ERP042 - Bring Your Brain to Work w/ Art Markman

Welcome to Evolve Radio where we explore the evolution of business and technology. Today on the podcast, I'm talking with Art Markman, who's a leading cognitive scientist. He's also a professor of psychology and marketing at the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to Art's 150 scholarly articles, he's also an author of several books. On this podcast, Art and I are reviewing his new book, Bring Your Brain to Work, using cognitive science to get a job done, do it well, and advance your career. It's a ton of great insights in this podcast, I'm sure you're going to enjoy it. And also check out the show notes for links to Art's books, as well as the links to his podcast, two guys on your head. If you enjoy the show, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast from. Also, be sure to check out the webpage evolvedmgmt.com/podcast for show notes, links to my guests, and to check out previous episodes. Now, let's get started. On the podcast today, we have Art Markman. Welcome, Art. Oh, thanks, Todd. It's great to be here. So you are a researcher in cognitive science, can you give us a sense of what cognitive science is? Sure, it's it's an interdisciplinary study of the way minds work. So, it turns out the mind is a complicated thing, and if you take any particular perspective on it, you miss something. So psychology, which studies behavior in a scientific way, is a wonderful field, but it it misses some things, particularly around what the brain is doing, so there's you add in some neuroscience. You can add in some computer science because understanding how to compute the kinds of things that that that minds and brains do is useful. Linguistics, the study of language and communication, also turns out to be really valuable. Uh as well as things like education, because understanding how you would train people to do stuff can also give you a lot of insight into the way the mind works. So, so when you put all of these disciplines together, you get something that's much greater than the sum of its parts. Excellent, very cool. And the uh previous podcast that we were we did was around um procrastination and focused a lot on motivation, behaviors and things like that. And uh your book that uh we're we're kind of chatting on here is bring your brain to work. Uh so I'm picked out a couple of uh uh spots in the book that I found really interesting. We'll kind of review those and interestingly, kind of the first one that really jumped out to me was around motivation. So I thought leading off of sort of the previous uh podcast, we'll I'll read a a fairly long quote here that I really liked. And then you can kind of give us some further thought on this. Uh the the quote here is, when you're making progress towards achieving something, your goals, you feel good, when you aren't, you feel bad. The more deeply invested you are in the goal, the motivational system is pursuing, the stronger the feeling you have. The feelings become emotions when you reflect on them. You don't consciously realize what factors are driving your motivational system to produce their your affect. The experience a particular you experience a particular emotion only after giving your own interpretation to those feelings. I thought that was a great quote, it really underlines the idea that we're in a way almost sort of victims of the only the things going on in our head. And then we have to make up stories about the way that we're feeling after the fact. Can you expand on that? Yeah, absolutely. And I I think you really hit the nail on the head with that. You know, the motivational system involves these mechanisms that are very deep inside the brain. And and if if you actually dissect uh brains or or or look at models of brain, the the motivational areas that are are are these structures that are called the basal ganglia. They're deep inside the brain. And and if you were to look at a a mouse brain or a rat brain or a sheep brain, it's got many of the same structures that the human brain has in in that way. Where the where the brains of those other animals differ from the human brain is in the cortex, that outer part of the brain where the human brain is much larger. And that's what gives us all of these great reasoning abilities that we have and the ability to tell stories about things. Unfortunately, all that motivational mechanism is not that well connected with all that storytelling apparatus. And so your motivational system sends these very cryptic signals to your to the rest of your brain about how it's doing. And through these feelings that you're experiencing. And and as that quote points out, what what it's giving you information about is valence. Am I doing well, good or bad? And and and direction, strength. You know? Am I am I invested or not? And then after that, we have to kind of figure out what must be going on with us. And sometimes the world is kind. It's easy to understand. I mean, if if if you have an employee at work who's annoying you at this moment and not helping you to get things done. And you're and you're feeling strongly negative in that moment, you're pretty sure you know why. But there's a lot of situations in the workplace that are a little bit ambiguous. For example, if you think about change in the workplace. So you implement a change and now your habits don't work so well. And now you feel unsettled. And and you're not sure why. And so now you begin to think, this change is stupid. As opposed to the process of of changing habits is uncomfortable. And so you end up attributing the emotion to the thing that's been changed rather than the process of change itself. And so and so that interpretation can sometimes get you into trouble. And and certainly if you're you know, from a managerial standpoint or an owner standpoint. When you're creating change, you actually want to help people to understand that I'm about to do something that is motivationally going to be difficult for you. You're going to feel bad about it, but that's totally normal and not a reflection of the change that we've created. Yeah. And I think. Uh that's an excellent point, I think it really underlines that process of change in organizations. And I suggest a lot of people fail to communicate the reason or the justification for changes. And I think you phrase it really well that outlining to people that this is going to be uncomfortable, but we're doing this for this reason. And it's okay to be uncomfortable. And I