← Managing Your Practice
Managing Your Practice
Building Brain Habits that Accelerate Your Team and Practice
00:55:25
Art Markman, PhD, is vice provost for academic affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of more than 150 scholarly works on cognitive science and related topics. In this podcast episode, he shares his expertise on “smart”...
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- [00:06]
A
Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Kathryn Williams. I'm head of Practice management here at Dimensional Fund Advisors. We focus on delivering tools and resources and data insights through two of the industry's largest global studies of their kind to our clients. And so this podcast is an extension of that. I love this format where we can take a subject that we get asked a lot about and go more than a little. So I'm really looking forward to our conversation today. You know, as I was preparing for our time today, I was reminded of a quote by Stephen Covey who said, I'm not a product of my circumstances, I'm a product of my decisions. And I know that they say, generally speaking, we make what, 35,000 decisions a day? I think I've made already that many this morning. And it does require, over time, really thinking, developing, refining, how do you make decisions, how do you apply critical thinking? Many of you listening today are working directly with clients, clients who rely on that skill. You're leading teams, you're developing the next generation of leadership in our industry. And so this is really what we're going to delve in today. And even if you feel like you've got great decision making skills, I'm going to challenge and I think you'll hear some things today that will help you take it next level, really raise your game, as we often say around that. And to help me with this, to help me talk first and foremost about the science and then equally importantly, the application, right? The two go hand in hand. It is my pleasure to have Dr. Art Markman, who is the Vice Provost of Academic affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. And Dr. Markman has published more than 150 scholarly works looking at cognitive science, decision making, organizational behavior. He's also written several books, including some that we're going to reference today. Smart thinking, bring your brain to work and brain briefs. I have a couple questions about brain briefs. I can't wait to ask about that. Dr. Markman, it's fantastic to have you with us today.
- [02:02]
B
Oh, Kathryn, it's really great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.
- [02:06]
A
Your body of work is incredible. It spans over. Hopefully it doesn't feel like I'm aging you by saying it spans over several decades at this point in time, what led you into this area? What is of most interest to you as you do think about some of the things we're going to talk about today relative to decision making, cognitive science, all those elements I've had to come.
- [02:27]
B
To grips with the age Thing. So it's okay. But it's interesting. I think every career is a journey. And for me, actually, early on, in the 80s, when I was in college, my primary interest was actually in artificial intelligence. And it's just that in the 80s, computers were slow and didn't have a tremendous amount of access to data. And I felt like I would make more progress trying to understand intelligent behavior by studying people and going into psychology rather than going into artificial intelligence. I think if I were in a similar situation now, having to make that decision, I might have chosen differently. But I'm glad that things worked out the way they did. And of course, what happens is I started out initially just being interested in the basic research. How do people function? How do they do smart things? How do they reason by analogy? How do they recognize the similarities of things in the world? And then how do they use that information to make decisions, good and bad? And then gradually began to recognize that almost everybody I know has a mind and almost nobody knows how to use that mind, and that a lot of people would benefit from knowing more about the research so that they could work with the way that their brain wants to work rather than fighting against it. And so that led me to, in addition to the research, to really trying to bring the implications of that work outward to other people.
- [03:55]
A
And I mentioned some of your books, and when I think about the span, I think about the audience I know today we have listening to the podcast, those that are incredibly seasoned, like you and I, in our careers at this point in time, I'll put myself in that same group where you've been actively refining, honing that skill of making critical decisions. And sometimes those decisions, they are really critical. You've been working on that for years. And then I know we have folks listening today who are just embarking on a particular career. Maybe they're trying to actually figure out where, particularly in this industry, the financial industry may be the best suited for them. And so thinking about the scope of your work and how it really can apply to all audiences or to a broad swath of audiences is really interesting to me and speaks to the body of work that you've done.
- [04:45]
B
Yeah, I think all of us can benefit from rethinking the way that we do things. And of course, the world changes rapidly. And in many ways, when we're thinking about really thinking about corporate America, and if you're in the financial industry, that's a place where being aware of the speed of change turns out to be crucial. Because my grandfather was able to invest in Railroad stocks in the 50s and then ride that for another 25 years so that he was able to retire with a reasonable sum of money. You just can't do that anymore. It's that the world is moving too quickly. Companies are having to shift money, business models every 10 years in order to stay relevant. And that means that those of us who watch what's going on in the world have to stay nimble in ways where our experience is a blessing in certain ways, but it's also a curse because we can come to rely on a particular worldview for too long. And that willingness to remain relevant ourselves takes a lot of work.
- [05:50]
A
One of the areas of work that you focus on is this idea of smart thinking. What is that?
- [05:57]
B
Yeah, a lot of people don't really understand what effective thinking is all about. And so I try to break it down into just three components that really effective thinkers have great habits, particularly great habits of mind. Those habits support the acquisition of what I call high quality knowledge, meaning that they really know how the world works in a systematic way. And then they become adept at using the knowledge that they have when they need it, which fundamentally requires understanding how it is that we pull information out from memory and in particular, how we can become more adept at describing problems in multiple different ways to make sure that we're able to find anything of relevance that we might know that might give us a leg up that solving a problem.
