Applying The Scientific Method: Smartcuts Miniseries Pt.2 with Shane Snow

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I’m extra excited about this one.

So a lot of you know that I have listened to Shane Snow’s audiobook Smartcuts many times and how much I was looking forward to having him on the show for the first time back in April. Well the only thing better was when he agreed to come back and do entire deep dive miniseries into the stories of those who have built these skills of avoiding unnecessary work and, instead of slowly climbing the “supposed to” ladder, building their own ladders to success faster, as well as how-tos of for how the rest of us can do the same thing.

A new episode of the miniseries will be out each Friday for the next 6 weeks.

If you missed the first time he was on the show you can listen to it here.

Thanks for Listening

Jess

P.S. If you like the episode please shoot me an email and let me know what you liked about it: Jess.Larsen@GraystokeMedia.com

Bio:

Shane Snow is an award-winning journalist, explorer, and entrepreneur, and the author. He speaks globally about innovation and teamwork, has performed comedy on Broadway, and been in the running for the Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism.

Snow has helped expose gun traffickers, explored abandoned buildings around the world, eaten only ice cream for weeks in the name of science, and taught hundreds of thousands of people to work better through his books, including the business bestseller Smartcuts.

Snow's writing has appeared in GQ, Fast Company, Wired, The New Yorker, and more. He is also a board member of the media technology company Contently, and the journalism nonprofit The Hatch Institute. Make sure to check out ShaneSnow.com Follow him on LinkedIn.

Here is the auto-generated transcription:

Jess: Welcome to Innovation and Leadership. I'm Jess Larsen today is episode two in our Smartcuts mini-series with Shane Snow. If you didn't catch part one, please go back and listen to that. Shane we've talked about your books and your highly successful tech company, and the course that this episode is going to be a part of in the future.

[00:00:19] Everybody go to Shane's website and check that out. But what are we gonna, what are you going to dive in in here today on episode two about?

[00:00:26] Shane: so today we're going to talk about applying the scientific method to your thinking process and decision making both kind of in your day to day and in sort of longer term thinking, when solving problems and building businesses.

[00:00:40] And I mean, this is building directly off of what we talked about last time, which is the idea that thinking different is hard because you think the way you think, however, There are, are ways to trick yourself, force yourself, or train yourself to continually think in more innovative ways. And, and so the framework that it all starts from is variations on the scientific method.

[00:01:06] So we're going to dig into that today as a, the underlying thing to keep in mind, as you're trying to use lateral thinking and, and apply innovation to whatever it is you're working on.

[00:01:18] Jess: I love it, by the way, and I'm going to put you on the spot here, so don't feel bad if you don't know the answer off the top of your head, but if people have their copy of the book smart cuts, where is this?

[00:01:27] Where is this in the book? Where are they hearing about scientific thinking?

[00:01:32] Shane: so in Smartcuts, I don't know that I actually really framed things in terms of the scientific method. Like I would, if I were making a new edition. everything in smart cuts is framed around this idea that innovation happens when you change the game, that when you play the same game and a and lateral thinking is the sort of the psychology term for approaching problems, from different angles so that you can change the game.

[00:02:00] So it's the, you know, the analogy that everyone uses is the guy who jumped over the high jump bar backwards. And suddenly figured out that you can jump higher if you jumped backwards and then everyone followed him laterally well thinking is, the process of doing things differently that way.

[00:02:18] So, the scientific method is really the, the anxious, the wrong word, but hundreds of years old framework for approaching new ways of thinking, which is exactly what lateral thinking is about. I am sure. You know, it's been seven, eight years since I wrote Smartcuts. so I I'm sure I invoke the scientific method at some point, but I have the habit of reading, reading my old books, which maybe I should,

[00:02:49] Jess: no, I'm putting you on the spot there. You know, the, can you talk about, Sir Francis Bacon and kind of how the Baconian method integrates here?

[00:02:59] Shane: Sure. So I think it's a good way to remember this story. The scientific method, I think right now is a, is the story of Sir Francis Bacon. Who's really credited with, with basically coming up with the foundation of the scientific method.

[00:03:14] So before Bacon. So he was, I believe the 1600s. you can fact check me on that, but before that, Science was really conducted by the seat of people's pants, you know, and there were great, thinkers who made great breakthroughs, but they were doing it using their own methodology, you know, experimenting in their own ways.

[00:03:36] And it was usually thought experiments. And so it was really rare that, that someone was able to make a scientific breakthrough until Sir Francis Bacon started a evangelizing empiricism, which is basically do experiments, and if you can repeat the experiments, then you can be pretty sure

[00:03:55] that something is real. And, and he used experiments as a, as sort of the base. It's a framework for, Hey, if you want to make, you know, an advance in some field do experiments, don't, don't just Willynilly it. And don't just, just to think hard, actually put some structure around thinking in ways that can help you to do better and through experiments.

[00:04:16] And, and I think the story of Sir Francis Bacon is interesting because he is credited as being so smart and coming up with this idea, which now seems really obvious, but actually how often do we actually think in terms of experiments, he came up with this because as a kid, he was real sick and, and so he had to stay at home and all he did at home basically was learn and be homeschooled.

[00:04:39] So for anyone that's listening to this during the you know, COVID pandemic, which is one of the recording, this or the post pandemic, you know, recession that will certainly come when kids everywhere are having to learn from learn at home. the guy who invented the scientific method, that's it because he was stuck at home and had to do homeschool.

[00:04:59] And, so there you go. So maybe your kids have an opportunity to make some breakthroughs, but because he was sick, he was stuck at home. He, as a kid was very inquisitive and he was always asking, well, why does this work? Why is it this way? Why, why, why, why, which kids do. And however, he was being raised, he was allowed to sort of some flexibility and freedom.

[00:05:19] And I think it was cause it was wealthy, to ask questions and then actually investigate them as kids. And this turns, you know, over time as he became eventually a statesman and a scientist, turned into what he called the  Baconian method, which I just called the Bacon method. And, and that, that became the foundation for the scientific method, which, which relies on this idea that if you can do experiments and you can repeat the experiments and they work every time, then you're onto something, but it goes deeper than that.

[00:05:50] And that's what we can talk about. But I think if you just want a simple way to remember this method in everyday life. I like to think about bacon, take a kid who's stuck at home who has a lot of money and time on their hands and can actually follow through on their questions of why, why, why, why did things work?

[00:06:06] And they can do experiments, but second vegetarian for 10 years. So I feel okay saying this. If you never taste bacon, you're never going to know how brilliantly delicious it is. The proof is in tasting the bacon. You can look at bacon and kind of get an idea that, you know, it looks like it's maybe pretty good.

[00:06:29] So that's an observation, which is the foundation of scientific method make observations. But then, you know, it's really only after you ask the question, how does bacon really tastes? How good does it taste? And after you do, you know, make the hypothesis that it's worth tasting, and then you're doing an experiment and you put it in your mouth.

[00:06:46] Or, you know, maybe even better, you put it on a sandwich or you put it in chocolate or you put it on anything, that you can actually realize the bacon is much better than you think it is. And it's consistently delicious. So anyway, that's a silly analogy, but if you think of bacon and the whole thing with the internet of put bacon on anything, and it makes it better, that I think is empirically true.

[00:07:06] If you're not a vegetarian, that's what the Baconian method is. This is about going through this process of discovery by trying things. But it's actually a little bit more of a process. And so that's, that's what I would love to dig into and break down as the foundation for actually engaging lateral thinking. Cause who would have thought that bacon is as great with chocolate as it actually is.

[00:07:32] Jess: I think that it officially needs to stop being called the scientific method and needs to be called the bacon method. But, so can you break those down for folks? One more time, thinking about the method. Can you kind of cover the five categories that need to be covered there?

[00:07:49] Shane: Yes. So scientific method, it starts with an observation and people often forget this. If you did science fair in middle school, you might have an inkling of this, but the scientific method really starts with you observed something.

