[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi everyone, and welcome to the 202nd episode of the Atlas Society asks. My name is Jennifer Anju Grossman. My friends call me Jag. I'm the CEO of the Atlas Society. We are the leading nonprofit introducing young people to the ideas of Ayn Rand in fun, creative ways, including graphic novels, animated videos, even music videos. Today we are joined by Nuala Walsh, live from Dublin, where it is getting late, so let's make the most of our time. Before I even begin to introduce the guest, I want to remind all of you, whether you are watching us on Zoom, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube. Use the comment section to type in your questions and we will get to as many of them as we can.
Nuala Walsh is an adjunct professor of behavioral science at Trinity College Dublin, an independent non executive director, bestselling author, TEDx speaker, and visiting fellow at the London School of Economics. She joins us to talk about her new book, tune in how to make smarter decisions in a Noisy World, which helps readers avoid misjudgment and maintain objectivity. Whether you are a young person making your figuring out your start of your career or finding the right relationship, or a seasoned executive pressure to make countless high stakes decisions in an age of accelerating change, or just your average citizen trying to make sense of a world in politically polarized times.
Nuala's 100 plus articles for Forbes, Inc. And psychology Today and her insights are featured as well in the Financial Times, BBC World Series, Harvard Business Review, and on Fox Business. Wow, Nuala, thanks for joining us.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: Great to be here, Jennifer. Thank you very much.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: So, in my introduction, I didn't get around to mentioning your storied investment career, including work at BlackRock, Merrill lynch, and Standard Life Aberdeen, which earned you recognition as among the 100 most influential women in finance. Things have changed, but finance is still a largely male dominated field, and I expect quite a bit more so 30 years ago. Which reminds me of how Ayn Rand described her heroine, Dagny Taggart, in Atlas Shrugged. Quote, she was 15 when it occurred to her that women did not run railroads to hell and that people might object to hell with that, she thought, and never worried about it again. So, looking back to when you were growing up, when you were 15, was there anything that stands out as inspiring you or preparing you to pursue such a high powered career and your interests, specifically in the field of finance and marketing?
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Well, you're certainly right, Jennifer. Things have changed. I guess reflecting on my upbringing, there wasn't a specific moment that stood out as directly as either being inspiring or prepared me for a career in finance. Instead, my own journey actually unfolded, driven more by curiosity and opportunity rather than any kind of predetermined destination. And my family weren't involved in finance, in finance industry. And to your question, I'm really not sure what can prepare anyone for a workplace that can be so male dominated or indeed political as indeed many workplaces are now, particularly investment management, but indeed certainly not exclusively so. So it's not that I ever felt particularly drawn to investment banking markets or asset management, even though I was there for 30 years. So my interest really leaned more towards understanding human behavior and psychology. But what I did was I seized on these opportunities as they came along and I guess followed my curiosity as well as pursuing paths that intrigued me overall.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Well, you write a little bit about your grandmother and the perspective that she lent you, her experience growing up during the troubles in Ireland.
And I think one of the takeaways that I got from my own grandmother was her voracious curiosity. And that seems to be what has driven you in your career to explore these different fields in writing this book. Book. Even before we came on the air, I asked if you had read out with shrugged yet, and you're like, no, but I'm really curious now and I think I'm going to read it. So I really think that curiosity, I don't know, maybe that is going to be your next book, should you dare to repeat this experience. But whether or not curiosity is just a default thing or what you can do to kind of cultivate your curiosity, because I think it correlates with not just professional growth and personal growth, but also to longevity. So in the vein of curiosity, over the course of the career, were there books about business leadership or decision making in a particular, were they an interest of yours? And if so, were there ways in which the body of advice contained that the books contained also had deaf spots or bounded perspectives? Were there ways in which you wanted to set your book apart?
