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Tina Seelig on Making Your Own Luck and Other Critical Life and Entrepreneurship Skills
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everybody.
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This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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A
Good morning, good evening, good night, entrepreneurship and Leadership Channel listeners on the New Books Network. I'm very lucky today to have someone I've admired for a long time, Tina Selig, who is a professor and academic at Stanford University in various capacities and a prolific author and has lots of content up on the topics of entrepreneurship and creativity and perhaps other things I'm not aware of. Tina, I could introduce you based on reading your LinkedIn profile, but how do you introduce yourself to someone who you meet at a social event or a business event, who has absolutely no idea who you are and what you do?
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C
I love that question. In fact, I teach my students how to introduce themselves in a very special way, so I'll do the same for you. My introduction is I'm passionate about helping people bring their ideas to life. I'm Tina Selig and I run Knight Hennessy Scholars at Stanford University.
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A
Okay, well, that's not the answer I was expecting. Obviously, a good answer leads to follow up questions. And the reason I managed to get Tina, I believe to get Tina on the podcast, is that she's got a book coming out next year called what I Wish I Knew About Luck, which will be part of the topic. But I think, and I will ask you why you wrote the book. But before I Do that? Why do you do what you do? You've devoted your life, as far as I can see, to academia and helping teach entrepreneurship and creativity. But why do you do that?
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C
I am so excited to help people figure out how to bring their ideas to life. I've been teaching courses on creative problem solving for 25 years at Stanford in various capacities, at the D School, at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, now at Knight Hennessy Scholars. And it's so wonderful to give people the tools they need to not just come up with really big, bold, important, and impactful ideas, but to teach them then how to actually manifest those in the world. And so that's what I'm really excited about. And it's been such an exciting journey for me because I've gotten to learn about it along the way.
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A
And one of the things that I'm involved in the world of entrepreneurship, I'm both an entrepreneur and I sometimes teach courses. Not at perhaps as famous organizations as yourself, but I often say that professor of entrepreneurship can be divided into two categories. There are the zoologists who understand entrepreneurs and understand their environment and what they eat and how they reproduce. And then there are people who are more like racehorse trainers, who actually help the entrepreneurs be better entrepreneurs and uncover their entrepreneurial leanings. I'm imagining. Would you share that? Do you think that everyone who teaches entrepreneurship is good at teaching people how to be entrepreneurs, or is that a particular strand of the profession?
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C
It's an interesting question. I would say that the way that I would organize it is there are those people who study it sort of on the side, and then there are those people who are practitioners who share their experiences. And so hopefully those stories converge and that those people who are studying it are in sync with those people who are actually doing it. And saying, yes, what you're studying matches my experiences.
- [04:27]
A
Okay, so maybe you don't see the divide as starkly as I do, but that's interesting. And do you think that everyone can be an entrepreneur, or is it something that some people are born with and other people are born without?
- [04:43]
C
I love that question. I get asked different flavors of that question all the time, like, can you teach entrepreneurship, can you teach creativity, can you teach innovation? And I always laugh because we don't ask, can you teach math or can you teach science or even can you teach sports or can you teach art or can you teach music? I mean, everyone can get better. There's a set of skills and attitudes that make you better. Now, there's some people who are natural athletes or natural musicians. But it doesn't mean that we say nobody, if you're not a natural athlete, you shouldn't go out and run. And we don't say that if you're not a natural musician, you shouldn't pick up an instrument. It's the same thing about entrepreneurship and about innovation, about creativity. There are a set of skills that everyone can learn and everyone can get better. And there are often people who define themselves as not being creative or not being entrepreneurial who realize, oh my gosh, I really am, once they start realizing that they're skills that could be learned and mastered. So absolutely, I think you can learn it. And also, no matter what role you play in the world, no matter what role, it's really important to have these entrepreneurial skills to some degree. In fact, we often joke that teaching entrepreneurship is a Trojan horse for teaching really important life skills like communication skills and negotiation skills, skills and team dynamics. And so by teaching those things, it doesn't mean you're just preparing to start a company, you're preparing to start anything.
- [06:12]
A
Absolutely. And that makes perfect sense. And I've often thought that one of the key entrepreneurship skills is self awareness because there are so many different flavors of entrepreneur. And provided someone knows what they're like, some people are very technical, some people are incredibly arrogant, other people are very humble and very nerdy. But they can be good entrepreneurs if they know themselves because then they can identify the other people they need around them to achieve the purpose they've set themselves. And I would imagine that you see that in your classes you get many different flavors of entrepreneurs.
