Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:02:43: Arousal

00:03:40: Significant statements

00:08:41: Surprising topics

00:15:32: Take-away actions

00:18:36: The Squiggly Career Videobook and others

00:21:02: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Helen Tupper: Hi, I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And you're listening to week four and the final week of the Squiggly Careers Videobook Club.  For this whole month, Sarah and I have partnered with LIT Videobooks to bring you lots of learning, because they have turned books into videos to make it a bit easier to digest, and they also make it very memorable with the way that they produce them.  You get complete access to their full library of videobooks for two months if you're part of the club, but to give our community something to focus on, we picked four books which Sarah and I have watched and we've talked to the authors and we're creating some conversation in the community just to give us all a little bit of focus.  And today's is all about decision-making. So, the book is called Predictably Irrational.  It is written by Dan Ariely. 

So, in this podcast episode, Sarah and I are going to be talking about our reflections and insights from watching the videobook.  And then tomorrow, you've got me and Dan having a discussion about decision-making actually very, very much in the context of your careers.  So, I was talking to Dan about how do we know if we're making the right decision about what jobs we do, that kind of thing.  So, I think tomorrow's episode is very focused on career development and decisions, whereas the videobook generally, Sarah and I will probably talk about now, is much broader about decision-making in life really and some of the things that can affect our ability to make rational decisions.

Sarah Ellis: It definitely made me think I would have enjoyed a degree in behavioural economics.

Helen Tupper: Oh, yeah, me too.  I was like, "Oh, these are all really interesting experiments".  You learn about human behaviour, you're definitely convinced by the end of it that we are irrational and we're nowhere near as logical as we would all like to think we are or as objective like, "Oh, yes, I'm rational and reasonable".  And almost accepting that you're not is probably a better starting place.  But I think as Helen described, some of what is talked about -- and it is a longer videobook, so I think it's an hour and 40 in total.  And each of the chapters actually is really interesting.  So, each of them sort of covers a different area of behavioural economics, but I think some are much more relatable to work than others.

Helen Tupper: I think this is the 'thinkiest' of the four videobooks.  And I think in the previous one, we said you can probably just watch the first chapter and you've learnt about their insights on burnout and the context of work.  On this one, I actually think if you haven't got time to watch an hour and 40 minutes of the videobook, you could probably just pick out a couple of chapters at random.  They're all interesting.

Sarah Ellis: I have watched it all, but I didn't watch it in a linear order actually.  Squiggly!  Because I did look at the chapter titles and I just thought, "Oh, that's interesting, that feels like it might be relevant", or I was maybe intrigued by the title.  And actually, I think it also works fine to do it in that way.  You could just pick and choose.  I mean there is one, everybody, that is called, "Arousal".  I think it's fair to say I didn't make it through; I think, Helen, you did actually make it through even though I didn't.

Helen Tupper: I did, I made it through, because I thought, "I want to watch the whole videobook".  So, I made it through.

Sarah Ellis: I was so squeamish by that point.

Helen Tupper: It basically, just a shortcut to everybody in case you're like, "Do I watch it?  Don't I watch it?" the shortcut on the arousal chapter of the videobook is, it basically says that we have a hot self and a cold self.  You can be hot for all kinds of reasons, because you're stressed or because you're aroused, for example, but we don't make as good decisions when we are in a hot state.  And that's basically the gist of it.  But to illustrate that point, there is some quite uncomfortable, well, I mean they did an experiment on it.  It's based on actual research, but there's knowing the research and then there's watching an act to play out the research, and that's a slightly different experience.

Sarah Ellis: And I was like, "I'm out"!  I was like, "At this point, I'm out"!  So, what was the statement or area that stuck out for you, Helen?  Was it that or was it something different?

Helen Tupper: No, it wasn't about that experiment!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, we did both talk about it before this and go, "Did you watch that bit?!"