[00:05:59] Speaker B: It's a great question. As I advanced through my career, I found myself, of course, drawn to reading these books as one does as one climbs the ladder. So the leadership and decision making books. So initially the focus was on leadership techniques, but more as I got further up the charts, as it were, I began to appreciate the softer skills a little bit more. So I sort of balanced that with my interest in human behavior. So there were huge, there were an awful lot of books, and I did read voraciously. I see you've got quite a few behind you there, so you obviously do the same. But really, the decision books on decision making are very different. Books on decision making are not leadership books in the classic sense of the word. Most of them are rooted in science. So behavioral science, I don't know if you remember, but Daniel Kahneman, who recently passed the Nobel laureate, you know, Dan Ariely Cassonstein, lots of really well established people. So those offered practical frameworks for decision making. So I would say that, no, I didn't as I went through my career, but maybe about six years ago, I left corporate life and I did a master's in behavioral science at the London School of Economics. And that gave me the groundwork, that gave me the insight. And I guess I was able to articulate in many ways the different biases and the pitfalls that we fall into in a way that I was never able to do through a 30 year career. I might have seen them, but I certainly wasn't able to label them and put a different, a different spin on. So in that way, the concept of blind spots certainly come up in the literature, but deaf spots did not. And, you know, we were probably, everybody's familiar with what a blind spot is. They hinder your ability to make a proper decision. But deaf spots, they do exist and they really refer to what we don't hear. So we hear what we want and we tune out everything else. And so they weren't discussed. So I try to really focus the book on this new idea of it's a tuned out world. It's polarized. You only have to look at what's happening in the universities today in terms of the voices that are being listened to. We live in a world where people feel unheard and they are unheard. They are unheard because it's so noisy and noisy. By noisy, I mean overloaded with data, you know, distractions, our own delusions, our own, our own, you know, sources of misinformation. So. And because of that, I wanted to draw attention to how people don't really think enough about what they hear. We rush to judgment. We tune out the voices that really matter at the expense of making better decisions for ourselves. And if you lead a team for teams, and if you lead a country for a country, so it operates on all of these different levels. And I guess my own experience, whether in companies or laterally sitting on boards, you see the consequences. Jennifer. And, you know, it is pretty severe, the impact on people's lives and livelihoods when people make the wrong decision. And of course, most of the time we do make the right decision, but the consequences are really quite severe when we get it wrong. And my argument is that in this noisy, fast paced world, we are more at risk of getting our decisions wrong than we are right. And that is a problem, particularly if.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: You hold our so one of the ways in which your book stood apart for me, and we both have a background in marketing, was the design, the visual appeal of your landing page, nualawalsch.com, complete with a book trailer and launch message. Since we also recently launched our own animated book trailer of Atlas Shark, I was particularly impressed that you learned, you leaned into this kind of marketing. So tell us about the process of writing. Tune in. It certainly seemed for me, in reading it, that you must have been gathering thoughts, research and professional notes for a very long time.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Well, you're not wrong. And thank you for noticing all of the effort, because I am a former chief marketing officer, so I guess I haven't lost my interest in that. And I did design and populate and build the website myself, so I was rather proud of that on the trailers, as you mentioned, and all of the design stuff, thanks to AI. So there's a lot out there. But it was certainly, I think that was probably more fun than anything, actually. I was so proud of my, my trailer video. I thought. I thought. I thought it was great anyway, I.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Thought it was terrific. Yeah.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: So I did. I did like it.
But the. Right. But the writing of a book, I think we all say we have a book. Well, a lot of people say that they have a book in them. A lot of people say that they would like to write a book, but a lot of people start and not everybody finishes. It was terribly hard. So I don't profess that it was an easy thing to do. Now, it was an enjoyable thing to do, but it was a hard thing to do. I didn't suffer the problem that some people have, which is, will I find the time to do it or I have to get to my desk and what can I think about? Nonfiction is different to fiction. I think I would struggle hugely if I was to write a book of fiction. That's probably not my orientation. But writing nonfiction, I was not stuck for examples. In actual fact, the publisher said to me that I had more examples than anybody else they'd ever published.
But I really wanted Jennifer, I mean, you referred to. I do have quite a diverse background. The examples that I've used in the book, whether it's about serial killers or astronauts or hackers or presidents or cults, hugely interested me, and I really wanted to put them in there because it was everything. It wasn't just esoteric. There was a, I did have a connection with all of the stories that I had there, or sports, I should have said, because there were quite a few examples of sports. So it's not just for CEO's. It really is a very, very diverse set of examples of people who either tune in and get decisions right or people who tune out and get them wrong. And what I do is I trap, I plot all of the different biases and judgment traps for people. So the process was sort of a typical process.
I did find that it required. You've mentioned about all of the different examples. If I had lots of notes, I did have lots of notes, and you should see the cast off notes, as it were. That's probably another two books that just didn't make, that didn't make it in there. So the process was disciplined to a point, but it was difficult. Then you go. Then I'm sure you realize you have your own, but once you have it done, then you have to go get endorsements. Now, when I did endorsements, I deliberately picked a broad spectrum of people. And you ask people, you invite people, would they please endorse your book, and then they have to read it. And it takes another couple of months for them to read it, and then they write something. But I deliberately picked people in business, I picked sports people, academics. And then I had a group of sort of other. And within that group of other, if you like, one of my favorites is actually I had an FBI investigator whose story I had written about, and he tuned in. And he tuned in. And basically in the story, he tuned in so much with a potential witness who he was interviewing, that the witness confessed to a triple murder in Yosemite. And it is a phenomenal, phenomenal story. It really is. And I was very proud to. And then I wrote to him afterwards, and I said, just out of a courtesy, I would like to let you know that I'm so moved by your story that I put it into my book. And I wasn't at that point, I certainly wasn't asking him to endorse. It never occurred to me. And then he did endorse that he loved it. And we spoke to him. And what struck me, Jennifer, was not just a story. What struck me was the story that he told himself. He had done such a, he had such a phenomenal career, he had saved so many people and made such a difference to people's lives that he was tortured by the children. He was in the child protection unit, the children he couldn't save. And I thought that was terribly sad that having done so much and done so much good that, you know, he was now tortured. But that's in the book as well. There's a chapter on the stories that we tell ourselves, you know, the right stories and the wrong stories. And so maybe in some perverse way, maybe he'll read that chapter and it might help him in the end. But again, but that was part of the process of writing the book. And then, of course, he marketed.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: So one of the most startling and counterintuitive insights from your book was smart people tend to trust more than most. That makes them more vulnerable to scams, identity theft and immoral persuasion, end quote. And I definitely know from my own life, people in my family that are brilliant phds, I've seen them fall victim to these kinds of scams. So I'm wondering, is this a function of intelligence, or is it projection, a function projecting that they are not out to deceive people and so they think others around them aren't out to deceive? Or is it a function of just growing up in maybe a more sheltered background where you don't come across these kinds of con artists?