[00:08:05] Newton observes an apple falling from a tree. No, he doesn't start with, you know, why do things fall? He starts with the observation that things fall. And then after the observation, you ask a question and, and there's lots of questions that you can ask. If you observe an apple falling from the tree, why did it fall?

[00:08:24]what caused it to fall? you know, does it fall the same rate, every time, lots of questions you can come up with, but the scientific method is you'd boil down and observation, and then you boil down the one question at a time that you want to find answers to. And then from there you come up with hypothesis, which is usually where, you know, a lot of creativity comes in.

[00:08:47] You'll come up with potential answers to the question and, and you want to do a range of them. And then you’d come up with experiments to disprove those hypothesis. And it's specifically to disprove, to invalidate the creative hypothesis, which is opposite of what a lot of people think science is about. A lot of people

[00:09:07] and especially if you're not a scientist, you know, you're in business and you come up with a plan, which is your hypothesis. You do what you, people tend to do, whatever they can to prove that the plan will work. Instead, you want to prove that the plan won't work and then the fifth step is you come to conclusions based on those experiments to disprove your hypothesis.

[00:09:26] And if you do everything you can experimentally to disprove something and you just can't disprove it. Then you're onto something. And then the scientific method, actor repeats this process in that process of hypothesis, experimenting to disprove them you come up with more observations, which then you go back to the drawing board.

[00:09:46] And so often the scientific method is kind of this tree, that you got to keep track of, of you're generating new observations through these experiments, through these conclusions that then over time, it's a, this mass of repeating the method over and over again, leads you to great ideas. And if you inject enough creativity and lateral thinking into those steps, you can come up with breakthrough ideas, but this is the framework it's sort of like the high coup that allows you to be more creative.

[00:10:15] So if I ask you just to come up with a poem on the spot about, so I'm drinking a LaCroix right now about sparkling water, come up with a pullout, sparkling water. You might be able to do it, but if I say, come up with a high coup about sparkling water. Chances are you'll come up with a better poem on the spot because it has some, some frameworks and some boundaries is, five,

[00:10:34] so we'll sell seven symbols, five syllables. That's what the scientific method is only. It's even better than that because it's been, would be the best way to write a poem, over hundreds of years of repetition. So it itself has, has been yet to be disproven as an extremely effective way to solve problems.

[00:10:53] And the thing about it is that normal thinkers, our natural way of thinking the logical way of thinking, or just the way our brains tend to work is we often start with the hypothesis. We start in the, the middle of the scientific method and that's how we're actually not being scientific. We start with the idea which might be based on, you know, we just don't realize that our pattern recognition, our observations, you know, our experiences that we have our training, you know, we have a lot to draw from.

[00:11:19] So then we have an idea we're gonna solve this problem this way, using my idea. But then by starting with a hypothesis, you actually might spend your time working on maybe the wrong question. Your idea first approach might actually lead you to attack the wrong problem. So  what a lot of people do is they start with the hypothesis and then they do anything they can to prove the hypothesis true with the scientific method is about, is it's about

[00:11:48] even if you do come up with an idea to solve a problem, using that as the trigger to say, let's back up to step one. What is the observation behind this idea that I have really, the thing that we can boil this down to, and this will be what we dig into in our next episode on first principles. But what are the observations behind this?

[00:12:07] And then based on those observations, what is the right question to ask. And then given that right question, is this idea actually a good thing to put into the pool of hypotheses? Or actually, is it not quite right? Or can we, can we be inspired by this come up with better hypothesis and then you go through to try and disprove it.

[00:12:27] So that's how our normal way of thinking can, can help remind us to use the Bacon method, but if you start with, you know, I wonder if, I bet bacon goes well, grape jelly. then you're gonna come up with recipes to try and make that work rather than backing up to observations about bacon and jelly, perhaps again, I'm, you know, I'm being a flip here, but that's what the scientific method is about.

[00:12:52] Is this about stopping yourself from doing what most smart people, do naturally which is go with their ideas and try and see if that work. Instead, use your ideas as a reminder, that you can stop and go back and actually start to engage a scientific process, which will help you come up with better ideas ultimately.

[00:13:12] Jess: You know, I have, I have an observation and a question for you. Okay. So my, my observation is that you're definitely not Canadian because you didn't bring up dipping your bacon and maple syrup, which is excellent. And B my question for you is any ideas on how we can develop more intellectual humility to want to back up and observe, you know, where we're running a company, we're trying to fix something in a division where we work or something.

[00:13:44] and we do come up with some hypothesis, you know, like we didn't, we didn't slow down. We were already there, but then we remember taking the Shane Snow course and the bacon method means that we're already on step three and we should probably back up to step one, but we're already feeling like that could feel slow.

[00:14:05] That could feel inefficient. That could, you know, there's so many, there's like the emotional attachment to my idea because it was my idea, right. And I think about how many times I haven't slowed down and got additional information and I've taken, you know, any one point is a line kind of an approach.

[00:14:26] And, and cause as you're talking, I'm thinking about like stories of IDEO and you know, they're asked to improve this airport in France or something and. They're supposed to fix these turnstiles or something. And these people tell them, this is what the problem is. And they say, Oh, that's great.

[00:14:44] Our method is we have to go observe first so that we can actually get close enough to the problem. So thanks for your input. We'll go observe and then can we meet again? And when they go observe, what they find out is that the flow in this airport they're supposed to be helping with, Is limited because the turnstiles, like the security check, things are so small, you can't wheel a suitcase through it.

[00:15:06] And so you've got all these people stopping and getting somebody else to help them lift the suitcase over these, like, you know, the bars that are they're wide enough to walk through it. Just not wide enough to pull your suitcase through that somebody like the client whose hypothesis about, we need you to make the flow better here.

[00:15:23] And here's what we think was completely wrong, but having observed it all of a sudden, they find much more relevant problems. You need to make these spaces bigger, which is so simple, but you can't get from a brief, you know, I guess I know other people come up with better ideas by slowing down and going back and doing observations, but my emotions want to surge ahead. And any thoughts there?

[00:15:49] Shane: Yeah. There's so many things. I love that story. I've never heard that specific example, but there's a reason

[00:15:54] Jess: Just quoting it.

[00:15:56] Shane: The principal there is really solid, right? By like, they thought that they knew what the problem was and, and, you know, solve this thing. And then observation from an outside group, you realized that the problem is different.

[00:16:11]it's actually, it's a different problem than they thought, or it's you know, you zoom out a little bit and you realize that it's a, it's not quite, it's actually simpler, what needs to be done. so there's a couple of things here. One is as leaders, we often get to where we are in a position of leadership, where we have resources.

[00:16:32] We have staff, we have teams, we have a company, we have money, whatever it is. We get there, usually not because we just inherited it from nothing that does happen, but when we get there, because we've been successful and we've had good ideas, we've been right about things where we've been lucky and, and the way that a lot of businesses are set up and way that certainly, you know, economics is set up is you get rewarded for being right.

[00:16:56] And so at a certain point, your ego gets sort of connected to your ability to be right. And also your status and your validity as a leader is connected to your ability to be right about things. And so you get this sort of combination or entanglement of ego and intellect and this pressure to be right about things.

[00:17:19] And to be the one that comes up with ideas, and you also have people looking to you, cause this is how we choose our leaders to be right and you develop this intellectual overconfidence that, that your ideas are good. Now you have this pattern now of having good ideas that have worked. And so what this leads to is a lack of intellectual humility.

[00:17:37] It leads to ironically less ability to see other ways of doing things, then the ways that have succeeded for you in the past. And so you tend to, you know, remember last time we talked about that puzzle of, you know, you have three people in a rainstorm and you, you would need to figure out which one to pick up and put in your car.

[00:17:55] And the answer is you get out of the car and you put two of them in, and then you hang out with the, you know, the person of your dreams. And you can’t see solutions like that when they're framed with assumptions of, you know, you can only help one person and sometimes our own success leads us to build in these assumptions about how problems need to be solved.