think people often sort of hear the resistance from people saying, I don't like this, this is dumb, and and that resistance is enough for them to just say, this isn't working. They throw it out the door before that that behavior becomes normalized and then you start to see the flywheel kick in after that, right? Yeah, absolutely. You know, I tell you everybody, no matter what you what change you're implementing. Whether it's moving people to a new office space or changing a procedure. You got to give people six weeks for that to kick in and you have to let them know that for six weeks, there are going to be days where they just think this isn't working at all. And and to really hold off making a real judgment about the change itself until six to eight weeks have gone by. And uh because you may discover if you give it that period of time that six to eight weeks in, it's all fine now. Right. Yeah. No, super important point. Uh next section that I thought uh was worth exploring to to discuss. Um was the ten universal values. Um uh so can you probably don't have a ton of time to run through all ten and explain them. You'll have to pick up the book to to check those out. Um but can you kind of talk us through some of those those values and and how they're important for understanding how how your brain works and and how to to engage that. Yeah, so if you think about your career in general. Right? Uh one of the things that you want to do is to feel fulfilled in the work that you're doing. And what in the world is going to allow you to do that? Mostly, it's going to be, are you doing things over time that allow you to express your underlying value? And there's some really wonderful work by Shalom Schwartz and a bunch of his colleagues that has looked all over the world. So this isn't just a bunch of college sophomores at American universities that people have have studied. This is he's actually done this in almost every culture he could get access to. And and he finds that there's there's about ten values that characterize a lot of what uh people are doing. And these are things like self-direction, that ability to um to be independent in in your thought and your action. Or benevolence, helping other people to do things. Or security, right? Now, if if you think about uh for example, being a business owner. Often uh people who have a high value on security have a really hard time starting a business. Because we know how that that even though most entrepreneurs are not inherently risk-taking because they believe that what they're going to do is is going to succeed. Still, they recognize that that some businesses fail and if you need security in your life, uh running your own business is probably not going to be the thing for you. Uh so you want to really get a feel for, well, what what are my values and and what are the values of the people that I'm hiring? Because particularly in the early phases of a company, you'd like to hire people whose values fit the kind of culture that you're trying to create within the organization. And and and so hiring people who may who may not have all the skills they need for the job, because they can grow into those, but have a really good fit with the values of the organization you're trying to create can often be a great strategy. Yeah, I think that's a great one. As as well. Um I see this pop up on occasion what you're talking about is is uh having the right values for the person that you're hiring. And in a lot of cases, people um want to see themselves reflected and they want to see sort of this uh high-paced entrepreneurial spirit. But if you're kind of positioning that person or a group of people to be high-paced entrepreneurial, then you end up with a lot of A-type personalities and a lot of clashing. Uh so I think it's really important that you got to understand who you're hiring for why and if someone looks, hey, this person would be a great business owner. They may not be the best employee. If you have a whole team full of those people. That's going to be a problem. You need that that whole ecosystem of of those different personalities to play off of each other in order to produce a well-functioning team, right, so hiring on those values is important to understand why you're hiring them, what you need them to do, right? Yeah. I let's let's face it, if you if you're an entrepreneur because you woke up one day and realized you couldn't work for somebody else. The last thing you want to do is to hire a bunch of people who can't work for somebody else. Exactly. Yeah. Um that kind of leans on um the some of the systems that I use for especially for hiring and and managing staff. Are behavioral systems like disc. Is that something that you're a fan of as well? Yeah, I am a fan of using good valid instruments for assessing personality. So, the disc is great. Uh the big five personality characteristics, which which have a lot of support, those are great. Um I and almost every other scientist who studies behavioral science. He's on a lifelong mission to stamp out the Myers Briggs. Uh yay. Which is. You know, was created in the forties by a couple of people who thought Carl Jung is really cool. And as I like to say, Carl Jung is really cool. But he's no basis for a system of personality. And uh and and so if if we could just get rid of that, uh that would be that would be wonderful. But I do think that getting some insight into those underlying stable motivational structures that influence people's behavior. Which is really what personality is all about. Can be very powerful for constructing good teams, for finding people who are going to be a good fit to the particular position that you're trying to uh to to to to put them in. And also for helping you to interpret some of the things that you're that that the people who work for you are doing. Because there are times where people will react to something very differently than you would. And if you're unaware of the dimensions of individual difference, you can really misinterpret why people are doing what they're doing. Yeah, so the people that know me. I I have to state, I did not know your stance on Myers Briggs and disc. Uh I'm a huge proponent of disc and uh as a result, I tend to trash Myers Briggs a little bit. And I I tell people, it's okay, you can use it. Maybe to to to underline some things about yourself for self-discovery. But there's really no scientific basis to it. And I I often tell people, um, you know, behavioral analysis is is useful. Uh personality