
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't bear thinking about what it must
Speaker 1: have been like for him as the fire runs over him.
Speaker 1: As you say, he wasn't trained. Nobody really knew for
Speaker 1: sure that this would work. I mean, I'm sure the
Speaker 1: heat and the smoke must have been intense. So there's
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of courage there. Smoke jumpers are. I'm
Speaker 1: sure they're all very courageous. Did any of them join him?
Speaker 1: Did any of them understand or trust the idea enough
Speaker 1: to actually get down there and join him in the
Speaker 1: shadow of this escape fire that he'd lit.
Speaker 2: No, they didn't. I think one of the great tragedies
Speaker 2: here that I didn't write about, and think again, is
Speaker 2: that the crew didn't have much of an opportunity to
Speaker 2: build trust. They didn't know Dodge very well. There wasn't
Speaker 2: a long standing relationship between them, and so they see
Speaker 2: him doing something that looks insane and they basically ignore it.
Speaker 2: I remember in the US, we were trained as kids
Speaker 2: right to stop, drop and roll in the face of
Speaker 2: a fire, and for Dodge, all he does is stop
Speaker 2: and drop. There's no roll, and so he just has
Speaker 2: to lay there hoping that the fire is gonna fail
Speaker 2: to burn him alive. The other smoke jumpers end up
Speaker 2: basically trying to race for their lives, and of the
Speaker 2: fourteen of them, twelve of them didn't make it. It's
Speaker 2: devastating when you look back, because Dodge was able to survive.
Speaker 2: There were two who made it because of their physical fitness.
Speaker 2: They were able to barely outrun the fire. But the
Speaker 2: other doesn't. I think failed because they weren't trained in
Speaker 2: the mental fitness to let go of the very assumptions
Speaker 2: that they brought to their job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you described just the horror of it, and
Speaker 1: I think one of them had a pocket watch that
Speaker 1: was partially melted. And it's just awful and the fact
Speaker 1: that they could probably all have survived if they had
Speaker 1: had enough experience or enough trust, or had it able
Speaker 1: to understand what Wagner Dodge was doing. One of the
Speaker 1: things that's inspiring about this story is that it's just
Speaker 1: so brilliant. It's like, how on earth does anybody think
Speaker 1: so fast in such a crisis in such an original way.
Speaker 1: Hardly anybody could do that. But you make the point
Speaker 1: in the book that actually there was a much simpler
Speaker 1: piece of rethinking that it seems like anybody should have
Speaker 1: been able to do. But but the firefighters the smoke
Speaker 1: jumpers they didn't do that either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think Dodge's rethinking is very much out
Speaker 2: of reach for mere mortals, right, The idea that when
Speaker 2: you're running for your life and you only have seconds
Speaker 2: to make a decision, you could just dream up and
Speaker 2: escape fire and live because of it. Not I maybe
Speaker 2: you tim could pull that.
Speaker 1: Out, but well, I'm glad not to be in the situation.
Speaker 1: But I sincerely doubt it.
Speaker 2: So many of us see intelligence as thinking and learning,
Speaker 2: But what Dodge is doing there is he's choosing to
Speaker 2: rethink and unlike he's got a rethink fire not as
Speaker 2: a source of danger, but as a path to safety.
Speaker 2: He has to unlearn his assumptions right that when you're
Speaker 2: trying to fight a fire, your job is to put
Speaker 2: it out, not start another one. That's a vital skill
Speaker 2: in a rapidly changing world, and it's a skill that unfortunately,
Speaker 2: that crew of smoke jumpers did not have, because if
Speaker 2: you look at the twelve who didn't survive the fire,
Speaker 2: they failed to drop their heavy tools. And it's just
Speaker 2: devastating when you read the reports on the accident, because
Speaker 2: you literally find burned bodies still carrying axes saws, shovels.
Speaker 2: Their packs alone weigh twenty pounds. There were investigators who
Speaker 2: calculated later that they could have run fifteen to twenty
Speaker 2: percent faster, and that just dropping their packs and tools
Speaker 2: could have made the difference between life and death. And
Speaker 2: the big question is why did they not think to
Speaker 2: drop their tools?
Speaker 1: So why didn't they because it seems it really seems
Speaker 1: very simple.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think there's any way to know for sure,
Speaker 2: But part of this is just a basic cognitive entrenchment problem.
