Download Transcript
Spencer Levy
Ever wonder if you're making good business decisions? In commercial real estate in particular, the disruptions of the last five years have sparked much rethinking about how to make and manage business decisions, about traditional norms, common practices, the day-to-day and the big picture alike. So if you're like me, you've probably thought about this question a lot. On this episode, we seek some answers to that question from someone I've been excited to sit down with for a very long time: Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, a bestselling author, and the keynote speaker at the recent CBRE Institute Global Forum in Arizona.
Adam Grant
The most frequently asked question today from a few of you in this room is, what the hell is an organizational psychologist? And my answer to that is, I study how to make work not suck.
Spencer Levy
Adam spoke to an audience of CBRE clients and colleagues, and then took questions from us all. But before we get started with our sit down, some important definitions and context from his keynote to set the stage. First, the importance of maintaining what Adam calls a “challenge network”.
Adam Grant
Your challenge network is a group of thoughtful critics who you trust to hold up a mirror so you can see your own blind spots more clearly. They are the people who instead of lining up to tell you comforting lies, actually have the courage to give you the unpleasant truths. And I'd say I don't see a lot of that in the companies that I study.
Spencer Levy
Adam's challenge network has included companies and audiences all over the world, including one whose insightful feedback was that he moved so awkwardly on stage that he looked like a Muppet. But Adam's bottom line is that it's important to listen even when it's difficult.
Adam Grant
When I talk with leaders about this, I sometimes get pushback. And they're like, no, I don't want people to know what I'm bad at. Well, I have some news for you. The people who work with you closely, they already know. They already know what you're bad at. You can't hide it from them.
Spencer Levy
Adam went on to share deeper thoughts about the value of not just listening, but learning and evolving – what he calls thinking like a scientist.
Adam Grant
The concept of best practices scares me in a changing world because what it does is it freezes the past and it says let's admire the way we've already done things and put it in a glass case like it's a museum. I want to smash the glass case and I want to look for better practices.
Spencer Levy
We'll explore more about all this and other big questions, including, well, which Muppet exactly, but more importantly about useful and tactical stuff from one of the most popular and influential business thinkers around. Coming up, a Q&A with Adam Grant at the CBRE Institute. I'm Spencer Levy, and that's right now on The Weekly Take.
Event emcee
Please join me in welcoming to the stage the host of CBRE's The Weekly Take, Spencer Levy.
Spencer Levy
Well, as the clean-up hitter today, I've got our home run hitter, Adam Grant. Adam does not need any introduction, but I'm going to give him a quick one. Adam is a New York Times best-selling author of six books, including “Think Again.” He is the top-rated professor at Wharton seven years in a row? Six years in a row. He has over 90 million downloads on his TED Talks. You think The Weekly Take is good? This guy is really good. And with that, I will say no more, and welcome Adam Grant to the stage. Adam, take it away.
Audience
[applause]
Spencer Levy
So Adam, we have in this audience 400 of the largest real estate occupiers that have to make decisions every day for real estate in the U.S., around the world, and they just want to think better. They want to forecast better. And you use a few examples in your book of people that will think better or worse. I'll give you two ends of the spectrum. First you start with Yoda. It says you must unlearn what you have learned. That’s pretty good advice. But then you have on the other end of the spectrum, Frasier Crane, who said, quote, I have a degree from Harvard. Whenever I'm wrong, the world makes a little less sense. Two ends of the spectrum, folks. So, speaking to our audience here, they all wanna make better predictions on what real estate to own, to lease, where it should be. What are some of the elements of that?