profiling is kind of just astrology, if you find something in it, then great. Uh so if you're Myers Briggs fan, I apologize and that's that's uh that's you've heard it from the the scientific basis standpoint as well now. Well, don't apologize. I you know, honestly, right, we we, you know, I mean, very few people would would use their horoscope for making significant business decisions. And this is about a half a step above that. Okay. Good to know. Um the next one that I I I loved because I've I've heard a bit about this and I I honestly, I'll say, I don't know a ton around this this uh this next piece that we're going to talk on. Um I know enough to be dangerous and I find it interesting. But if you could tell us about the Lake Wobegon effect and explore that a little bit. Yeah. Sure. So the Lake Wobegon effect comes from so so so there was a a show called Prairie Home Companion. It's no longer on the air. And Garrison Keeler, who was the creator of that, had created a fictional town of Lake Wobegon. And uh and the the tagline was uh where the the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all of the children are above average. And it's that last bit that was the uh the the genesis of this. There was this observation that if you ask people how good they are at things, that that on average, people assume they're above average. So, so we we misinterpret our level of skill in many situations. And there's been a refinement of this over the years. There's another there's a a refinement of this that's now called the Dunning Kruger effect after two guys named Dunning and Kruger. Uh who who observed that this miscalibration in your confidence in your abilities is most prominent for the worst performers. So if you're really bad at something, you most strongly overestimate how uh how good you are at it. And the reason for that is because if you if you don't really understand what is required for expert performance. Then it's very hard for you to evaluate how good you are at something because you don't even realize how much more there is to know, right? If you don't know anything about playing a musical instrument. You look at somebody up on a stage, you think, well, how hard could that be? Right? Right? The more you get into it, the more you realize what goes into expert performance and you become better calibrated. Because you think, whoa, I don't I don't actually know how to do that or that. And in fact, the most expert people and often the highest performers are often quite critical of their own performance because they realize exactly what's required to be really good at something. And and so, you know, I I think that that novice business owners, for example, will often overestimate how easy it is to succeed. Whereas, um, the more that you've been around the block on on on starting a business, the more you realize what kinds of pitfalls you have to watch out for. And and of course, the the more you understand about expert performance, the better you can prepare for things. So, so you have to be really careful. And the other thing that's important here is as you begin to mentor and nurture new employees. You have to recognize that they're looking at you thinking, well, I can do that that person's job. I mean, how hard could it be to run this place? Uh and and so part of what you want to do is to bring them along in a way where you begin to reveal the complexity of the operation so that they can actually begin to both to learn about it. But also to appreciate how much work really goes into the success of an enterprise. Yeah, and speaking as someone who uh is now in management and works in with managers a lot. I can say when I was a a technical person lower on the totem pole, I did look up and say, how hard can this be? Like, why are people so stressed out? You know, the basics are there. Right? And then once you get into that position, you're like, holy smokes, this is a lot more complicated than I really anticipated. Uh the the the analogy I was thinking of is like if someone's just playing, you know, basketball hoops on on a local court and they're they're kind of mopping up the local neighborhood. That does not mean does not necessarily mean they're going to go to the NBA and be able to compete with LeBron James. Like the the the the the strata around that expertise is so big and if you're fooled by sort of your local influence. And people start to sort of believe their own hype, right? Yeah. Well, and you know, I've always wondered what the Dilbert cartoon would look like if it were drawn from the perspective of the pointy-headed boss. That's great. Yeah. Yeah, I think I think it would be, you know, it would look completely different, right? You know, the whole world there that uh that most people are are. By the way, sheltered from for good reason, right? I mean, you know, if somebody's got if you have employees who have a job to do. Having, you know, I think it's important to train people and to begin to to to to to help them to see how they might advance in their career in in ways that might enable them to take on some of those jobs. But but at the same time, you you also want to keep people somewhat sheltered from some of that complexity because they have enough of their own work to do and and so they shouldn't necessarily be too worried about some of the things that keep you up at night. Yeah, definitely. But I I agree. I think uh that factor around mentorship is probably one of the best thing that that people can do for advancing skills in in staff. I think a lot of people tend to look to more formal education and very structured approach to certain things. But I think practical experience and exposure are some of the best learning tools that people can have when they're trying to grow their career. Oh, absolutely. In fact, I start the book by pointing out that almost everything you need to succeed in your job is something you did not learn in a class. Yeah. And and even when you do continuing education, and I spent eight years as the director of a program that we created here at the University of Texas called the Human Dimensions of Organizations. And we have not only an executive master's program, but but, you know, one-day classes people can come and take. And they're all organized around problems that people face in the workplace. Nonetheless, there's still a tremendous amount that that that people need to learn just by being engaged with other people at work. And and I'm a big believer in empowering everybody in