- [06:46]
C
This is such an important point. I actually am teaching a brand new course at Knight Hennessy Scholars right now called Leading Yourself. And I'm teaching it with a colleague, Liz Wiseman, who's an expert on strategy and management. The course is designed to help people do this reflection and self reflection and build their own personal skills so that they can be prepared not just to lead themselves, but also to lead in other settings. So you're absolutely right. The introspection and understanding yourself is a real starting point for the process.
- [07:19]
A
Yeah. Can you talk a bit about the organization you're working in or lead? Because in our pre podcast talk you said you'd be happy to talk about it. And I think for many people such as myself here in Europe, we sort of imagine Stanford as a sort of a unitary organization. Very famous, very prestigious. But what's the bit that you're involved in? What's its purpose and how's it different or how does it integrate with the rest of the university.
- [07:46]
C
Great. So for 20 years, I actually ran the Stanford Technology Ventures program, which is an entrepreneurship center at the School of Engineering. And five years ago I moved to another group on campus called Knight Hennessy Scholars. And it has just a wonderful founding story and mission. And it's called Knight Hennessy Scholars because John Hennessy was the president of Stanford University for 16 years. Very beloved, very respected. He actually is now the chairman of the board of Alphabet as well. And when he stepped down from being president, he said, you know what, I'm not done yet. There's some, still some important work to be done about helping the next generation of emerging leaders. And he went to Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, and presented this idea. And Phil was really excited and said, sure, I will help fund this, but I also would love to have your name on it as well, to have some. You have some skin in the game. So that's why it's called Knight Hennessy Scholars. Now, students who get into our program, this is a three year program, they apply to it in parallel with applying to Stanford for graduate school. So they can apply to all seven schools at Stanford. Medicine, Law, Business, Engineering, Education, Humanities, Sustainability, they can apply to any of these schools for graduate school and they apply to our program. If they get in, they get three years of funding, up to three years, depending on the length of their program. They get this global community, this multinational community, this multidisciplinary community studying all of these different topics. And then we also have this leadership program that they do in parallel with their graduate work. So they get these three pillars, they get the community, they get the funding, and they get our leadership program.
- [09:34]
A
So it must be extremely competitive to get in.
- [09:37]
C
It is, it is, but it's certainly worth it. And the students, again, we take up to 100 students a year. So you can imagine we have a total, we could have a total of up to 300 students who are actively involved with the program at any one time.
- [09:52]
A
Yeah. And for anyone listening who hasn't heard me say this a hundred or a thousand times, just because something's difficult doesn't mean you shouldn't try, because you never know. And I would. So that's very interesting. Well, obviously for anyone listening, we'll put links to all these organizations and institutions in the show notes. But I'm conscious of time and I do want to ask you about your book, which is what you wish you knew about luck, and you distinguish between luck and good fortune in the book. And a lot of people may not have thought about that very much. What's the difference?
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C
Yes. In fact, this is sort of a pattern I've had in my last books, is parsing terms and concepts that people often conflate. In this book, I do it by really trying to take apart luck. I see so many people leave opportunities on the table, walk right past them. And I've been trying to figure out how to give people the tools to essentially bring their ideas to life and to accomplish the things that they really hope to do. So I distinguish between fortune, which are the things that happen to you, whether you're fortunate or unfortunate, and then luck, which is something that you actually control or have some control over. So you might be fortunate to be born in a certain place and time, or fortunate, unfortunate parents with certain backgrounds, or fortunate to be tall or short or have different health background. Luck is something that you can cultivate in your life, and the book is about all the tools that you have at your disposal to do that.
- [11:31]
A
Good. Well, I certainly think it's. And there's a lot. Sometimes people say you make your own luck. That's something that, you know, I've come across other business people saying that, yes, they were lucky to meet such and such a person at such and such an event, but it wasn't an accident that they'd bothered to go to the event and were approaching people systematically as they went there. So why did you write the book? Do you feel that people. That this is an idea? You haven't heard other people elaborate, or did you have a particular take on it?