- [06:48]
A
Is there an optimal time of life or age or even cultural experiences that can help jumpstart or really accelerate smart thinking? What's been your observation in the work you've done?
- [07:02]
B
Yeah, one of the fascinating things is if you ask people, when are you at your cognitive peak? The answer is it depends, as is the answer to every difficult question in psychology. But what it depends on is in some ways how you define cognitive peak. So your brain is at its fastest and most coordinated at about the same time that the rest of your body is fastest and most coordinated, namely in your early to mid-20s, after which you undergo a long slow physical decline that affects the body and the mind. But just because your brain is fastest and best coordinated in your 20s doesn't mean you're smartest in your 20s. In fact, if you were 20 year olds would rule the world, and they don't. If you look at the people who occupy positions of leadership and authority, they tend to be folks who are in their 50s and 60s, often sometimes dipping down into your 40s. And in fact, when you see business leaders who are successful in their 20s and 30s, there are usually several folks behind them who are bringing a lot of wisdom to bear on that. So why is that? Partly, if you break down that definition of smart thinking, one of the things is high quality knowledge. What that means is you need to know a lot about a lot of different things in order to be an effective thinker. It's not enough just to have a particular base of expertise. It's actually a matter of knowing a tremendous amount about a wide variety of different topics. And that takes time to acquire. You have to build an initial base of expertise and really have something to work from, but then expand out from that and learn about other things, not just to a surface level, but really digging down, down a little bit more so that you understand the broader systems in which you are operating. And the most effective thinkers know a lot about a lot that takes a long time to do. And they have become adept at being flexible in the way that they characterize problems, which means having enough maturity to be willing to be just dead wrong about something. So one of the things we know about creativity, for example, is that the people who have the best ideas are the ones who have the most ideas. Not because every idea is a good one, but. But precisely because every idea isn't a good one. You have to go through a lot of junk to get to the gold. And. And that requires a certain willingness to just try stuff and think through things and be willing to just be dead wrong. And honestly, early in your career, you're so concerned often about being impressive that you're less willing to show that vulnerability of being wrong about things.
- [09:55]
A
We see that relative to our clients that we work with and their young teams. But even here at Dimensional, where there's that period where we often think of it as like you're still qualifying yourself, it often shows up in the way that young professionals introduce themselves when they ask about right. And nothing wrong with citing that college and that college degree and all those kinds of things. And that's. And over time, when you have a body of work experience. But I can see as you're referencing that, how it definitely can show up for young professionals. We're going to talk in a little bit about the culture of smart thinking. So how do you, even as a leader, help create some of what you've just been talking about in that larger workplace? But I wanted to ask you, and it's. I was chuckling a little bit when you mentioned having this interest in AI. It is big time in front of everyone right now. We spend a lot of our time talking with Clients about how to think about AI in the business, and of course, even not just from a regulatory standpoint, but how to actually grow and enhance their business. But I love when you're describing smart thinking and this idea of how can you solve new problems with your current set of knowledge. What's the path to go down? That I love your story that you told around the game of chess and the usage of initially AI and their approach to if we. How can we essentially solve all the possible moves when it comes to chess, but in fact, on the human side, it actually doesn't work that way. Can you talk a little bit about that?
- [11:24]
B
Certainly, if you look at the history of AI, an early game that that was became part of the gold standard for trying to do a smart thing. But one of the reasons why AI researchers gravitated towards something like chess was because the rules were so clear. Every pie has a prescribed set of movements. There's a clear end goal that would give you an opportunity to evaluate each board position relative to its likelihood of leading to a win. And so a lot of what early chess programs were about was trying to enumerate lots of moves, trying to figure out which directions might be most likely to lead to a good outcome, and working through the set of moves far ahead. And so the. And the idea was, that's going to tell us a lot about the intelligent behavior. And certainly it helped us to create chess computer programs that, in fact, beat the world's best players. But if you look at the way that people play chess, they actually do something quite different. For one thing, there's a certain amount of scripting early on in chess games that have to do with learning a particular set of openings. And then chess players also begin to recognize particular kinds of endgame. So recognizing, oh, I'm in a particular situation in which I will win if I do the right things. But in the middle of the game, expert chess players aren't really looking as far ahead as these computers are. Instead, what they're doing is recognizing the situation that they're in and really understanding where is the action here in this part of the game, to the point where there was some classic studies that got done in the 1970s on chess players where if you could ask, do chess players have better memory for chess because they're so good at the game? And the answer is, if you show an expert chess player a configuration from the middle of a chess game, that expert chess player is much better at reconstructing the board position than a novice would be who would get many Fewer pieces placed in the right place. So you might think, okay, great, so they're just better at remembering things related to chess. But if you were to show those same chess players the same number of pieces, but randomly thrown onto the the board in a way that wouldn't really happen in a game at that point, the chess players are completely at sea at trying to reconstruct that, because what they're doing is just something very different from what a novice is doing. Novices are just looking at each particular piece and figure out where is it, whereas the expert is looking at the configuration and saying, oh, I see what's going on here. White is in a position of strength. This is the way that black is trying to defend itself. And so by reconstructing that in an expert way, they actually are revealing something about the way that they're thinking about it. And if you want to take this more broadly, think about when you're in a presentation about some potential investment, let's say, a lot of times early on in people's careers, what you'll see is that they'll just throw everything at you. So you get this presentation that's got a hundred different reasons for and against everything. And what your experts are doing when they're presenting that same information is they're really distilling it down into three crucial things that you need to know in order to be able to make this decision. Understanding the interrelationships between various pieces of information so that it's presented in this more coherent way that reflects a greater understanding of the overall world.