Adam Grant
Okay. So you all are professional forecasters, right? You make predictions every day. And I think the big mistake that we make is we rarely keep score. How often have you sat down and said, okay, here are all the forecasts that I made. Not only which ones are right, but also how well calibrated was I? In other words, when I was right, had I been highly confident? And when I turned out to be wrong, had I expressed a lot of uncertainty? There's an organization I work with called Good Judgment that scores forecasters. This is their bread and butter. And they actually give you an accuracy score, but also a calibration score. And when you do this kind of scoring, what you discover is a lot of the time, you're overconfident. And most of us tend to be, especially in the domains where we have a lot of experience. So then what they do is they wanna figure out what do the best forecasters do differently from the rest of us? And the main thing the best forecasters do is after they make a prediction, they put a confidence interval around it, and they ask themselves, what are the conditions that would prove me wrong? And they make a list of things that would happen, or have to happen, in order to lead them to rethink their forecast. Let's take an example. I ran a forecasting tournament with Good Judgment in 2021. We asked about 25,000 forecasts in total on all kinds of major world events, like what's gonna happen to the Euro, and who's gonna win the Olympics in a given event, and which billionaire is gonna get to the edge of space first. And one of the most consistent predictions was Simone Biles is going to win the Olympic gold in gymnastics all around. And then, she didn't. You might remember, she had the twisties, she got lost in midair, and she had to withdraw. Well, some of the best forecasters actually foresaw that. How did they do that? Because the moment they made the prediction, of course Simone Biles is gonna win, she's the goat. They said, well, what would a world look like in which she didn't win? And they said, what if there's an unknown gymnast training in secret who actually is more talented? If I saw that information, I would have to rethink my forecast. What if she gets injured? If something happens that throws her off her game, physically or mentally, then I'm gonna have to rethink my forecast. And so those forecasters, what they then did monitoring the situation was they caught the early signs that she was losing her bearings in midair, and they adjusted their forecast, whereas most of their peers didn't, and they basically stuck to their guns, not realizing the world had changed. So, I think in the real estate world, this principle holds exactly, right? Which is, you've got a forecast. You sit down and you say, what would have to change in the world that would convince me that the forecast is incomplete or incorrect? And you make a list of those conditions and then you watch for them and the moment one of those buttons is pushed, you pivot.
Spencer Levy
And so that moment is a moment of doubt. And I'd use doubt on one end of the spectrum and I would use grit on the other end of the spectrum. And interestingly, and I saw Angela Duckworth up there, one of your colleagues who wrote one of my favorite books in the world, “Grit.” And I hate to say it, in your book, you didn't have such a high opinion of grit. In fact, you said grit could get you killed if you're a mountain climber. And so I admire grit. I see it in so many ways. But you admire doubt. Why?
Adam Grant
Well, I admire both. Let's be clear. But there is a study of mountain climbers showing that the mountain climbers with the most grit are the most likely to die on their expeditions, because they get hyper-focused on the goal of reaching the summit and forget that they need to also focus on the goal of getting back down from the summit. And that's a scary thing to see. So Angela and I have debated this for 15 years, and where we've landed is that grit is more dangerous when it's focused on a path, and more positive when it's focused on a goal. So if I'm a mountain climber, right, my goal is to get back from the summit and there are lots of different ways that I could get there. One is I could summit and come back. The other is I could turn around and come back before I die. And that's the person who we want to invest in, right? The person who invests all their grit in one path and says, I've got to go to the summit and that's the only way to succeed, that's the person who's putting us all at risk.
Spencer Levy
In addition to being day-to-day real estate executives, everybody in this room is a leader within their business, and we all wanna be better leaders. And once again, I think our audience would like to know, well, what's it gonna take for them to be that better leader? And you use some things here, things I've heard before: Be a better listener.
Adam Grant
Sorry, what were you saying?
Spencer Levy
Be a better….
Audience
[laughter]
Adam Grant
No, I’m just kidding. I couldn't resist, Spencer, I'm really sorry.
Spencer Levy
That's okay. Oh boy, here we go. By the way, I was just trying to think of the Muppet character that you remind me of. It's going to come out here. It's going to come out.
Adam Grant
I deserve that.
Spencer Levy
I was a big fan of The Muppet Show. By the way, you do look like Scott. I will say that, from the “Austin Powers” movie.
Adam Grant
Scott Evil.
Spencer Levy
Yeah, Scott Evil. You do. Well, nothing but love up here, brother. Nothing but love. So if you're going to become a great listener or a great leader, what are those elements beyond listening skills? It says, quote, weak leaders silence voice and shoot the messenger, but strong leaders welcome voice and thank the messengers. And the other thing I'll mention here is the goal of a leader isn't to give you the opportunity to show the right stuff, but they actually had it. They had an experience when they were younger that showed that they had this right stuff, perseverance. What do you think?
