Speaker 1: 0:00

This is the Art of Network Engineering podcast. In this podcast, we explore tools, technologies and talented people.

Speaker 3: 0:15

We aim to bring you information that will expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers.

Speaker 2: 0:23

Welcome to the Art of Network Engineering. My name is Andy Laptev, I am at Andy Laptev on Twitter and tonight I am joined by one of my favorite people in the whole wide world, Tim Bertino. How's my buddy Tim?

Speaker 3: 0:36

I'm good, andy, because you are not only the center of my heart, but you're the center of my screen tonight as well. Don't tell my wife that she's not going to be watching. So it's fine. Oh, yay, but no, I'm doing. Well, andy, I'll let you introduce it, but we have been wanting to cover what we're going to cover tonight for a long time with the person that we wanted to cover this with.

Speaker 2: 1:01

So really looking forward to it. Yeah, and I don't know if he knows that he's also one of my favorite people, but he definitely is. Tonight we are joined by the man, the myth, the legend. I know you know him. His name is Mike Bouchon. He was on episode 105. We did a leadership series and during that episode Mike I quote said we should do an hour on cognitive biases and how to handle those. So here we are with Mike. Hi, mike, how you doing? Welcome to the show, welcome back.

Speaker 1: 1:33

How you been. I've been doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Super happy to be here. Last time I think I had to sing a South Park song. He remembered, yes.

Speaker 3: 1:44

Mike, when Andy told us that he was going to reach out to you to make this happen, I said that sounds great, but on one condition he has to sing us another song.

Speaker 1: 1:53

That's fine. What would Brian Boitano do? What would Brian Boitano do if he were here today? I'm sure he'd kick an ass or two. That's what Brian Bo boy tana would do. When brian boy tana was in the alps fighting grizzly bears, he used his magical fire breath fire breath and saved the maiden's fair. You did not disappoint again thank you.

Speaker 2: 2:19

Thank you, mike buchang. Um real quick for the people listening. Uh, where are you? We don't work together anymore and I miss your face and your voice. So where are you at these days? Before we get into the topic, what are you doing?

Speaker 1: 2:30

I made the move over to Nokia. No one really knows how to say the word, but I'm over there doing data center things at a very large networking company that has a strong routing heritage and absolutely just a good technology foundation. They don't know exactly what they're up to, though, and so it's trying to get the rest of the world to understand the things that we do, and I'm doing such a job from. If you see, there's a little sun on this side sunny San Diego, where the temperature is always between 64 and 74. So I feel bad for all of you folks out there suffering in the snow, yep.

Speaker 2: 3:10

It has been raining here for three straight days and in the 40s Fahrenheit, and it's supposed to rain for the next three days. I don't want to live here anymore, Mike.

Speaker 1: 3:20

We have an extra room upstairs, Andy, if you and your family wants to come.

Speaker 2: 3:25

Like to move or to visit. That's a lot of people to live in your room.

Speaker 3: 3:28

Details.

Speaker 2: 3:29

You'll probably hate us in a week yeah, we'll figure it out later and two dogs. I got too many people here, man.

Speaker 1: 3:36

We got three dogs, so that'll be good.

Speaker 2: 3:39

All right. So why on God's green earth would a network engineering show talk about something as strange sounding as cognitive bias, right? So I guess we should start with some kind of definition. I kind of had to. I mean, I feel like I have a general idea of what it is, so I'll I'll massacre it, mike, and then maybe you can step in and be our expert, resident expert.

Speaker 2: 4:04

So my understanding of cognitive bias is and you actually turned me on to this If you're trying to influence anyone, I guess, or try to understand their thinking and their behavior, and whether it's your child, your wife or your team at work, knowing how people process information, form the reality, this might get real crazy, real quick. But you turn me on to that book, thinking Fast and Slow, with Dan Kahneman, and it was a hell of a read and I still didn't get through it. There's a couple of other books I can recommend later that are easier intros into that. But basically my understanding of cognitive bias is it's how we and maybe I'm screwing up with like heuristics and stuff but basically how we perceive the world, how we build our reality. Our brains take shortcuts which I think are called heuristics, and then that creates all these biases, and my favorite is confirmation bias, just because I guess we're ensconced in social media in our lives, but it's the echo chamber in social media, right, we're looking for information that confirms our previously held beliefs, and that's a really great way to never see or hear new information, challenge your beliefs and have new ideas. Right, and I think we've seen not to get on the soapbox, but I think we've seen how that plays out on social media and the things it's done to society at large.

Speaker 2: 5:23

So how did I do, mike? Where would you start a cognitive bias? And, more importantly, why is it important on social media and the things it's done to society at large? So how did I do, mike? Where would you start a cognitive bias? And, more importantly, why is it important for people watching the show? Right, how, how can we leverage this as we learn from you? What's the value here?