Helen Tupper: "Did you watch that bit?  What are we watching?!"  I've written down, and I've put a circle around it, "Money destroys social relationships", it's very dramatic.  So, there's a bit in the videobook where Dan talks about market versus social norms, and to bring this to life, he basically has these people all sat around, it's supposed to be a family having a Thanksgiving dinner, I think.

Sarah Ellis: Oh, yeah!

Helen Tupper: And they're all having a Thanksgiving dinner and then one person at the table goes to his mum, "Oh, how much do I owe you for the dinner?" and starts getting money out, like $300, $400.  And everyone at the table is like, "Whoa, that's really weird.  This is a Thanksgiving dinner with our family.  You don't pay mum for the food".  Now, the point of it is there are social norms where people will do favours for each other and they will do kind things for each other, you know, you have a lot of goodwill in those relationships.  But as soon as you bring money into the equation, it can really affect how that relationship is. 

Like, for example, I might say to Sarah, "Oh, Sarah, I'll go and grab this thing from the shop for you", and that's a favour.  Or if Sarah said, "Oh, Helen, I'll pay you £2 to go and get this thing from the shop for me", it feels weird and it affects the quality of their relationships. The reason it stuck out to me was I was just thinking about, Sarah and I are thinking about creating some communities for various different things.  It could be for research and we're thinking of a kind of Squiggly listening board, so you've got people in different places that can give us insights on what people are experiencing in different areas, that could help us make sure that we can make careers better for everybody. 

And we could ask people that we know, "Do you want to be part of this?", a favour, because they know us and we respect their word; or we could say, "We will pay you for this".  But his point is, don't do the paying.  As soon as you add a finance to what could be a favour, you change the dynamics of that relationship.  And it just made me think.  I'd never thought about that before, it's just a, "Money destroys social relationships", statement that stuck.  Quite dramatic!

Sarah Ellis: Mine was different.  So, I picked out a concept that I'd not heard the words before, which was this idea of, "Motivated reasoning".  And motivated reasoning is essentially, we paint the world in the colour that we want to see it. 

So, we sort of see the world in a way that works for us, and then that affects our decisions, it influences how we think about things.  I guess it's knowing that we all bring natural biases to everything.  And remembering that, I was thinking, well at work, some of the ideas that we've talked about before that I think can be really helpful, and we might want to use a bit more knowing this, knowing there's a name for this, what do I think about this?  So, still talking about that, I think it's important that you've got your own perspective, but knowing that that perspective is likely to be motivated by just your own experiences.  And then, thinking about things like, "Okay, well, what would an opposite opinion be?" 

Because an opposite opinion is painting the world in a different way to the way that we see it, almost that forcing function of what is an opposite opinion.  Or I was thinking you could imagine yourself in the shoes of someone very different to you and you'd go, "Well, they will see the world in a different way to me.  Okay, so what might they think?" I think particularly when you're thinking about judgments, it can be really helpful at work.  So, you know if you're judging a challenge or an issue, or if you're trying to understand why somebody might be upset or emotional about something, that you go, "Well, I can't understand that", and the reason you can't understand it is because you're painting the world in your way.  And so, if you can sort of try to go, "Okay, well my way is not the only way.

 What is it about this situation that this person is going to be caring about?" and just recognising it will be different.  I suppose the whole point is like, we are all different.  That was one of the things I found with all the behavioural economic concepts.  I found like I was moving from, well, now I've got the awareness, what is the action that I take so that I'm not irrational? 

Because most of the time being irrational doesn't help us.  It doesn't mean we want to be flaky and never make decisions, but I think it can help you probably improve your decision-making once you understand, "Oh, okay, well my decision here is definitely going to be influenced by what I would normally do". It's kind of a sense check.  I was like, what are the small sense checks I could put in place just to slightly slow me down to go, "Oh, okay, just going to check, opposite opinion would be this, has that made me change my mind?  What would Helen do?  Has that made me change my mind?"  Maybe even asking someone in our team who maybe doesn't know the issue quite as well, "What do you think?"  So, yeah, that stuck with me and I kept on applying that logic as I was going through all the different ideas.