Adam Grant
Well, I think that–let me say two things to that. The first one is, my colleague, Bob Sutton, has a great metric for listening that I think could, it could be something you use every day. Which is, he actually will score your ratio of statements to questions. And if that ratio is above 1 to 1, he thinks you're in trouble. In his data, you're in trouble because you're not learning, you're doing too much telling people what you already know and not enough discovering what they know and what you don't know. So I like the idea of whatever your ratio of statements to questions is, if you can increase the number of questions you ask, that's a great way to prompt better listening. I think the second thing I would say on this is there's a great story from early days of Apple. So Steve Jobs is not an easy person to challenge for obvious reasons. And the Mac team decides that they've got to do something about that. So they create an award for the person who most courageously disagrees with Steve Jobs. And what's so interesting about this is every year, Steve Jobs promotes the winner of that award. So he's not just thanking the messenger. He's actually elevating the messenger. And he's sending a signal: Look, I might be really difficult and unpleasant. I might berate you. But I need you to disagree with me. And you can see the benefits of that play out decades later. He swore for years at Apple that he would never make a phone. He hated cell phones. He called the cell phone carriers the four orifices. He got so frustrated… that's a quote. He got so frustrated with his phone, he would throw it against the wall and smash it, and yet it was his designers and engineers who said, look, we put 20,000 songs in your pocket. Don't you think it's only a matter of time before we put the whole computer in your pocket? And because he created an environment where people were not afraid to challenge him, and kept doing it, and that behavior was rewarded, he ultimately changed his mind and invested in the phone.
Spencer Levy
Well, we're now starting to take some of your questions, so keep them coming in. I'm just gonna use them when it's on point here. So one of the questions is, how do you speak truth to power? Maybe Steve Jobs was open to it, maybe not overtly. Overtly, it looked like Steve Jobs was completely the opposite, but actually was taking it in. I've heard similar comments, by the way, about Jeff Bezos, asking for that same exact type of person. In fact, Jeff Bezos, I believe, famously said, I want you to disrupt this whole company. I want you to disrupt what I do here today. But courage is in short supply. How do you muster that courage?
Adam Grant
Well, I think it doesn't always have to be an all-on assault, right? I think that what happens is most of the time, when there's a climate of fear or when there's a reason to hesitate, people don't speak up until they've basically lost it. And at that point, it becomes a career-limiting move. And it's taken that much heat to motivate you to speak up, and you've completely lost the ability to do it in a rational, effective way. I think before that happens, what I wanna do is say, look, there are ways to speak up without directly threatening the authority of your boss or damaging their ego. And one of my favorite is actually to take the thing you want them to rethink and ask for their advice. I might come to you Spencer and say, hey, I've got this idea. I'm afraid people are gonna shoot it down. And I know you are brilliant at driving change around here. So could you give me some guidance on how to make sure that my idea gets heard and people really give it a chance? When I do that, a few things happen. One is I flatter you, right? You're like, wow, you're a genius. You knew to come to me. Secondly, you take my perspective, right, to think about, okay, well, how would I advocate for this idea? And third, you give me suggestions which creates some ownership. And together, those reactions mean you are less likely to be an adversary and more likely to be an advocate. And so I would say, go to the person who might be a barrier and ask them for advice about how to get through that barrier, and you might learn something or even enlist them as a source of support.
Spencer Levy
You talk about how you can be not just a good leader, a good listener, but you talk about how you can be a role model. And you suggest being a role model, not your parents. In fact, you say make your children proud, not your parents. What do you mean by that?
Adam Grant
Well, I think custodians of the past keep us stuck in traditions that no longer make sense. I was a little hard on best practices earlier, but it's true that a lot of our best practices were built in a world that no longer exists. And I worry that if we're always trying to make the people who came before us proud, that we're not gonna end up changing or evolving enough. And so I wanna think about, I guess, being more of a good ancestor as opposed to a good descendant. And I think that what that means fundamentally is doing some mental time travel and saying, look, if I'm to think about my organization 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road, 30 years down the road, what will the people who are filling my shoes be most proud of me for having done? Sometimes it's a hard question to answer in the abstract, so let me recommend a way to get concrete on it. You all run post-mortems when a decision or a strategy goes bust. You debrief about what went wrong and what you want to learn from it. Well, I love post-mortems, but why would you wait until you've already screwed up to have that conversation? There's research showing that pre-mortems are very powerful in avoiding or preventing the bad decision in the first place. What you do is you sit down before a big decision and you say, let's assume that the commitment that we're leaning toward right now turns out to be an unmitigated disaster. What are the most likely causes of that failure? And that makes it more likely that people see around corners and can prevent the very thing that might happen. So, I think that's a pretty easy way to get into that, ok, well, how do I become a better ancestor?