Speaker 1: 5:36

And so I kind of got into the cognitive bias idea. I want to. I probably before I used to read a lot more books than I do these days. It's amazing what kids will do to you and sports schedules. But the more I read about it and really kind of unlocking how people think and how they get entrenched in what they believe common in some cases, models that people use, in some cases deficiencies, and how they reach conclusions, if you can unlock that predictably, you know somewhat reliably, then you can maneuver a bit. And for me it was kind of came together when I realized that my job was essentially to sell, and I don't mean like externally trying to sell product to people who want to buy products.

Speaker 1: 6:24

I have always been sort of a non-conventional thinker and what that means for me is that I've got to convince other people to think the way I think, and I tell my teams this, by the way if you think that you're a thought leader of any sort, by definition you've set yourself up to be disagreed with by everybody you run into right. If people agreed with you, you wouldn't be a thought leader, you'd be a consensus thinker, and this means that for anybody who wants to make waves, anyone who has observations that things ought to be different than the way they are. They are salespeople, whether they like it or not. And so, even if you're an engineer and you don't ever talk to like a classic customer, I will tell you today that you are still a salesperson. You have to convince people to reach conclusions they haven't already reached. And the question is, how are you going to do that? And I would tell you that most people view fundamentally if people don't agree with them. I'm just going to educate you into submission. If you just knew what I knew, you would agree with me.

Speaker 1: 7:16

And it turns out that that rarely works. Rarely is that the reason people don't agree? And so the more I started reading, the more I realized that there's just ways of thinking. And if we could tap into that a little bit, if we could, I guess, steer into the skid, so to speak, you could be more effective. And when I did that, what I found out and I'll end my monologue here, I promise I was more and more effective at getting people to. You know, go along with whatever it was I wanted to push, and that started to develop a little bit of a reputation for me where I could get people to move beyond their positions and that, for me, that was the fuel, that was the catalyst for my entire career, you know, going back the last 15, 20 years.

Speaker 2: 7:59

Convince people of new conclusions. That's a big one, right? That's not easy.

Speaker 1: 8:05

Well, let me give you an easy example. So you guys, every one of us has been in some presentation where somebody is trying to hawk something to you. So do you prefer PowerPoint or do you prefer a whiteboard?

Speaker 3: 8:16

That's a good question. I would say, depending on the room, the amount of people, the audience, I probably would prefer a whiteboard. However, PowerPoint usually seems to be the path of least resistance for larger groups of people.

Speaker 1: 8:32

But if you're like in a smaller group, I mean like a whiteboard. So why do we want whiteboards? What is it about? Like if you ask, if you asked a room of people, you know if you were in a conference room, would you prefer a PowerPoint or whiteboard? I'm telling you that almost 100%, if not 100%, will say whiteboard. What's? The number one reason you think everyone gives.

Speaker 3: 8:51

To me it's more dynamic and intimate.

Speaker 1: 8:54

It is more dynamic right, and so I used to. When I was at Juniper before I was the architect of what was known as the one Junos message. It doesn't matter that much for today what that is. Just understand that it was a whiteboard pitch that I gave literally thousands of times, and I would begin every one of my presentations. I would go to the whiteboard and then I would do a little bit of theater with the room. I would basically ask them what do you guys want to talk, or what do you all want to talk about today? And they would say some random things. Sometimes they wanted to talk about software architecture, sometimes it was some routing thing, things like QoS, whatever, and I write each of these things down in small print on the board. I would step back, I would stare at it as if I was trying to formulate a plan, and then I would say this is exactly why I don't bring slides, because I would never have a deck that covered all these things. Then I would pause for a minute as if I was trying to figure out what I was going to say. And Then I would pause for a minute as if I was trying to figure out what I was going to say, and then I would return to the board triumphantly and I would give this whiteboard talk that was catered to what they wanted. Now, would it surprise you if I told you that, doing this thousands of times, the presentation was like identical every single time, and that that was all theater?

Speaker 1: 9:57

Now, the reason it worked, though, and I'll bring it to cognitive bias here so one of the things that were so you mentioned, andy, mentioned confirmation bias. Another one that's sort of related to it is choice supportive bias, so we will, inherently, we will see things that support a decision that we've made. Confirmation bias is about, like your worldview. Choice supportive is that I've just chosen to buy a Hyundai, and so everywhere I look, I'll see Hyundai commercials or data or reports that say that Hyundai is the safest or most economical, or whatever it is that I care about, and so, when we make these decisions, we tend to see things that support our point of view.

Speaker 1: 10:30

Now, if I'm trying to convince somebody to do something different than what they've already decided, I have to overcome choice supportive bias. I can't just tell them here's the better thing, because I know that they'll nod their head all along, and then they'll reach the same conclusion they reached before, which means I'm on the outside. So when I do my whiteboard, what I would do is I would draw things on the whiteboard and I would pace them out, right, because we know that if you hear something. Actually, let me cite a different study, and I know it's a bit convoluted, but I'm going to bring it back, I promise. So there's another book.

