Gary Klein
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
They'll say, we want to be harmonious, so we're going to make decisions where everybody agrees. A harmonious decision is a terrible idea because that means that everybody has a veto. And so your chance of coming up with an innovation has been severely compromised.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
I am guilty of the delusion that we can have harmonious decisions. And despite personal experience, I hold on to this goal.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
I do not do it when I make lots of decisions. And so I don't do it automatically.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
Okay, so there's a couple of things that I might do with them. First of all, we would want to run some premortems. to inject a healthy dose of reality. Not that I don't think they have that. A second is, are they going to be able to pivot based on what they learn? Or are they going to get locked into a business model and not be resilient or flexible as things develop? Because things will develop.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
Their plan is not going to continue as they've originally designed it, simply because they're nobody is smart enough to come up with a perfect plan right off the bat. So you do want to make discoveries and you do want to be able to pivot and maybe even make massive changes in your business model.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
I mean, if you do some sort of pre-mortem, you might say, what are the things that we might have to adapt for in part to build a more resilient organization?
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
The premortem is designed to help you do better rather than to shut off innovation.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
A wicked problem is one where there's not a clear right answer that people would generally agree upon.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
Most of the major social problems we wrestle with are wicked problems. We have multiple stakeholders and there's no way to please all of them. And so there's all of this potential conflict and resource situations change or pandemics arise, wars arise, things that are unexpected that are going to upset what you're doing.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
The premortem is designed to help people surface realistic possibilities and threats so that you can improve the plan, improve the product, and increase your chance of success.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
You know, many of our projects succeeded, but not all of them. And we would occasionally have an after-action review. Those weren't exciting things to do because we were pretty disgruntled. At one point I said, why don't we do this at the very beginning? Why don't we imagine that it fails?
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
Often in organizations, if you have like a kickoff meeting, there'll be a part where they say, all right, now, does anybody have any concerns? Are there any critiques? Does anybody see any problems? And nobody says anything, either because they don't want to disrupt the harmony of the team or because they're not thinking that anything could go wrong because they're excited to get started.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
So to break through that mindset, I developed this technique of a premortem, and at the end of a kickoff meeting, we say, all right, imagine that I'm looking at a crystal ball. I'm dialing forward six months, maybe a year, whatever the right time frame is, and oh, no. This project has failed. It's failed in a big way. We know that. There is no doubt. This crystal ball is infallible.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
Now, everybody in the room, you've got two minutes. Write down all the reasons why this project failed. And it's amazing the types of issues that people surface that ordinarily they wouldn't say in public or even think about.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
Well, after I developed the technique, I read about some research on prospective hindsight. And so I think a big part of it is the certainty that it's failed. And so now that changes my mindset. So I'm not resisting. If I say, here's the plan, are there any problems? There's all kinds of pressure not to think about problems.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
But by being certain that the plan has failed, by entering into that exercise, it just changes the whole valence, the whole experience.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
OK, so let me get we never thought about this as a tool outside our company. This was just something we did. But then we had a big project we were doing for the Air Force. It was a software tool for identifying ways of using precision-guided munitions. And I told my prime sponsor, I want to do a premortem. And he said, what's that? And I explained it to him, and he said, absolutely no way.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
We want everybody to be positive. This is such a depressing exercise. I don't want to do it. And I said... This is an important project. We want it to succeed. This is a way to make it succeed. And reluctantly, he agreed to do it. We were doing this premortem, and there was this young captain. He hadn't said a word. The meeting had gone on for about two days. He hadn't said a word.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
And it was time for him to come up with what he had on his list. We'd go around one at a time around the room, and we'd do one or two or three sweeps. And he looked a little nervous, and he said, this tool that we're building, it's for people in the field, and they have these low-powered laptops. The tool we're building runs on a supercomputer that takes 48 hours.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
I don't see how that's going to work. And there was silence in the room because everybody realized he was right. And then somebody said, now, I've got a back of the envelope technique that I use that could be a shortcut. And all of a sudden, we were back in business. But if we hadn't done that, we would have failed. And he never would have said that if we didn't give him that space.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
I have a couple of ideas, but one of them is the premortem, because the premortem creates a culture of candor. People learn that they can voice unpopular ideas and not be punished for it. It also creates an environment where...
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
I'm surprised at the ideas that you come up with or this young captain comes up with because a premortem really harvests the different experience and ability of the people in the room. I don't know what's in your head, so how can I appreciate your perspective? But in a premortem, I realize, wow, I never thought of it that way.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
So there's a chance for the people in the room to start to gain more respect for their colleagues.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
Anonymity could be useful in environments that are usually very punitive, but in terms of creating a culture of candor, it works better if we're all face-to-face.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
I have never seen that happen, surprisingly enough, no. No, because everybody knows that this is a made-up failure. So it's not life or death, although it could be. And everybody knows that the intent is to improve the plan.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)
I've wrestled with that issue for a while because most organizations say that they want insights, but they don't because insights are going to mean that we have to change. And if I'm a mid-level manager, now I've got to change my supply lines, I've got to change my staffing. Can we just continue what we're doing and try to do it better?