Helen Tupper: So, let's talk about something that surprised us.  Mine, I don't know if this did surprise me, it's just another thing that has just sort of stuck with me, which was about, he talks about the temptation, and the temptation leads us to make sort of short-term decisions, which I guess is a bit like that food thing.  I guess it surprised me and again, it sort of stuck with me a bit, is like, "Make decisions with your future self in mind".  That's what we should do, because we're irrational when we make decisions based on short-term temptations, and actually, we should think about what's better for our future self.  That's the balancer to that temptation.  And I thought, "Oh, do you know what?  I don't think I do that.  I think I am quite an in-the-moment person".

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, you're very in-the-now, which is a good thing.  I think, I'm not sure it's identical, but I think the graph that Dan shows is very similar to the research that Katy references.  I was like, "Oh, we're starting to see similar things…"

Helen Tupper: "Oh, look at this, join the dots!"

Sarah Ellis: … where he talks about, I mean this is a bit bleak, because we give into temptation, the amount of preventable deaths that it leads to.  It's a US-based research.  I think it's fact, but it's about 40%.  It's high. 

It's just things like, I don't know, always choosing to eat bad stuff or not doing exercise, or could be also things like isolation and loneliness, but various different things where they sort of go, "Well actually, if you have your future self in mind, you will live longer and be better physically and mentally".  It's interesting how they both refer to that.  I think you can see with -- this is like behavioural economics isn't it, and change -- what they were both really motivated by, I thought, was how can you help people with those things that actually they've got a really high level of control over, but we might feel like we've got a lower level of control over. 

I mean, I say this having literally eaten three white chocolate Christmas coins prior to this conversation.  So, if I was thinking about my future self, I probably should have been like, "No, eat the banana!"  But they were delicious.  Maybe I'll have a banana next and next I will invest in my future self!

Helen Tupper: Banana for the future, chocolate coins for now!

Sarah Ellis: Yes!

Helen Tupper: What surprised you?

Sarah Ellis: Something different actually, and I hope I've understood it right, because it did surprise me.  So, he did some research where he was talking about procrastination.  He basically says, "Whenever there is something that takes effort, even if it's in our best interests to not delay it, so we get it's better to do this now, we still procrastinate because of the effort".  It's almost like, "Oh, this feels hard, and the hardness wins over the helpfulness of do it now, start making progress". 

And so, he was basically talking about his students procrastinating over and giving in essays, and stuff.  He had three different approaches to try and help people get stuff in, like deadlines, basically meet their deadlines.  One was like the dictator approach, which was like, "I'm going to be really strict.  I'm going to tell you essentially exactly what you need to do"; one was the coach, which was more supportive, spaced out, encouraging people to give some of it earlier, so quite pragmatic, I thought, quite sensible as a way to do it; and then the third was free will, you know, "This is a deadline, how you get to that deadline, completely up to you".  Now I was like, "Oh, that's interesting".

I am somebody who the free will works for me.  So, if I think about when we were both at university, quite a few years ago now, together, I would set myself a deadline that was often a week before when it was actually due, because I liked the payoff of being like, "I'm going to give it in early, and then I'm going to reward myself with, "Oh, but I'll be done", and then I'm going to, I don't know, go on holiday, or have a break, or I will have done it.  So, for me, the free will works, and I don't like someone telling me, "You must do it in this way".  I like the freedom to figure it out for myself.  I thought the coach one was going to be the most effective, because I was like, "Oh, you're spacing it". 

And I think he even talked about maybe rewarding people for doing some of it earlier.  But the one that is most effective is the dictator one.  I suppose we would always discourage people from being too directive.  Also, it feels too much, and maybe in this context, it's okay but I'm like, "You've got to treat everybody like adults".  We talk about, give people lots of freedom on the how, just be really clear on the what.  And I was like, I don't know, it felt quite uncomfortable because I was like, that feels more command and control.  That doesn't feel like a way that I want people to work.