Speaker 1: 11:01

This book's called Better and it was written by a neurosurgeon talking about, like, how do you improve medicine? And one of the things they did and I'll get the summary wrong, so if somebody's read this and it's like Mike, your detail is a little bit off. You know, I'm cooking man, don't get in the way. But so they went to a hospital, right, and they audited the hospital, they observed, and do you know what? The number one cause of death in hospitals is? By chance.

Speaker 3: 11:30

Do not. You're going to pull something in Medication errors.

Speaker 1: 11:32

Oh, that would be good. No, that should be very scary. If they're messing that up all the time, it's actually infection. Infection was the number one cause of death in hospitals, and so when they observed the way that everyone was working inside this hospital, they realized that there's these things you could do. So they made a recommendation. Here's the 27 things you should do to drive an infection down, and it was simple. Things right, like train people on this, move sinks closer to the doors. There's just a bunch of fairly easy things that were all about how people do their jobs. So then they went and implemented the 27 things, and what do you think?

Speaker 3: 12:07

happened to the?

Speaker 1: 12:07

infection rate. It plummeted, right yeah, it stayed the same. So it stayed the same. They implemented the 27 things and it stayed the same. So they went to a different hospital. They made the same observations, but this time, instead of telling them what they should do, they just said here's the observations, what do you think we should do? And so the group came up with the same basic list of 27 things, or whatever the number was. And this time, what do you think happened to the infection rates? Up, down or the same?

Speaker 2: 12:33

I was wrong last time. I'm afraid to answer Tim. I'm going to say it got worse.

Speaker 1: 12:38

No, no, no. They got better because the team came up with their own recommendations. They weren't listening to outside consultants tell them what to do. These were their own ideas and we know that when it's our own ideas, we more faithfully follow them. This is actually choice supportive bias. This means that if I come up with the idea, then I believe I'm right. So I'm more likely to go do what I have to go do In the case that somebody else comes up with the idea. It's their idea, it's not my idea. So I don't follow it like faithfully and so I'm not going to. I don't. I don't pull that in Now.

Speaker 1: 13:06

Let me pull this back to the whiteboard thing. So if what I do on the whiteboard is, I reveal information slowly, I put the breadcrumbs out at a pace so that the audience is always one step ahead of me. When I deliver the punchline, I'm not asking the audience to agree with me, because they've already reached the punchline before I say it. What I'm doing is I'm agreeing with the audience and so I take that entire sales thing and instead of trying to convince them that I'm right, what I'm doing is reaffirming to them that they're right, and now they have an idea that they never had in the first place. What whiteboard allows me to do? Even though it's always the same, it feels better to the audience. What it allows me to do is to pace things out and to make it so that it's all about them and not about me, and then it reaffirms all of the thinking. That's an easy sales way to use cognitive bias towards my pursuits.

Speaker 3: 13:57

So I've got a question here, mike, because you've already turned this on its head for me, because when I was researching, getting ready for this conversation, I was looking at this from all of the different cognitive biases. I was looking at it from a lens of me. How do I perceive my own? And, like I said, you kind of flipped it on its head. For me is that you're taking a you know, a quote seller focus lens and you're trying to get people to think the way that you think in not so many words. So do you then need to back to the whiteboard example? Do you feel like you need to understand the cognitive biases of your audience, or can you take like a templative approach to how you go after that and try to get them to think the way that you want them to?

Speaker 1: 14:51

A little bit of both. So I think the thing about cognitive biases there's dozens of them, but there's not like thousands of them, and so people will think a certain way, and once you understand the patterns and the ways that people think, then you can more effectively navigate. You won't be 100% right, but if you're dealing with an audience, you'll be in a better position. So I typically go in with a mental model about how can I be as persuasive as I want to be in this particular setting, and then what I'll do is apply, frankly, a little bit of tips and tricks to try to set the situation up so I can do what I need to do. Now, in some cases I got to be really careful how this comes across right, so that can be seen as manipulative. You know, I would just say if I use my powers for good, then you know I'm a superhero. If I use my powers for bad, then I'm a supervillain, and so obviously, for me I would always use my powers for good.

Speaker 1: 16:05

No-transcript usually enough to trigger me to say, okay, what am I actually anchored to?

Speaker 1: 16:13

A good example would be you know, like I've got 12 year old twin boys and they're constantly, you know, like, fighting.

Speaker 1: 16:20

They like each other a lot and they just it's like a lot of fighting and they'll say some stuff and then every once in a while I'll have this.

Speaker 1: 16:25

I'll have like a really strong, you know, negative reaction to something and I'm like I realized I'm not reacting to what they said, I'm reacting to something that's inside me, and so when that happens, you kind of then I'll try to pause and then what I've taught myself is that when I, when, in moments where I'm clearly impacted by something beyond just the situation, what I do is I practice silence, and it's not just like count to three, I will actually sit there and try to. I'll take 30 seconds of awkward silence because I'm like I realize there's something going on in my head and I don't entirely know what it is, but I know it's not what the kids just did and so it's a little bit of. I know that's a long answer to your question, but like, so you got to be aware of it in yourself and then you got to be aware of it in the situations around you so you can effectively navigate.

