Lessons

Lesson Info

Sideways Lens Part 2

So, we already have a lesson on Sideways Lens part one. Sideways Lens part one was about you and understanding your preferences, and your biases, so that you can duck and weave around those, and try and get to the areas of thinking that you naturally run from. So, we've done this, we've confronted our detest tool and now it's time to think about who is not us, everybody who is not us. So, if you're in the service industry, they're the people you're not servicing. If you're just hanging out and you're thinking about you as you, they're the people who are not your friends. They're the people who you don't interact with, and then it's why. You know, people that you don't understand, you tend not to gravitate towards and in fact, in times of uncertainty, and you could argue that society right now is generally in many countries a little uncertain, we tend to gravitate to what we know, and that actually means we gravitate to the people we know, which means we're missing all those others. So,...

if you're trying to actively cross pollinate, you need to actually go and seek out what is not you, and those people that you do not know, right? The people that aren't like you. So, we need to seek them out for our cross pollination opportunities, but we also need to seek them out when we're thinking about stuff because we always think about people like us. We default to people like us, we think that everybody likes what we like, we think that everybody is our shape, we think about people like us, right? Our nationality, our culture, maybe even our gender. You know, I have mentioned already that like, when women go in with a heart attack, they're 50% less likely to be diagnosed with the heart attack than men because most people are thinking about guys and heart attacks. It's quite a scary statistic, and it's real, and it's current. So, it just makes you wonder, you know, what else are we missing? So, there's a great example of a D school graduate going into a hospital in India. There's a lot of really amazing, frugal innovation happening in healthcare in India. Indians have a word for frugal innovation, which is (speaking foreign language), we're gonna have a whole lesson around frugal, but in this case, it's a student from the States embedding into the culture of this hospital in India, and trying to come up with the low care solutions for post operative care. So, she was looking at the care environment at the hospital, and how these patients could be better cared for at a really low rate, and she was looking for who are we not looking at. You know, we're looking at the patient, we're looking at the nurses, we're looking at the healthcare system; but we were not looking at the family. The people who know the patient best and can we discharge the patient even faster, which offloads costs from the hospital system, but send them to an environment that is knowledgeable in terms of post op care. And so, what they decided to do was turn to the families who could care and give them in depth training on how to care for relatives, so that they became part of a hospital system delivering care in a much greater active sense than normal, which gave better results for the recovery rates on the patients, of course, when you're surrounded by optimism, love, and knowledge. I mean these people know what they're doing now, it's not sort of that half ass care of, I think you're okay and I'm really worried about you but I gotta call a nurse. There's actually a whole lot of training to make sure that when you go home it is very much like staying in hospital for another two days. So, this is an example of looking at, you know, who are we not thinking of in this scenario? Another classic example, also a hospital, a friend of mine, Maureen Bisognano, who was CEO of a massive hospital chain and they were struggling with the cost, a huge cost of casual nurses. So, what they found was their regular nurses were taking tons of time off work and they were spending a ton of money on casual nurses, who cost more and more on contract. They couldn't come up with a way to solve it. They kept looking at the scenario, looking at the figures, and trying to work out why the nurses were taking so much sick time. You know, threatening them, they were saying, don't take sick time we won't pay you anymore, but that wasn't really working, as it really does, threatening. So, she decided to look to a group of people that were completely unrelated to the hospital system. She went and embedded for a month with a franchise of electricians who worked on commercial property. So, she went and hung out, and looked at how this super tight franchise, family run, but now franchised, was working, and how it was keeping its main electricians at work and happy. And, she soon worked out that they were paying above minimum wage, and they were offering all sorts of incentives to keep the employees occupied. Mainly, they were offering an incentive for anyone who brought other electricians they knew into the business. So, she took this model back to the hospital and decided in the face of massive opposition to the bean counters, that in fact she would offer an immediate pay rise to all of the regular nurses. She'd offer to extend their contract by two years, but it wasn't contingent on the pay raise, like, the two things weren't related. She wanted to extend their contract, chunk up their pay, and then give them a robust referral system so that if they could refer to other people who became part of the permanent system, they also got a bonus, and the savings on casual nursing were almost immediate, because people were so happy that they'd got, not a promise of a pay rise if they hung around for a certain period of time, but immediate appreciation, value, and this other referral system so they could bring other people in. So, it became the place that people wanted to work, and they almost were able to almost completely eradicate casual nursing from that section of the hospital. Because she'd looked outside of the people she was currently dealing with. Sometimes the answer can't be found, the really good answer, can't be found in what we already know. And so, she went out to find other stuff and she made that unexpected connection to bring this type of human interaction into another environment, which is the key. So, sideways thinking is all about trying to throw your brain outside the normal, it's trying to throw your brain outside of who you always think of, and try to think of the other. And, nothing can be more extreme I think, in terms of our inter people dealings, than introvert and extrovert interaction. So, this is a key part of understanding others, is understanding what your preferences are in terms of introversion and extroversion. What's interesting I find, I've done a lot of research into introverts and extroverts, surprisingly you may find, I am a massive extrovert, but I have worked for about five years now on reducing my level of extroversion and trying to get more of the introvert thinking. And, the reason I've been trying to do that is that introverts actually think in a different way. Introvertive thinking courses through two different areas of a human brain to extrovert. So, the reason I can't run an in situ Myers-Briggs inversion, which is