[00:18:14]the best way to do things is the way, the way that we've been doing things. So we, we frame the problems to be solved within our own context of our own way of thinking. And so this, these two things basically combined to make it hard for leaders to want to stop and rethink their own assumptions because you just can't, you know, think outside of your own cognitive entrenchment, but also at least this pressure of no, the way that I, that I'm going to solve the problem needs to be right.

[00:18:42] And then I think there's another factor too, is often time is our enemy. You know, if you need to get problem solved quickly, then you're going to have to, a lot of times you don't think about it, but you're gonna have to decide on the trade off of solving the problem in a novel better long-term way, you know, making a breakthrough or just solving it sufficiently enough

[00:19:02]to move on to the next stage, maybe it's okay. If you just improve the rate at which people go through the turnstiles by 10%, maybe that's a way, and that's good enough for you, but if you want to, you know, fundamentally, make a breakthrough, then then time is going to be your enemy. So you're either going to need to take time to use lateral thinking or you're going to need to accept the fact that you're going to have a sub optimal solution

[00:19:27] or at least the potential for suboptimal solution. And so as a leader, I think you, when you're confronted with problems and we can use the airport problem, you do need to take at least a second to stop and ask yourself, is this the kind of problem that it's worth taking the time to come up with a novel breakthrough solution?

[00:19:48] And if the answer is yes, then you need some way of forcing yourself to go back. and use a scientific method for this. And often, you know, even if you decide to do that, so, you know, this airport, they decided, okay, it's worth it to spend some time solving this problem in a way that can really push us, you know, a step function forward.

[00:20:12]but we can't see any solution because we're cognitively entrenched. So we need to bring in an outsider. And this is where, you know, this is where a lot of consultants where they're valuable is they can see what you can't see because you're cognitively entrenched. It's not necessarily that they're smarter, it's that they, they are set up to see what you can't see.

[00:20:31] And that's what observation is all about. And, and so, you know, if you can do that yourself even better, you don't need to pay consultants. but either way they bring an IDEO and IDEO is using the scientific method. So I think that's the tension is the speed versus, you know, the potential upside of taking your time.

[00:20:51] And then of course not being able to do it on your own, if you are cognitively entrenched. What I would say is that the point of what we're talking about in this series is to help people to be able to do that in their own head, you know, to get outside of their own you know, box, or to recognize who are the kinds of people or consultants, even that you can bring in to force yourself to get outside of your own box.

[00:21:18] Jess: I love it. You know, as you're saying that, it made me think about a saying, which I hope is true, but, I guess when surgeons are cutting veins, you, you have to get that, that vein sewn back together quickly, or you'll never get it back together and you have to cauterize it. So there's supposedly there's this saying of go slow.

[00:21:39] You only have 30 seconds. And what they mean is, you don't have time to do it twice. It's kind of like the, I wish I could remember who said, if you don't have, if you don't have the time to do it right the first time, when will you have time to do it over?

[00:21:54] Shane: I like that or it's, you know, my dad always said my dad was a handy man.

[00:21:58] And he always said measure twice, cut once, which I think is a cliche, but yeah, you only have one board, so you better make sure that you cut it right the first time and then that should measure it twice.

[00:22:10] Jess: Yeah. Well, as we're digging further into the observation here, can you talk to us about the idea of first class noticers and, what Sherlock Holmes called elementary?

[00:22:20] Shane: Sure. So this, this does come from Smartcuts. So Saul Bellows was a Canadian actually American writer. and, and he was, he had, there were a lot of things that he gets quoted on, but in one of his short stories, he talks about someone who's a first class noticer. And the, I picked up on that and I wrote about that in, in Smartcuts in the chapter about learning from masters.

[00:22:42] So the chapter about how, if you want to accelerate your learning and a mentorship relationship. You will, and to be mentored by someone who is the best of the best, and you want that metric relationship to be organic so that they help you with the little things that world-class experts understand and know that simple experts don't necessarily.

[00:23:05] So the difference between a world class professional and someone who's a not world class professional are the tiny details. And so people who can pick up on those tiny details, who can be first class noticers are more likely to learn, and jump over the people who are simply experts. So, you know, you see this in chess, you see this in surfing, you see this in business, it's really being able to get down to the really teeny, tiny things that add up to make a difference.

[00:23:32] So a lot of people, you know, might talk about this as the 80/20 rule, right. You know, 20% of the things that you see are going to make 80% of the difference. And, you know, there's lots of derivations of that, but first class noticers are the kinds of people who place a premium on looking for the tiny details of which is essentially the observation step of the scientific method and where this ties into Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes is always saying this kind of arrogant sounding stuff like, Oh dear Watson, this is elementary, Watson said, how could you possibly put together that conclusion?

[00:24:04] And Sherlock's like, he says, well, it's elementary. It's obvious when you look at everything. And that's the key is Sherlock Holmes took stock of all of the possible clues before he jumped to hypothesis before he made his conclusions. His whole thing was, if you just observe enough, then the deductions are easy.

[00:24:26] Once you have enough data and enough facts, then you can put it all together. But in absence of the facts, you have to jump to conclusions. And what a lot of people do, what, you know, what Watson did, what most of us do is you get some of the facts and then you start to fill in the conclusions you fill in the gaps.

[00:24:41] You make these hypotheses. And Sherlock Holmes, he said, I don't even want to get to that point. I'm not even going to think about what the answer might be until I know all of the observation. So that's, what's elementary, it's easy once you have all the data. And you know, he is of course, super smart.

[00:24:57] So he, he can say it's easy, but for us, it's going to be easy, easier. And so this is really, truly in the last episode, we talked about how well world-class surfers show up to the beach before a tournament at six in the morning to observe the waves. Spending more time doing that makes a huge difference because you'll find those details that can help you to ask the right questions and then make better hypothesis.

[00:25:23] So this plays into is something that you and I were talking about, you know, off of, when we were not recording, you know, one of the stories from smart cuts that I think is an underrated story. If I, if I can say so is the story of Michelle fund, who's a makeup artist who was one of the early YouTube celebrities that had enormous success,

[00:25:44] that seemed like overnight success. And when you peel back the curtain, you know, she has these makeup tutorials that are really great, and she has millions and millions of fans has built this, you know, a beauty and makeup empire out of it. She wasn't an overnight success. She actually was, you know, decades in the making.

[00:26:00] Where she got her start was growing up, watching Bob Ross paint on PBS and painting along and putting in a lot of time, she actually painted and drew on sheets of paper from the yellow pages, which is all the paper that she had, which she put in tons of time. basically getting creative instruction from Bob Ross.

[00:26:18] And then she, before she became a YouTube star, she put in tons of time making makeup tutorials. It was her 50th one that finally went viral. but she spent all of this time feeling her reservoir with, observations and then experiments on, in her case makeup design, but on, on creative art that by the time people noticed her great video, her 50th video, she had this huge pool, that people could then we'll go back to and realize that she was great.

[00:26:46] And she got a bunch of fans rather than just one off hits the, the hidden thing about that story. Is a, you know, the story of the overnight success that took years to make. I think it was a really good one. She had built up all this potential energy, putting all this practice, but hidden part of that story that don't really get into

[00:27:02] Smartcuts is this idea of the observations. So you see this pattern in the history of really great consistently creative people. They don't just spend time practicing their creativity. They spend a lot of time getting creative inputs. So Michelle Fond spent decades watching Bob Ross and, and other painters and artists for that matter.

[00:27:30] She spent a lot of time consuming content. What this did was it filled her reservoir, gave her things to draw from though in, you know, the, the sort of most crude way to talk about creativity and it's exactly what lateral thinking is making connections between things that haven't been connected before.

[00:27:47] So if you've never seen the color purple before, what it takes to make purple, this brand new color is taking blue and red and mixing them together. That's what creativity is. And that's really what lateral thinking is all about is drawing from different places and combining them, the whole universe is made up of atoms that are combined in different ways and then make new things.