Spencer Levy
Let's pull the lens out, and I'm not surprised we got a question from the audience here about the polarized world that we're in today. Polarized national environment, polarized global environment. How do we apply rethink strategies to have a conversation about some of the most pressing issues of the day in a world where I would suggest risk has never been higher to have that conversation.
Adam Grant
I don't know, I just study this. Good luck. No, it's hard, but it's not impossible. I've learned a couple things. So let me give you a quick personal story and then hopefully it'll be clear how you can apply this. So I was working on a project at an investment bank years ago and they called me in and they asked me to help them figure out how to retain their junior analysts and associates. And I spent two months using every tool of social science that I had. I did experiments, surveys, interviews, observations. I pooled research from outside and inside, and I gave them a report with 26 recommendations. I'm in the middle of presenting it, and the Co-Head of Investment Banking…. I’m on recommendation four, is like, why don't we just pay them more? And if there was one thing that was not in my report.
Spencer Levy
And you had to say it in a British accent?
Adam Grant
He was based in London.
Spencer Levy
I have found that British accents are sometimes more persuasive.
Adam Grant
Believe it or not, there's research on this. If you have a British accent, you're judged as more intelligent.
Spencer Levy
Right-o.
Audience
[laughter]
Adam Grant
So he obviously had gotten a lot of positive feedback. Guy had gotten a lot of positive reinforcement in his career for his accent, but not his substance, in my view. Anyway, so he said, you’ve gotta pay them more, and I was like, but first of all, these people are already very well-paid. They were overpaid, actually, if you look at market rates. And there's a wealth of evidence that once people hit a certain income strata, you cannot buy their loyalty if they hate their job and they hate their boss. And I tried to explain to them, and he was like, well, that's not what my experience has shown. And if there is one way to activate my inner logic bully, I was like, yes, that's why I have randomized controlled experiments and longitudinal studies, because I like to learn systematically from rigorous evidence, not idiosyncratically from your experience. He didn't take that well and he started screaming at me.
Spencer Levy
But with a British accent, so he sounded smart.
Adam Grant
It sounded very measured. It was just loud. But I don't even remember saying this, but I was told afterward, I said, you know, I've never seen a group of smart people act so dumb. I am not proud of that. It was horribly embarrassing for me. I descended from logic bully to playground bully, right? But it was a really, really big learning moment for me because what I realized was that I needed a script for how to handle those situations and this is what we need when we're having a polarized conversation. There are certain things that will activate your inner preacher or prosecutor. If you know what they are, you are better prepared to handle those. So one of my biggest triggers is what's called fame knowledge. When someone is arrogant and ignorant at the same time, it drives me crazy. That's like a calling card for my inner prosecutor. So I wrote a script for what I do when somebody pushes that button. It has two parts. The first is the internal script, where I try to shift into scientist mode. What would a good scientist do? Good scientists are curious. I'd be like, wow, what an interesting specimen. I don't say that out loud, but I'm like, I can't believe this person even exists. How could someone think this way? Like, you're the closest I have ever met to an actual alien. And that reminds me, I literally do not get what goes on inside this person's head, and so I need to learn more about how they think. And then the external script, and this is the much more important part, is I want to get curious out loud. And instead of just trying to decimate their argument, what I will ask them is, what evidence would change your mind? It's such a useful question. And sometimes I'll even say, I don't even know why I'm here. Why did you hire me if you think my data are baloney? Like I have better things to do with my time. Are there data points that you would find persuasive? And a couple things happen. One is, they have to commit that there are things that would change their mind. And also, I learn what evidence would persuade them as opposed to what data I find convincing. And sometimes I already have the data that they want, and I just didn't think to bring it. Other times, I'm like, you know what, that would be a really interesting test. And we run the experiment, and we discover we were both wrong. So what evidence would change your mind? It's my favorite question to ask in a polarized conversation, and you should both answer it. But also, you should have a script for what traps you as a preacher or a prosecutor, and how you wanna respond instead.