Speaker 2: They're so used to a certain way of doing things
Speaker 2: that they don't even bother to question their assumptions. As
Speaker 2: a firefighter, as a smoke jumper, your tools are just
Speaker 2: ingrained as part of your training. But I think there's
Speaker 2: also a case to be made that there's a deeper
Speaker 2: problem at play here, which is those tools become part
Speaker 2: of their identity. If you are a firefighter, who you
Speaker 2: are is dependent on your tools. You can't put out
Speaker 2: a fire without water, you can't dig a place to
Speaker 2: deal with it without a shovel. You need all the
Speaker 2: tools in your pack to do your job. The organizational
Speaker 2: psychologist Carl Wike wrote so eloquently about this. He said
Speaker 2: that dropping your tools required letting go of your identity.
Speaker 2: And if you no longer have your tools, you're no
Speaker 2: longer a firefighter. Why are you there? Job is to
Speaker 2: put out the fire, and you let go of your tools,
Speaker 2: you've basically given up on your entire mission. Yeah, there
Speaker 2: was another tragic fire in Colorado where one of the
Speaker 2: survivors had run about three hundred yards uphill. He realizes
Speaker 2: that he has his saw over his shoulder, and then
Speaker 2: he ditches it because it weighs twenty five pounds. But
Speaker 2: then he starts looking for a place to put it
Speaker 2: down so the saw won't get burnt. He remembers thinking,
Speaker 2: I can't believe I'm putting down my saw. So he
Speaker 2: realizes that this is an irrational behavior, and he still
Speaker 2: can't quite get himself to rethink this ingrained habit of
Speaker 2: taking care of his tools, and some of his peers
Speaker 2: end up dying because of that ingrained habit.
Speaker 1: It was a very human thing, though. I mean, I
Speaker 1: can think of times in my own life where, from
Speaker 1: an outsider's viewpoint, the need to rethink instant should have
Speaker 1: been obvious. One particular example, I was going to give
Speaker 1: a lecture in Scotland. It's quite a big deal. And
Speaker 1: I was on my way to the airport and I
Speaker 1: got a call from a friend who was with my
Speaker 1: wife and they were both on their way to hospital
Speaker 1: because my wife was being taken into the emergency room.
Speaker 1: I was very concerned and I was glad, but my
Speaker 1: wife's friend was there with her, and I said, I'll
Speaker 1: call you back, and then I called the office and
Speaker 1: my colleague, who had arranged this lecture for me, said, Tim,
Speaker 1: you're not going to Scotland. You're going to the hospital.
Speaker 1: I'll sort everything out. I don't want you to think
Speaker 1: about this for another moment. I just couldn't let go
Speaker 1: of this fact that I was going to the airport
Speaker 1: and I was going to give this lecture and I
Speaker 1: was going to have to manage the logistics somehow. And
Speaker 1: it took somebody from outside the situation to say, you
Speaker 1: just need to be somewhere else. In hindsight, of course,
Speaker 1: what was I thinking? But I wasn't thinking because I
Speaker 1: had a plan, and I realize the planet changed.
Speaker 2: These moments are all around us. There's so many patterns
Speaker 2: of thought that become habit and plan and it's so
Speaker 2: much easier because of the forces of inertia to stick
Speaker 2: with the plan as opposed to pausing and rethinking it.
Speaker 2: And I worry a lot about that, fueling all kinds
Speaker 2: of escalation of commitment. You make a plan, it doesn't
Speaker 2: work out, and instead of abandoning the plan, you double
Speaker 2: down and you invest more. And the data on this
Speaker 2: I think you are chilling in some cases. On the
Speaker 2: subject of cautionary tales. There's some research on mountaineers suggesting
Speaker 2: that the grittiest ones are the most likely to die
Speaker 2: on expeditions because they cannot let go of the goal
Speaker 2: of getting to the summit. And it seems that in
Speaker 2: the moment they forget that the ultimate goal is not
Speaker 2: to make it to the top, it's to get back down.
Speaker 1: I'm reminded of the very first caution retail we broadcast,
Speaker 1: which was the story of Torry Kanyon and Torrey Canyon.