[00:28:07] So the mathematical principle. It was a very Holmesian Sherlock Holmes and principle. Is the more you have to draw from the more potential you have to make a creative connection that works. It doesn't mean that every connection you make will be good or interesting. You can make a lot of like really poo Brown colors by mixing a lot of bad paint colors, but you can also make beautiful colors with the right combination.

[00:28:31] So there's this you see of the more observations people have in their database, the more likely they are to, to be able to come up with creative solutions. Favorite story of mine that is captured in the, you know, the whole book about this called The Creative Curve by a friend of mine, Ellen Gannett, is the story of Ted Sarandos.

[00:28:49] Who's the chief creative officer of Netflix. And, I realized that I'm now going into rambling territory, but just as share this story as an example, so a cheap credit often serve Netflix, the guy who, you know, he's produced all of their great hits. all their original content. He's the guy who oversaw their recommendation engine, which was their, you know, huge breakthrough that changed, changed things for Netflix among other smart things.

[00:29:11] The company did his backstory is not that he was just born a creative genius. He, when he was a teenager, worked at a video rental store, and, and he decided as a board teenager, one summer that he was going to watch every movie. In the video store. I don't know how big this video store was, but you know, he watched movies all day long and while he was waiting for customers to come in and watch movies all day and all night.

[00:29:34] And so that when a customer came in and said, you know, I just saw the movie Tremors, what should I watch next? So you can say, Oh, okay. You like kind of campy horror. Well, here's what five things that I could recommend to you. And oh speaking of bacon, Kevin Bacon, here's something that here's a movie of his, that most people don't know about that I think you'll love if you really like tremors.

[00:29:52] And so he became this human recommendation engine. Because he had consumed so many movies and then this turned out to be right really handy when he was running content for Netflix and he had to choose what movies to acquire and help guide the recommendation engine itself. What are the patterns of things that make people more likely to, to watch a second movie?

[00:30:14] And then when they started making original movies, his brain was a database of every movie ever that he had consumed that allowed for really creative ideas. So when they started making, you know, house of cards was their first big one, they relied on a lot of data for this, but the short story of how they made house of cards, which now, you know, in light of revelations about Kevin Spacey being a dirt bag.

[00:30:38] It was kind of uncomfortable to think about, but at the time before knowing that Kevin Spacey was a dirt bag, the observations or people who watch Kevin Spacey, movies watch lots of Kevin Spacey movies. Also an observation was David Fincher is one of the directors that people obsess over the most. And also people that watch the British version of House of Cards, which not very many people watch.

[00:31:00] And one who happens to watch it watches all of it. So really, you know, the American TV show House of Cards was just a combination of those observations. Let's get Kevin Spacey to star in a series directed by David Fincher. That is basically Americanized version of this show that once people watch they binge and, they spend a hundred million dollars on this bet, but it ended up being a really good experiment.

[00:31:23] You could say because his observations were so solid. All of that, you know, I think is driven by this guy, Ted Sarandos. Enormous amount of observations in consuming content. So long story short is the more observations you can make, the more you set yourself up to make brilliant decisions later on to have really it's episodes of lateral thinking and change your business or change the world or whatever it is.

[00:31:52] If you don't have as many observations that becomes the constraint, the bottleneck. Or the throttle for your lateral thinking is precisely the number of observations, the amount of data that you have to draw from.

[00:32:09] Jess: Well, you know, I love so much what you covered there. And I guess my first question is, you know, I'm thinking about on the first, the first episode of this mini series, when you were saying that essentially

[00:32:23] The skill here is to reteach ourselves how to think, you know and I think about, you know, the science of deliberate practice, Malcolm Gladwell talked about it and the 10,000 hour stuff and myelination in the brain. And my question is like, my observation is, wow, Shane's really smart. I need to start doing this.

[00:32:46] And then my question is, any practical steps for like the baby steps, for how to repeatedly get myself outside the comfort zone. So that my brain would go, Oh, that was really too hard to think about we need to wrap extra myelin around those neural connections so I can gain some expertise at it.

[00:33:06] So yeah. Any thoughts about a practical daily life solving our problems at work or elsewhere? How I can, you know, even if it's uncomfortable start to get my meaningful repetitions in, into you know, slowing down and, and observing as much as Sherlock Holmes instead of jumping to my conclusions and then trying to justify them.

[00:33:28] Shane: Yeah. So a couple of things. I, I love the point about the 10,000 hours because it ties into one of the dangers. So people who put in 10,000 hours of practice on something and become world class experts or whatever, you know, people argue that it doesn't have to be 10,000 or it has to be more or whatever.

[00:33:44] It depends on how you practice either way. If you practice something, say your golf swing for 10,000 hours, you become an amazing golfer that is likely to get you stuck in a certain way of golfing. You're going to be less likely to invent a better game than golf. if you, you put in those 10,000 hours, unless you have some sort of corollary habits that it ties into thinking differently and lateral thinking.

[00:34:12] So, you know, if you could put in 10,000 hours of practice in thinking differently, that's great. That's hard. but, but those are the kinds of people that invent new games and change the game rather than just get good at the game that everyone's playing. so in terms of baby steps, one of them is what I've kind of already mentioned, but I'll, I'll spell it out.

[00:34:35] Consuming content, consuming information is what can help you to become an expert, but it's also what can help you to broaden your creative reservoir to draw from. And if you specifically consume content that's outside of your lane, at least some percentage, that's going to be really helpful for just broadening your ability to think laterally.

[00:35:05] So if you're trying to, you know, to make breakthroughs in your industry, So you're a heart surgeon. You ought to consume everything there is to know about heart surgery. You ought to consume all of the research that's coming out about heart surgery. But you ought to dedicate a quarter of your time to reading things that are outside of your field.

[00:35:22] You should consume content about physics or you know, about Russian literature or whatever it is. This is a pattern you see, actually in creative geniuses, throughout history, they always have a different first array of interests that they're adding to their pool of thinking. You know, I think I talked before in one of our interviews about how Einstein was a

[00:35:43] you know he's a patent clerk and that actually helped him out. Cause he's looking at patents for inventions that had nothing to do with what he was working on in physics. So he was looking at clock synchronization pat. So there's this race to figure out how to synchronize clocks across Europe. So he's looking at patents for clocks, filling his brain with different ways of thinking about timekeeping, and that helped him to make the connection

[00:36:02] that maybe space and time might be related and that helped him with his physics work. So. This is a pattern you see over and over again. If you simply make a habit of reading broadly, that will help you to set yourself up, to use more lateral thinking. Cause you will naturally start to draw from what you're reading that's outside of your field.

[00:36:21] Slso you want to know, I mean, I think the balance is you want to know everything that's in your field. If you want to practice within that field. However, a lot of breakthroughs come from outsiders from fields because of what we were talking about before you observe what everyone else takes for granted if you're an outsider.

[00:36:38] So, you know, you want to be careful about not getting so deep that you don't see, you know, what an outsider would see, but this is why for me, it's about the more you can consume information-wise, the better. And then the second thing is from a noticing the details standpoint, you know, you can tell yourself

[00:36:59]you know, I'm going to notice things, I'm going to be more present for whatever. And that's, you know, that's hard to do. You can remind yourself, you can set yourself up to, to have reminders, put a sticky note on your computer, change your computer password to first-class notice or ‘99 or whatever it is so that you remember to try and notice.

[00:37:15] But that easy, I think thing to do is brain training standpoint is also sort of a, you know, Simple advice or cliché advice. It's mindfulness meditation get, you know, a mindfulness meditation app so that you don't even have to, you know, be sort of self directed and do guided meditations. And research is pretty clear that it only takes a few months for your brain, your literal brain, connections to start changing.

[00:37:46]if you do a daily meditation practice and mindfulness meditation in particular is about. Being aware of your sensations of your thoughts without doing anything about them. So, you know, you have a thought, you don't judge it, you don't pursue it. You just notice it and observe it. So you can train your brain to get better at noticing details through mindfulness meditation.