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C
First of all, I think that it is a real problem is that people, some people just feel that they're unlucky. And I want to give people the tools to unlock luck in their life. You mentioned that people say they make their own luck. There are a lot of things. As soon as I say I'm writing a book on luck, one of the first things people usually say to me is, oh, yes, the harder I work, the luckier I get, or fortune favors a preparing. And these are true but incomplete statements, and I wanted to break them down. So if the question is, okay, fortune favors prepared mind. What the heck is that? Prepared mind? You know, if you say that sentence, it doesn't really give you anything actionable. You know, well, what is a prepared mind? And then if you say, the harder I work, the luckier I get, well, what is that hard work? And so that actually is what the book's about. It's essentially breaking apart these expressions to show what is a prepared mind, what is the Hard work. And then what is the fruit of those efforts?
- [13:02]
A
Very good. I notice in my prep for this interview you've given some TED talks. Probably more than one. But certainly when I took on the license to organize a TEDx, I met some amazing people I'd have never possibly met as a result of that decision. And these things don't happen.
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How to phrase this? These things don't happen automatically. So I suppose part of it is being willing to take action and to embrace the fear of people rejecting you or things not working out. Would that be part of it?
- [13:36]
C
Yes. And in fact, you sort of set a whole bunch of things in that sentence, right? One is being willing to take a risk to get out of your comfort zone. Second is being willing to ask for what you want. And also being able to understand that it might not always work out and to be resilient should things not turn out as you hoped. And one of the things that I think about a lot, especially with my students, is the fact that everybody has a mental model of what failure looks like. Some people think that when they fail, they're going to die. If I fail this test, my life is over. Or if I ask someone out on a date and they say no, I'm going to be mortified for the rest of my life. Whereas I apply to Stanford and I don't get in, it's going to be humiliating. Other people view failure as in a much more resilient way. It's more like a trampoline or a rubber. And they know that they're willing to try something because they know that they're going to bounce back from it. And I try to help people think about that mental model and whether it's helping them or not. And if it's not useful and is getting in the way, is there a way for them to retell a different story about engaging in the world so that they are more likely to get the things that they're hoping to achieve?
- [14:54]
A
Yeah, very good. I mean, I sometimes say it's just a different perspective on the same event. And, you know, sometimes, and I have, often when I was younger, I hated failure and rejection. I was so concerned about things not working out, I wouldn't do them. And if you work in sales, you know that if someone says no, that's an inevitable consequence of them asking if they might say yes. And this. This ability to regard rejection as a data point, I think, and separating the ego, you know, separating the event from how you feel about it is very important. So something else you're Famous for is your or famous for? I hadn't heard about it until I started researching this, so I should be careful how I use these words. Is your failure resume. You encourage people to collect examples of things that went wrong or didn't work out in the lessons you learn. Could you talk a bit about that? Is that part of the manifesto, do you think?
- [15:51]
C
Yes, I think it's really important to realize that especially when you're trying something hard for the first time, failure is a very likely outcome. And that even when you know how to do something, there are times in which you mess up. I mess up every single day. There's something I wish I didn't say or didn't do or could have done better. And sometimes they're really big messes. Sometimes they're just really little things like, oh, you know, I had a meeting with someone and I didn't do my homework and find out about them, you know, or it could be something big where I really, you know, forgot something that was a critical importance for some sort of event. And it's really important to formalize that lesson in a failure resume. It's like, okay, here's what I did, here's what I learned from it. Here's what I'm going to do next. And by doing this, one of the side effects is really powerful. You're much less likely to perseverate on it and to just keep chewing on it and chewing on it and chewing on it. I mean, it's something I used to do when I was younger. When I failed, I would just spend days and weeks and sometimes years agonizing about something, a misstep and being really disappointed. But if I found that by keeping a failure resume, you are much more equipped to move on because you say, okay, great, tomorrow I'm going to do it differently. Tomorrow I'm going to have a different type of conversation. Tomorrow I'm going to listen better. Tomorrow I'm going to, you know, be more prepared, whatever it is that you felt like you messed up before.
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A
Your book is full of terrific examples, and maybe.
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I'd like to find something that's not in the book. And I think it's very common characteristic of people at the top of their game that they're not complacent. And someone might think, well, someone like Tina never makes mistakes. You just said you're still making mistakes. Can you give a vivid example of a mistake you've made, say, in the last week or few months of something that. Because I think it's really important for people to realize that this isn't a. There's no moment where you've made it and the mistakes stop, is there?