Speaker 1: As you may know, Adam was an oil tanker. It
Speaker 1: ran aground in broad daylight, in good weather on rocks
Speaker 1: that were visible and well marked on all the charts,
Speaker 1: and just drenched the coast of southern England and of
Speaker 1: northern France with oil. Somebody was killed also in the
Speaker 1: attempt to salvage the tanker. So this was a catastrophe.
Speaker 1: And fundamentally the problem was the captain, who was a
Speaker 1: sailor called Pastrengo Rujati. He was in a hurry, and
Speaker 1: he'd made a plan to take a slightly risky course
Speaker 1: between an island and some rocks. And it was a
Speaker 1: bit tight to take an oil tanker through there, but
Speaker 1: it was fine. It was certainly perfectly possible. And then
Speaker 1: a small thing went wrong, and another thing went wrong,
Speaker 1: and another thing went wrong, and the more stuff went wrong,
Speaker 1: the more his vision of the situation narrowed. Rather than
Speaker 1: doing what he should have done, which is to say, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: look this is actually getting risky. We need to stop,
Speaker 1: we need to go around. I know we're in a hurry,
Speaker 1: but we're just going to have to take the time,
Speaker 1: he kept thinking, I can just make it. I can
Speaker 1: just make it. I can squeeze through that gap, and
Speaker 1: in the end the result was a catastrophe.
Speaker 2: I remember listening to that and immediately thinking about research
Speaker 2: on threat rigidity. How when we're under stress or pressure,
Speaker 2: we revert to our most basic, well learned instincts and
Speaker 2: we narrow our field of vision. We're more likely to
Speaker 2: fall into a tunnel vision at the very moment when
Speaker 2: we most need to broaden it and rethink our definition
Speaker 2: of the situation. It's amazingly difficult to train yourself in
Speaker 2: that skill, because it's a bit like planning for the unexpected.
Speaker 2: I had a fascinating conversation a few years ago with
Speaker 2: Nik Wahlenda, the tightrope walker who walked across the Grand
Speaker 2: Canyon with no safety net. Now, I thought, okay, if
Speaker 2: you want to learn to be faster at rethinking, maybe
Speaker 2: somebody whose life is literally hanging in the balance could
Speaker 2: teach us something. And he told me that one of
Speaker 2: the most important things he does in his training is
Speaker 2: he's balancing on just a one foot high tightrope. Nothing
Speaker 2: bad will happen if he falls, but he will gather
Speaker 2: a group of people and ask them to try to
Speaker 2: push him off at random times from behind, just to
Speaker 2: prepare his body for all these unexpected events. And I
Speaker 2: don't want to say that any of us should live
Speaker 2: in that world, but I do wonder if more people
Speaker 2: had been trained that way, if we might have been
Speaker 2: more prepared for all the rethinking that the pandemic has
Speaker 2: forced on us. How many politicians and CEOs did we
Speaker 2: watch cling to their tools as opposed to dropping them
Speaker 2: and saying, actually, we might need to wear masks. It
Speaker 2: might be a good idea to social distance. Seems like
Speaker 2: a lot of missed opportunity for rethinking there.
Speaker 1: I think so. And one of the things that's striking
Speaker 1: about these different examples is the dimension of time. Sometimes
Speaker 1: we have time. The mountaineer can stop, they can go down,
Speaker 1: they've got some control. Pastrengo Ugiati, the captain of Tory Kanyon,
Speaker 1: he didn't have to keep going towards the rocks. He
Speaker 1: could have stopped. I mean, he was under time pressure,
Speaker 1: but ultimately it wasn't like Wagner Dodge where the fire
Speaker 1: was coming. Sometimes we have time to we think, and
Speaker 1: sometimes we don't. But when we do have time to
Speaker 1: we think, do we take advantage of that time?
Speaker 2: Not as often as I would like. One of the
Speaker 2: questions I've gotten a lot since Think Again came out
Speaker 2: is what about people who think too many times or
Speaker 2: who overthink? If you think about this as a curve,
Speaker 2: most of us are on the opposite end of that spectrum. Yes,
Speaker 2: there are people who struggle with overthinking, but you know what,
Speaker 2: It's better to think too much than it is to
Speaker 2: think too little. And I'd much rather see people grapple
Speaker 2: with rumination and analysis paralysis than I would have them
Speaker 2: never engage in the analysis at all. And I think
Speaker 2: that when you do have the time, the big question becomes, well,
Speaker 2: how do you know when it's worth pausing to think
Speaker 2: again and when you should basically charge ahead? And my
Speaker 2: favorite way to answer that question comes from studying professional
Speaker 2: forecasters who you've also spent a lot of time with him.