your organization to seek out the mentors that they need to learn things. I I think a lot of organizations do a bad job of mentoring because they hire somebody and immediately plop them down and say, this person's your mentor. And then those two people go out for coffee and have like a 45-minute discussion and they never speak again. Because the person who was assigned to be the mentor doesn't actually have what that that that new employee needs. And and instead, if you empower new employees to seek out people who who do have those skills that they want and do have that success that they want, then you create those opportunities for them to learn from you. Uh when they need it and not when not just when you think that they need it, which I think is is really valuable and actually a great way of of empowering people to do that. If you're higher up in the food chain of an organization is when a new employee comes in, find something that that employee knows how to do that you think is interesting. And take them out for a cup of coffee and say, I noticed that you're really good at this. And and I've always wondered how that works, can you teach me a little bit about that? Because now what it says is each of us is supposed to look around this organization and find people who can help us learn new things. And that starts from the top. Yeah. And I think that's really insightful around more what I would describe as like a a pull education rather than a push education. If you're searching for something or you see that there's a gap in something that you need to fill, then it's a I think your attention and your interest and the usefulness of that information is so much greater if you're looking to pull that information in rather than just someone just trying to force something in your head. The context isn't there, I guess. Yeah, well, there's a there's a great, one of my there are certain concepts in psychology I love and and partly because of the name. And the Russian psychologist Vygotsky from the from the early 20th century had this concept of what he called the zone of proximal development. Which basically that at any given moment, there are certain things you're just about ready to learn. And that effective education happens when you are exposed to information and processes that you're just about ready to learn. Now, one way to do that is to have a really good curriculum that sort of leads people along. But most organizations can't really do that because they have people at all different levels. So the other way to get people to learn in their zone of proximal development is to do as you were pointing out and have people really pull that education to them. Because now what they're doing is saying, this is the thing I need to know right now. Now, I'm ready to learn this, so come and teach me. Whereas if I push that on you, there's a there's a high probability I'm doing that in a way where I'm outside of that zone of proximal development. And and it's just going to go in one ear and out the other. Yeah, great. Um. So the the first half that what we've been talking about here is more of the um sort of the behavioral psychology components uh and the book is broken up um in sort of a a way I really like. It talks about, you know, uh going to get a job, how you function at a job, then kind of how you really excel at at work. Um so we'll flip over a bit more to um the parts that um I I love the behavior stuff and I also love like productivity and making things work effectively. That's sort of a large part of the second half of the book is is bringing your brain to work. Like, what are the ways that you can be smarter about how you interact and how you uh succeed at work? Um the first one that that I wanted to touch on is clarifying by email. And you talk about, you know, emails going back and forth. And so you everyone's familiar with this. The the ten email chain response of people trying to clarify information between each other. And the part I wanted to ask is, why do we do this? Because even the smartest people do this. They'll continue to email to each other when they they know they should just pick up the phone or or and call the person to clarify it in ten seconds. But instead, they'll spend, you know, not an engaged time, but probably 40 minutes of elapsed time to clarify something through email. So despite the fact that we know these things, why do we continue to do it? Yeah, so it's funny. For one thing, we don't analyze our own ability to communicate very well. So I think most of us don't really recognize that human communication is actually optimized for two people or a small number of people in face-to-face contact. In real time, engaging in a spoken communication, and that the further and further we get away from that. The the harder and harder it is to communicate. And so what what email does is it is it takes you out of face-to-face contact and it takes you out of real time. And and that has a bunch of uh that creates a lot of problems for communication. For one thing, it you lose tone of voice and and and, you know, people's facial expression and things like that. Which can be a problem and we can come back to that. But it also makes it harder for people to negotiate meaning. So I think a lot of times we are lulled into a belief that that the world is kind of like the way that scripted dialogue happens on television shows. Or uh you know, in in in you know, in a book. And the fact is that if you actually get a transcript of the way people have communication when they when they're having conversations. It's fits and starts, a sentence starts one place, shifts to another place. Somebody else interrupts. Um somebody will notice somebody else looking confused and ask what's wrong. And all of this happens very quickly to the point where we're not even paying attention to it. And yet, it makes our ability to communicate effectively uh much easier to do. And so as we shift to a text-based medium like email, we can't do that fast back and forth. And so and so we think, well, I'm just going to write this sentence, which is perfectly clear. You're going to get all of it. And then you don't, so you ask me a question. And now I don't understand your question, so I have to ask a question about the question. And in a real conversation, we could actually go through an exchange like that, it would take six seconds and none of us would remember it. But when it becomes a ten email chain, suddenly it's incredibly frustrating. Because even though it's