a separate lesson, is that everyone in this room is an extrovert, and that kinda makes sense 'cause if you wanna come and be in a studio audience, if you wanna come and expect to have two and fro interaction, you're more likely to be an extrovert because you're fueled by dopamine. So, dopamine means excitement right, and the more dopamine you get, the more G'd up you get, the happier you are, and the more ideas you have. That's how you function, that's how I function, apparently that's how everyone in the room functions, and possibly a lot of you watching. But, an introvert has a completely different pathway, it takes longer, for a start. It runs through meaning and memory. So, where mine goes (hands clapping) bang, dopamine, short route, and it's completely sensory, it's of the moment, an introvert is taking a longer and very considered path to where they're currently gonna come out with an idea. So, what's interesting is our society's completely geared towards extroversion. If you think of the pace of society, the rate at which we're supposed to answer, the way meetings are always run, we are always looking to the extrovert as the person with the quick ideas. But, the quick ideas are not necessarily the best ideas, and it's really interesting to understand who in your team, who in your family, who of your friends are introverts versus extroverts. 'Cause most introverts are not shy. You know, maybe they get labeled as shy or withdrawn, not true. In fact, during my Dorie Clark lesson I mentioned how I had a quiet student in the class, who was labeled by one of his colleagues as soulful. I think soulful is a much more meaningful way to describe introversion, because in fact, what it means is people are considering. They're considering whether they could be bothered speaking over you, especially if you're speaking at a crazy rate and smashing out ideas that have, not necessarily massive worth, but you like to be heard, right? They're considering whether it's worth speaking. They're considering what you're saying, listening, learning, processing it, and a quick scenario isn't always the ideal environment for an introvert to get heard in. So, not only are the introverts thinking through different areas of the brain, they're firing on a completely separate nervous system to us. We're going on fight or flight, that's why we get G'd up, but it's interesting. My mom is a massive introvert, I'm a massive extrovert, and I actually now understand how I physically repel my mom when I get G'd up. It breaks my heart but it's true. It used to be that I'd get there and mom'd be like, eh, oh she's very, very creative, but pretty quiet, right? And, I'd roll into the room, especially fresh off the plane, bounce into Australia and go, hey mom, woo, ah, and start talking to her about stuff, and I would see her visually retract. And, because I'm an extrovert, I would lean in at her and like, think, oh well I can transfer my energy to her 'cause that's what we do, right? We're like, yeah I can get you, and she would just be repelled because that's not how it works. If you're an extrovert and you try and transfer your awesome energy to someone who doesn't fire on dopamine, you repel them. So, think about that in terms of interactions in the workplace, or interactions with friends. The fact that you think your additional excitement is bringing more to a room, and it probably is to all your friends that are extroverts, but the introverts are just like, ah, right? It's a whole different dynamic that, until you actually understand the physics behind it, the biology behind it, and then you think, I realize I should back off. And so, now whenever I deal with my mom, who I love, but I did repel her, I take a very quiet point of view. I try not to speak, try to roll in and gently say like, maybe one thing I've been working on, and then I stop and I listen, and the energy is amazing. For most of us, and I'm just gonna talk to the room here because I know you're all extroverts, most of us don't realize that. And so, we're actively repelling around 40% of the population by talking at them and trying to energize them, instead of in fact, backing off and giving them space. So, Sideways part two is super focused on who is not you, and there's nothing better to represent that than this idea of introvert and extrovert. Now, it's interesting, I use Myers-Briggs. I love Myers-Briggs and I'm being bad to talk to you about Myers-Briggs, but a lot of other companies don't like to use that. They like to use colors or they like to use, you know, names, or spirit animals, I dunno, to determine what people are, but I find it's an interesting one if you can sit down and do a Myers-Briggs. As I said, I've been working for five years now to reduce my percentage of extrovert and attempt to access this parasympathetic nervous system, this memory and meaning. I'm trying so hard by listening more and I'm not sure, I haven't yet found anyone that can tell me if it's actually physically possible for me to change, but once you know that it exists, wouldn't that be interesting to be able to access it? It'd be like almost the ultimate form of creative thinking, if you could somehow choose which way you were gonna process, and which way you were going to express. So, this is Sideways Thinking part two, at its essence, who is not you. We're looking out there for, who can we find that we don't think of, or who can we find that, in fact, in what we do we're actually suppressing. How do we feel about that? While you were talking about that, as you probably know, I raised my own genetic study because-- You sure did. I have twin fraternal 18 year old boys, and I call them Ying and Yang, or Sol and Pepe. One is the absolute introvert, the other the extrovert. One is an actor, an improv, you know, just six foot five and big, and the other guy is drowning himself. He's crawled into his hoodie and the acne, and the glasses, and the posture, but both of them are wildly creative, and recently I've wondered. I thought, is it because the kid is pulling back and he's 18 that we're just fighting so much? This is Liam, the introvert. Yes. And, it's what you just said, I just realized that. I mean he can't stand anything about me right now. No, so imagine between, and I know Carol and I know her boys, and that's so interesting. I'd not thought of it in that way but imagine that one son, he is so introverted and so amazing. Like, he has a bird collection that is incredible. He cares for these animals, he's really thoughtful, interesting kid, and yet if he is repelled by dopamine, he gets nothing from it, and in fact, has a completely different nervous system reaction, having two massive extroverts in a small space must literally be backing him into a mental corner as well as a physical corner, 24/7. 800 square foot apartment, single-- Amazing. Yeah. That's incredible. So, now you can have a think about, like, how in fact do you give someone like that enough space that you hear from them? Because the memory and the meaning is so important and we usually don't. We don't really, in the way we function, the way we run our society, we don't really have time to hear from them. So, how can we structure, again, to make sure that our cross pollination includes Liam as well as Quinn. Yeah. Right? Includes both sides.