Speaker 2: They're amazing people, they're so fascinating. One in particular is
Speaker 2: Jean Pierre Bougam, who's a military historian by training and
Speaker 2: participates in forecasting tournaments for fun, and he was the
Speaker 2: world's most accurate election forecaster in a series of tournaments.
Speaker 2: He not only predicted the rise of Donald Trump and
Speaker 2: foresaw a few other elections. He's anticipated some events that
Speaker 2: many people thought were improbable or just didn't even give
Speaker 2: a chance. And one of the things he does is
Speaker 2: when he makes a prediction, he makes a list of
Speaker 2: conditions that would change his mind, and that forces him
Speaker 2: to stay honest. And I think we could all be
Speaker 2: doing more of this, right to say, the moment I
Speaker 2: make a decision or the moment I make a plan,
Speaker 2: I should pre commit to the possibility that I'm wrong
Speaker 2: and ask what would have to happen to change my mind?
Speaker 2: How would the world have to shift? What new information
Speaker 2: would I have to discover in order for that to
Speaker 2: cue me? Hey, wait a minute, it might be time
Speaker 2: to think again here. And I've landed in a framework
Speaker 2: that I think is helpful there, which is just to
Speaker 2: ask two questions. The first one is how consequential is
Speaker 2: this decision or this forecast? How high are the stakes?
Speaker 2: Second one is how reversible is this decision? Am I
Speaker 2: about to walk through a locked door or a revolving door?
Speaker 2: And where we most need to think again is when
Speaker 2: we're dealing with highly consequential, irreversible decisions. Every decision you
Speaker 2: make is a prediction about the future. When you choose
Speaker 2: a career or when you take a job, you're making
Speaker 2: it bad about what kind of work you're going to
Speaker 2: find motivating and what sort of culture will be healthy
Speaker 2: as opposed to toxic. When you marry someone, you're making
Speaker 2: a prediction about what you're going to want in the
Speaker 2: next few decades, and also who they're going to become.
Speaker 2: That's when it's really worth slowing down, because it really matters,
Speaker 2: and you can't easily change your mind tomorrow. It demands rethinking.
Speaker 1: After the break, I meet someone who refused to rethink
Speaker 1: and got it very wrong when it came to making
Speaker 1: a highly consequential, irreversible decision. Don't go away. We're back
Speaker 1: and I'm here with Adam Grant, the author of Think
Speaker 1: Again and Now. Adam I squirmed while reading the chapter
Speaker 1: and Think Again about Mike Lazaridis. So tell us who
Speaker 1: he is and why did he get things so wrong?
Speaker 2: Mike Lazaridis has affected your life, even though you might
Speaker 2: not realize it. He started out as an electronics wizard.
Speaker 2: He was the kid in high school who fixed broken
Speaker 2: TVs for his teacher. He'd built a computer for fun.
Speaker 2: He'd improved the buzzer for his high school quiz bowl team,
Speaker 2: and actually paid for his first year at college doing that,
Speaker 2: and he becomes an electrical engineer. He drops out of
Speaker 2: college to become an entrepreneur, and he ends up inventing
Speaker 2: a little device called the BlackBerry.
Speaker 1: I have to explain to gen Z what the BlackBerry
Speaker 1: is because it basically disappeared from popular views so fast.
Speaker 1: But half the smartphone sales in the US were Blackberries
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine, and all of the things
Speaker 1: that we now worry about with iPhone, addiction and doom scrolling,
Speaker 1: it was all the BlackBerry. We used to call it
Speaker 1: the Crackberry, and then it just went We got Android,
Speaker 1: we got the iPhone, and the BlackBerry disappeared. So what happened?
Speaker 2: I almost wonder if you just understated the popularity of
Speaker 2: the BlackBerry, because not only was it the dominant smartphone,
Speaker 2: it invented the smartphone category. So Mike Lazaridi's basically said,
Speaker 2: we're going to go from these really clunky pom pilots
Speaker 2: to allowing you to send emails and message on the go.