- [17:59]
C
Oh, my goodness, I'm in every single day. But the cool thing is, then you think about, how do I reverse it? I mean, as I just mentioned, I had a meeting this last week with someone who had been connected with me for a potential opportunity, like giving a talk. And I had it on my calendar. And I didn't do my homework. I didn't. So when I got on the call with this person, I had to say, can you tell me about your role in this organization? And it turned out they were the founder, they were the CEO, and I was, like, so embarrassed. Like, I should have just known that, you know, it would have taken me just a couple of minutes, maybe less, to just go onto LinkedIn and see who they were in their background. But I just had it on my calendar. I just made the call, and I wasn't prepared. And to me, there was an embarrassing moment, and I was like, okay, I'm not going to do that again. I'm going to be more prepared when I get on a call with someone. I took the time to look up information about you, find out what you've done, listen to some of your podcasts, have a better understanding. So when I got on this podcast, I was more prepared, and probably I may not have done that if I hadn't codified the fact that I was disappointed I hadn't done it before. So that's an example.
- [19:07]
A
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And I think that it's. Some of the best leaders I know are people who are more than willing to admit mistakes because they create an organization in which it's okay to talk about mistakes rather than this sort of hero culture where everyone pretends they're perfect and serious problems don't get discussed. And I'd like to lean in a bit to your reflections on values because you gave an example of a situation quite early on in your career where you went to an event, somewhat secretively, under false pretenses, where you weren't admitting it wasn't obvious you were working for a competitor and you got caught. And I think that it'd be interesting. Do you think that having the right values is part of luck? Or can you talk about the values that lucky people should have? And I think it's very. It's very attractive to me as knowing about the book to think that values are important, because sometimes people talk as if the world was so objective and.
- [20:11]
What'S the. I'm trying to think of value free, that to be effective isn't the same as being good. And could you just. I'd like you to talk a little about the values that you think are important for lucky people.
- [20:22]
C
Well, it's such an interesting thing. All you have to do is read the newspaper of people who get caught doing things that, you know, they are. Are embarrassed about sharing with the world. And they have to get up and say, I'm really, really sorry, because they did something that was not consistent with the values they should have had, and they're embarrassed. So we can see that every single day almost in the newspaper. The story you refer to is, when I had just gotten out of graduate school, I was working for a company, and within a couple weeks they asked me to go and attend a conference where they asked me to. To not represent myself as a member of that company, but to say I was a graduate student at Stanford. And I didn't realize at the moment that I was being asked to lie. I mean, the president of the company asked me to do it. He had a lot of authority. It sounded like, okay, fine, maybe everybody does this. But it became clear to the people at the conference because of the questions I was asking, that I was likely had much more information than other people who were in the room about this product. And so they called the company and asked if I was there. The receptionist said, well, she's at a conference. And it was clear. And so they confronted me very dramatically in an elevator where they pushed the stop button and cornered me and said, are you a spy? And at that moment I realized that I had not aligned my actions with my values because I hadn't even taken a minute to think about it. And this happens all the time. There's another story I share in the book, which is about. That happened much more recently, where I got to test my values. And it was a time where a student of mine sent me some screenshots from a book that had just come out. And they were a story that looked like it came right out of my book in first person. So someone has essentially plagiarize me. And I was shocked. Now, there were lots of ways I could have handled it. I could have gone on social media. That was my first instinct. Get online, you know, this person copying me. You know, I could call their boss, I could call their publisher. I could do a lot of things that would make a lot of fire and smoke and fireworks and be very dramatic. I took my time. And this is an important thing. I Took my time to really think about what my values were and how I wanted to respond to it. And I finally landed on the fact that I needed to get more information. And so I reached out to this author and said, help me understand what happened here. And they got jumped on a call with me the next day and were extraordinarily humbled by what had happened and admitted that this was a very big mistake, to be honest. You know, so it was very sloppy and it was not clear how this could have happened, but they were very quick to want to repair it and find all sorts of ways to rectify the situation. And I said, fine and was willing to move on. And I feel so good about that because I think about what would I want someone to do to me if I made a mistake? What would I want someone to do for my child if they made a mistake? And I felt like I needed to be respectful of them and understand the situation better. We've stayed in touch, this author and I, and I feel in the long run that that was the absolute right thing to do and consistent with my values of open mindedness and empathy and curiosity that I try to foster every day.