not only is it the 40 minutes of elapsed time that you mentioned. But it's probably taking seven minutes of actual time to accomplish something that could have been done in 12 seconds. Had we been face-to-face. And because we're not thinking of it, we don't even try and we think, you know what, it would be too much of a bother for me to actually talk this out. You know, I'm a believer that that if you can pick up the phone and take care of something in ten seconds, do it. If you can stick your head in somebody's office and take care of it in ten seconds, do it. Even if it requires saying, listen, hit me up when you have a chance. Because I have something I need to ask you. That that's still more effective or sending them an email to say, pop your head in my office as soon as you can, I just want to talk about this with you. For for for so many aspects of the work day, that is so much more a productive way of doing things. Yeah. Really important. Um so you you mentioned uh facial cues and expressions and things like that. So I imagine you're a a proponent of using video as much as possible in a connected world, right? Yeah, I think if you can. Uh, you know, obviously, if you're if you're dealing with suppliers overseas and things like that and the and the connection is horrible, that's very frustrating. And so I can understand going with audio only. But if you can put yourself in face-to-face contact, it it helps a ton. Because it it helps you to see confusion on people's faces when you've said something they don't get it. It also helps you to communicate your humanity a little bit better. If you ask somebody by email, could you send me that report, right? You might have meant it in a very friendly, hey, could you send me that report? But that doesn't mean that that's how it was received on the other side, where it might sound like this command. Send, you know, could you send me that report, I mean, it could be a much more uh you know, terse exchange. Plus we just don't write with the same kinds of flourishes that we use when we speak. So, so you can actually make it difficult for yourself to have a decent relationship with people if if you only communicate just, you know, by voice without any without any opportunity to see you. So I yeah, I think it's very important to try to to try to find those opportunities to to get into some kind of face-to-face contact, even if it's mediated by uh by a camera and a screen. And my second follow-up was a a bit of an aside. Um but you hit on something that I think is um, I don't know if it's because I recognize this or maybe it's more of a prevalent issue. But I I like shows that have like a a lot of intense dialogue like West Wing and billions and shows like that. But I I agree, I think it gives us this skewed perspective of what conversations look like. And maybe make us a bit self-conscious of like, well, you know, I don't I don't speak as well or I don't carry myself in a I'm not as thought out for these sort of like mini monologues that happen in a lot of these shows. Do you think that that becomes an issue for people when they're trying to communicate that they think they should sound like the shows that they watch? I think there are certainly some people who feel that way, they wonder, why is it that when I say a paragraph's worth of stuff, it doesn't come out as a fully formed coherent paragraph? It fits and starts and goes this way. And then I realize I forgot to say something. You know, it's it's hard to to write in a way or to to speak rather in a way that sounds like you were writing something out. But of course, script writers have the the the joy of being able to write stuff out and actors have the joy, generally speaking, of being able to read something that was scripted. So, so it it it certainly I think can make you self-conscious of of the way that you talk. But I will say, one of the things that I that I do in the book. I I I have these these sections called uh called the jazz brain. Um I, you know, I I'm an amateur jazz musician myself, I I took up the saxophone in my mid-thirties. And uh and I'm just fascinated by lessons that we can learn from our improvisational abilities for how we work effectively. And one of the boxes that I have in the book is called silence is a note. And it it's about the way we speak because a lot of us have verbal ticks that we use where we fill our pauses. We say things like, uh. Or we have these other hitches, we'll say like a lot or other kinds of of placeholders when we're not entirely sure what we want to say. And those verbal ticks can be very distracting for people and I think it's important that you find a way to learn to suppress those. Which can be really effortful up front, but to find a way not to do those things and to replace them with a little bit of silence. Yeah, and I agree. It's something I work on a lot. Uh knowing those things. And obviously, I I just did it. Now I'm going to be self-conscious about this. But it's it's a big part, like I've I I listen to Tim Ferriss's podcast and he suggests the reason that he even started the podcast was to eliminate the verbal ticks. Because he wanted to do less editing. And I'm the same, like I I know of those things consciously, but it is really difficult to override and just allow that silence. I agree. But it is very powerful, you it is less distracting when you hear people talking without those verbal ticks for sure. And and one of the things that people can do, you know, you you do a podcast, I do a podcast. One of the things that that makes us lucky to do, I guess, is that we have to hear ourselves speak a lot. And so we get to hear some of the worst offenses that we commit verbally. Uh I think most people don't have that opportunity, but it's actually worth it. It's actually I I talk a little bit in the book about meetings and meeting behavior. And there's there are certain people in meetings who are the dominator. They they they are the ones who have to just speak all the time. And sometimes if you fear that you might be that person, taping a meeting that you've had and actually paying attention to, how long are you speaking? Are you actually making a point in that four-minute monologue that you did? Could you have replaced that with two sentences? Uh those are all ways I think of of helping yourself to be more effective interpersonally when you're when you're communicating. Yeah, and that's a great transition. So my next point was around uh meeting effectiveness. And we'll we'll quickly