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden, what we thought were mobile
Speaker 2: phones became devices for text based communication. And so if
Speaker 2: you think that the smartphone was a revolutionary or disruptive innovation,
Speaker 2: Mike Lazaridis is probably the single most important figure behind it.
Speaker 2: So he is the founder, he's the co CEO of RIM,
Speaker 2: which is a company that makes the BlackBerry. And I
Speaker 2: think the standard narrative about what went wrong is that
Speaker 2: he failed to adapt. But I think that there's something
Speaker 2: more interesting at play. Mike Lazaridis is a scientist, and
Speaker 2: yet he spent too much of his time as a leader,
Speaker 2: thinking like a preacher, a prosecutor, and a politician. So
Speaker 2: this iPhone comes out two thousand and seven, and Mike
Speaker 2: does exactly what you would expect any self respecting engineer
Speaker 2: to do. He pries it open to figure out how
Speaker 2: it works, and he says, they put a computer inside this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and if your product is basically a phone with emails
Speaker 2: and texts and somebody builds a phone with a whole computer,
Speaker 2: that is a moment to pause and think again. What
Speaker 2: Mike does instead, though, is he preaches the virtues of
Speaker 2: his existing product. He says, what's great about this is
Speaker 2: we have a keyboard. Everybody wants a keyboard.
Speaker 1: His existing customers they like the keyboard, so it's not
Speaker 1: a crazy view. So what should he have done differently?
Speaker 2: A good scientist has the humility to know what they
Speaker 2: don't know and the curiosity to seek new knowledge. They
Speaker 2: don't let their ideas become part of their identity. Instead
Speaker 2: of defining himself as the guy who made the phone
Speaker 2: that had buttons on it, right, he would have been
Speaker 2: much better off saying, well, that opinion I hold that
Speaker 2: has become kool aid that I'm serving to everyone else.
Speaker 2: That's just a hypothesis waiting to be tested. And of
Speaker 2: course it turns out if he had tested this hypothesis,
Speaker 2: he would have discovered that, Yes, although millions of business
Speaker 2: and government users really liked the keyboard for work emails,
Speaker 2: the majority of smartphone users were looking for a device
Speaker 2: that provided home entertainment, and the touch screen was much
Speaker 2: more effective for that. So what I would have advised
Speaker 2: Mike to do is to put on his scientists goggles
Speaker 2: and say, what are the alternative hypotheses, and then how
Speaker 2: do you run experiments to test them?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's great advice. But let me give
Speaker 1: you an alternative perspective. Let me see if I can
Speaker 1: persuade you to think again, and then you can come
Speaker 1: back and you.
Speaker 2: Can I'm open to it in principle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, yeah, you have to pretend to be open
Speaker 1: to it, don't you, Adam, it would.
Speaker 2: Be ironic if I weren't. Although I mean, if you
Speaker 2: persuade me to think again. Here, and I admit that
Speaker 2: I was wrong in a much larger sense.
Speaker 1: I was right, Absolutely so, Mike Lazaridis. He's so innovative,
Speaker 1: he's so smart, and then at some point he stops
Speaker 1: thinking like a scientist and he starts thinking like a preacher.
Speaker 1: Fine alternative hypothesis. This happens a lot. The British Army
Speaker 1: invented the tank and Blitzkrieg, and yet we call it blitzgreig.
Speaker 1: The Germans took the idea, the British lost their technical lead.
Speaker 1: Kodak invented the digital camera, Sony invented the MP three player,
Speaker 1: Xerox invented the personal computer. There's all great ideas, but
Speaker 1: they weren't taken advantage of the theory that I discussed
Speaker 1: in One of my cautionary tales about the invention of
Speaker 1: the tank comes from Rebecca Henderson, a Harvard professor. These
Speaker 1: are what she calls architectural innovations, and architectural innovation is
Speaker 1: an innovation that requires a change in the architecture of
Speaker 1: the organization. So it's not just about one guy at
Speaker 1: the top who should change his mind and can't change
Speaker 1: his mind. The whole structure of the organization needs to change.
Speaker 1: Kodak is built around film and chemical processing. It can't
Speaker 1: cope with digital cameras. Xerox is a photocopier company. It
Speaker 1: can't make pecs. Maybe you're too hard on Mike Lazaridi's
Speaker 1: Maybe he just didn't have a chance because this was
Speaker 1: an architectural innovation and they're just almost impossible. So what
Speaker 1: am I missing?