Speaker 2: 17:12

It's a very good trick is take some time. When you're mad, I do the same thing. I get very quiet. I'm like uh-oh, something's happening inside of me. I need to not say anything for a little bit because it's going to come out wrong.

Speaker 1: 17:30

Well, so let me give you a good example. So I use this with my kids. Actually, I try to teach them self-awareness. I want you to picture yourself now on a crowded subway. It's wall-to-wall people and everyone's crammed in pretty tight. It's rush hour on a weekday and you're standing there and you've got your back to someone behind you and then they elbow you. I mean like really hard in the ribs, I mean it hurts, and so you turn around with like rage in your mind, right, and then you turn around and the person's blind. Are you still mad? No, you're not mad, right, because now in fact, you probably react like oh no, I'm sorry, I should have given you more room, like you're almost apologetic about it. You know, I should have given you more room, like you're almost apologetic about it.

Speaker 1: 18:05

You see, your, your anger, your reaction in that moment wasn't tied to being hit in the ribs. It was tied to a story. You had instantaneously told yourself that the reason you got hit was because the person was somehow careless. They were at fault, and so when you wheeled around, you wanted to blame them for that. And when you find out that they weren't careless, then all the rage it just dissipates like.

Speaker 1: 18:23

That's a good example where, like we tell ourselves these stories, we're sort of wired to think a certain way and then when you find out the situation is a little bit different than you'd anticipated. Everything just dissipates. Now imagine if you could control that at will, that if all of your responses were reasoned. Now look, I'm not a robot, so I would say my success rate on controlling stuff is pretty low, but there are moments where I'm a little bit better than I would have otherwise been, and in those moments that's when I find either clarity or I find, in some cases, just a level of effectiveness with either my family or my co-workers or my friends that I wouldn't have before. And it's tied to my ability to sit down, think and then stop, the way that I'm hardwired to react and actually deal with my own in this case, cognitive biases towards what I thought was going to happen or what I thought the cause was.

Speaker 2: 19:12

Are the stories we tell ourselves, the biases that we're talking about?

Speaker 1: 19:18

Yeah, they can be. The biases will manifest as stories. It's like another good one, right, and I'll pick up some topics that I think are a little bit controversial, because I think it's it's good to talk about. So like, why is it that if we say that, um, that, that, uh, middle-aged white men have privilege, a lot of people will fight you on that right? Like a lot of people will. And and why is it that they fight you on it? Okay, why?

Speaker 2: 19:43

You said it in our last episode Hold on, survivorship bias it is, survivorship bias, it is survivorship bias. Nailed it.

Speaker 3: 19:52

Please explain.

Speaker 1: 19:53

So survivorship bias we tend to attribute to ourselves any success that we have right. So if we're successful, it's because we tried hard or because we had the capability or we put in the effort or whatever it is that we think. And when we fail we'll find conditions that are outside our control. So it's like someone else's fault that I didn't succeed. It's all me if I'm successful. And so when we start talking about things like privilege, it's actually very difficult because you're asking somebody to conclude that maybe they didn't succeed entirely on their own merits, and so you're going against. So even if they're like, very rational and you go through, they will agree with you that yes, I agree, yes, I agree, yes, I agree. No, I'm not, I didn't benefit from privilege, like I did it all myself. Because at that point you fall back on your cognitive bias, on your way of thinking about the world, and so it's very difficult to overcome that. And so some of these discussions where we again we believe that we're going to produce a bunch of reports, I'm going to show you a bunch of statistics, I'm going to give you the numbers and then I'm going to hope that you change your position. You don't usually educate people in the submission. That's not usually the thing that breaks through right.

Speaker 1: 20:59

It's very easy and this is why we have cognitive dissonance. It's because I have a belief that's strongly held in the face of evidence that I can't deny. What do I do in that moment? And that creates these moments that are actually very difficult to rationalize. And that's one of the things that creates a little bit of energy and emotion in some of the debates that we have and it actually makes people walk away because at some point, if I can't rationalize it, if I can't get my point across to you, if you're anchored to some report, study, number, and I'm anchored to some sort of fundamental way of thinking, if I can't get things through, it'll be very frustrating and I will actually walk away from that conversation or, in some cases, end the relationship. Obviously, we're in an election year, so people will end relationships.