- [15:03]
A
So the ability to really, from the very beginning of a meeting or presentation, and you talk about this in your book, really honing in on the three things. And as you said, there could be 10, 12, 15, 20 things at the end of the day, but what are those three things? You're going to start the meeting with that, you're going to lean in around that throughout the meeting, and then you're finishing off with that as well, too. And what does that do relative to the brain of the presenter and the brain of the consumer?
- [15:30]
B
Yeah. So one of the things that happens when you look at studies on memory is that they're really clear that we remember about three things about anything. So all of you listening today, you're going to remember roughly three things about this podcast today. And the question is, what are those going to be? And the sort of weasel word in, in this statement is things. Right. How big is a thing? And the, the size of the thing that you can remember depends on that. Expert expertise. And when I'm reading something new, I should be really attentive to what are the most important things that I should be extracting from this. And given my overall expertise in the area, can I really try to bind together key pieces of information to maximize the size of the things that I'm remembering? But more importantly, perhaps if I'm giving a presentation, I want to influence the memories of everybody else. One of the things we forget is that presentations aren't just about looking impressive. They're really about trying to affect the brains of the people around you. So you need to take that opportunity seriously and lay the groundwork for that. The old advice that when you give a talk, you're going to tell people what you tell them, and then tell them, and then tell them what you told them is true. So what you want to do is to start by saying, hey, here are the three most important things you need to know. And then really weave those together into a great story that highlights the critical aspects of those three things. And then remind people at the end, as a review, this is what it is that I told you. And if you begin to do that when you give presentations, then your presentations go over a lot better because people will walk away going, oh, I really get this, as opposed to, wow, that person certainly said a lot.
- [17:22]
A
Yeah. And I'm going to offer, we're talking about this in the construct of a presentation. Maybe you can go so far as meeting with a client per se, but this also applies when you're meeting with people internally within your organization. And just lots of ways to think about that, that role of three, push that through. I want to pivot a little bit. One of the things that you absolutely attribute or would say are, is absolutely necessary to be successful with smart thinking are smart habits, building habits, which is so hard. Right. The willfulness sentence at times can work against that. But talk a little bit about why smart habits is so important to getting successful at that smart thinking in the open.
- [18:07]
B
Catherine, one of the things you said was, I probably made 10,000 decisions already today, and then I'll make 35,000 over the course of the day. And of course, the fact is that we have 35,000 opportunities to make decisions during the day, but in fact, most of them aren't really choices. I got up this morning and showered and brushed my teeth and shaved and all of that. And theoretically those things were choices, but really they weren't. I was engaging my morning routine, which I did pretty mindlessly, to be honest, so that I could think about the rest of the day. And that's because I was making use of habits. My habits are basically ways of associating or using my memory to relate the situation I'm into, the action I'm supposed to perform. And if I can do all of that by just remembering what to do next, then I can greatly ease the mental burden on my day by just going through a stereotyped series of actions. And the trick to a smart habit is to do those things habitually when you don't want to have to think about them. Somebody once asked me, if I want to be more creative, should I take a different route to work every day? And my answer was, only if you want to think about your route to work. What I recommend is take the same route to work every day and use that time to think about something else. Because the beauty of habits is they don't really soak up much in the way of your mental resources. What you want to do is to think about what sorts of habits do I need in order to be successful in the work that I do. For example, if you're going to build up that knowledge base, then you have got to develop some number of habits to learn new things. And that might be listening to a podcast or an audiobook, or it might be making sure that you attend a lecture every now and again, or that you have a book by your bedside that you read a few pages of, but that you do something to really engage with new material and make that a habit. Another habit that's really important is to summarize things when you finish reading them, don't just leave your memory to chance, but finish a few pages or a chapter of something and then ask yourself, huh, what did I just learn from this? What did I take away from this? Because there's an illusion that happens, and I talk about this in smart thinking. There's one of my favorite phenomena in all of psychology is something that was discovered by, by Frank Kyle and Leonid Rosenblit. It's called the illusion of explanatory depth. And the idea behind this is that we believe we understand the world better than we actually understand it. So there's a bunch of things we think, oh, yeah, I totally get that. But then if I asked you, please explain it to me, you, you would actually have systematic gaps in your knowledge. And one of the things that happens with that illusion of explanatory depth is often what gives us that illusion is that we've heard somebody else give a really good explanation of something. You watch a TED Talk or You listen to an audiobook that, that, that gives a really good explanation of something. And because you were at one point in your life in the presence of a good explanation of something, you think, I understand this. And there's a difference between knowing that there's somebody else in the world who understands it and you yourself getting it. And that actually requires that you reproduce that explanation for yourself so that you actually ask yourself, okay, this other person explained this thing, or I read this explanation, could I give it, could I do that explanation? And, and it's only at the point where you could go back through and give that explanation yourself that you truly understand it. So that's another habit, right? It's a habit to say, okay, I just encountered an explanation. Can I actually give that explanation again myself? And, and one of the things that the research literature shows is people who have the habit of being what's called a self explainer, meaning that they, they routinely explain things back to themselves. They have a much richer and better knowledge base than people who don't routinely self explain.