Helen Tupper: It's like compliance, isn't it?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: It's like decision-making by compliance.

Sarah Ellis: And, "I'm going to tell you off".  I guess back to like, we don't like to be told off, I suppose.  But what was interesting, so that one still works the best, being super-strict.  But then, when he does do the coaching and the spaced approach, it still does have a really positive impact versus not doing that.  And actually, the free will one doesn't work.  So, maybe I'm the exception there, rather than the rule.

Helen Tupper: Or maybe you coached yourself!

Sarah Ellis: Or maybe, maybe at an early age, I was like, "I'm preparing for my career in circa 20 years' time".  But the coaching approach did work.  And he said, even though some people did leave some of it until later, still lots of people made progress earlier than they would have done otherwise.  And also, there is a bit of a sense of, "Well, do I actually really want to dictate to people what they should do?  And do people actually enjoy that experience?"  Or, "Yes, I might have done it, but I don't feel good about it, because I do feel like I've been sort of dictated to".  That's not a good way to be.  It might work, but it's not any enjoyable process, whereas the coach one is at least a more enjoyable process.  You're getting enough support but without being left with too much space.  It's that support/space happy medium.

Helen Tupper: Just connecting it to work makes me think about feedback.  So, companies want people to get feedback because it's powerful for learning, but lots of people don't do it.  And so, I guess the dictator view is, "You need to get four pieces of feedback by the, I don't know, 28 February, or whatever".  That's the dictator one.  The free will one is, "Go and get some feedback this year". 

And the coach one in the middle is, "You need to get feedback by 28 February, because there is a date.  We suggest you do it every fortnight, you get one piece, but you determine what's best for you".  And it just makes me go actually, a lot of companies probably do the dictator one at the moment with feedback or filling in forms, but they culturally maybe try and get that coach one.  Like, "We need to have it by this day.  Here's a suggested flow for the frequency of your feedback, but we leave that to you".  It just makes me think about how you could apply those research insights…

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, really nice.

Helen Tupper: … to what we're actually doing at work.

Sarah Ellis: And I suppose that's freedom within a framework, which we always know people do like freedom within a framework.

Helen Tupper: What other action are you taking away as a result of watching this videobook?

Sarah Ellis: One of my favourite chapters, which I had come across before, was on relativity and choices.  I've actually seen the example before as well about The Economist and how The Economist tried to sell their magazine.  They give one price that's for the magazine, one that's for the digital, one that's for the one that's combined, and it's really interesting in terms of anchoring of prices and where people go.  I think the conclusion I came to is, choices are good for people, give people choices.  So, we might want to think about that in terms of learning.  Like, one of our big focuses for next year is how do we get people learning as they go, learning in the flow of work?  And so, rather than we could dictate that, but that's probably not naturally our style, we could give people some choices, "Oh, you can learn in the flow of work.  Here are three choices". 

So, we could say for like meetings, try a decision discussion agenda; try making one meeting ten minutes shorter; or try combining decision discussion agenda and making a meeting ten minutes shorter. So, you could do those three and then you could go, actually, it's probably helpful for people to have three choices.  And what you have probably done, I think, is people go, "Oh, decision discussion agenda and make it ten minutes shorter probably feels too hard", and that is what he would call a decoy option.  So, we're not actually really expecting people to do both.  Maybe some super-keen beans and ambitious people might.  But if then that meant that people chose one of the others, some action to learn is better than no action to learn.  So, then I was like, "Oh, how do I start influencing the psychology of learning?" 

And that's when I actually got really interested in it then, because I was like, well, we've just written a book on learning, or at least the first draft of it, and then I was like, we could literally go through that book and be like, "Right, we want all of those ideas to come to life.  You could use behavioural economics to increase your chances that that work has a higher impact, gets used more frequently".  So, yeah, I got to choices and decoys.