touch on that one. Because it was something that I found is uh repeating uh and advocating for something that someone has already said. You kind of note that there this is probably not necessary. And certainly something that I'm guilty of is like, hey, that's a great idea. I think it's good because of this, this and this. It's not really the best time for that, right? It is kind of an an ineffective use of time. Yeah. I think we use time ineffectively in meetings in lots of ways. And and one of them certainly is this kind of, oh yes, and I agree too. I need to say I'm I'm here in the meeting, I have to say something. You know, sometimes, particularly if the meeting is taking place in a room. And we're all in the same place. A bunch of people could just nod their heads. And I'm nodding my head right now. As I'm nodding my head as well. All those people who can't see it. And I I think that that what that does is it communicates non-verbally that you completely agree. And now we can move on. Because if everyone takes another 15 seconds to add their version of, yes, I agree. The meeting now has been extended six minutes without actually accomplishing anything. Yeah. And the next one uh that I wish was more prevalent. It's something that I I try to advocate for, but I really struggle with this being put into practice for meetings is allowing for pre-reading and circulating documents that people need to read in order to come informed and just simply make a decision. So that we don't have to talk about and read together and produce this information for people to to consume during the meeting. Let's just do this on your own time and then we can show up to the meeting and and uh and hit on the topics that we need to and move on. And I think probably the biggest reason why that doesn't tend to happen more is people aren't even to the point of having agendas for their meeting. So the the pre-requirements for the pre-reading are not there to begin with. Yeah. I think that's right. And one of the things that I'm a big advocate for is using principles of education to design meetings. And one of the most important principles of education is this idea of backward design. So, when you're creating a class, what you do is you say, here's what I want a student to look like at the end of the course. And here's where I think they're starting. And now I work backwards and say, if this is where I want them to end up, what is the path I need to create to get them from where they are to where I want them to be? And very few of us think about meetings in the same way by saying, how do I want the people who've attended this meeting to be different at the end of it than they were at the beginning? And then designing the meeting around that. And sometimes I want them to be different because I want to have reached a consensus related to a particular topic. And if that's what I want. Well, I need to be thinking, okay, what kind of information are people going to need in order to reach that consensus? What which parts of that information should I should I have them read in advance, which are the ones that I want to actually present in a context, so some things I might just want them to read. Some of them I might not want to present until I've given them an understanding of why that information is being given. But I can't be at all strategic about that. If I'm not thinking about how I want people to be different at the end of the meeting. So having that agenda is crucial. And it it saves so much time when when you're not just doing a read aloud, really. You know, and I think a lot of us don't think about how expensive meetings are in in terms of the the the the HR cost of all of that high-priced talent sitting in the room. Yeah, I agree. I often describe this as the fact that a lot of companies will have uh, you know, even a $500 expense approval. But no one bats an eye when you have a $2,500 meeting for an hour with five people sitting in it, right? Like this that's expensive, but no one really thinks of it as as a soft cost versus a hard cost. It's unfortunate. I agree. Um. So the next piece we'll talk a bit about uh communication and um uh I thought this was really uh a great comment that you had as well about. One of the things if you ever do surveys and feedback from staff in a company, people complain about lack of communication. And the the owners and the managers are often sort of met with this with a little confusion, they're like, well, we have this newsletter and we have these meetings all the time. Like, how can people feel like they're they're not being communicated to? And I I think it's a it's it's about the quality, the quantity, uh all of those things. But you you say here very aptly that what people are usually saying is that they feel they aren't informed about the things that they feel they should. And the the comments about the or the complaints about the the lack of communication is more a feeling that they get that they're not hearing about things directly. And they're like, oh, I didn't hear about this. Like, they said so and so is off and uh this project is moving forward. I didn't hear anything about this. And I I think it was really important that it's a comment about their feeling about how they they they're uh connected or disconnected from the level of communication in the company. Yeah, and one of the things that I I like to say is that when people complain about communication. That's really a canary in the coal mine. It just says, there's a problem somewhere. Such that there was a piece of information that somebody wanted that they didn't have. And they felt like they should have had it because it was available. Now, you've got to do a much harder job. Which is to figure out why is that happening? And it certainly could be because you don't have the right newsletter, but I I bet it's not. Right. It's it's probably more like you didn't realize that this person needed to be looped into this communication. Or you didn't realize the role that they were playing. Or there's a misalignment between their belief about their job function and your belief about their job function. That really needs to be tightened up. But whatever it is, it's not about the sort of traditional ways of thinking about communication. It's really about understanding why it is that someone would feel as though they were missing key information. It's actually a lot of hard work to diagnose and repair those kinds of problems. Yeah, and I think you hit on one in particular