- [22:18]
A
I'm curious then. One of the things you talk about is this idea of path dependence. And so as we're thinking about building habits, playing it back, quite honestly, maybe even deliberately putting ourselves in a situation where we allow what we think we know to be challenged in a really good way. And I see advisors challenge their clients in a really great way. I see leaders challenge their teams. That's a good thing. But how does path dependence and how that shows up and you tell, you talk about even the history of the keyboard, which I as well learned to type on an actual keyboard where you ran out of tape as a boy, but knowing that there's actually a keyboard out there that would allow us to type faster, but we don't use that one. We use the one that was created before. But talk about path dependence and how that shows up in habits and the way you're processing.
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B
Yeah, you might think that everything evolves towards some perfect standard and that we end up always in a better place than we were. But actually in almost every situation in life, including in the evolution of creatures, each next step of that evolution has to be based on something that came before in which we can take an incremental step forward, as you point out. I talk a little bit about the, about keyboards on, on, like that you type on. And the, the QWERTY keyboard that we use was so named because you, the Q, W, E, R, T, Y that's across that upper left there. That keyboard is, it's fine. But it's not the optimal one. There's actually a better keyboard if your goal is to type maximally fast. But we don't use that one because we adopted one that there's a. There's actually a lot of lore around exactly why we have this keyboard. But. But what? Suffice to say that we have that keyboard because it's the one that people developed when they were putting typewriters together. And because everybody learned that one, we just kept it because it would have been prohibitively expensive to shift to a keyboard that would ultimately allow everybody to type faster, but would require millions of people to change their habits around typing. So we never really adopted the faster keyboard. And if you look at so many things in the business world, for example, you see this path dependence all over the place. The business model that a company chooses to adopt is based in part on what it did before. And the decisions that are made are based in part on a belief about what makes sense to do, given where we are right now. Which leads to those great stories like Kodak being the original developer of digital imaging technology and then not pursuing it because they felt that it would cannibalize their core business of processing photographic film, which, as I like to point out, they were right, but unfortunately, they forgot the cardinal rule that if somebody's going to cannibalize your business, it ought to be you. We have to recognize that there is a certain degree of this path dependence in everything we do, and that can sometimes get in the way of doing what might be the optimal thing to do. So we have to ask ourselves, am I choosing to do this only because it's the easiest step to take from where I am right now, and is that the right decision criterion? And by the way, sometimes it might be. Sometimes doing something that is incrementally the best thing for me to do right now is the right way forward. But there have to be times where you have to be willing to take a step back and say, you know what? I'm just going to pull this whole thing down and say, start over again. I have to end up in a better place than I am right now.
- [25:59]
A
And I think that's why one of the three actions that you cite relative to driving habits and making that effort around developing habits is to set up a practice schedule, go into those repetitions, really, as you said, self summarize and self assess. So that if you are, like you said, maybe the decision is right today, but is it going to be the right decision in the future? And I think specifically within the businesses we work with, I think about the fact that we have, for the high performing firms that we engage with, they have 97 plus percent employee retention, they have 98, 99% client retention. And so it can be in my mind a little bit tempting to get complacent to. It's not broke, so don't fix. And yet the need to innovate, the need to be competitive, the need to make sure that you're staying in front of a client's need is really propelling these businesses forward. Despite, despite those super high retention percentages which could work against you over time.
- [26:58]
B
Yeah, I think it's so important to stay aware of the things that are coming. And I think that just because you're powerful today doesn't mean that is going to persist. There are going to be technological changes that are going to create changes in marketplaces and you need to be aware of them and to try as best as possible to decide explicitly. This is a path I do or don't want to take. And I think from a decision making standpoint, one of the things that often happens is we do take a mentality of, well, it ain't broke, why should I fix it? And the answer in many cases is because it may be too late by the time you realize it is broken. And so you have to be willing to take a look at new technologies that come forward, new strategies for, for doing things as they arise and evaluate them on their merits rather than just assuming. We look, every investment firm is forced when they do advertising to say the past performance is not an indication of future returns. And we need to take that really seriously in our mental lives as well.