[00:15:59] Speaker B: It's a fascinating area, isn't it? And it was an Oxford university that found that, you know, and the first part of that sentence, right, that, you know, smart people tend to trust more than most, which, you know, and, you know, they're typically more successful, and they have, they say they have, you know, they engage and they have to have productive business relationships, etcetera. And there's a different correlation with them. They're happier.
But the more people trust, particularly in this day and age, horses are going to be more vulnerable because they are more trusting by definition. And to your question, it isn't tied necessarily to intelligence. Everybody can be duped, and everybody is duped. And sometimes the smarter you are, it's maybe you've got a busier job. And again, in a noisy world, you're rushing to judgment all the time. And deception is much more likely in a noisy world if you're just too exhausted to tune in and decode data, if you're a doctor or a newscaster in an emergency room or in a hospital, you are constantly go, go, go. And by definition, you're just going to believe people. And I find that if your whole world is usually with trustworthy people, shall we say, you expect that that's the social norm in your group. You don't expect to be conned. And you do see this in business, and you see it all the time, because it's your natural assumption that people are going to do the right thing rather than not. So I think it's very, very interesting and maybe a small example of Bernie Madoff. So Bernie Madoff, in his environment, people certainly did not expect Bernie Madoff to be doing anything untoward. And even he said that he was shocked that people didn't recognise what he was doing. He said if theyd even thought about it once or twice, surely they would have seen it. So he was shocked that nobody questioned his judgment. So again, that was something. And the SEC, the Securities Exchange Commission had the data on him for over nine years, 29 red flags. But again, because of this image that he had of im a successful Wall street titan, I couldnt possibly be doing this kind of thing. So there is a theme in the book as well, about, again, tuned out because of who you see. And so this rush to judgment based on first impressions and the visual dominates the hour, all so we make a judgment call based on who we see rather than what we hear. So the warnings were tuned out because the visual dominance and, you know, was just so strong that the rest of us, the rest of us just got lost. But it is very hard, very hard to stop deception.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: I think, I think with the Bernie Madoff example, I have a friend who recently passed away.
She and her mother lost all of their savings to Madoff. And one of the themes that we explore in objectivism is being willing to see and hear and think for yourself, being critical, even when everybody else around you has a consensus, or they believe that they have a consensus. And I could see that with Madoff, he's projecting wealth. He's probably flying around in a private plane, and all of these people that are successful and wealthy are all saying, oh, he's great, he's wonderful, and not really looking any further.
[00:19:31] Speaker B: It's a terrible story. It absolutely is. And, you know, it's not even, it's not even those people. But even his own family suffered as a result, as well as you probably know, his own son, a year to the day, tragically committed suicide. Again, couldn't stand the pressure of people thinking it was him as well. And actually, I read something recently where his, where his wife Ruth made of. It was one of her greatest regrets that she didn't listen to her son. Her son wanted her to cut ties with the husband. She didn't. And then, of course, you know, what happened, happened. And she said it was one of the greatest regrets of her life that she didn't listen to her son. So you know, there are no winners in those scenarios. There really aren't.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: So we're going to get to some of the audience questions that are pouring in. But first, wanted to talk about this. One of the chief challenges of engaging, engaging young people with the ideas and literature of Ayn Rand is impressing on our stakeholders just how radically the content landscape and the content consumption habits have changed since the days when the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were published. Your book contained one particularly sobering statistic in that regard. Quote, the length of the average bestseller has reduced in. In 2021, 38% of books exceeded 400 pages, a third less than in the previous decade. Shorter books now stay two weeks longer on the bestseller list. So how does this seemingly collapsing attention span play into decision making deficits?
[00:21:27] Speaker B: It is one of the fundamental problems, Jennifer. It really is. In a reductionist, 280 character sound bite world, people's concentration is shrinking. And there are plenty of studies that say that point to that. And not only that, but people feel their attention is shrinking.
And I think, as one of the famous scientists, said Herbert Simon, a wealth of information creates this poverty of attention. There's so much out there, we literally can't cope. I mean, you know, on a roll, you go for a run, you think about work, you're at work, you think about going for a run. The cycle just never stops. And even social media users, their time spans are shrinking as well. They curate a topic for a lot shorter than they did in the past. So if you think about your decisions in the workplace, the decisions that are fast, quick are rewarded. So everyone wants a quick decision. And that is a real problem because you pay an expert, you pay a consultant, you pay any professional for their considered opinion, but then at the same time, you want them to think about it and reflect on it and give you the best guidance, but same time, you want it tomorrow. So can I get just a quick answer, or can you just summarize your 30 years in three sentences? So you kind of get that all the time. And it is a huge, it is a huge bearing on quick decisions. Now, sometimes, don't get me wrong, sometimes quick decisions are necessary. Again, go back to the emergency room. You can't reflect forever, and it's needed. But the problem is that the average screen time is a problem. If you have so little attention, you're not going to make the right decision. And that is a problem in a noisy world, and it affects your vulnerability to error. And there are plenty and plenty of examples of that. So it is a modern problem. It is one that people are aware of. But again, it's just one that people have to focus on if they want to rectify it.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: All right, well, we're glad that at least people are using their screens to tune in, to tune in to talk about your book. And we're going to get to a few of the questions right now. Candace Morena, I love you on Facebook. You're always first in to ask a question.