Helen Tupper: My thing I'm taking away is, I like the chapter about keeping the doors open and why that is bad for decision-making.  So, as human beings, we like to keep doors open, but that creates too many options, and you're sometimes better to focus.  There's a story that gets told about a Chinese military person who burnt some boats so that they only had one boat in the battle and they had to win.  Anyway, the action I've taken from that is kind of like the burn the boats.  I'm thinking about us and our work, particularly for like the year ahead, and how we've got too many doors open.  Maybe we should close some doors so that we're more focused on delivering some things!

Sarah Ellis: When you say, "Have we?" we do!

Helen Tupper: "We have too many doors open"!

Sarah Ellis: We have too many doors open!

Helen Tupper: So, we should maybe burn some boats so that we are more committed to the things that we have decided to do, rather than spreading that decision-making a little bit.  If we had that in our heads, what doors would we close if we knew that that was going to a better decision about what we actually do do.

Sarah Ellis: And just before we finish, the one thing we haven't really talked about over the last three or four episodes is the Squiggly Career video.  So, if you've not had chance to watch that yet, you've still got access to all of the videobooks, so maybe you could watch a bit of Squiggly and let us know what you think.  I did go on, because I realised this week that the videobooks get reviews and star ratings and I was like, "Ooh!"

Helen Tupper: Always dangerous!

Sarah Ellis: I know it is.  Do you know what?  It is dangerous!  If I've read this right, we've got 636 reviews, which feels like a lot…

Helen Tupper: That's nice!

Sarah Ellis: … suspiciously a lot.  I was like, "Oh, is that total reviews across all videobooks?"  If that's our videobook, that's great because that means lots of people are watching it, and we're scoring 4.4 out of 5, which I was like, "That's good, that's good".  Funnily enough, and I was like, "I'm sure Dan would have something to say about this", I would feel better if it was 4.5.  I was like, 4.4 just feels that one point lower than I want it to be, and I was like, "What is it that we'd need to do to make it that one bit higher?"  But I think lots of people have watched it. As well as the videobook, some of you might have spotted these if you've watched some of the others, you can download a sort of one-page summary. 

Those are quite helpful, they're all kind of PDFs that you can download.  And with our videobook, maybe unsurprisingly, there's also a workbook that you can download with loads of the exercises in.  You'll see Helen and I on screen, you will see some people sharing their Squiggly Career stories.  They're people that we asked to be part of the video, and I think they're brilliant and they are not actors.  There were actors in some of the others, but ours are real people.

Helen Tupper: Real people!

Sarah Ellis: Real Squiggly Career community people.  And you will also see some animated versions of Helen and I, which I'm slightly less of a fan of, but it mixes it up and it gives you a break from listening to, well, seeing both of us.

Helen Tupper: Maybe other people are less of a fan too, and that's why we're 4.4.  They were like, "Your animated selves are not doing anything"!

Sarah Ellis: Maybe that's it, maybe it's the animations.  I did try to click into it.  I was like, "I should be open to reading it", and I can't actually -- I need to find what people have actually written.  But yeah, I think a lot of people have spent time with it, which is brilliant, and if you have, thank you.  And please make the most of all the other videobooks on there.  Lots of people who've been on the podcast before have videobooks.  

Ethan Kross on Chatter, one of my favourites.  Shellye Archambeau on being Unapologetically Ambitious.  Love Shellye.  She's great to listen to as well, great to watch, got great presence, great voice.  Kim Scott, Radical Candor.  So, loads of the classics, the career-development classics that I know lots of you would enjoy.  Like I say, definitely spend a bit of time and make the most of the partnership we've had with LIT Video.

Helen Tupper: So, thank you very much for being part of the Squiggly Careers Videobook Club.  We would love some feedback from you.  So, if you've enjoyed doing it, if you've got any ideas, if you want to do anything like this again in the future, please just send it our way.  It's helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com.  But we are going back to our normal podcast episodes from next week.  So, hopefully we'll be listening and learning together with you then.

Sarah Ellis: That's all for this week and we're back to you again soon.  Bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.