- [24:05]
A
Good. So just picking out a reflection there of taking your time to deciding how to respond in this instantaneous world, like when someone's in a chair chat, online chat, or whatever, you don't have time to reflect. And sometimes you need time, and that's important. A very good way of framing how to behave is asking the question, what would happen if everyone knew everything that. I think in today's world, we're so monitored, someone might think they could get away with it, but probably you can't. And even if you could, would that still make it all right? Because the difference between conscience and guilt and shame is guilt is when you feel bad, even if no one knows. And shame is if you get caught, then other people know about it. And I think people reflecting on their internal values is important. Another I don't know whether it's a value or a behavior you talk about is patience and gratitude.
- [25:06]
Can you explain why those are important to people who get lucky?
- [25:11]
C
Yeah. So let's talk about gratitude. I am honestly the thank you note queen. And this is something that I have cultivated over the years when I realized that one of the most important things you can do in life is show appreciation to other people. When someone does something for you that they didn't have to do, even if they had to do it, even if it was part of their job, you need to close the loop by showing appreciation, it's not good enough to just be grateful. Like, oh, I'm so grateful. That's an internal, that's an internal experience of being grateful. But you need to show appreciation. What happens is you don't know how long the game is going to be. And it's not just you're being appreciative because it's transactional and it's because it's the right thing to do. But it does pay back over time. Those people who show appreciation end up later on getting opportunities that others wouldn't because the person who is asking them, who you've asked, realizes that what they've done for you is something that was truly valued.
- [26:23]
A
Indeed. And another thing that sometimes people think that if someone's famous and important, it doesn't matter anymore. But I think that on the contrary, if someone's made a lot of money and they're leading an organization, the things that other people crave they've already got. You know, they've got their house, they've got their car, they paid for their kids education, they're not lacking material things. And if they get a letter or someone comes up to them at an event saying, you know, that talk you gave five years ago profoundly influenced my life, that'll make them wag their psychological tail. They love it and just show people don't stop needing appreciation as they get more important. And when it's genuine, it may land more so because you know, if you're the CEO of a company, you get lots of praise from people who are going to praise you anyway. And getting genuine gratitude matters rather more.
- [27:14]
C
So I tell the story in the book about how when I started teaching, I remembered one of the most profound teaching experiences I had when I was in college 20 years earlier. So, and I wrote a thank you letter 20 years later to this professor in college. Now I didn't know if he got it or not, but it was really important for me to write it. However, 20 years later, 20 years later, so 40 years after I took this class, I got an email from his granddaughter saying that her grandfather had just died and they had read excerpts of my letter to him at his funeral. I mean, I got chills the idea that this letter I had written 20 years earlier in response to his teaching 20 years before that had made such a powerful impact on him that he had saved it. So I think that you cannot underestimate the power of showing appreciation.
- [28:12]
A
Yes. And I think another thing is not so much the instrumental side of it, that there's absolutely no guarantee that showing appreciation will generate a payback. But it makes somehow that mindset makes you a happier, more open person, which makes perhaps other people more likely to want to work with you because of gratitude. The sort of person who's grateful is nice to work with them. So there may be no direct feedback between the person you're grateful to and they're doing anything for you specifically. But that mindset makes you more likely to stumble and not stumble for other people to want to give you opportunity, perhaps.
- [28:56]
C
Yeah. So let me tell you a funny little story. A number of years ago, I was running a fellowship program for a dozen students, and we had taken them on a field trip up to Napa to look at one of the students. Family had been in the wine business. And so we were looking at family businesses and the wine industry. And we spent a whole weekend studying this. And we came back and then we had another special event. And not a single student had sent a thank you note for this series of very special experiences they had been given. And I was really disappointed. So I gave myself a couple of weeks to really think about what to do. So I went into class and I said, I'm going to teach you a new framework. And they said, okay, fine. They got out their pens and paper and I said, I'm going to teach you about radical candor. So this is Kim Scott's framework about radical candor, where if you are radically candid, it's because you're being very direct and very candid, caring, as opposed to sort of ruinous empathy where you go, oh, yeah, they're just kids, and you kind of let them off the hook. And so I said, I'm going to be radically candid with you because I care about you so much. And I told them I was disappointed that nobody had sent any sort of recognition for this series of experiences that they had been given that were very special and their jaws dropped and they realized instantly that they had messed up up. I mean, it wasn't as if they were going to argue with me and say I was wrong. They, like, realized, oh, yes, that was a missed opportunity. And many of them told me that was the most important thing I learned in school. Some of them have written, like, graduate school applications where they wrote about this in their essays. So I think so often people don't learn this, and this is why I include this in my book about luck, is the importance of showing appreciation, because it does open the door for opportunities that that would possibly remain closed if you don't show appreciation.