Speaker 2: Nothing? I think that's a complimentary hypothesis, not an alternative
Speaker 2: fund So I think you're right. I think one of
Speaker 2: the real struggles for RAM at the time was they
Speaker 2: had to reinvent a lout of the company in order
Speaker 2: to compete with the iPhone. But the question is why
Speaker 2: didn't they do that. They could have done it, they
Speaker 2: invented the architecture.
Speaker 1: Or they could have tried, at least it seems didn't
Speaker 1: even try.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing. I mean way before, right, way before.
Speaker 2: There were missed opportunities to think again, there was a
Speaker 2: top engineer back in the late nineteen nineties who wanted
Speaker 2: to add an Internet browser to the BlackBerry, but Mike said, no,
Speaker 2: focus on email. Right, that's a coding challenge. Right. That's
Speaker 2: an example of Mike being too attached to his convictions. Now,
Speaker 2: you could also argue that he knew the importance of
Speaker 2: ruthless prioritization, and he was trying to avoid distraction, which
Speaker 2: I think may have been true at the time. But
Speaker 2: guess what, It's two thousand and eight. The company is
Speaker 2: worth more than seventy billion dollars and the BlackBerry still
Speaker 2: doesn't have a reliable browser, nor does the company have
Speaker 2: another product. Yeah. Right, and that is a massive systemic
Speaker 2: failure to think again. And if you look at the architecture,
Speaker 2: the structure, and the culture of that organization, that architecture
Speaker 2: was built by the leaders at the top. I guess
Speaker 2: what I would say in response is I think that
Speaker 2: Mike's tendency to slip from scientific thinking to preaching was
Speaker 2: part of the reason that the architecture frozen place as
Speaker 2: opposed to being reimagined.
Speaker 1: Okay, you've persuaded me that Mike's decision making, the psychology
Speaker 1: of that is certainly an important part of what's going on.
Speaker 1: There was a lovely subplot in the way you tell
Speaker 1: this story, which is that a few years before Lazaridis
Speaker 1: at Research in Motion is making these decisions or failing
Speaker 1: to make these decisions about producing a touchscreen phone. Over
Speaker 1: at Apple, you've got Steve Jobs, and you know we
Speaker 1: think of Steve Jobs. Oh he's this genius who created
Speaker 1: the iPhone and blah blah. But Steve Jobs, he swore
Speaker 1: him never make a phone. He hated phones, so he
Speaker 1: had to rethink. So how do you get a man
Speaker 1: like Steve Jobs to change his mind?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think the narrative about the renaissance of Apple
Speaker 2: missed something vital, which is not only did Steve Jobs
Speaker 2: hate phones, he hated cell phone carriers. He called them
Speaker 2: the four Orifices. He often got so frustrated with his
Speaker 2: phone that he would throw against the wall and smash it.
Speaker 2: And he just thought that phones were clunky, they were
Speaker 2: poorly designed, the tech didn't work right. He hated the
Speaker 2: hardware and the software and the design. And some of
Speaker 2: his engineers and designers started seeing the writing on the
Speaker 2: wall in the late nineties, And it really began when
Speaker 2: they rolled out the iPod, which was their first big success,
Speaker 2: And suddenly it became clear to a group of them
Speaker 2: that it was only a matter of time before everything
Speaker 2: else you could put on a computer was also in
Speaker 2: your pocket. And they started pitching him the idea, and
Speaker 2: he just thought it was stupid. He kept saying, I
Speaker 2: will never make a phone. I don't know why you
Speaker 2: would want that, and he was very close to the idea,
Speaker 2: and Steve Jobs was not an easy person to argue with.
Speaker 1: It sounds like very similar to the kind of things
Speaker 1: that Mike Asuidi's was saying, like why would we want
Speaker 1: why would we want a touch screen? You know, would
Speaker 1: why do we want a browser? We don't want that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. It's too complicated, except, of course lasuitis
Speaker 1: is making is saying this after Job group have already
Speaker 1: proved it can be done.
Speaker 2: That's right, which makes it all the more depressing. But
Speaker 2: I think what ultimately made Steve Jobs an effective leader.