[00:38:06] I will say that it's, it is easier said than done. You know, for me, it's hard to have that habit. I have to use apps like Headspace and I use an app called Muse as well. and I have to set reminders because it's just not naturally part of my, you know, natural rhythms, like take time out to meditate.

[00:38:25] But I do know that that helps to train my brain to be better at noticing things. I do a credit or I do credit. I do tribute some of my ability to connect dots between things and to notice things to training my brain through meditation.

[00:38:42] Jess: Well, I mean, to me, one of the most important things that you just said there is scheduling it, you know, cause it's not in my world.

[00:38:51] That's not going to happen by accident. You know, if I schedule it enough times, then it can become a routine. Right. But, you know, getting inspired, listening to you and telling yourself, Oh yeah, I got to do that. Has not been a pattern that has been successful in the past.

[00:39:08] Shane: Yeah. You can also to, sorry to cut you off there.

[00:39:12] You can also, it doesn't have to be specifically in meditation practice. If that's not the way you roll in that, not going to work for you. There's a lot of really good research and evidence that, and I think a lot of people just naturally will resonate with this. That inspiration often pops up when you are in the shower or when you're on a hike or when you're outside of your work station.

[00:39:36] Lot of people get inspired that way. And specifically as your brain in those environments is free to wander and to sort of pluck things out of your reservoir, and make connections. So, you know, maybe the mindfulness meditation habit, isn't the thing that, that works for you, but maybe you're a runner.

[00:39:53] And during your running, you can, instead of putting on music, you can allow your mind to wander that actually can be a form of noticing your thoughts and developing that. Maybe it's something else, maybe it's working something into your routine where you do have those moments where you're not deliberately thinking about things.

[00:40:11] To allow yourself to, to just notice things instead that's, that can be an easier way for people who, you know, like you and me, that maybe are go, go, go type. Like you find those liminal moments between when you're going and allow yourself to do some observation then that, that for me, ends up being really good.

[00:40:30]as well. So anyway, sorry to, to cut you off there, but I think that's an important thing for, I suspect the kinds of people that are listening to this will resonate a little bit more to that than oh, great, I have to start a new, you know, 15 minutes a day habit into my routine.

[00:40:43] Jess: You know, you've given me such good book recommendations.

[00:40:48] And by the way, if anybody hasn't been to Shane's website, Shane where give people the URL and tell them what page, all your book recommendations or some of those top book recommendations around.

[00:40:59] Shane: Okay. So Shanesnow.com/books has my three books. And then it has categories of, of book recommendations.

[00:41:07] You can get all in one page, all my book recommendations that you don't want to click on the links, Shanesnow.com/booklists. And, that's my running list of, of books that have changed the way that I think in different categories. I sneak my own books in there. But,

[00:41:22] Jess: well, so I've benefited from that so much. And one that I didn't see on there that you might really love is basically the science behind what you just talked about, about going on the run and coming up with a good idea. How many of us have good ideas in the shower? Right? it's called autopilot.

[00:41:37] And I want to say it's by a guy named Andrew Smart, I believe. And it basically goes through the science of how these people were putting individuals in FMRI machines and saying, think about this and then seeing what part of the brain lights up and trying to figure out what part of the brain does, what, and then when they weren't doing anything,

[00:41:56]the machine kept going off and they thought their machine was broken and they accidentally discovered something called the default mode network, the default mode network. And essentially what the book goes on to say is how many of us are missing opportunities because we're so over-scheduled.

[00:42:14] And he says they basically have scientifically shown how by having nothing to do, like he says, you know, it's not a huge coincidence that Newton was just sitting in the garden by himself when he makes that observation. And you just go through how many people have talked about all the best ideas came up, came to them on their walks, or it came to them in the shower or came to them.

[00:42:35] Right. When, they're not engaged in conscious effort. The brain has the room to light up this other part of itself called the default mode network, which then starts to synthesize all the inputs that have been happening. And he talks about how many of us have good ideas after we sleep on it. And how much of the default mode?

[00:42:56] default mode network lights up while we sleep. And it motivated me cause I'm, you know, I'm always listening to my audio books at three and a half speed trying to put, you know, expand my liquid network of ideas, right. And I started driving, I started turning books off because of this. And I started like intentionally choosing boredom to see what would percolate, you know, and that's been one thing that has helped.

[00:43:26] Shane: That's great. You know, there's two things that come to mind from that. did you read Michael Pollan's book? How to change your mind? The one about psychedelic. Good. So Michael Pollan, he wrote Food Inc. He's a, like a, like a food science writer. You know, he's written books about like caffeine and he wrote a book I want to say two years ago, 2018 came out with a book about psychedelics and he explored how

[00:43:53] magic mushrooms, and LSD became illegal and he explores the ancient history of, you know, indigenous tribes using Ayahuasca. And so we explored the science from a very science-y perspective of what psychedelics do to your brain. And then he gets into, how they, they were being used for therapeutic like addiction recovery programs, and then, helping people post trauma, you know, after war and stuff, until they, they were made illegal.

[00:44:21] And now how that's making a comeback with more sort of safety guardrails than happened in the sixties. And that the book is really fascinating and it was super well-respected. It was the number one bestseller, I think specifically, because this was a science guy, not a hippie who's trying to promote LSD.

[00:44:36]but the key thing that I remember from that book is that what happens when you take psychedelics? Is it a, it lets your default mode network run wild and it's actually very similar to what happens with kids. Like the reason that little toddlers look like they're drunk, is because they're experiencing the world, in the same way that you experienced the world when you're on acid, apparently, in that your default mode network is, is incredibly active and you make all of these connections

[00:45:06] that your adult brain kind of prevents you from making cause you need to be able to navigate the world sensibly and you know, not walk off cliffs. and so, anyways, so it's interesting the connection between what we're learning about in the brain there, that, and the reason why, you know, some really creative people, attribute, you know, Steve Jobs famously talks about how doing LSD helped him to be more creative.

[00:45:31] And it's specifically it's that brain mechanism it's, is having your brain, be able to run wild a little bit. So, you know, and Michael Pollan does a good job of saying, you know, you shouldn't just take LSD in large amounts on your own, and especially it's illegal. But, you know, when it's legalized, even you shouldn't take it in large amounts, just, you know, without any guard rails, but specifically

[00:45:56] it has taught us how the brain makes creative connections. And whereas that's the first thing. The second thing is that comes to mind. You think about every detective procedural on TV. It's like, I'm a big fan of Castle. but anything like Bones or, you know, anything where the plot is kind of always the same every time it's like there's a murder and the detectives have to figure it out.

[00:46:17] And there's someone who has some special ability that helps him figure it out. The plot of almost every one of these, they always have these side plots. It's like, so like with Castle, it's like, here's the guy, who's like the writer who was kind of a consultant to the police squad. Body's been found, there's a murder,

[00:46:30] they can't figure it out. And then always the side plot is what helps them figure it out. So, you know, Rick Castle's at home with his daughter, his daughter has some problem with their homework and something she says with her homework makes them realize, oh, the murderer must be the math teacher or whatever.

[00:46:47] And it's always that side plot that gives them the inspiration that helps them solve the case. Literally like you now can't watch any of those shows without seeing this. Once, once you realize this, literally it's always that side plug gives them some little spark of inspiration that they then use to solve the case.

[00:47:03] All that is these two things we've been talking about? It's the person noticing, making observations, wherever they are. About something you're making observations about your teenage daughters, you know, math problems or whatever. And then it's that space where you're not, you're not in this go go, go focus, focus, focus that allows your brain to make connections between things that then helps you come up with a creative hypothesis that then makes the breakthrough in the case.

[00:47:30] So it's this autopilot thing, you know, this in the shower thing, Combined with the observation and then importing that into the case that, that helps them solve the crimes. Anyway, all of this is connected as usual. I'm a, you know, I'm going all over the place here, but I think the important thing about, you know, these conversations that we're having is any problem that people are working on that they're trying to make breakthroughs on.