And she asks, do you think there is a common piece of advice given for decision making that is actually detrimental for people?
Or maybe, you know, something that cuts both ways.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: Oh, what a good question.
I think it is that one about speed. I think it is that one about speed where people say, you know, make a quick decision and just go with your instinct. Sometimes it's right, but sometimes it's not. So it is that all decisions are this double edged sword in many ways.
So there is something about that I think you need to. Yes. So, yes, you rely on your instinct to a point, and except if you're in this firefighting situation, maybe. But when you have the luxury of some time, I would advocate that consider your instinct and then you check it. And there have been studies that show that when doctors have been asked to make a snap judgment, a diagnosis, that they get it right 10% of the time, then they're told, okay, now you have the luxury of going off and find some facts and check it out a little bit more. And their accuracy, even when they just have the opportunity to check facts and access a book, it increases to 40%. So the point is, of course, that extra seconds of reflection, extra time, you do make better decisions. The other problem is, if you only rely on your instinct, you have this bounded rationality, and you only make a decision based on your past, your past decisions, what the decisions your peers are making, you know, your family are making and your friends are making, or what you read about on social media, having the third party independent view, you may revert back to your original view, but at least you've gone through the process of at least checking out other views. Of course, the problem is you might just use confirmation bias to support your view, which is a mistake, of course, as well. So I really would listen to that advice just a little bit more carefully where people just say, oh, just rely on your instinct. It isn't right to always just rely on your instinct if when it comes.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: To decision making, it reminds me of advice that was given to dagny Taggart. Nl paraphrase, if there is any part of your decision where you are torn between following your mind, your head, and following your heart. Follow your mind. Think and take the time to think. Okay. Taylor 619 on Instagram asks, do you think education institutions fail to teach young people how to make decisions? Is there something you would prioritize teaching young people? And I have some thoughts on that. But what do you think?
[00:26:29] Speaker B: I love that question. I would have planted that question if I could have. That was a fantastic question. You are absolutely right. You are not thought. We are not thought and have never been taught decision makings, not just in schools, but in the boardroom where, hello. It matters hugely as much as it does, I think. Why? It just isn't part of the curriculum. It might be that people see it as a softer skill. It might be that people aren't trained because you do need some training. It's not just about go with your instinct all the time. There is a science behind it quite, you know, years and decades of study behind getting the right decisions or when you get it wrong is really where the science comes in. So you're absolutely right. It should be taught on actually, Elon Musk.
If you listen to Elon Musk, he said, once upon a time, that bias should be taught in all schools. And I thought that was quite interesting. I'm not sure people have taken them up on it, but I feel very strongly that if you don't teach people, this is really one of the reasons why I wrote the book, to be fair. I mean, I'm at the other end of my career spectrum, but I saw my nieces and nephews. They're all trying to climb the ladder. They're all starting their careers. I'm thinking, if only you knew some of this stuff, you would have such an advantage. You would have what other people do not have. It doesn't take much, but understanding other people's behavior is a massive source of advantage and power in an organization, because people don't always value it, don't always rate it, but it also helps you make fewer mistakes. It's not a guarantee that you'll never make a mistake, but it is a guarantee that you will make fewer if you are at least conscious of these misjudgment traps that you can make. And we all make them. And we make them. We will make them. But being conscious of them means you're at least increasing your likelihood of less. So a really great question. It'd be fantastic to see it in the education system. It really would.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: Yeah. And, you know, mentioning Elon Musk, he reminds me of something else that you cover in the book, which is making u turns right, and all of what we have invested in not wanting to come forward and change our minds on things and how that kind of traps us into a certain position. He's certainly changed his mind on a lot of things, and I think that helps us, you know, trust him more that people are not so completely married to their cognitive commitments.
So, and then my two cent on young people in school and better decision making, I would say it could start with what shouldn't be taught. So there's, you know, if you go back and see my interview that I did with John agresto about the decline of higher education, he just charts how over the course of 50 years, universities have become completely one sided, only presenting one point of view to the exclusion, complete exclusion of any conservative or libertarian perspectives. And that is just an irresistible invitation to wanting to make sure that the students think like you do. So there's a lot of what's going on in school that is passing for education, but it's really more like indoctrination or kind of the cultivation of activists. And it's just a time based thing. You're not really having the opportunity to develop your critical thinking skills and learn your critical thinking skills. And if it's like you don't even have critical thinking skills and the ability to see both sides of the issue, then you're not going to be very good at decisions. And Nuala, with regards to that, seeing both sides of issues, you have some examples in the book of leaders that would really have a skill for sort of saying, hey, this is what I think is the best decision, but I'm going to make the opposite case. So talk about that.