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 2: Life and Death (Update)
I'm very impressed by it. I'm impressed because it's sophisticated. It's not simplistic. There's a variety of levels and a variety of reasons. And before we start making policies about what to do about failure, we need to look at things like her spectrum and identify what kind of a failure is it so that we can formulate a more effective strategy.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 2: Life and Death (Update)
I don't think we should enjoy failure. I think failure needs to burn on us.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
Failure is an inability to accomplish important goals that you have set out for yourself.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
There are people who say we should learn to enjoy failure and use failure and not respond negatively to it. I don't agree with that. I think it needs to be a negative emotionally. The value of failure is it forces us to reexamine our assumptions and to revise our concepts of how things work or can fall apart.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
I think that's exactly accurate, that in many organizations, people don't want to admit their own failures because it'll reflect poorly on them, and they don't want to call out their colleagues because that's going to disrupt the harmony.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
And so they avoid it, or they just find some ways to redirect the focus of the team in another direction so they don't have to confront how this failed and why it failed.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
That feels right. I would accept that analysis.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
I don't have a good answer. I'll tell you what I do. What I do is... I become discouraged and depressed for a couple of days. And I say, I never want to do any of that again. And I just, I don't totally repress it, but I wish I could repress it.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
And then eventually, after a couple of days, almost always, I realized, you know, if I had done that or if we had arranged that differently, that could have been really exciting. And now I can't wait to do it again.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
Facebook wasn't the first thing I built. I also built chat systems and games, study tools and music players, and I'm not alone. J.K. Rowling got rejected 12 times before she finally wrote and published Harry Potter. Even Beyonce had to make hundreds of songs to get Halo.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
I think they tend to be cliches. And my negative reaction to them is it's pretending that we should learn to enjoy failure. And I don't think we should enjoy failure. I think failure needs to burn on us. When I talk to people, I want to find out if they're experts. One of the things I ask them is, can you tell me about the last mistake you made?
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
And some people, a surprising number of people say, I can't think of any mistakes. But the people I think are the real experts, they can tell you because those mistakes have been bothering them for the last couple of weeks or
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
I think it does. I think the failure stories tend not to be advertised as well. People who had those stories aren't in a position to go on the lecture circuit or write books.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)
I think it would, but we don't want to discourage entrepreneurs from trying things out, even though the chances of success are so low. It's not a good gamble for the entrepreneurs, but it's good for our society.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
We don't want to discourage entrepreneurs from trying things out, even though the chances of success are so low. It's not a good gamble for the entrepreneurs, but it's good for our society.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
It's a question of what kind of resources you have, what's your tolerance for pain, what are the alternatives. There's that kind of reluctance to admit that you've wasted all of these resources.
Revisionist History
Memorial Day, 2020 | Part 1
Fixation is simply going down the wrong path and getting stuck on that path.
Revisionist History
Memorial Day, 2020 | Part 1
He had what was now called in Israel a conception. His conception was Egypt will never attack us until they have air superiority. And they don't have air superiority, and we have nothing to worry about. And he held on to that belief until about two hours before the attack. But his subordinates were seeing all these counter indicators.
Revisionist History
Memorial Day, 2020 | Part 1
They're seeing the Egyptians moving troops and changing configurations at the border. All these signs that indicate an attack is imminent. And Zahra said, this is just a training exercise. But then the subordinates showed there was no sign of training going on. So this was just a cover story. And Zara refused to pass their concerns on higher. And then the attack occurred.
Revisionist History
Memorial Day, 2020 | Part 1
I watched one examination where the attending physician, this is the first observation I made, the attending physician is examining the person, the person's describing his condition and seems pretty straightforward. And at a certain point, he says, what's this on your back? Well, it turned out he had had surgery to repair some heart defect. This hadn't been in his history.
Revisionist History
Memorial Day, 2020 | Part 1
And the physician said, wait a minute, let's start over. And he started the whole exam over because he was aware that there might have been implications in what he did that he didn't see because he didn't have this other possibility.
Revisionist History
Memorial Day, 2020 | Part 1
Oh, yes. Yes, they found a much more serious problem that the resident and some of the nurses had missed.
Revisionist History
Memorial Day, 2020 | Part 1
Derek Chauvin, he had a script for how to handle people who were larger and intimidating. And that's as far as he ever got.