[00:47:54] You're going to need to do these kinds of explorations and seeing examples from all across the spectrum and understanding that this is how it works in detective work can help you to think of yourself more as that scientific type of detective when you approach problems. And to know that it's okay to build in this dead time.

[00:48:11] It's okay to explore. In fact, it's good to explore things outside of your lane when you're working to make a breakthrough.

[00:48:18] Jess: I love it. Well, what's the next step then? So from here, what's the next step.

[00:48:26] Shane: Okay. So after the observation, it’s the thing that, and, and we'll dig into this, you know, in a future episode of this, we'll dig into tactics, but it's, it's about making sure that you're asking the right questions.

[00:48:38] So you've made these observations. You can do a lot with this reservoir ofdata that you have, you know, this liquid network of information as you called it. But you want to ask the right question now and, and so the way that this, this is subtle and it seems silly, but it's really important. Because if we come up with a hypothesis, we have the idea for what we want to do.

[00:49:01] And then what often people do is they then go collect data and then start working, using that data to work on that same idea. What you want to do is you want to take some time to make sure that you ask the right question. So that that idea is even, you know, a hypothesis that's on the right track. And I like to use a silly sort of case study, when I'm teaching people, this in workshops is that let's pretend that you and I are, we're on the team at M&Ms and, I'm the boss and I come to you and the rest of the team, and I say, all right, we need to come up with a new flavor of M&M a or a new color.

[00:49:40] Sorry. A new color of M&M. So, you know, it's been 10 years since we released the blue M&M it's time to make a new one, what color should it be? What color should the new M&M be that people get excited about help us increase sales? So if I say that then, you know, actually I'm curious, just using the scientific method,

[00:49:58] Have the observation, what would you say the observation probably is behind this really my hypothesis that we needed to come up with a new M&M ?

[00:50:07] Jess: I dunno if this is where you're going with it, but I'm such a nerd for the Clayton Christianson book competing against luck that my first thought is, you know, we really in that question, what color for M&M we really rushed over this assumption that a new color is what grows marketing and sales.

[00:50:27] Shane: Absolutely.

[00:50:28] Jess: Is that where I was supposed to go?

[00:50:30] Shane: Sorry, I'm getting at. Yeah. So the, you know, the, the observation would be sales are flat or sales are down, right? Like that has nothing to do with, with a hypothesis yet. That's the observation. And then we could make another observation that in the past, when we released new colors of M&M's it boosted sales for some period of time, we could collect that data.

[00:50:49] Maybe that's true. But then exactly we're rushing to, even if we collect this data and it's like, Hey, you released a new color of M&M and an increase in sales. So now what color M&M should we do, we're skipping the question and you're exactly right rushing back to the idea. The question is given this data, given the observations we've made about sales and the plateau, what is the best way for us with our limited time and resources to increase sales right now?

[00:51:20] Or maybe the question actually is what's the best way for us to increase long term sustainable sales that are just going to be a bump, but that will actually sustainably grow M&Ms. If that's the question we're starting with that actually new color of M&M is one hypothesis that we might be able to disprove as the best idea pretty quickly.

[00:51:42]if the question really is how are we going to sustainably boost sales of M&Ms other hypotheses may include new flavor of M&Ms. They might include, you know, sugar-free options. It might include something entirely different, like a new product or we're actually new branding and marketing. It might include, you know, get Michael Jordan, to be the poster boy for M&Ms that might do it, you know, 10 year contract with Michael Jordan.

[00:52:11]but suddenly it opens up more possibility. It's more hypothesis for solving the right problem rather than solving the wrong problem. If you just use. And you, you're going to look at the data and the observations from a biased lens. You're trying to get to the hypothesis of a new color is what we need.

[00:52:31] You we'll focus. Okay. Early on the data that last time we released a new color M&M the boosted sales, and you will ignore the fact that sales swirly boosted for a short time during that campaign. And then things went back to normal. And so if the real question you determine is we want longterm

[00:52:49] sales boost and an increased revenue. Yeah. Then that takes your first initial idea off the table. So, yeah, so that's, that's the silly thought experiment that I like to use, but it gets at how this is hard. But also why the question step is really important because even if we're going to making observations, we can still build our own biases into the way we look at those observations.

[00:53:14] We look at that data because we're just trying to come back to our idea. So taking time to inject the question and think through the right question can really force us to get off of our idea or off of our bias. Cause if you can, and you can also build your biases into the questions, but if you do take the time to focus on that question, it will force you to let go of the biases that you may have built into this process from the beginning.

[00:53:39] So that's step two.

[00:53:42] Jess: Well, so once we've come up with, with these multiple hypotheses, why do you think so few of us, work that hard at disproving them?

[00:53:53] Shane: I mean, I think it's because of the thing I had said before about ego and that you brought up about intellectual humility, which, you know, is one of my favorite topics.

[00:54:01] We do connect some sense of our identity or our self-esteem to our ideas. And, so that's often why you know, we'll, we'll come back to that. I think there's also, there's the internal part. You know, if our self-esteem, you know, we feel good about ourselves if our ideas are right, especially if our first ideas are right.

[00:54:20] Cause that, that says something about how innately good we are. You know, that's a problem then there's the external problem of if the only time your boss ever praises you is when you get the right answer. And the only time the world rewards you is when your idea's the right one, then you'll be inclined to want to stick to your guns

[00:54:35]with your ideas and, you know, take your biases in a way that brings them to the conclusion that your first idea was right. The nice thing though, about thinking in terms of the scientific method, is it does place more of that sort of self-esteem potential on you because now it's your, you're still being smart.

[00:54:56] Your smarts are the thing that are getting you to the better idea. It's not your, your instincts, they're great. But you're leveraging your instincts to then go through a process to be even smarter. So you can kind of trick your ego that way, and it makes it so that you don't have to be married to that

[00:55:12] first, you know, ego-driven instinctual idea, you can be more married to your how brilliant you are at being able to come up with better ideas. If that makes sense. you know, it's, it's easier said than done, but that's why I think it's so important to. To learn the scientific method is it can help you to overcome that overconfidence.

[00:55:30] Now you're smart from using a method that gets better ideas, not just from being naturally smart that makes sense.

[00:55:38] Jess: I love it. so, so taking what we've been able to disprove and what we haven't been able to disprove any thoughts about synthesizing that into new observations to go through the circle again here?

[00:55:49] Shane: Yeah. I think. It's a, I mean, that's a great question. I think, it's kind of starting to see this as a game and this ties into the disproving thing too. If this is not about proving that you were right the first time, it's about, you know, coming up with the best answers and you do that by disproving things and you're not attached to them.

[00:56:16] It can become, like we said before, like time can become an enemy. It can become sort of burdensome to be like, Oh, great, everything that I do now creates a whole new set of, you know, of scientific method pads that I have to go down, and that can be kind of daunting and it can be kind of frustrating.

[00:56:35] It can lead us to just want to, you know, just get to it at a certain point you do got to cut things off and do the best you can, you know, 80/20 and all that. But if you start to think of it as a game, then it becomes fun. So the new observations, starting the process over, can, if you start to think of that basically as like, yes, I haven't just, you know, been disappointed by realizing that this hypothesis is not true.

[00:56:59] I have advanced the game and you look at Sherlock Holmes and he's always talking about the game as a foot. Like I'm so excited, another murder, I'm so excited. You know, now it's, you know, it's definitely not, you know, the, the math teacher, it's gotta be someone else because there's another murder.

[00:57:13] Great, the game is afoot. So, just for me, I think that's a good way to think about it is a more observations mean that this is a you're playing the game better and you're playing a game that's helping you to push the ball forward. And, you know, starting the process over can be quick and Smartcuts in chapter three

[00:57:32] I talk about rapid feedback and, how thinking in terms of repeating a feedback cycle can inoculate you from the fear of failure. So I think it's part of what's built into this, you know, I want my ideas to be right, because if my idea is wrong, then I failed and that reflects badly on me or, Oh no, it's all over because we failed, thinking in terms of how fast can I go through this process of observation question hypothesis disprove.