- [28:06]
A
We've really leaned in around smart thinking. We're testing ourselves, we're developing good habits around how we think about the decisions we make, those cognitive skills, if you will, and we're going to, we're going to pivot out to the science a little bit more in just a moment. But applying your knowledge in this area, this idea of similarities versus analogies, and I'd love for you to talk a little about that. I'm not going to lie when I read the example around McDonald's, all I could think about, I get a lot of ribbing with all my traveling that if there's a Starbucks in the vicinity, I'm it. But I know exactly how to navigate that and what I'm going to get. And so thank you for justifying find Starbucks through your McDonald's analogy. But talk a little bit about that because I think in an Environment where we want to draw on stories, we want to draw on collective knowledge and collective experiences. What are some of the challenges or some of the opportunities when you're thinking about similarities versus analogies? Yeah.
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B
So most of our life is driven by what's called literal similarity, meaning I am in a situation that is just like one that I've been in before.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So for example, when I go home at the end of the day today and start preparing something for dinner, I'm in my kitchen. I'm literally in my kitchen. And so I can use all of my prior experiences in my 10 years in living in this house to draw on as I figure out where things are, where particular ingredients are, how to do things, everything I can. That's like the optimal literal similarity situation. And we are, are most comfortable in situations that are exactly like stuff that we've seen before. And, yeah, and, and talking about McDonald's and Starbucks and things like that, one of the, one of the reasons why Starbucks is such a, a familiar place to walk into when you're traveling is because they, they design them to be more or less the same everywhere. And so you know exactly what to order. You, you walk in, you know exactly where to go to, to place your order. It's just a, it's very comfortable to be in. And that's a world we enjoy every once in a while, either in, in business or in life. We're in a situation that doesn't resemble things directly that we've been in before. And, and this is what leads to a phenomenon. I, I tell people all the time that foreign travel is mostly fun. When you look back on it right in the moment, it's really stressful because you're not sure exactly what to do. And, and, and you know what the location, customs are and how to order. You might not even speak the language, so you don't know how to say excuse me to somebody on the sidewalk. And so everything is new. You have to think about thing that was really rooted in your habits before. So what you do in those situations is you now try to figure out in what more general way is this situation like something that I've seen before. And that's where analogy comes in. Analogies are your ability to use knowledge that doesn't necessarily look similar to that situation on the surface, but underneath it, in this, in all of the kind of inherent relationships that are part of this, there's a real similarity there that you can begin to use to generate some idea about how to move forward. And humans, luckily, when literal Similarity fails us. We're able to fall back on. There are these other kinds of similarities, similarities we can use. And so we can recognize that, okay, these two situations, they're not similar on the surface, but they are similar in this more relational way. And for example, one of the ways that you see this playing out is after the success of ride sharing companies like Uber, you. You suddenly saw lots of different groups try to create the Uber for something else, right? Most of which were failures, some of which were a little bit more successful. So if you think about things that have similar structures, something like an Airbnb or a VRBO are at one level analogous to an Uber. You have somebody as a resource, car, house there, and they're gonna, they're gonna rent that out at times that they're not using that space. There were companies that tried to do that for power tools. Probably not such a great idea. But the idea was the business model didn't have to look similar on the surface. It didn't have to be Uber and Lyft. Those are literally similar. The rest of these companies are just making use of the analogy of somebody trying to monetize a resource that they have that's not currently being used. Using an Internet platform as a mediator. And that ability to use analogies is incredibly powerful. It can be a very, very powerful way of generating new ideas, but it's something that we tend to rely on mostly when, when we don't have a good literal similarity match. And the reason that that point is important is because every once in a while, you actually want to try to disrupt something that seems to be working perfectly well, right? We look at, you look at Netflix, for example, and the challenge that it initially posed to Blockbuster. Blockbuster was working fine. There was one on every single corner. And yet they noticed a potential efficiency to be had by not having to be on every corner and being able to allow people to choose the movie they wanted to have delivered to them. And then, and then quickly continued that, that recognition, the idea that they recognized that they were basically then in the business of delivering computer files over a very low bandwidth connection, namely the U.S. postal Service. And so they, they then changed the business model to streaming, and then ultimately to production. And all of those things were really involved asking that question in a different way, because to be reminded of an analogy, you have to strip away a lot of those surface details and ask yourself, fundamentally, what are we trying to accomplish? So it's actually a big leap to go from mailing DVDs through the mail to streaming, unless you realize, no, I'm, I'm just delivering computer files, and this is a more efficient way to do that. So it's describing the problem gives you a completely different set of knowledge to draw on that might then give you ideas about how to change up a business model.
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A
And that's exactly why I wanted to ask you about this and have you unpack it a little bit more for, for us. Because I think as businesses are striving to innovate, they're encouraging and actively looking for teams and talent that will help them with that. What are some ways that you can, as you said, really strip that back and stress test even a little bit of your decisions? Right. And if we look at it from a different angle, do we get the same response, the same answers? You talk a lot about creating a culture of smart thinking, and I'd love for you to share what's the ultimate driver for that for you, and what have you observed in the work that you've done around this?