Spencer Levy
Well, that is the opposite of don't let the facts get in the way of a good argument, right?
Adam Grant
Exactly. Well put. That's what I should have said. That's right.
Spencer Levy
That’s what you could have said. By the way, speaking of British accents, and I don't know why I'm hung up on this. Have you ever noticed that in most Star Wars movies, all of the bad guys have a British accent, but the Americans...
Adam Grant
I have not noticed that. I have noticed that British accents go away when people sing, and I really want to know why.
Spencer Levy
Okay! So, we're now talking about some of the leaders of some of the biggest real estate organizations in the world.
Adam Grant
That's a good segue.
Spencer Levy
That is a very good segue. And we're trying to identify not only what we can do individually, we're trying to identify what we can do as an organization to foster the type of behavior that leads to great outcomes. What are some of those hallmarks of a good organization that you see, organizationally? Maybe it's structural, maybe it's otherwise. And what are some of the hallmarks of the opposite?
Adam Grant
Well, I think to contrast the positive and the negative, one of the reasons that startups innovate much more consistently than large organizations do is that in a large organization, all it takes is one no to kill an idea. Whereas in startup worlds, all you need is one VC to say yes to give an idea life. And so some of the companies that I've studied that handle this best, they try to create internal units that look like venture capital arms. One company in particular that I studied, they said, we want to replace our corporate ladder with a lattice. They created an org chart that looks like a crisscrossing lattice structure, like a picket fence. And they say, anytime you have an idea, you can go to anyone above you in the lattice. Not just up your ladder, but up anybody's vertical. And if you get one yes, you get a budget and some time to work on your idea and see if you can prove it. And they've created a bunch of industry disrupting products where the functional leader of someone who had the idea said no, they went to somebody else, they said yes, they gave it a shot, and the rest is history. I don't think you can run, day to day, all of your decisions like that, right? But the concept of saying let’s let people innovate that way and give them multiple shots on goal I think is really powerful.
Spencer Levy
When listening to that and listening to this less structured or unstructured or unusually structured organization, it makes me recall when I think about some of the great management thinkers from Peter Drucker to Charlie Munger. We talked about the Whiz Kids, how they were the innovators of, regiment is probably the wrong word, but data-driven analysis. Data-driven decision making. Were they wrong?
Adam Grant
I think there's actually evidence on this, and the conclusion is a definitive maybe.
Spencer Levy
Way to come down on that one.
Adam Grant
Yeah, no, I've spoken like a true social scientist, right? It depends. But here's what I learned recently. I, for years, said my value added is data-driven insight about work and leadership. And I read some research showing that being data-driven is a double-edged sword. And it really bothered me for a long time. But I think I've come on board with it, because the problem with being data-driven is that you are anchored on the patterns of the past. By definition, you can only use past data to guide the future. And what that means is, if you're in a stable environment, you're in good shape. The patterns of the past are diagnostic of the future. But if you are in a dynamic world like we all live in, the intuition that you've built up from experience, the data you've gathered from the past, are no longer perfectly accurate. It's like trying to predict tomorrow's market from nine years ago's market data. And so what the research on this shows is that the leaders who make the best decisions and the best forecasts are the ones who combine data with intuition. They gather data to try to become informed, but then they make judgment. And they don't just take the data at face value. What they also do is they like to mix quantitative and qualitative data, saying, look, the quantitative data are always going to be anchored in the past. But qualitative data, I can ask people what they're seeing right now and what's going on in real time before we've accumulated all the trends. And the mix of those two things and the interplay between them I think actually is maybe one of the best ways that we all future-proof against AI. I don't know… I did an interview with Sam Altman recently on my podcast and I was grilling him about this. No one in the AI world knows anything about how to take human judgment out of that loop. And I think that's good news for all of us.