[00:30:49] Speaker B: Well, funny, when you were talking there, you reminded me, actually, of Bill Clinton, and he is renowned for, and I think some of his biographers talked about how when he was making decisions, or some of the people who worked them in the White House came back and talked about how when he was making a decision and when he was preparing an argument, he would learn both sides of the argument incredibly well and argue for the other side. And when you do that, you are then able to, I guess, you empower yourself to change your mind more so than before. And by doing that, it does break down that divide of actually being able to tune into the other person's point of view, because if you don't do that, it's not just polarized, but you become more entrenched in your own way of thinking. So by doing that, by arguing for the other side, it sounds like well, why would I do that? But actually, it does help you. It does help you make the alternative view. So it's a, it's a technique that actually anybody can do now, particularly those who want to develop those critical thinking skills, as you were just referring to there.
[00:31:53] Speaker A: Well, of course, I'm not a big fan of Bill Clinton because I would love to blame him for costing me a job when I was a speechwriter for President George HW Bush. But the other side of that coin is that maybe if President Bush had read your book and had someone who was willing to really make a strong case against his abandoning his tax pledge, he would have still been in the office. Never know. Okay, let's see here. We have a question from my modern gault, another of our favorites here, asking from Instagram, what do you think about the trend of people getting stuck in their ways and not being open to making different decisions? Is there a method to break out of this?
[00:32:53] Speaker B: Well, you have to ask yourself, who wants the person to break out of the mold? So is it that you're stuck and you want to broaden your horizon, or you want somebody else? You want to broaden someone else's horizon? I'm assuming it's probably the latter, that you're dealing with someone who just won't shift their way. I tell you, the one thing that you don't do, and psychology has shown this several times, is you never confront the person. And I find that it works, that if you say, if you find something in someone's argument, there's always something right about the argument. I mean, you may not agree with the totality, but if you can find something that you agree with or something that you like about what they're saying and relate to that and say that you agree with that, you actually, you avoid psychological reactance from them. So it's a starting point. Sometimes you need to accept that you're never going to change someone's opinion, no matter how, how hard you try.
You can try all of these techniques, but sometimes people are just so entrenched, you just make them dig down more deeply. But a soft way to try to do it is exactly. That is to, and there is always something, I mean, clever about someone's argument. I mean, even, you know, even if you don't like a politician who has gone into power, you can at least recognize that they've done something right somewhere along the way. It's not that binary. People aren't that binary. So for me, I always try and find something good or something that I like about someone, even though, you know, I may not agree with them because what's the point? You're only, you're only, you're only becoming more adversarial and you're never going to win and you're never going to influence them. So if the objective in that case is to try and influence them, I think that's probably one of the easier ways to influence people rather than going, rather than headbutting. And I think today what we're seeing is headbutting in too many ways.
And that's where we get that polarization. People are just tuning out. They're not even trying to acknowledge any valid points in anyone else's argument. And I think that's a recipe for disaster.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: I'm going to take one more and then, guys, we will get back to you. But I do have a lot of questions from reading Nuala's book myself, so I want to get some of those in. But here's one actually that dovetails with one of the questions that I had prepared for you, and it's from Aaron Barker on x. He's asking, do you see any difference between older business people and new people who enter into business in terms of their decision making choices? So that kind of also overlaps a little bit with my question about are there, as we go through the arc of life, what are some, I think pretty much all of the examples and the advice that you give throughout the book is applicable regardless of your gender or your age. But you do touch on a bit sort of some of the traps that can be more dangerous for people who are very old or people who are very young. So both the questions in terms of decision making that shows up for young people and people that are towards the end of their career and then maybe differences across age groups.
[00:36:26] Speaker B: The only one, and it is a good question, you're absolutely right. The advice is for everybody. It doesn't matter, because if you're at the, if you're at the further end of your career, let's just take a power based trap. And you think so in the beginning you're craving power. You're so desperate to have it. Usually, you know, you go fall into all of these mistakes because you really want it. If you have it and you're desperate to hold on to it, you're going to make certain other decisions. You may be at the top of the tree and you may be very senior and about to retire, and you want it for as long as possible and you are not handing it over to anybody else. You're going to make other kinds of decisions there. So you're still vulnerable. You're still liable to fall into a misjudgment trap no matter what age you are there. And they are power based, for example, just as like, they could be ego based. Or you will take certain risks at one end of your career versus the other, potentially because you think you've got more time. So there are time based traps that are in there as well. But to the question, is it age specific? The only trap that I wrote about is what I call the memory based traps. Now, don't get me wrong.
A 15 year old can fall victim to the forgetting curve. They forget something. You know, they forget something. And I did put in some examples of people who forgot stuff. But we all know as you mature in life, you do forget more. That's just a fact.