[00:57:57] And sometimes you can go back to it's like disprove hypothesis disprove, other hypothesis disprove, other hypothesis disprove. Now I have a new set of observations. So go back to the beginning. The faster you can do that the, the faster you can innovate. And so that's the game, but that's also the antidote to the fear of failure, to your own self being on the line.

[00:58:18] This is what the lean startup is all about. There's a whole bunch of different ways to sort of frame it, but thinking of it as a game, that the point is to try to go through that process as fast as possible. Not the point is to come up with the right answer first and then yeah. Use the constraints of time and resources and observations that you can make to make the best guess

[00:58:40] if you're, we're going back to the detective analogy at a certain point, you have to make a leap and you know, an arrest someone and question them and find out if, if you're right at a certain point, you gotta just move forward. but that's what it's about. And so, you know, it doesn't have to just be, you don't have to think of it as like, Oh, great,

[00:58:57] This is going to take me forever. If I'm going to use scientific methods, try to use a lateral thing and it's going to take forever, you can do it in a quick iterative process. And that's where, you know, the best companies in the world, the best, you know, especially like in the technology sector, they make it a habit of trying to go through that method, as quickly as possible.

[00:59:14] And that's, you know, this part of Smartcuts that's about rapid success. Is not about shortcuts. It's about going through this process really as quickly as possible.

[00:59:25] Jess: You know I'm so fascinated with so much of what we've covered. And I feel like it'd be really helpful if you could help me, maybe give me a little more applications of how do I, you know, translating this theory, whether it's my regular life or innovation and, you know, work solving a problem.

[00:59:42] Shane: Sure. So I think there's, there's three ways you can build this into, kind of your work life. And I think actually in terms of practice, you know, easy things that you can do to practice before you're even approaching like a big thorny work problem, you can practice this just in everyday conversation.

[01:00:00] And I think in three pretty easy ways, one is just in fun conversations with people. You know, when you're exploring a topic, you're having a conversation, even like we are right. You can do what you actually have done twice in this conversation. You can actually invoke the scientific method by saying, you know, my observation is this, you know, this thing that we've been talking about, I've observed this thing.

[01:00:23] That's a fun way to explore together with people. Then it reinforces the scientific method, just thinking in those terms, and it is a fun way to have a great conversation. You can even do it like honestly, in dating. It's a good way to flirt. I noticed this thing you just said, or you just did this thing.

[01:00:42] So now I have a question about it. Let's explore this thing or, or whatever. I noticed the person over there at the other end of the bar just did that, which reminds me of this question. It's a great conversation starter. You can then explore together, rather than, you know, a lot of dating. You know, can be like the talking about your resume and it's boring.

[01:01:01] It's a lot more fun to explore together and you can sort of loosely use the scientific methods as a framework. Don't tell them that, you know, it's your shot.

[01:01:11] Jess: Think about that same concept at work. I was advising a CEO yesterday who one of their major clients, the executive has just moved on and she's now talking to the replacement.

[01:01:22] And the one bit of information she knows about the replacement is they came out of an industry that's more of a command and control industry and the people who are at that company, they've already them quite dismissively and in a discounting way. So indications, they might have a big ego. Right. And to your knowledge of dating

[01:01:42] like people buy from people they like, they don't just date people they like, they buy from people tey like, she wants to keep this account. You know, she was saying, Hey, you know, what kind of thing, or my resume do you think I need to emphasize? So that he'll value me. You know, we're talking about this.

[01:01:57] And I just said, you know, the little bit we know about his history. I don't know that there's anything you could say that would make him value you. It seems like he mostly values himself. So, you know, can we get on his LinkedIn, make some observations about what he's done and ask questions about how did you do that?

[01:02:16] Shane: Yeah.

[01:02:17] Jess: We're all our own favorite subject, but if you can become, it's funny, you're such a good journalist, but I was saying, if you can become an investigative journalist and dig into his background until you can find something you actually admire about him, you know, he's likely to talk about that for most of your whole hour together.

[01:02:34] And by the end of, you know, talking about himself for an hour, he'll probably like you,

[01:02:38] Shane: I love that. Yeah, that's great where I thought you were going to go. I'm glad you went there it's even, even better than the one I thought we're going to go. However, you're going to go the route of sort of taking people who, you know, you don't necessarily jive with yet and roping them in to be part of your process, like asking someone for help with something, can help them to, to like, you know, more so, for example, at Contently, the company that I started, I'm now on the board of one of our biggest, longest running clients is a JP Morgan chase.

[01:03:18] And they were, it was early on in the company. It was like, you know, two years in when, they, the guy that we were we're trying to sell a deal to was very difficult. And very shrewd, very smart and, and difficult because he was smart and pretty demanding from a client standpoint. And what ended up getting him on board with us is actually folding him into the problem-solving process.

[01:03:45] There were things, features that he wanted, and, in our, you know, our accounts team kind of before he was even a client, folded him into the process of solving for those underlying problems for him and what turned out to be a lot of other customers kind of made him part of this, you know, and it took like six months, you know, before he ended up being a, becoming a client, but he sort of turned into this bit of a consultant that helps the team develop some features that then became the things that made, you know, we're valuable enough for him to buy for his company. but it was that process of, of folding him into

[01:04:20] Shane: essentially our scientific method for, you know, coming up with better, a better product that got him on the team and made him less of sort of a, you know, the smart adversary and a more of an ally. So both those things. I mean, I think, both of those things speak to different ways that you can use this observation question experiments, either rope people into that

[01:04:41] so they're part of your team, and they, they help push you or you use that method to figure out what makes them tick and what can help you to build the relationship that you need. I love that it speaks to just how many applications there are to this. Another thing I'll say is, in day to day life, when you have arguments with people, this thinking in terms of scientific method can really be helpful to turn.

[01:05:06] what could be a combative argument into something collaborative? So pausing, you know, I have it all the time right now, so COVID is going on. There's lots of, we don't know what we don't know, and there's lots of conflicting data. There's lots of conflicting opinions. People are scared. And so I have a lot of debates with friends and some of them turn into arguments, or, you know, in

[01:05:30] You know, working on projects with clients, sometimes there's misconceptions or disagreements or whatever they can, you know, that can threaten the relationship, but in those kinds of debates or arguments, if you stop and say, hey, can we pause for a second so I can get this right and clarify the observations, you know, the observation, what I'm hearing you say is this, or

[01:05:55] What I'm seeing, you know, the data you're bringing up around this argument about, you know, whatever, when we should reopen from the pandemic or whatever it is this that's my observation, is that right? And clarifying that with people. That's a good way to, first of all, to get them to realize that you're trying to be collaborative.

[01:06:12] You're seeking to understand, rather than seeking to win the argument. But then from there you can actually take control of the process and say, so based on that, you know, I think the question and we should be talking about, is this, is that right? And then, you know, yes, exactly. That's the question that really is a foot here.

[01:06:28] So you've now clarified and then you can have a more productive exploration of ways to solve the problem for the customer or you know, hypotheses of, you know, in the specific thing around COVID, you know, what would happen if we did this to reopen the economy or whatever it is that leads to more productive conversations.

[01:06:45] So now you are exploring you're more like scientists trying to disprove things together rather than just trying to, win the arguments. So that's, I think a really, you don't even have to say let's use the scientific method here. People think you're an asshole. you can, you can say. Hang on,

[01:07:02] let's just get clear on what the underlying observation is. Cool. Okay. Now that I understand, is this the right question we should be talking about? Great. Awesome. Now I'm on board, now let's dig in again. That I think is really, really practical way that you can use this natively life. Not even in your hardcore let's invent something

[01:07:18] that's going to change the world type of thing that we're usually sort of thinking about when we talk about this stuff.