that I find really prevalent is the the owner or the manager's bias around whether or not they feel parts of information are relevant to someone underneath them. And I think that there's a strong bias against, well, they don't need to know that, it doesn't affect them, but that doesn't matter, they want they still want to know and they feel better if they feel better informed. It's not as relevant about whether or not they need it, as you say, it's more about whether or not they want it, right? Well, the brain is a prediction engine. What when your brain is most comfortable when you have a pretty good sense of what's going to happen. So I imagine, for example, that that you've had a few people on your podcast who've never been on a podcast before. And so they may be a little nervous when they're doing that. They're thinking, I'm not sure how this is going to go and they, you know, he said it's going to be conversational. Well, what does that mean? And so their their brain isn't able to predict what the experience is going to be like. And so they're unsettled by that. But you know, if you have a guest who who's been who's done a lot of this kind of work. Well, then it flows in a very different way because everyone's got a much clearer expectation of how that's going to go. Well, the same thing is happening at work. You may think, well, I don't need to give somebody this piece of information because they don't really need it. Well, they may not need it strictly speaking to execute the job you've given them to to perform. But what they do need that information for is to help them to make the workplace a more predictable place, which makes it a more comfortable place. And which allows them to understand how the work that they're doing fits into the overall structure of what you're trying to accomplish. Yeah, excellent. And moving uh swiftly along with more management practices, because this is the stuff that I love. So I definitely keyed on a bunch of this in the book. Um and your your comments on managing deliverables were very aligned with mine, so I wanted to touch on this. Uh it you said, it's better to manage a list of tasks, uh have a manageable list of tasks. Rather than disappoint people by failing to complete the things that are promised to do. Uh you want to expand on that? So, you know, it it turns out, right, we each have a a limited amount of stuff that we can accomplish in our days. And yet, we often take on far more than we're than we're actually able to complete. And I think it's important to to try to really make sure that your to-do list is a is a manageable to-do list. And that if there are things you're not going to get to, that that you need to actually have a discussion with the people that you're working with and say, how can we restructure this to make sure that I can actually accomplish what it is that that I've said I'm going to do? And and you have to create a workplace as well, you know, particularly when we look from the managerial standpoint. In which it is in which people are uh allowed to come to you and say, you just asked me to do this task and I'd be happy to do it, but here are the other 12 things you also asked me to do and realistically, no single human being is going to be able to do all of these things. So is there something on this list of things that I've already committed to doing that maybe you can take off my plate in order for me to help with this? So that, you know, and and to really get some assistance in prioritizing things. Because I think a lot of times we misestimate how much work we've given to other people. Yeah, and the other half of that, I think that uh uh so 100% agree. Most of the busyness that people comment on is a lack of prioritization. You can't do a billion things on a in a week. So you got to pick a few and and a a good manager will help the staff prioritize their deliverables. I think that's really key. The other is, I think people are so cautious about people being people pleasers. That they're they're really uncomfortable to say no. And not recognizing that the person is way more disappointed by just a lack of of uh accountability or a lack of delivery on that that request. Then to just simply say, look, I've got a lot to going on right now, uh if this is important, we can shuffle some things around, otherwise I can't put this onto my my to-do list right now, I'm just got too much going on. I think that conversation is so uncomfortable for most people. Well, it's it's funny. I think a lot of us are are somewhat agreeable. Uh a lot of the and and and if we think about those big five personality characteristics, one of them is this is this idea of agreeableness. Which is I don't want to disappoint other people, I don't want people to think badly of me in the moment, and so I will agree to do things even though I can't really take them on. When in fact, as you point out, most managers actually aren't going to feel that badly about you if if you're overcommitted, what they're what they want though is to determine whether they can trust you. And if you say you're going to do something and then you don't do it, now, they don't know whether they can trust you. For good reason. You said you were going to do something and you didn't do it. And so you have to really look at it, I think, you know, for people lower on the food chain, they have to really look at it from the perspective of that supervisor. That that what they care about more than anything else is can they trust you to do things? And so you've really like to be in a situation where if you say you're going to do it, you're you're going to do it. And if you say you can't, it's because you really can't take it on at the moment. Yeah, really well said. The the importance of the currency of trust is huge, right? Yeah. Absolutely. So. Um others on managing people, the next quote that I have here is uh as you progress your career. You're judged more by what your team produces, not yourself. Your people will uh yet people tend to view their individual contributions still as primary to their work. And I think this is a mistake, like really. Uh contributors uh fail to manage their team. And they say, well, I'm too busy, so I can't spend time with my team to make them more productive. And again, like that it's a prioritization issue that you're saying, well, I can't manage my team, they should just be good at what they're doing because I got all this stuff to do over here. And a really good executive will look at that as as a