- [30:56]
A
Absolutely And I think that I'm going to move on from that onto the radical candor. And honestly. So do you think that people who are more direct and open about what they think get luckier as well? Is that an input? I don't think it's on the list of my notes. But I suspect it's true that radical candor being giving people constructive criticism rather than keeping quiet might lead to more opportunity.
- [31:22]
C
Well, I have a whole chapter in the book about trust and about how to build trust, because that is foundational. In luck is building trusting relationships of people. And how do you have those difficult conversations? And so created a little framework with one of my students who teaches. She's doing her PhD work on having difficult conversations, especially in. In very turbulent environments. And we create a framework looking at whether something's personal or professional or it's about values or behavior. So think of a two by two matrix. And so some conflicts are about behavior, personal conflicts about behavior. Like you left your socks on the floor. Right. But it could be personal behavior that's based in values, like whether we're talking about monogamy in marriage or something like that. It could be a professional conflict about behavior such as interrupting someone in meetings. Or it could be a professional conflict that has to do with values difference, like diversity efforts. And so you need to know where in this four boxes you land. Is this a personal professional? Is this about behavior or is it about that? And there are different types of questions that you can ask that help you unpack this, like, help me understand why you do this. And really leaning into being open minded and curious and empathetic and not projecting onto the other person some ideas that you have that may or may not be true. And oftentimes we don't understand why someone has done something. One of my favorite books is called the Course of Love. I don't know if you've read it, but the author follows a couple through from dating through marriage. And it's a pretty simple story, but every time they have a conflict, he pops up and describes what's really happening. And it had a profound impact on me. And even my marriage where I was like, oh, it's not always about what it's about, right? Leaving the socks on the floor may or may not. It's like unlikely. It's about the socks. What's this really about? Why am I really upset about the socks on the floor? What does it mean to me?
- [33:41]
A
Sorry for interrupting. What's the author of the book, the course?
- [33:44]
C
Alain Debottam.
- [33:45]
A
Okay, okay. I'LL put that in the show notes. No, I had a wonderful example of that. My father, who's now dead, taught philosophy in Oxford and he had a pupil, Michael Gould, who was a business school professor in the UK. And when I was about 35, I said to Michael, I'm thinking of doing a PhD and he said, oh, that's interesting. Is your marriage in trouble?
- [34:09]
And you know, sometimes if someone's experience, what someone says means something completely. And in fact he was right, amazingly. But you know, sometimes if a man in his middle aged man starts talking about doing a PhD, it could be a symptom of something else. And I think that sometimes I'm conscious of time and I'm looking. I want to ask you about people and how building a crew is part of what a team of people is part of what you need to do if you're going to be lucky. And I'm wondering about, I'm looking for something you might disagree about because I sense we're very much on the same wavelength. And when you're looking for people to build a crew with, are there people you rule out? And this feeds into instant judgments because I think what you've just told me is that sometimes you might be misunderstanding people and what they say might not be what they mean, or maybe what they mean isn't what they really want. So you need a little depth and patience. But are there people who you just have to rule out of your life if you're going to be lucky? Do you have a checklist of things you're looking for where you say, well, if someone's like that, they're certainly not part of the people I want to have in my orbit. On the one hand, so what's the no list and what's the yes list for the things you're looking for in other people?
- [35:21]
C
Okay, so great. I want to pop up a second before I answer that question because the framework of the book is that luck is ubiquitous. Luck is like the window and you need to build a sail to catch it. So with that framework, the idea is that the book has three sections. One is how do you build your ship? And that's the internal work that includes your values. How do you recruit your crew, which is what you just referred to, and then how do you hoist your sail, which is all of the hard work you do. And we've talked about some of those things, like showing appreciation. So let's go to the building your crew. One of the things that my colleague Bob Sutton always used to say is if There are two people with the same opinion in the room, one too many people. So surrounding yourself with people with a different perspective is actually really valuable. I love having people who I work with who disagree with me, because let's have a debate and figure out the right answer. I'm super comfortable with debate. I grew up with my father always saying, let's argue so we can get to the right outcome. He literally had a sign on his desk at work that said that. And he would tell you that even today was an important aspect of growing up is like, yeah, let's disagree. Let's have a debate about that. This. And so I think fostering ability to listen to people with different perspectives because you might be wrong. In fact, there was the old adage, you know, speak as if you're right and listen as if you're wrong. And so it's really important. Now, there are some people, though, who are jerks, right? I mean, Bob Sutton I just mentioned, wrote a book called the no Asshole Rule about people who were jerks. And I can tell you there are people, you go, I just don't want to work with them. So as long as someone is open minded, curious, hardworking, all the values that you want on your team, it's great if they have a different perspective. One of the benefits of Knight Hennessy Scholars is that we bring people around the world from all different disciplines, and we often have difficult conversations. And in fact, it's one of the things that we really look for when we're picking students is people who are comfortable in that environment where they can be exposed to people in very different backgrounds and perspectives and have those conversations and learn from each other.