Speaker 2: I don't want to say a great leader, because he
Speaker 2: violated some of my core values in the way that
Speaker 2: he treated human beings. But he was willing to change
Speaker 2: his mind, and he surrounded himself with people who knew
Speaker 2: how to tempt him to think again. They tried to
Speaker 2: plant the seed and let him water it. The first
Speaker 2: thing they did was they said, we're not trying to
Speaker 2: threaten the core DNA of Apple. We don't want to
Speaker 2: turn Apple into a phone company. It's going to be
Speaker 2: a computer company. We're just going to shrink the computer
Speaker 2: and put a phone on the side of it, and
Speaker 2: you're already putting thousands of songs in your pocket. Don't
Speaker 2: you want to carry around everything else too? The research
Speaker 2: on this is fascinating to me that people are more
Speaker 2: willing to embrace change when they're reminded of what's going
Speaker 2: to stay the same, right, that if you give people
Speaker 2: a vision for change, they're less likely to resist it
Speaker 2: if they also hear a vision for continuity. And that's
Speaker 2: exactly what the engineers and designers did for Steve Jobs.
Speaker 2: They said, we're going to take the core of Apple
Speaker 2: our identity, and we're going to shift the form. There's
Speaker 2: an engineer who hears that Microsoft is planning to release
Speaker 2: a tablet and it's going to have a stylus, and
Speaker 2: he purposely brings up this example because he knows that
Speaker 2: Jobs hates Microsoft, and he thinks the stylus is the
Speaker 2: worst invention in this smartphone industry. And immediately that fires
Speaker 2: up his competitive juices and he says, we're going to
Speaker 2: make a better one and you're going to be able
Speaker 2: to operate it with your finger. And there were so
Speaker 2: many moments like this. I'll throw out one other that
Speaker 2: I really got a kick out of which is there
Speaker 2: was an engineer who just casually says to Steve Jobs, look,
Speaker 2: I know that smartphones are just hideous. Therefore the pocket
Speaker 2: protector crowd, But what do you think it would look
Speaker 2: like if Apple designed one right and activates his imagine
Speaker 2: and Jobs basically then starts to run with the vision
Speaker 2: and so I guess the overall lesson here is that
Speaker 2: if you want to push someone like Steve Jobs to
Speaker 2: think again, it's really helpful to make sure that you
Speaker 2: activate their natural curiosity, that you give them a chance
Speaker 2: to generate some ideas, because then they start to take
Speaker 2: ownership over them. If you do that in a way
Speaker 2: that doesn't threaten what they're already attached to, it's a
Speaker 2: lot easier to get them to give it a shot.
Speaker 1: I guess the really deep point there is that you
Speaker 1: can't change somebody's mind. Only they can change their mind.
Speaker 1: And they were giving him the prompt and the space
Speaker 1: to change his own mind because they're not going to
Speaker 1: do it for him.
Speaker 2: I think one of the most powerful lessons in the
Speaker 2: last few decades of psychology research is it's very difficult
Speaker 2: to motivate someone else to change their mind. What you
Speaker 2: can do is try to help them find their own
Speaker 2: motivations to change their minds.
Speaker 1: After the break, will return to the horrific Man Gulch
Speaker 1: wildfire pro final twist in this cautionary tale. We're back
Speaker 1: and I'm with Adam Grant, the author of Think Again.
Speaker 1: And Adam, I've heard some of the Man Gulch story before,
Speaker 1: but you've added a final twist. What is it?
Speaker 2: I didn't know this when I sat down to write
Speaker 2: the story. I thought that I was writing a story
Speaker 2: about the failure to think again, about the escape fire
Speaker 2: and about dropping tools. And as I read about Man Gulch,
Speaker 2: I was horrified to discover that there was a deeper
Speaker 2: and much more systemic failure to think again, which is
Speaker 2: that the twelve smoke jumpers who died lost their lives
Speaker 2: fighting a fire that did not need to be fought
Speaker 2: in the first place. The entire field of wildland firefighting,
Speaker 2: a whole industry, was guilty of decades of failing to
Speaker 2: think again. I think the earliest record I can find
Speaker 2: is the eighteen eighties, when scientists started writing about the
Speaker 2: fact that wildfires are important in the life cycles of forests.
Speaker 2: So if you think about what a fire does it
Speaker 2: puts nutrients in the soil, it clears away dead brush.