Spencer Levy
Well, a great philosopher once said, he who controls the past controls the future. You know who that was?
Adam Grant
I don't.
Spencer Levy
That was Rage Against the Machine.
Adam Grant
Ok, wait. Can I add to that? Liv Boeree, a poker champion, says, the problem with raging against the machine is that the machine learns to feed on rage.
Spencer Levy
Hmm, all right! Next time with a British accent, okay? So a couple of more questions, and we're just about out of time. I appreciate all the questions coming in, but we're all in the real estate business, and I think we used the example of the Whiz Kids going on to become Secretary of Defense. Didn't work out as well in the military context as it did in the businesses that they were working in, but how applicable is rethinking to a high stakes and immediate decision-making environment like military or war environments versus what we do here today where we have more time to contemplate what we're thinking?
Adam Grant
Ok, I actually talked to Jeff Bezos about this a few years ago. I went to give a talk at one of his companies, and he showed up in the front row. And I hunted him down afterward. And this was the question I most wanted to ask, was, how do you think about this tension between we've got to act quickly, but we also have to be willing to question everything? And I came away from that conversation with a 2 by 2 framework that I think about every day, and I don't even have a real job. So this is much more relevant to all of you than it is to me. Jeff said, I ask myself two questions when I'm making big decisions. Number one, how high are the stakes? Number two, is it a one-way or two-way door? And he said, if you cross those, there's one quadrant where you have to move slow. It's the highly consequential irreversible decisions where it really matters and you can't easily change your mind tomorrow. So let's say he plunked billions of dollars into the cloud. He can't wake up tomorrow morning and be like, just kidding, I want them back. So he said on a decision like that, the last thing I want is to be the first mover. I want to watch everybody else move quickly and make mistakes and learn from them. I will procrastinate as long as possible because I want to see their data before I lock in. He said in the other three quadrants, if it's less consequential or more reversible, I am very happy to act fast and just stay open to rethinking what I know. And I think that's a great way to handle that dynamic.
Spencer Levy
And there's a term for that. It's called a second-mover advantage.
Adam Grant
There you go.
Spencer Levy
And I think that there's a lot to be learned from that. In fact, it goes to the essence of your book, which says that so many of the things that we hold dear… The smartest person in the world, the most experienced… Your brains could work against you if you can use your brains as a source of certainty or conviction.
Adam Grant
There's a bias that I worry about a lot. It's called the I'm not biased-bias. And it's the belief that other people have holes in their thinking and limitations to their rationality, but not me. My judgment is sound. And it turns out the higher you score on an IQ test, the more likely you are to fall victim to the I'm not biased-bias. Watch out.
Spencer Levy
So Adam, we're out of time, but I'm gonna ask you to give your final thoughts to 400 of the biggest real estate executives in the world that are trying to go through their days and careers and take one big takeaway from today of how they can be better in their jobs.
Adam Grant
Yeah. I have to say, I think you all know the value of learning time, of blocking it out and building it into your calendar. I think you also need unlearning time. It's different. Learning time is just where you seek out new information. Unlearning time is when you rethink things you thought you knew. It's when you reach out to your challenge network and ask them, what should I rethink? It's when you revisit past decisions and say, knowing what I know now, would I approach that differently? And how can I apply that understanding to the next set of choices I have to make? And I think the single best resource you have at your disposal to make that happen on a regular basis is, frankly, a sense of humor. I think when I've studied organizations where people won't think again, they take themselves too seriously. They can't laugh at their mistakes. They can't poke fun at each other. And I have to tell you, the sense of humor in this room, judging by the volume of your laughter, is a damn good sign. Honored to be with you all. Thank you so much.
Audience
[applause]
Spencer Levy
The honor was ours. And if you're interested in learning more, check out Adam's books, of course, and you can visit our show's homepage at CBRE.com/TheWeeklyTake. You'll also find deeper coverage of the CBRE Institute and other recent and upcoming events on the CBRE website. We'll be back next week as usual with important information and insights here on the show. Don't forget to subscribe, share the show, and send us your feedback. We'd love, as Adam Grant advised, to hear what you have to say. Thanks for joining us. I'm Spencer Levy. Be smart. Be safe. Be well.
.jpg)