Speaker 2: 21:41

Yeah. So when you're faced with those periods of what'd you call it Cognitive dissonance, when our biases are challenged by evidence that refutes it, I guess we'd fall back to our biases, because it's easier, right, it's harder to challenge your own, like you, you would. You would put, when we had you on last time, around survivorship bias you would. You had said something I thought was really interesting about you know, as a, you know, let's say, as, like a white guy who grew up middle class, you think all your successes in your life not you, but the royal you, um, were because of you and all the hard work you've done and how smart you are. But maybe you started on third base, comparatively speaking to other people, right? So look how great I am. Well, there was a lot of things you didn't have to overcome that other people would. So that blew my mind, because to me that ties into, I don't know, prejudice, racism. It seems to go there, right, that's where a lot of that stuff is, and I've had recent conversations, mike, with people that I'm very close to around the election year stuff, and I tried to have and you have said this to me a hundred times, you know trying to present data to someone trying to convince them of to think differently is useless, but I still do it, even knowing a lot of these things that you're talking about. And I spent 45 minutes on a car ride home talking to this buddy of mine uh, just about the election stuff, and how could you and this and that, the other thing, especially the who you are and where you're from and your heritage and all that. And at the end of 45 minutes we were nowhere near a middle point of you know. At the end he was like, well, listen, buddy, I still love you. You're my buddy, like you know, I don't care who you vote for. And then he texted me later like hey, man, believe what you believe.

Speaker 2: 23:27

Faced with all this evidence and again, we're not talking politics here, but it happens over and over again in my life I try to understand where someone's coming from, because I'd really like to understand them, because I'm not where they are and maybe we're both in our own, locked in our own biases. It's. It's really hard for me to to understand people. You would said once about you know, when we work together, like Andy, don't assume malice, right. And and that might be like one of my own biases I used to get livid.

Speaker 2: 23:54

If something you know wasn't right or somebody did something that I thought was malicious and you're like sometimes people just you know they have their own, then you tie it in constraints. I like how you frame a lot of this stuff. They're under different constraints and if you can find those constraints in conversations, then you can start to get to the meat of what's happening. Not, these people are dumb or they don't understand networking or they never manage a network. That was my biases. Coming into that role was like these people don't know what they're talking about and I need to educate them. But that never went well for me. Tim, you're laughing, right, but that's what I thought my role was, and it didn't go well for me ever when I did that. But then, when I started to try to reveal constraints because that's what Mike had showed me like they're just under a different set of constraints Then we were able to find out that they weren't idiots, right, they just had different parameters that they were working under.

Speaker 3: 24:50

I want to ask Mike, I want to ask you for a hot take and first off, maybe you can start by educating me a little bit, and by a little I mean a lot, and I don't think I've heard you say yet cognitive bias is inherently bad. So maybe you can start with that. But my question is depending on that answer, are there any situations in which just blind cognitive bias is okay?

Speaker 1: 25:16

Sure. So if you believe Daniel Kahneman a lot of the way we think so, daniel Kahneman, as Andy mentioned, wrote a book, thinking Fast and Slow. It's a pretty heady book, so I would say it's challenging to get through the middle part of it, but it's worth reading. And then if you combine that with a book called Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss, it will give you all the negotiating tools that you need to get whatever it is that you need out of a situation. If you put those together and use them for evil, you can become quite powerful. I'm pretty sure it's how Emperor Palpatine started, was those two books. But so no, it's not so.

Speaker 1: 25:56

Bias is not necessarily bad. So a lot of times it comes up out of survival, right. So like a good example is if you talk to, if you take men and women and how they behave in social situations, men will be. In general, we tend to be more relaxed, more trusting. We don't really think about the implications because most of us are never really afraid for our lives. Women are in different situations and so they'll perceive like if you get off the same floor as a woman in a hotel and you get off and you're trying to be chivalrous. You're like, please get off in front of before me, and then you make the same turn that she makes. That feels very intimidating and so like and women are a lot of that like it comes out of a sense of survival. It's not a bad thing, right? It's in fact it's. You know, it has in fact saved lives. So there's nothing that's inherently wrong with seeing things the way you see them. What I think you have to be is a little bit aware about how these things come into play and then understand in certain situations when you want to dial them up and dial them down. I think that's because I think self-awareness and being deliberate. If you talk to anybody about leadership, one of the things they'll say is they want you to be deliberate. What deliberateness really means is I want to rely on more than just muscle memory in a situation and be thoughtful about what I'm going through right now. I think there's real value in thinking that way.

Speaker 1: 27:16

In corporate settings, people will see things the way they see them, which I think is fine. It means they can identify problems very, very quickly and I think going in and having a particularly skeptical mind because things have never worked in the past, that's actually useful to have at least one person on the team that is going in and really asking a bunch of detailed questions, presuming it's going to fail, and forcing people to think through some of the detail that's required to put a proper plan in place. Now, of course, you don't want 10 people all doing that, because then you never get started, so there's a bit of a balance in how you do that, but I think that's actually a healthy. When you think about team chemistry, it's not just about do I have people that have all different types of skills that can fill out the team. It's also going to be do you have people with different styles, different ways of perceiving things that allow you to get a more broad understanding of what the current situation is and how you might maneuver? I think that kind of diversity is really valuable. And then again, that diversity will frequently come out of different walks of life, which is why things like diversity are important, not necessarily because you pick up somebody that has a different character, race, gender, whatever, but because you get people with different backgrounds that have experienced life in different ways, and those different experiences will actually come to roost in different base beliefs, in some cases different biases and that will actually ground out the team. So I think that's where things go. And then for people who are listening, it's like, oh my God, what does all that mean? What it means is you've got to be a little bit aware of what you're thinking, what the people around you are thinking. You should be at least somewhat able to identify why they're thinking that. And if you can't identify it, then you need to do something transformative, like ask them. And I'll give you a really easy example.