I look after my 85 year old mother, and I can guarantee you when you get to that age, unfortunately, the memory curve is more accelerated. But in business. So what I said there is that. The problem is it's the misremembering self. Whatever you, whatever experience you have. Daniel Cannon, point out that we have what's called the misremembering self. It's never exactly the experiencing self. So what you think you're experiencing is not what you always remember. So there is a difference there. And I do point out that there is a difference based on the memory curve is different when you're further up the tree and when you get more senior. But when you get more senior, not always, but typically, you hold more power. Not always in this day and age, because there are a lot of very young people who have a lot of power. But, you know, traditionally, that's. That's the way it was. And that is, that is something that people should at least be more conscious of. But people are, people are afraid to even mention it in case they're accused of being ageist. So it is one of those sensitive things that people won't call out, but it is a. It is a judge. It can be a judgment trap, and the individual just needs to be conscious of it.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: Well, throughout reading your book and looking at all of these ways that we fall into these judgment traps and wishful thinking, I'm reminded of maybe one of my all time favorite quotes by Ayn Rand. You can evade reality, but you can't evade the consequences of evade.
So it's just trying to get as close to reality. And even though it's uncomfortable sometimes, it's probably going to be less uncomfortable than the consequences of avoiding that reality because you have to be walking on solid ground. I guess I put my two cent in terms of being kind of also more mature in my career arc, that when you are just starting out in life, you don't have any experience, and so you don't have that library of patterns. Right? So when you are in your fifties and sixties, you know, a lot of the things that will come up in businesses, a lot of the decisions that will be presented for you to make, you've already seen some version of that before, either in your own experience or in the experience of somebody else. So I think for a younger person, that means trying to learn from the experience of others, finding ways to provide value to your superiors so that, you know, they are willing to have a relationship in which they are able to take you under their wing and be more of a mentor. And I'd also say for younger decision makers, you know, you are, you're a native to this world of these collapsed attention spans and all of that. And so just making a conscious decision that you're going to read x numbers of books a month or what have you, and just finding ways to counteract that perspective shrinking trend that we have with the kind of media that we consume. I don't know, Nuala, if you wanted to add anything to that.
[00:41:21] Speaker B: Well, I think you're absolutely right. I think the more we can read and learn and feed that curiosity, the better decision maker you will be because you have broadened your perspective. So it is a cycle, and too often we just narrow our frame of reference to what's familiar, to what's comfortable, rather than, as we start off saying, talking about being more curious and trying to think outside the box so you don't have to read all the time. However, I mean, Warren Buffett and lots of very successful people say that they read all the time and voraciously because it gives them more ideas and broadens and broadens their perimeter of thinking beyond what's right in front of them. And it is a huge, huge source of knowledge and insight to do so. And I think many of your viewers do that.
[00:42:13] Speaker A: I read at least two books a week, and granted, I do most of it on audible, and part of it is for my work, but part of it is that I've just been inspired by the guests that we have on the show.
There is one common denominator with every single person that I've had on that has achieved any kind of professional success, whether as a novelist or an artist or an academic or in business. They all were voracious readers as children. Okay, so you had touched on power based traps before. And when you do that, you observe that, quote, most people conform to the voice of authority, even when it contradicts their intuition, expertise, or values. This is authority bias. We follow rules, orders, instructions from those senior or uniformed. Wow, that really resonates with me, and I think with a lot of the viewers that will be watching. How does fear, reality based fear or manipulated by those with authority aggravate this bias?
[00:43:29] Speaker B: It's one of the biggest, and it's probably the most important bias within the power based traps is this conformity? And, you know, conformity and authority bias can be perceived authority. Yes, it can be to your boss, which is classic. The classic hierarchical conformity. But you can also. You can also over sublimate you're an idol or an expert and not challenge their view so that. So that you almost lose your own identity. So it's a really. It's a really. It's easy to explain when you talk about how a co pilot will defer to a captain or a junior officer to a lieutenant, and that does. That does happen. But social class, wealth all creates this hierarchy of who gets heard. So, although it's really. Although it is important that there is conformity, of course we don't want anarchy, but authority bias is so innate enough. That can be a problem, and it can be a problem in a decision making context. I mean, I'll give you an example. There was. There's a study done for even in the caring professions. So where it was in an Ohio hospital experiment where 95% of nurses willingly complied with their doctor's instructions to administer drugs that were against established practice. Now, was it just because they're not. These aren't stupid people or uncaring people, and they care about their patients. So, you know, was it fear of demotion? Was it just uber respect for the more senior person? Why is it that people don't choose to at least ask the question? And it's funny, I was saying this to somebody recently, and they said, but the boss is always right. And I'm thinking, well, the boss might have more experience than you, but why is the boss always right? I mean, look at. Look at NASA, the space challenge shuttle, the space shuttle, the challenger, all of the engineers, you know, who didn't speak up. When you have authority bias, you then get into ethical problems. You get into misconduct, you get into bystander behavior, you get into complicit behavior where people don't speak up. And actually, my thesis was on whistleblowing behavior and why people don't speak up. And authority bias is one of the strongest reasons. Fear, as you said, this fear of punishment, of consequences, and we don't want to lose. So we have this innate loss aversion. So we dread losing things rather than gaining things. And anything that smacks of fear of loss makes us stop. And again, this aggravates blind spots and deaf spots and sometimes dumb spots, as in you don't speak up when you should and when it's really important. So as a power holder, it's really important to know that when you hold power, when you're admired by other people, that your power exerts a subtle silencing effect. And when you know that it's really important, a, when you're the power holder, but b, when you're not the power holder and you're looking at someone with perceived power, you know, formal power or informal power that you've given.
[00:46:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that was really remarkable, what you said about somebody saying the boss is always right.