[01:07:25] Jess: Man, I love it. This idea of giving them some ownership of it and, you know, if your observations prove to them that they have been fully listened to, you know, what a great way to help them open their ears to say something you've got to say, and, you know, I guess where I would go next here is, and I know we're wrapping up, but, you know, you went from journalists to building a multi-million dollar tech brand, you know, how have you seen the scientific method at work in your business, Contently?

[01:07:59] Shane: Yeah, so I think the most salient example to me, also something that I talk about when I talk about 10X thinking, which is a tactic for using a lateral thing, that we'll get to, I think in a few episodes, I think we have that plan. but there was a point in the history of Contently my company when we were at this sort of crossroads with our business model.

[01:08:26] So it was a pretty fundamental thing, that required some really novel thinking and required us to take time to really think through what we're going to do. The short version is the business originally was, the model was we connect talent, journalists, editors, photographers, whatever it is you need to brands like JP Morgan, chase or American Express or Pepsi

[01:08:46] who want to do content marketing. You need some bloggers, you need some photographers. We got you. We can actually, with people who have really good training and then the model was we take a 15% cut like a talent agent. What we realized is that because we're dealing with these big companies. We needed salespeople to close deals.

[01:09:07] We had to pay sales people, a commission. And between that commission and our costs at 15% cut was never going to be a sustainable business. And we were going to run out of money. We were just like, it was going to be really difficult. And so we're at this crossroads where we had to figure out how do we make more, get more value from this business?

[01:09:28] How do we provide more value so that we can get more value? We couldn't. We figured out pretty quickly that the hypothesis of, Oh, let's just take 30% or 40% was just simply not going to work with what we were offering. So we're at this crossroads and we really dug in my co-founders and I, and you know, we didn't write it out as a scientific method, but we really were clear on the observation is our margins are low enough that we are going to need the, a hundred percent of the market,

[01:09:58] if we want to return our investors, any kind of investment and other observation is there's 50 competitors. There's no way we're gonna get a hundred percent of the market anytime soon, maybe ever. And so the question was, how do we build, how do we provide enough value for our users and customers that we can justify extracting more money, for the work that we're doing

[01:10:26] so that we can build a sustainable business? That was the question. And we got clear on that. Cause it could have been, how do we, get more from these transactions between writers and brands? it could have been, you know, how do we increase the value of the marketplace we have, but that wasn't the question.

[01:10:43] The question was, how do we provide more value so that we can extract more value in this business generally? And one of the things that came up is, well, we have, in order to help these writers and editors and brands work together, we have these project management tools and we keep building new ones to facilitate these transactions.

[01:11:02] What if we started charging money for those tools, we had a software subscription and we built more tools, so that we could charge a lot of money for that software subscription. And this turned into an argument, where I said, I kind of, you know, as the. And especially at the time I had this sort of pie in the sky view of, software, I said, no software should be open source.

[01:11:24] It should be free one day. You know, if we're charging for software, one of our competitors will offer the same software for free so that they can, you know, build this marketplace and they will undercut us and we will lose. And you know, all software should be free. No one should pay for software. And as I was like my philosophical sort of hardcore.

[01:11:43] And actually kind of tied to my identity in a way it was like, I am this hacker, mindset guy. And so we had this argument about that and it ended up being a hypothesis that we thought was worth pursuing. And my other business partner was like, no, we should absolutely just do it. And then the third business partner said, why don't we do an experiment?

[01:12:04] Why don't we say, you know, he's like he was the tech guy. He's like, I know we have these five features coming out next month. Why don't we tell all of our clients that if you want these five features, it's a thousand bucks a month and just see what they say. And it turns out that 13 customers said yes to the numbers aren't going to be exactly right.

[01:12:20] But that's essentially what happened. Like a pretty serious chunk of customers said, sure, we'll pay a thousand dollars for those features. That would be valuable. So then that experiment, it was pretty easy experiment. Then we said, well, would people pay $10,000 a month for a certain set of features?

[01:12:35] What would those features be? And so then we did some surveys. We had our sales people start asking and we start, we ended up building, shifting the business model from this take 15% in the middle to 15% in the middle. It was really this thing on the side now. And now the business model is we sell software for

[01:12:53] thousands of dollars a month for these features that allow you to do more with your content and your content marketing. And so that was a fundamental shift in our business that has allowed us to build bigger business. Ironically, got us more customers that got more work for these, you know, these freelance writers and editors that I care so much about.

[01:13:11] And it's really when you break that down. And as we got real clear on the observation and it was an emergency, we asked the right question and then we literally did an experiment. That was no skin off of our back. And from that experiment, we learned that, that there was this willingness to pay.

[01:13:27] And then from there we iterated did more experiments around getting the exact number, you know, willingness to pay, and amount and features. And we ended up disproving a lot of things. One of the things actually key insight we realized is that, there were certain features that were super easy to build that we thought that, that everyone would want, simply because they were easy to build that, the actually only customers that were willing to pay a ton of money wanted.

[01:13:56] And, and so we, we basically, through these experiments, we proved that there was very little correlation with how easy it was to build something, to how valuable it was for someone. And so these, these big enterprise customers that wanted, for example, to be able to manage legal contracts on our system, were willing to pay thousands of dollars a month for that

[01:14:16] cause it was that valuable to their business, but that didn't take very long to build versus some features that took forever to build that every little tiny customer of ours would want, but did not have much willingness to pay. So that mindset of experimentation, helped us to build the business that we have.

[01:14:33] So that's the most salient example of this. and I think it's, it's actually, you know, the, the simplest version of this lesson that you could say is when you're building a company, the easiest way to resolve an argument is to turn it into a collaborative experiment. So that way, you're all trying to win together rather than you're trying to win the argument and prove something to your partners.

[01:14:59] Jess: I think what you just said is just so genius. It's not about whether I'm right or whether you're right. It's about what the data tells us, you know, and the data told us yes, they'll pay PS. I love that in the story you were the one who was wrong.

[01:15:11] Shane: I know.

[01:15:13] Jess: Well thinking here, giving people a bit of a preview for the next episodes. Do you want to talk a bit about what we're going to cover?

[01:15:19] Shane: Sure. So now that we've, we've talked you to death about the scientific method, we're going to go into. Each of these steps, putting them in action. So doing observation right or awesome about what's called first principles thinking. So that's what we'll dig into in the next episode.

[01:15:37] So then, you know, asking questions and, and sort of the long-term questions that's about what's called second order thinking as a big picture thinking. So we're gonna talk about really digging into how to do that. That one's gonna be super fun. And then, then we'll get into what I think a lot of people probably will be most excited about, which is how do you actually create creative hypothesis?

[01:16:00] How do you come up with stuff that, that isn't what other people would think of, you know, the unnatural way of thinking, and that's going to really be about cognitive diversity. Both in terms of teams and in terms of your own brain. And then we'll get to probably the even funner part, which is brainstorming and thought experiments and actually testing to this group hypothesis.

[01:16:20] And, and then finally, we'll dig into mental models and, sort of hardcore bulletproofing and disproving of hypothesis so you can come to good conclusions. And then all of this, all this speaks into, you know, the, the course that I'm building that, this is all a preview for, which really kind of, depending on what you're trying to do with this ends up into learning paths on, you know, advanced, critical thinking.

[01:16:45] Like if you're in engineering or you're in strategy, you're trying to apply these to some very specific disciplines. Or if you're trying to build this into teams and build this kind of collaborative thinking together, or, you know, there's even a component of this, of getting people on board. With lateral thinking and, you know, and doing things differently is often about storytelling and leadership.

[01:17:08] So we'll talk a little bit about that in the end, but all of this is sort of an entree to those sort of deeper topics. So that's what we're up to. That's whatever it has to look forward to.

[01:17:17] Jess: I love it. Well, everybody, thanks for listening and tune back into a team back into the next episode. Thanks everyone.