managerial failure to say it's it's so much less about you producing. And what your team produces, that's the the measure of a really good executive and what people need to start to get better at as they move up the career ladder. Yeah, absolutely. And of course, the funny thing is, we are often rewarded early in our career for success at individual achievement. And so the way that they reward us for that is by giving us the opportunity to create group achievement, which we've never been trained to do. And so we now have to shift gears and say, well, wait a second. It isn't really about me anymore, it's about this set of tasks that needs to be completed by the group. And furthermore, there's a second shift that has to happen, which is we have to go from trying to call attention to our individual achievements. Which to some degree is important early in your career. You you certainly want people to notice, not that you always want to be saying to people. I look what I did, look what I did. But but advancement is going to require that you get some amount of credit for some of the work that you've done. You have to be able to shift later and realize when you when you are higher in the organizational chart. That uh you're going to get more credit than you deserve for the work of your group. And that your job is actually to mentor the people who are working underneath you so that they can do their jobs effectively. And to call out all of their successes as individuals so that they get noticed. Because the other thing, particularly if you're working for a larger organization is you're going to need allies in the future. You're going to need people who believe they owe their career to you. And the best way to make that happen is to help them to shine so that they also rise in the organization. And now as you, because you you're actually doing an effective job as a manager, move up. You now have this whole cadre of people who think you're amazing. And and want and and believe that that your success and their success are interlinked in ways that actually allows everyone to do great work. Yeah, excellent. And. Uh the other one I have here is um uh around motivation for staff and how you get people to do things. Uh one of the the the questions I get asked probably the most is how do you make people accountable? And this is something I comment a ton on. Uh so you you note here uh what what you say and request has the smallest influence on their daily behavior. They're observing the behavior around them that gets rewarded. Yeah, yeah. That's right. I I always like to say in life, there's what you say, what you do and what you reward. And the people who work for you are listening to those in reverse order. So the the least important thing is is what you say. They want to know who's getting rewarded, which is all sorts of things. It's who's getting praised, who's getting promoted, who's getting opportunities, who's getting noticed. People want to know who who are doing those things. And they're also paying attention to what people are doing. They are looking around the workplace to see who's actually engaged in whatever tasks it is that they've been told to do. And so almost universally, if you are asking for a behavior in the workplace that you are consistently not getting. There is a misalignment between what you're saying, what's what is being visibly done within the organization and what it is that's being rewarded. Yeah, so I would expand on that as well. And say, um, one of the comments I make is that uh culture is defined by what you tolerate. And I think if you are getting that misalignment, you're tolerating behaviors that are counter to it. And other people are noting. Right? If you're if you're telling the team, I need you to do these three things and the most senior members of the team that have been there a while. And they know they can get away with sluffing those duties and they don't do it. That is a lot more important to the other saying, well, this guy's not doing it and he seems to be okay. No one's done anything about him. Right? So I don't have to do this. Right? That's I think the calculation that they're making in their head. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And of course, you know, this has been a problem. I I uh many years ago had a chance to to do some work for a military organization. And you know, they were saying, uh, you know, they wanted to be the the current uh commanding officer wanted them to be more uh more innovative. And and they say, well, you know, this this person's going to be gone in two years. And then somebody else is going to come in and they're going to want something else. So, so really, what I'm going to be rewarded for doing is keeping my head down and not really doing anything. And this will blow over. And so people are very sensitive to that kind of reward structure and really figure out how to do what is reasonable for them. Given the structure of the workplace. Yeah, excellent. Um. So we'll look to to wrap up here. Um the uh the book is bring your brain to work. And the book will be available June 11th, right? That's correct. Okay, and people can get it Amazon and everywhere else that books are sold essentially. Everywhere else the books are sold. And uh I have a I have a website uh smartthinkingbook.com. Where I have information about uh all the books I've written including uh including bring your brain to work. So if people are interested, they can they can check it out there. And and I have a a number of links there to a variety of different places where people can get books, everywhere from the behemoths like Amazon and Barnes and Noble to uh to uh some of the the independent bookstores that uh that also need our support. Absolutely. Yeah. And uh any uh channels on social that can people follow you? Yeah, absolutely. Uh I blog pretty frequently for psychology today, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review. And and so if people want to to find the stuff I'm giving away in addition to some of the stuff that I sell. Um you can find me on Twitter at AB Markman. I have an author page on Facebook, I am on I'm on LinkedIn. Uh I have an Instagram page, not not so not so sure that that's going to be of relevance to people. But uh but I'm all over social media, love to connect with people. So uh yeah, please please do reach out. Okay. Awesome. Art. Thanks for coming on and educating us and uh all the best. Well, thanks, Todd. It was great talking with you today. Take care.