Speaker 1: 28:58

So when I was at Brocade, I had a marketing counterpart. Her name is Vasu. She was super friendly. We got along really, really well and I was a very frustrated stakeholder and she could not figure out why. Because we always got along so well. We would have these one-on-ones, we'd get along great, we would chat about things and we really connected. We would hug when we met. I mean, we were like we're friends.

Speaker 1: 29:21

And then I'd be frustrated in public settings about what the marketing team was doing for me and public settings about what the marketing team was doing for me. And so we got in a meeting this one time and she said Mike, why are you so frustrated? I said, vasu, what do you think my number one concern is. And so she quickly rattled something off. And I said that's not it. And she looked at me she's a little bit like okay. And then she quickly rattled off a second. I said, vasu, that's not it either. And then she got serious. She said okay.

Speaker 1: 29:44

And she thought for a minute and then she rattled off a third thing. I said Vasu, that's not my number one concern either. And she looked at me and she said what's your biggest? She said what do you mean? That's not your biggest concern. I said Vasu, has it ever occurred to you that you've literally never asked me what my biggest concern was? And she was mortified. And then she sat back. She said Mike, what's your biggest concern? See, we assume that there might be constraints, there might be different things that are driving people. We do all this work trying to read people, which is fine. I think it's good to be observant and try to put it all together. But in the absence of all of that, it's actually okay once in a while to just ask the question, right, what's your primary concern?

Speaker 3: 30:25

Mike, why do you think we don't do that? Is it like fear that we're going to get embarrassed by asking somebody a question like that? Or what are your thoughts?

Speaker 1: 30:35

I think we're mostly transactional and so we work the issue and we don't always work the person. So you're inside, like if you're in the middle of this heated thing, and especially when you disagree, you get this fight or flight. Like a lot of people, it's really hard to debate Like I actually get fight or flight, as confident as I am in some of these settings. For me my adrenaline kicks in when I have a disagreement with somebody, whether it's big or small. You know small meeting, you know big meeting, I will. Like the adrenaline kicks in and I don't always think like why don't I just ask this question to diffuse the situation or to better understand? I'm so concerned with telling people why I'm right and when they're talking I mean we all know this right. Someone's talking and you're sitting there formulating your response already Like oh my God, like here's exactly what I'm going to say, and then you lose kind of the art of the exchange. I think that's part of it. And then I think, just when you care about the issue and you're not really tied into the person, like there's the question like what are you, what are your constraints? Like that's so far upstream from whatever it is you're working right now that it doesn't always like and it feels like foundational. So look at it this way how many of us have made fun of leaders because they say something like this, like oh, let's all take a step back. Like it's a meme in leadership. Like you're like, oh're like, oh, they're not adding value, they don't know much. There's actually value in that. Now, I'm not saying that 100% of the time that's a value adding statement. Of course it's not. But there actually is something like okay, what are we trying to do? Sometimes it's actually not clear. Two teams will have a different view of what you're trying to do. What are we trying to optimize for? What are the constraints that exist? And once you start to surface some of these things, you start to have more real exchanges on what's going on, and then you can start moving people past their positions. And you don't move them past their position because you're just educating them on a topic that they already know. What you're doing is creating a visceral connection between the person and some other systemic thing that's around, and sometimes that's enough to dislodge or to kind of get past this position that they don't even know why they hold it. What you're going to do is create these moments that give people the opportunity to change their position and again just to kind of wrap up.

Speaker 1: 32:41

So I make my living in the vendor space and I'm trying to sell stuff to people who've purchased other stuff, which means 100% of the time I have to convince them that the decisions they've made in the past are wrong. I'm constantly swimming upstream, and if I believe that my data sheet is enough to get them past that, then I should never have a sales meeting. I should just mail data sheets to everybody. But instead, if we presume that's not particularly effective, then what I've got to do is figure out okay, what's the set of conditions that existed to get you here, and what might those conditions be to get you there? And how do I surface that? So it's your decision and not mine. That's what my job is.

Speaker 2: 33:39

And frankly, it's hard to do. If I think fundamentally, if I just talk about one more protocol, need of scouring the whole network for a particular configuration usually takes a lot of time in many terminal windows. Unimis shrinks this tedious process into a couple of clicks and keystrokes. The config search feature lets you easily look up and list all devices in your network with a particular config, with regex and time range search options. You can also perform network-wide validations of your device's running state. With Unimis automation features you can, for example, query any show command outputs from your devices at scale, with the results automatically grouped. You can easily find non-working links in LACP bonds, stp root bridges, wireless frequencies used by access points or any other operational parameters of your devices. Interested in a device agnostic NCM software to automate configuration management for your entire network, check out Unimus.