- [35:12]
B
Yeah. So it's one thing for you as an individual to begin to learn how to be a more effective thinker. As you, as you move into leadership roles, one of the things you want to do is to then encourage your team to be more effective thinkers. And part of what you want to do there is, of course, to teach them the principles of being a more effective thinker. But then you also have to do a lot to really build that into the way the organization functions. For example, it takes time to learn new things. And so if you take your employees and drive them 24 7, 365 on tasks that are directly related to today's bottom line, you are not giving anybody in your organization the time to learn something new that might benefit them down the line. And so there's a bit of a paradox that there's a trade off between productivity today and innovation tomorrow. Innovation is inherently wasteful to some degree. You have to be willing to mortgage a little bit of the present for the future. And a lot of companies are really focused on efficiency. How can I be maximally efficient? And. And you have to actually recognize I need a little bit of over capacity in my organization if I'm going to give people that opportunity to learn new things, to think about things in a different way, to try new things. So one thing as a leader you have to do in order to build a more effective culture, a culture of smart is you have to give people that time and space to actually learn some things and try some things. Another word that become very common or another phrase that's become very common in the modern business world is this notion of psychological safety. And the idea behind psychological safety in the context of smart thinking is you have to create an environment in which it is safe to be wrong and in which it's safe to challenge the prevailing view of things. Because we often get into habits of thinking, and we need somebody to shake us out of that a little bit and to tell us, no, maybe that's not the right way to think about something. But we also have to recognize that there are a lot of cognitive errors that are going to happen. There are going to be days when I suffer from that illusion of explanatory depth. And so I believe I understand something up to the point that I try to explain it to somebody else and then discover I don't. There are going to be times when I'm going to throw out an idea that initially seems really cool, and then, on further reflection, isn't really going to work. And if we bash people for that, then they're going to stop throwing their ideas out, and that is ultimately going to be an inhibitor. It's interesting. I was asked to be one of the leaders for Covid planning for the University of Texas back in 2020. And one of the things that we did was we strongly encouraged people to just give us their ideas for how we might be effective at opening the university. And in fact, one of the things we did to create that environment of psychological safety was we had a weekly planning scenario, as we were in the spring and summer of 2020, trying to figure out how we were going to open a university in the fall without getting people sick. And that weekly planning scenario had all sorts of suggestions in it for how we might do things. And very explicitly, that planning scenario didn't have anybody's name on it. Lots of people contributed to that. But the specific ideas that were in it weren't anyone's in particular. And so no one would fit, would have to feel bad if their idea got thrown out there. And then somebody found a flaw in it and we changed the way we were doing things. So it created an environment in which everyone could feel like they were contributing, but nobody had to feel like they themselves were somehow going to be held accountable for a particular idea that wasn't a good one. And I think that helped us to explore a huge range of ideas in a very short, short period of time and kept people engaged. And I think we have to create that willingness. So psychological safety doesn't mean never be uncomfortable. It just means that we have to tolerate, expect, and in fact, reward people for saying the stuff that's on their mind and trying things out, even if it's wrong. Because just because you were wrong today doesn't mean you're going to be wrong tomorrow. And I need to continue hearing what you're telling me.
- [39:41]
A
Yeah, I love that. And particularly for leaders, it can be really hard to essentially do the one thing we don't want to do at times, which is be quiet, stop talking a little bit. It's in a client advisory board or an internal meeting or whatever it might be, and just let ideas come.
- [39:57]
B
Yeah. And if I may, in one of the other books that. That I did called Bring youg Brain to Work, I describe a bunch of different brains in the book, and that's a shorthand for just different ways of thinking. But one of my favorite sections of that book was I had throughout, sprinkled throughout the jazz brain because I. I play the saxophone and. And I never thought that I would learn lessons from jazz that I would then bring to my work. But there's something that I affectionately refer to as the first law of jazz, which is something they teach you early on, which is that whenever you sit in with a new group, you should listen more than you play because you want the playing that you do to really mesh with what everybody else is doing. And I think that is one of the most powerful leadership lessons. And to your point, Catherine, as you were describing it, you have to be willing to listen as a leader and to hear what people are telling you, not just on day one, but throughout. You don't want to be the one who dominates every conversation because your success is dependent on all of the minds that you have harnessed on your team, not just yours.
- [41:02]
A
I had a. I played jazz as well, many years ago, and I had a jazz. We were talking about improvisation, which for jazz is big depending on your environment and what I see your head nodding. And this idea of. It's not about trying to figure out which count to jump in on, it's about listening to all the previous counts. And it's always, yeah, it makes sense. And, yes, jazz absolutely has application in our lives. And you touched on where. I'd love to. Let me. I'd love to finish up really quick on the small culture, and then I want to spend a few minutes, for sure, talking about the brain, because this is where all of this really comes from. But you do give 10 suggestions about how to create and drive a small, smart culture forward. And I'm not going to list all 10 out because people should go read the book if they want to really get all 10 of them. But two of them I'd love if you could say a little bit more about. The first one is create desirable difficulties.