When you are in an executive position, when you are the boss, you want to make sure and you're sane. And, you know, again, maybe most don't, but at least you have enough humility to know that you're fallible and that you make mistakes. You want your friends and certainly those on your team, your most trusted people that work with you to tell you when you're making a mistake. Because, I mean, we all, even when you're the boss, even when you're the CEO, even when you're the chairman, we all report to a higher power, whether that is a board of trustees or your donors or the marketplace. So I think making sure that you're avoiding making mistakes. And I do remember in my career, I've had, I've worked for, you know, very, very powerful billionaire entrepreneurs. And some of them were tough, some little tougher than others. And. But I, my takeaway was, yes, they're tremendously successful, but how much more successful might they have been if they didn't use this management by fear? Right. And they kept that feedback loop open. So it's a great point.
[00:48:12] Speaker B: It's a great point.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: You know, with the news of OJ Simpson's death at 76 years of age making the headlines earlier this month, the example you used of the biases involved with authorities ignoring Nicole Simpson's pleas for safety were particularly heart wrenching. Maybe you could use that example as something that's fresh in all of our minds. Although people watching may not be aware how many times previously, she'd called the police and said she'd feared for her safety. So what were some of the biases that were at play there?
[00:48:49] Speaker B: Yeah, it is a terrible story. It is a terrible story. And I included it because when I was young, and it has gone back to the 1980s, and I watched every day of the trial like many people did.
But the point is that she made all of these calls to the LAPD. And I gave one example of where I think was in 1989 that she did make a call and she was in the garden and crying.
And the police went against protocol, and they had a set protocol, and I think he wasn't arrested in that particular case. But five years later, then, of course, the tragic circumstances happened and they came back again and, you know, she was in the garden and. But my point there was that the police, they saw the bruises, they didn't listen. Again. It was a little bit like the Madoff example, like the big hero. So there was that sublimation. Well, that's not authority bias in that way, because. But that is almost.
It's sublimating someone because of their status. And we do that, and we do that in life. So the blind spots were there.
Seven or eight times she'd called for help. The Los Angeles Times sort of reported that they defaulted to truth. Maybe they believe. Maybe they passed it off. There is something called the ostrich effect, where people deny uncomfortable truth. And they were friends. Apparently. There was fraternity there as well. So there were a couple of different reasons as to why it's motivated hearing. Maybe they didn't want to. There was a lot of back scratching going on, apparently. So the celebrity aura cast a glow, as it does in many. In many cases. And this history of fraternizing and back scratching existed. So all of these, it's not just one. It's circumstances at the time as well, all fed into what's called a force multiplier effect, as in they all kind of combine and they make it worse. And, you know, a really, really tragic case. And, you know, at the end of the day, society expects power holders to do the right thing, no matter. That's why they're in positions of power. And it is culture. It's that psychological safety, as you were talking about earlier on, it is about the voice of conscience.
And I think when you hold power, the decisions you make, have you said consequences and the reality way further than we expect? And it may not seem like a massive consequence at the time, you know, something like that. I'm sure in hindsight, people would they would have been sorry that they didn't do more. But at the end of the day, that's not the only example. But increasingly, at least, Jennifer, I think we're seeing now in society that transgressions are being punished a little bit more and people are being called out for this kind of thing. And hopefully we'll see more people, you know, being called, you know, getting their just rewards, as it were.
[00:51:50] Speaker A: I sure hope so. Yeah. Because it doesn't at the moment, I have to be honest, feel like it very much. Here in the United States over the past three years, we've been seeing crime, crime going up, and, you know, these very radical district attorneys letting, oh, you know, shoplifting, no problem. If it's under 700, $900, you're. You're fine. So it doesn't seem like things are going in the right direction, but we may have an opportunity to make some changes. All right, we've got eight more minutes, so I'm going to take one more question that's jumping out of at me from Instagram. Alex, 1971, asks, what questions would you think are good to ask someone in an interview in order to gauge their decision making skills and, of course, putting you on the spot. And we just talked about how making decisions, deciding which question to ask on the moment you might change your mind after you've had a little bit of time to reflect.
[00:52:54] Speaker B: Well, I tell you, it's not about their decision making skills. I'll tell you what I would ask them, Alex. I would ask them, I would like to test their receptivity to changing their mind, which is fundamental to decision making. And I would ask them, and this is going to seem, it might feel quite trite, but I would ask them, I would try to test what I call status quo bias, which is, are you afraid of change? Do you do the same thing all over all the time? Do you drink the same coffee? Are you very habit based and you basically not like to change? And I would probably ask them, and it would seem really odd, where do they like to go on their holidays? And they tell me, wherever. And then I'd say, do you go there every year? And if they tell me, they go to the. And then earlier on, I would have asked them, you know, how innovative and curious they are. And they would probably tell me, they're very innovative and very curious. And then they would say to me, no, no, no, I go to the same place every year, all the time. That says to me, they like comfort over curiosity. And so their behavior has told me that straight away. So it is probably one that I might ask. Not everybody would ask. So if anyone asks you that the next time, maybe just keep your eye out for what are they really asking? And in interviews, I really do believe this. I've been through too many. It's never about what you're asked. There's always an underlying question behind it. In most cases, if they're good interviewers, they will be asking you something beyond. So my whole point about think twice, look beyond the obvious, reinterpret what people are really asking you. So in that case, I'm really testing. How change oriented are you? It's a different way. Because if I ask you, you'll say to me, I'm very change oriented, but if I ask you, what do you do? It'll tell me something else.