Speaker 2: 34:35

Now back to the show. I know Tim has a question. I have a question from 20 minutes ago that I didn't ask because Tim asked a great question, but I really just want to touch on it to confirm something. The whiteboard scenario no, I'm lying Before that. The hospital infection scenario Are you saying that the people who came up with their own solution were more effective in reducing infection. Yes, because they thought it was their idea, as opposed to an external person told them what to do. Their behavior was different because the external people telling them what to do, they didn't follow protocol as closely as. Hey, we have an idea, we are doing this, we are invested. Did I follow that?

Speaker 1: 35:14

Yeah, that's right, and it's not just because they thought it was their idea, it actually was their idea.

Speaker 2: 35:18

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:19

What's interesting, especially in situations where you think that everybody should, once they see the situation, everybody should reach the same conclusions. When that's the case, you don't have to tell them the actions, you just have to make the evidence available to them and then let them reach the conclusion on their own. And once it's their decision and not yours, they will more faithfully follow it. So it's actually a lot easier. So in my, if I go back to my work thing where I have to convince people to take different decisions, a way that's effective is if I point out the conditions that existed when they did thing A and then point out the change in conditions and then ask them, in the presence of these conditions, what's the right answer. They will frequently reach the decision on their own, and I don't have to say it. And when they reach that conclusion, then all of a sudden they'll start rethinking through well, maybe, actually, and then they'll work their way to whatever a better decision for them is.

Speaker 2: 36:10

And this is what you might do on a whiteboard. That's how you tie the yeah, you're walking them through. Okay, yeah, because it was an important connection that I missed. That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1: 36:20

It's also the pacing of the story.

Speaker 2: 36:21

You've said this before the decisions they made at a point in time made sense, then Correct. Made at a point in time, made sense, then correct. But but they're tied to those decisions because of some bias I wrote down, you know, whatever the hell it is availability or like they're. They're tied to a decision they made but they're probably not even aware of it, like the way things have always been done. I think that's a particular bias here I'm looking at right, but I like how you tie it to well, it's a decision they made at a point in time.

Speaker 2: 36:46

they don't have stay forever. Like, here you are and you're trying to convince them of something different. Well, if it's the way they've always done it and nobody gets fired for buying whatever the funny little thing is today that they change. It used to be IBM and then it was Cisco or whatever. But I guess, like I'm reading one of the how cognitive biases can impact your career, like poor decision making, you might continue to make the same decision over and go over again and keep implementing vendor A's solutions, because it's the way you've always done it Pre-existing beliefs based on experience, even though if those decisions started 20 years ago, Mike right Like you're still holding onto that.

Speaker 2: 37:23

Well, we've always done it this way. We have to keep doing it this way. And there's places still running mainframes, probably because they always run mainframes.

Speaker 1: 37:29

Let me tell you like an easy example, right? So we think through how you like what's the right way to make a presentation. We've all heard the mantra tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what you told them In that model that presumes that what they're missing to make the right decision is information. If they merely knew, that's good. But you're not going to that model. Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what you told them. That model actually doesn't let them reach any conclusions on their own. It says in the very first slide here's what I'm going to tell you, here's the conclusion I want you to reach, and then I'm going to litigate that case to sort of prove why I't tell them what you're going to tell them. Let them discover it and then let them reach the conclusion on their own and hope that they reach the conclusion, or set it up so they reach the conclusion before you tell them.

Speaker 1: 38:14

It's a very different sales style. But are you more likely to change your position because somebody boldly asserts here's the way you should be thinking and they back it up? Or are you going to be like, yeah, that person is a consultant. They're an empty suit. There's like think about all the words we use to describe people who do that versus somebody who comes in and they sort of almost like Columbo, where they go in and they kind of ask a couple of questions. You don't entirely know where they're going. And then they get to where they're going and you're like, wow, I have like a totally different point of view than I have before, don't entirely know, I can't really tell where the idea came from. Those are very different approaches.

Speaker 1: 38:51

And then, instead of imagining it in a sales setting, now imagine that, you know, put yourself in the middle of corporate politics and you're talking to your supervisor, or your supervisor's supervisor, maybe a peer on the other side of the organization. Like, are you going to tell them what you're going to tell them? Tell them and tell them, tell them and then tell them what you told them. Like, is that really going to be effective? Because I've been in that supervisor chair. When people come up and they tell me what they're going to tell me, and as soon as they tell me what they, when they tell me what they're going to tell me, you know what I'm doing In my head. I'm thinking of all the reasons that they're wrong because they don't understand this they don't understand that.

Speaker 1: 39:22

So they actually they hearted me by going in with that approach. So now it's actually more difficult for them to convince me because I'm giving into my own cognitive biases, which is like you know, don't you tell me what I'm going to do, because you don't know me. This is my position, right, like like it actually steals me against the, against. Um, you know what they're trying to convince me of. It's a but it's. It's very common, right? If you go to, like almost all these presentation classes, they all tell you to do the same thing, and I'm just telling you that that works in some cases. Doesn't work in all. I'm not saying change how you present all the time, but I am saying be aware of what you're walking into and maybe be thoughtful about which tool is the right tool for the job in whatever the situation is.