- [37:35]
A
Thank you. And so, as we draw to a close, there's a couple more questions I get. One is, what haven't I asked you that I should have asked you, but before that, other views that you've got, where you've got colleagues who really disagree with you, that I totally agree that you need diversity of opinion. You need to listen to people who you don't agree with. That's really important. And probably it's more the values. When you talk about people being jerks, whether it's racism or intolerance or dishonesty or greediness, you know, those are not opinions, they're values. And probably the level of values is where you need to draw the line. But other things you're known for thinking, where you've got quite a few colleagues you respect, whether they say, tina, I just don't agree with you about that. Are you an outlier.
- [38:19]
C
You know, what comes to mind is really kind of funny is my father. My father and I debate about love all the time. He, in fact, the opening story of my book is about my father's view about luck. And he just believes he's 99, he'll be 100 when the book comes out. And he just believes that he has been lucky and it has just happened to him. And I say to him, let's break this apart and look at all the things you did to make that luck happen. And even though he's read my book, I tell his stories based on his personal experience, he still is convinced that luck just happens to him and he has a difficult time seeing all the things he did to make it happen.
- [39:06]
A
Isaac Newton said that if I have an apple and you have an apple and we swap apples, we've both got one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we swap Ideas, we have two ideas. Apparently that was quoted in a TEDx talk, a TEDx I organized. And I think, think the wonderful thing about this is that if someone reads your book or has heard this podcast and they think about it, even if they don't agree with you, at least they've got a different perspective on the same issue. And I very much hope that people who listen to this and take the time to read your book when it's published will reflect on this, because certainly I'm reflecting. So thank you very much. And I also appreciate you sharing the fact you disagree with your father. My father was a philosopher and my entire childhood in Oxford was in whatever I thought he would disagree. I was totally used to the idea that disagreement was normal and suddenly I'd stumble into the wider world where people would take it very personally if I disagree with them. So thank you for sharing that. And is there anything that we haven't covered in this? Because I'd say we've just got a few minutes more. Is there anything that we haven't covered in this conversation that I should have asked?
- [40:17]
C
I really, really enjoyed. One of the things I just would mention is that this what I Wish I Knew About Luck is part of a series and it's the book before it was what I Wish I Knew when I was 20, that I wrote as my son was nearing that age and then did a 10 year edition to update it. And that book is really about how to see the world as opportunity, rich and full of possibilities and to challenge assumptions and to reframe problems. And I then took it to the next level and written a couple books about creative problem solving. So that at the crux, my interest is in looking at the world through fresh eyes to generate ideas and then figure out how to bring them to life, whether it's for yourself.
- [41:05]
In terms of luck or whether it's creativity and bringing other ideas into the world. So I'm so delighted that we got to chat about this and you ask such wonderful questions that many of them are going to leave me thinking long after our conversation.
- [41:22]
A
Good. Well, I often talk about about the entrepreneurial mindset and clearly what we've been discussing is part of this and two people can see the same event, have the same conversation, read the same article, go to the same lecture, and one of them comes out with a huge opportunity because they're looking at it with the entrepreneurial mindset and I'm sure not. I'm sure it's obvious that your book is talking about the same topic. How to be in a situation. Well, I don't want to. You're so much more eloquent than I am. I just think I should maybe just close this by saying that. Is there anything else you'd like to share with our audience or do you think we should wrap?
- [42:08]
C
I think we've been fine. I have really, truly enjoyed our conversation and I couldn't be more appreciative.
- [42:14]
A
So NBN listeners, Entrepreneurship and Leadership Channel listeners, we've been talking to Tina Selig. I very much encourage you to buy the book when it comes out and thank you very much indeed for your time.
- [42:25]
C
Thank you so much.