Oct 29, 2021
Have you ever had a disruption
in your routine – moving to a new house, taking a new route to work
– and found yourself exhausted every day?
This is common when our habits
are upended (the subconscious can’t use its rules anymore so your
conscious is having to do a lot more work!). And while it may feel
annoying, this is also a great opportunity to innovate and change
your life for the better.
Today, I’m joined by Adam
Hansen, VP of behavioral innovation at Ideas To Go and coauthor
of Outsmart Your Instincts
who happened to be in the midst of
a move, so we talk about how to reframe an annoying disruption in
habits to make it work for you. We also discuss the curse of
knowledge and how it impacts businesses, risks of omission versus
risks of commission, and other fun behavioral goodness sprinkled
throughout (including my new favorite term of being an “omnivore of
information”). Listen now...
Show Notes:
- [00:07] In today’s episode, I’m
excited to introduce you to Adam Hansen, VP of behavioral
innovation at Ideas To Go and coauthor of Outsmart Your
Instincts.
- [03:18] Adam shares about
himself and his background. He always knew that innovation would be
part of his career.
- [05:18] When working on the
book, they started looking at all the cognitive biases to figure
out which ones were causing most of the mayhem in
innovation.
- [06:16] If you adopt the
behavioral innovation approach, you can see three to four times
improvement in performance and quality of ideas very early on in
innovation. You can get to better ideas faster.
- [09:01] All of the thousands of
small decisions we make every day that have been automated are lost
when you move. Each little thing is so minor that we don’t realize
what the cumulative effect of all those small decisions
is.
- [10:02] It is important for us
to automate everything we can.
- [12:19] It is impossible for us
to place ourselves fully back in the shoes of our first-time
clients. Our version of dumbing things down to meet them where they
are is still going to be more advanced than where we need to get
to. We can work on this by following up with first-time clients and
asking what you could have done better.
- [13:46] There is so much more
jargon in your business than you think there is.
- [16:10] Our need for
tangibility is much greater than we assume. Most people need help
to break down abstraction. The more tangible you can be the
better.
- [18:13] The curse of knowledge
is the idea that once you become knowledgeable in a given area, you
can't unknow what you know and you can’t fully place yourself back
in the shoes of the subject.
- [23:27] Negativity Bias is the
idea from our ancestors of thinking of all novelty as threat and
not opportunity.
- [25:12] Especially in
innovation, we need to be as opportunity minded as possible. We
need to be aware of threats and take smart action to minimize and
mitigate those threats.
- [27:43] When we are in moments
of threat, to still be able to take swift decisive action is
fantastic (and sometimes life-saving!)
- [28:29] The research shows that
negativity can appear super profound. Too often we are shooting
down ideas and not coming up with alternatives. That is not
progress.
- [30:31] We are predisposed to
go toward the negative any time a new idea comes
up.
- [31:38] The more you can value
ideas early on for their provocative value rather than for their
immediate merits the better. Then you are in a better frame of mind
to take on the negatives.
- [33:54] When you approach
challenges to problems in this way, there is real value. The
language is brilliant, priming to get people to deal with problems
and concerns in a much better way.
- [35:10] If you are an
optimistic person it doesn’t mean that you don’t have a negativity
bias and pessimistic people still have optimism
bias.
- [36:44] Go in understanding
that there will be some differences and then the task becomes “How
do we get the most out of the differences?” The more you can
approach differences with curiosity than defensiveness...the
better.
- [37:48] Curiosity is very smart
and super adaptive. Be curious even when it is hard to be
curious.
- [39:07] Curiosity kills the
cat, satisfaction brought it back. (Did you know there was more to
that saying?!)
- [41:49] It is hard to gather
data on what you don’t do.
- [43:42] Every year to 18 months
every person should “fire themselves.” If you fire yourself and
come into your job as if you had new eyes...what would you do
differently? When you start a new job you are looking for all these
opportunities of growth and then you become
stagnant.
- [45:07] We need to be more
intentional and realize we can choose better because we have all
these nonconscious instincts so we can choose
otherwise.
- [46:49] Meaning is created
dialogically not monologically.
- [47:35] Melina shares her
closing thoughts.
- [47:42] One of Melina’s
favorite things is this idea of being an “omnivore of information.”
It’s such a great way to think about learning and essentially
devouring all kinds of topics from various origins.
- [50:07] Melina’s award-winning
first book, What Your
Customer Wants and Can’t Tell You is available on Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes &
Noble, Book Depository, and Booktopia.
Thanks for listening. Don’t
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and share what you liked about the
show.
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Let’s connect:
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Top recommended next
episode: Good Habits, Bad Habits: an Interview with
Wendy Wood (episode 127)
Already heard that one? Try
these:
Check out Melina’s award-winning
book, What Your Customer
Wants and Can’t Tell You on Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes &
Noble, Book Depository, and Booktopia