- [41:56]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It turns out that your brain is constantly trying to figure out what it's supposed to remember. And part of the way that your brain figures out what it's supposed to remember is if I had to think hard in order to reach a conclusion, then my brain is going to say, you know what if I remember this, then it'll be easier the next time. And so putting yourself in situations in which you have to do a little bit of work gives your brain the signals it needs to know that I should remember what just happened. And so that's what it is. A desirable difficulty is that kind of difficulty, as opposed to a difficulty of, this was so frustrating, I couldn't make heads or tails of it. That's an undesirable difficulty.
- [42:40]
A
Yeah, love that. And I. So much of the work that we do with clients, our advisors are doing with clients, is this idea of taking really complex concepts and making them simple and understandable, but also at times trying to get the clients to push that, think about difficult things that they don't want to think about, they don't want to problem solve around what are questions around that. So I, I, if you can create at times a little bit of that, and I say this all very carefully, but if you can take at times a little bit of that rub with clients, you, I can see where you could, the impact that you can have on what they ultimately want to achieve, whether it's with their lives, with their finances, with their physical wellness, whatever it might be. Seems like opportunity. The second one I wanted to ask you about is, and I'm confident we have folks listening right now who are listening, typing, maybe driving, eating, doing multiple things. So you discourage multitasking. Maybe some of those things are not actually tasking, but say a little bit more about why you discourage that multitasking, because that is a big one in society that these days, we're proud of the fact that we can do 12 things at one time.
- [43:44]
B
And yeah, and we can't. So the brain doesn't multitask. Right. It. It switches back and forth between tasks. Basically, the only time you can multitask is when one of the things that you're doing is a habit. So if I've developed a habit to do one thing, that part of the reason that habit is valuable is because it frees up some of these more sophisticated brain areas to do other things. But generally speaking, if I'm trying to do two reasonably complex things at the same time, what I'm really doing is shifting back and forth between them. And so if I listen to a podcast while at the same time composing tweets, I then, while I'm on social media, I'm not really listening to the podcast anymore, and then. And vice versa. And I would say that it's not clear that either engaging with social media or potentially listening to any other podcast other than this one requires full attention. But I do think that there's lots of things that we do that should require our best selves, and we often don't give our best selves to them because we're trying to do too many things at the same time. And I think we have to create an expectation in workplaces in particular, that we want people to bring their best selves. So let's actually reduce those opportunities for multitasking. Cut down on the number of windows that are open on your computer. Put your cell phone upside down. Don't feel like you have to respond to each new Slack message that comes in just as it arrives. And really give yourself the chance to think about something.
- [45:15]
A
Pivoting a little bit around pursuing your career, your job. You talk a lot about. Just find what you're passionate about. And so specifically, I'd love for you to speak a little bit. You talk about looking for jobs that do align with your values, and that there is a path that you can actually really become quite passionate about what you're doing, even if you maybe don't even actually start in that place. Can you say a little bit about that and some of the research you've done on that area?
- [45:42]
B
Yeah. So I think one of the things that happens is people often focus on the wrong things when they're trying to figure out what they should be working on. So they think, oh, I need to love every aspect of my job in order to really. In order for. For this to really be fulfilling. And it would be useful if you liked some of it. It's unfortunate if you hate every single little task you have to do, but you can often learn to love lots of aspects of your job if the job ultimately allows you to reflect your underlying values. And there's a wonderful researcher named Shalom Schwartz who has studied value systems across the world, and he's identified a wheel of values, and these are universal. You can see similar values in just about every culture. And values are interesting because you get them in Part from your own culture, in part from your own experiences, in part from being around particular friends and family. And then they drift a bit over the course of your life. So early on, for example, a lot of folks have been programmed, I think, to want to be seen as being successful. And so they have a tremendous value around achievement. They want to get that promotion, they want to. They want to get that raise, they want to have the trappings of success. And then later in their careers, they become much more interested in doing good for others and being of service. And one of the things that then happens is people may discover a mismatch between their values and their career path over time. So what fed them initially may not be the thing that feeds them later. And that doesn't mean the thing you did early was wrong. It was the right thing for you to do at that time. But I think it's also important to check back in with yourself every once in a while and ask yourself, am I continuing to live in accordance with my values? And if not, is there a correction I need to make in what I do that might actually help me to live that alignment between my work and my values?
- [47:43]
A
Yeah, I really appre. Appreciate your perspective on that. And we work with businesses, organizations that are 1, 2, 3 years old, and we work with organizations that are 30, 40, almost 40, but definitely over 30 with regard to how long they've been around. And we're finding, actually it's a lot of those more seasoned organizations that are coming back to us, coming back to the table around, even at an organizational level, what mission, vision and values. What's our values? Why do we exist? Why do we show up today? And so certainly as an individual, which is the context that you were just describing, thinking about how that aligns, but as an organization, how does that evolve over time? And how do you come back to that and test that, really make sure that it's still very much in play? We're seeing a resurgence around that, even for incredibly seasoned businesses that have been around for quite some time. So what's old is new again, I guess.