Speaker 2: It also opens up a path for sunlight. And if
Speaker 2: you suppress wildlan fires, you end up with forests that
Speaker 2: are too dense and that can lead to more explosive
Speaker 2: wildfires and that kills force rather than allowing them to rejuvenate.
Speaker 2: So that was known starting in the eighteen eighties. Man
Speaker 2: Goulch happens in the nineteen forties, and it's not until
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight that the US Forest Service finally eliminates
Speaker 2: their policy that if anybody sees a fire, it has
Speaker 2: to be put out by ten am the next day.
Speaker 2: And what's crazy tim about Man Gulch is that wildfire
Speaker 2: that killed the smoke jumpers happened in a remote area.
Speaker 2: There's no human life at risk, and the smoke jumper
Speaker 2: go in because no one in the community, the profession,
Speaker 2: the organization has questioned the assumption that wildfires need to
Speaker 2: be put out.
Speaker 1: It's a real gut punch to think about that, and
Speaker 1: it got me thinking about cautionary tales in general, because
Speaker 1: most of the cautionary tales that we tell are about
Speaker 1: intense moments where someone makes a mistake and It may
Speaker 1: be an individual, or it may be an organization, but
Speaker 1: the spotlight is on a particular time and place, and
Speaker 1: I wonder how often there's something going on in the background,
Speaker 1: something much more diffuse, something rotten in the culture or
Speaker 1: in the structure of a whole industry or a whole
Speaker 1: field that should have been fixed fifty years previously, and
Speaker 1: that we don't talk about because the cool story is
Speaker 1: it happens at a much faster pace.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's maddening when you think about it. We've
Speaker 2: seen so many disasters that are due to this kind
Speaker 2: of deeper cultural failure of rethinking. You know, certainly pandemic
Speaker 2: response falls in that category. The crash of stock markets
Speaker 2: fits that bill pretty cleanly. Almost any example of a
Speaker 2: frog in a slow boiling pot would probably align with
Speaker 2: this issue. And as you know, it turns out even
Speaker 2: that story needs to be rethought.
Speaker 1: Because, yeah, the frogs will move right.
Speaker 2: I mean, the moment you heat up the water to
Speaker 2: the point of discomfort, the frog leaps out. I read
Speaker 2: about that and thought, it's not the frogs who can't
Speaker 2: think again, it's us. You hear the story, you assume
Speaker 2: it's true, and you retell it. As opposed to pausing
Speaker 2: to rethink it. I think that's a metaphor for so
Speaker 2: many of the mistakes that we make in our lives
Speaker 2: and in our world, which is we make an assumption
Speaker 2: it proves to be a successful one in the moment,
Speaker 2: it helps us achieve our goals, and we don't ask
Speaker 2: whether then the practices that we build a around that assumption,
Speaker 2: our best practices are time honored traditions were created for
Speaker 2: a world that no longer exists.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Adam. It's been fantastic.
Speaker 2: Thank you honored to be a part of it. It's always
Speaker 2: a little nerve racking showing up on a podcast that
Speaker 2: I've listened to.
Speaker 1: It is our honor to have you. I should say
Speaker 1: that Adam writes amazing books faster than we can release
Speaker 1: podcast episodes. So while in this episode we were discussing
Speaker 1: his book Think Again, his more recent book is Hidden Potential.
Speaker 1: It's not only packed with interesting stories and ideas, but
Speaker 1: practical lessons too. You canvide all of Adam's books in
Speaker 1: good bookshops, and you can listen to Adam Grant's podcasts
Speaker 1: Rethinking and Work Life wherever you get your podcasts. For
Speaker 1: a full list of our sources see the show notes
Speaker 1: at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by me
Speaker 1: Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Alice Fines
Speaker 1: with support from Marilyn Rust. Sound design and original music
Speaker 1: is the work of Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the scripts.
Speaker 1: It features the voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge,
Speaker 1: Stella Harford, Jemmas Saunders and Rufus Wright. The show also
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohene, Eric's handler, Carrie Brody, and Christina Sullivan.
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded
Speaker 1: at Wardoor Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you
Speaker 1: like the show, please remember to share, rate and review,
Speaker 1: tell your friends and if you want to hear the
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Speaker 1: show page in Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin dot fm,
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