[00:54:30] Speaker A: All right. And as I mentioned again, your website was really very impressive. So I'm going to ask that we put that link across the platforms. Is your TEDx talk there embedded in your website? Okay, great. Let's talk a little bit about that. Because towards the end of the book, you describe how in preparation for a TEDx talk, you found yourself beset by nerves and wondered how you would stack up against others who got so many views on YouTube and what have you and how you eventually resolved to find a more meaningful perspective on that.
[00:55:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I remember it well. I remember it well. Again, this is one of the things that people say, I'd love to do a TEDx talk or a TED talk. Well, I suggest go try it, because again, it is very nerve wracking, intimidating.
[00:55:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it is.
[00:55:27] Speaker B: It is. And I'll tell you how I got over it. I loved my. I was nervous. And I was nervous until the point where it was on how to overcome indecision. And I loved the time. I loved my content. I thought my content was great, whether it was or not, I thought it was, and that always helps. And I thought, this content is really going to help people who can't decide. And what I did was I shifted the focus from me and am I going to stutter and am I going to get it wrong and am I going to forget something and is it going to be in cyber permanence, my mistake? And I tried to, and I tried to focus on the people in the room who were very normal people in the room. And I thought, you know, my content is good. It's going to help you. And I genuinely believed it was going to help. And then I thought, I'm telling someone something that's going to help make a real difference to their lives. And so when it was, oh, I did it, and that did calm me down, believe it or not. And then when I was finished, of course, it's like, oh, well, you know, who's going to look at it? When I had, what made a difference afterwards was actually, there was a woman there who said in the audience, who said that her daughter was struggling with anxiety. And she wrote to me, like, on LinkedIn, maybe a month later, and she said, thank you very much. I really liked your talk. I was in the room, and she had. My daughter was with me, and she was really struggling with anxiety. And because of your talk, she couldn't make up her mind about x. And, you know, this really helped her, and she decided why. And I just thought, gosh, that actually meant more to me than people saying, oh, great job, or it was good, or they liked it. I thought that really made a difference to someone. And then I was working with another person on a board, and they were establishing a board practice, and they said, oh, nol I listened to your TED talk, and I couldn't decide what I was going to do about my board practice. So it was a CEO. And he said, I've been hemming and hawing. Now I understand why I couldn't make up my mind, and because in the talk, I point out why you can't make up your mind what the reasons are and how you overcome them. He said he had decided to close his board practice. So it was practical examples like that that actually, I think, made a real difference. So taking it away from yourself and your ego and putting it on to actually, I'm helping someone else. That's actually all that matters, really. And that did make a difference. Jennifer, believe it or not.
[00:57:43] Speaker A: All right, we've got two, maybe three minutes left. Final question here. I recently interviewed Jonah Goldberg, who shared some advice that he received from Charles Murray, who said, if you set out to write a serious book and you don't change your mind on at least half a dozen issues, you were doing it wrong. So I'm wondering if there were any areas where you change your mind or just even be surprises that you came across over the course of writing this book.
[00:58:18] Speaker B: Yes, I started with one idea, and I've kept to the main area, and I changed the orientation to these deaf spots. I didn't start with deaf spots at all. I started with the decision, the mistakes that people make. So it was going to be just a book about the mistakes that people make and how and the psychological reasons. My moment of insight was this is about tuning out and about people don't listen. It's not don't listen, it's don't reinterpret. So did I change my mind? Yes. But I broadened my mind. And I found, and I think that because I kept digging and digging for more information, I found what I felt was a better angle that would, that would help people just think a little bit differently. Don't think about what you see. Try to think about what you hear. Try to think about different voices that you listen to. And when you do that, you know, when you tune in, you maximize your opportunities to stand out rather than lose out.
[00:59:12] Speaker A: Well, that's fantastic, Nuala. I imagine that over the next months and years, you be busy with interviews like this and talking about this book and helping other people with strengthening their decision making skills and maybe becoming a decision ninja or at least aspirationally moving in that direction. What's the best way for us to follow you and keep up to date with your work?
[00:59:41] Speaker B: I'm on LinkedIn, so that's probably my main platform. And also I think if you put in there nualagwalch.com and I'm also on Twitter, so both of those would be fantastic. And I'd be very keen to hear from anybody. If anybody has any questions or like, any guidance on anything. I really do respond to anyone who approaches. So please do feel free. If you ever need any help or.
[01:00:03] Speaker A: Support, keep in mind the time difference, because she is in Dublin right now. So again, thank you. Nuala. Thanks to everyone who joined us today. Asked fantastic questions. Of course, as always, if you enjoyed this video or any of our other programming or materials, remember, we are a nonprofit. We rely on the support of our donors. So please consider making a tax deductible
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Donate and be sure to tune in next week when author Paul Tice joins us to discuss his book, the race to how ESG investing will crater the global financial system. We'll see you then.