- [48:37]
B
I think it's absolutely true, and I think it's well worth doing that. And in part because I think things evolve over time. Right. If you look at some of the early folks who were involved in leverage buyouts and private equity, a lot of times they were initially really helping companies to turn around companies that in ways that benefited employees and created new markets. And certainly there are a number of people in that area that continue to do that, but there were others who engaged in somewhat more predatory behavior using some of the same mechanisms at. At to the point where some of the early people who engaged in that. In that model suddenly felt more uncomfortable with it because they felt like it went in directions that were no longer in keeping with their values. And I think it's important that you sometimes recognize that and think differently about how you want to do things.
- [49:25]
A
That's great. I feel like I'd be remiss if I did not ask you and pull a little bit from what I just found a thoroughly enjoyable book, the book that you co authored with Dr. Bob Duke called Brain Briefs. And specifically, I love the story in there around the question, is our right brain different from our left brain? The story on that, that this idea of hemispheric specialization. We talked a moment ago about jazz, just how music is processed. But is there people say, I'm right brain, I'm left brain. What say ye around that?
- [49:59]
B
On the one hand, there are differences, generally speaking, between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. So for example, we've known for 150 years that somebody who has a stroke on the left side of their brain is much more likely to have language problems than someone who has a stroke in a similar area of their. On the right side of their brain. There is some specialization, but people drew very specific conclusions from a lot of that. That my left brain was more logical, that my right brain was more creative. And. And that doesn't seem to be a particularly good characterization of exactly what's going on in the brain as a specific element of what's happening in your brain. If you're a relatively more creative person versus being a relatively more analytical person, that doesn't mean it's happening in the right or left side of your brain. If you want to describe yourself metaphorically as being right brain because you like to be a little bit more creative or a little less analytical. I'm not sure there's any harm. Harm that as long as you don't take it too seriously.
- [50:59]
A
As a mom of two young men who are now fully on the other side of their teens, we used to often comment when they were in their teens about their brain will eventually fuse one day and then really good decision making. So any parents out there, you might know what I'm referring to when we joke about that. Dr. Markman, I want to finish up our time with a quick question for you. Someone listening is thinking, look, I. I want to be sure that my. That I'm really. That I think about that. I'm leaning in around this smart thinking that there's some things that I can do to really challenge the way that I might be building habits or approaching problem solving. What's one thing that someone can listening today could do to take that first step?
- [51:36]
B
Yeah, I think that the most important thing you can do is to be continually asking yourself why and holding yourself responsible for understanding the details of the answer to that question. Because asking yourself that question why is what gives you the confidence that you understand what's going on in the situation, that you understand the system in which something's embedded. And I think any of us who act in one way or another as consultants, whether we're doing it professionally or whether we're consulting because we have, we're leaders. And so our teams are coming to us and asking for that advice or our clients are coming and asking us for that advice. A lot of times as a consultant, you're not answering the question you were asked. You're starting by asking what question should that person have asked me? And then you answer that question. And the only way to figure out what questions somebody should have asked you is to understand the system in which they were embedded that led them to ask that question in the first place. And so the more that you understand about the way the world works, the better able you are to then provide the answer to the question you should have been asked rather than the question you were asked.
- [52:52]
A
Yeah, so I think about that advisors engaging with clients, young up and coming professionals that are even with their mentors or their leadership of their existing organizations. Like I, I can see that applied in a lot of different ways. So really fantastic. Dr. Markman, I want to thank you for your time today. It's been a pleasure to speak with you. We covered quite a bit a wide range, but really appreciate and thank you for your work and the dedication that you've given to this space. It's really powerful and I just really appreciate you taking the time to share some of that with us today.
- [53:24]
B
Well, it was my pleasure. Thanks so much, Katherine. It was great talking with you today and I'm glad we had a chance to do this.
- [53:29]
A
Lots of fun. So for those of you that want to check out Dr. Markman's books around called Smart Change, there's also Smart Thinking Bring your Brain to Work and we talked a little bit about Brain Briefs or just some of his writings. And you can also get rid of recordings of his podcast Two Guys on youn Head radio show. You can look it up online and get some of those past recordings there. And with that I'll go ahead and sign off for today. Thank you everyone. We will catch you next time.
- [53:55]
B
Thank you for joining us for Dimensional Fund Advisors Managing youg Practice Podcast. For more information, please visit www.dimensional.com Dimensional Dimensional Fund Advisors LP is an investment advisor registered with the securities and Exchange Commission. The views, information or opinions expressed during this podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Dimensional or its affiliates. Dimensional is not responsible for and does not verify for accuracy any of the information contained in the podcast. All expressions, information and opinions are are subject to change. This podcast is distributed for informational purposes and it is not to be construed as an offer, solicitation, recommendation or endorsement of any particular security, products or services. Please consult with qualified legal or tax professionals regarding your individual circumstances. Investing involves risks. Risks include loss of principal and fluctuating value. This podcast is available for private, non commercial use only. You may not edit, modify or redistribute this podcast without the express written consent of Dimensional. Dimensional assumes no liability for any activities in connection with this podcast or for use in connection with any other website, computer or playing device.