Speaker 2: 40:02

I think I know the answer to this question, but how do you pull them along to plant those seeds?

Speaker 1: 40:08

For me. I paste the information out, so I put breadcrumbs out because I'm and I let them discover on their own right. So if I believe fundamentally so, even in this conversation, by the way, I've been doing it right, my pacing.

Speaker 2: 40:21

Oh, come on, You're hacking us.

Speaker 1: 40:24

Yeah, I am, I'm hacking and I'm hacking and truthfully I'm hacking the audience, but I'm doing it intentionally. So when I say things slow enough and I'm so I'll be more verbose, I'll be more expressive, I will show my work in more detail and I will wait longer until I reveal the punchline, so that by the time I reveal the punchline, everybody's there before I am. There's nothing I've said in the time that we've been talking, where I went straight to the punchline. Everything I've done I've intentionally taken circuitous paths, I've used storytelling to get there. I've said one thing Thank you.

Speaker 2: 40:56

That's what I was looking for so I thank your superpower and your trick and I've been studying it the past six months is storytelling. I've seen you do it masterfully and one or two other folks and I've been dabbling on my own. But storytelling seems to be a way to disarm people and they forget. This book I'm reading it's like when somebody says, hey, let me tell you a story. Everybody gets quiet and listens. It's just because we are story-driven people from forever and ever ago, and it seems to be this magical hack of getting people.

Speaker 2: 41:30

If people are going to listen to you, like you said, mike, somebody comes in and they're going to tell you what they're going to tell you. You're not listening already. You're like screw you, you don't know what you're talking about, and I'm right. But if somehow they can compel you with a story and now get you in this narrative, and now all of a sudden you're in imagination land and you're going along for the story because you have no other choice, because that's how our brains are wired, I think that's the key, right. That's how you can pull people along and put breadcrumbs and get them to start to see things slowly is through story.

Speaker 1: 41:56

I love how you speak in story.

Speaker 2: 41:57

I find it very effective.

Speaker 1: 41:59

Well, let me give you two examples. So imagine that you hear a song on the radio you've literally never heard before, but even the way it's going, you sort of know what the next note is likely to be. And you may not be 100% right, but you know kind of where it's going, because these stories or songs, or whatever, they have an arc and that arc allows me to predict what is next. Picture yourself watching a movie. 10 minutes in, you're trying to figure out what the plot of the movie is, and this is what makes the twist so effective, is that it's it's not what you expected, but the twist only works because you had an expectation. You're watching it play out and then you have.

Speaker 1: 42:32

It's when you, when you, when you use these, these moments like theatrically, you can have great effect on your audience. It turns out you can do the same thing with people, right when you're, when you're trying to work towards a conclusion, like, if you have a story, that story has an arc and people will follow Again, I'm doing the same thing I just told you. All I'm doing is repeating the same thing I told you, but I told it in stories before and now, when I go and lay it out. It's like you already know where I'm going, and so then, when I reach my conclusion, you will have been there two steps before I get there, when in fact, I'm the one that plotted the course the entire time.

Speaker 2: 43:06

So our brains take shortcuts that Dan Kahneman called. What was it Thinking one, or whatever the hell.

Speaker 1: 43:10

System one, thinking System one and system two Right.

Speaker 2: 43:13

It takes shortcuts, which he called heuristics.

Speaker 2: 43:16

And there are ways that our brain just take all this information and tries to distill it down into something more simple and understandable. I think those heuristics create biases, the shortcuts create these gaps in rational thinking that we have, and then we get stuck there. So I guess awareness of all this is step one, and then storytelling to me seems to be where you can start to. Once you understand how people think and why bombarding them with information and data sheets is frustrating and doesn't change anything, then maybe you can leverage storytelling to make progress that you couldn't make before. Does that sound fair Like should people be studying storytelling after they learn about cognitive bias?

Speaker 1: 43:59

Yeah, I think it's really about like how do you get information to somebody in a way that they can absorb based on where they're at? And stories are a great way to do it, because I'm not talking to you about the moment. I'm talking to you about something that's maybe you know it's related, but it sounds like it's different. It's somehow far afield. It's frequently like I'll draw on, like one of the things I do with my teams is I draw on my personal experiences, because I try to make it so that it's real and it's things I've actually done, and so that it's real and it's things I've actually done, and so that makes it approachable. And then when I go and tell those stories, then you connect with the story and then the story itself has a meaning. You don't need the author to tell you the meaning of the story. I mean, we've all been through these classes. You read the story, you develop a sense for the meaning and then when I come along and offer the meaning again, it's your conclusions, not mine. Like these are the ways. This is how you intercept people where they are.

Speaker 1: 44:53

Um, and then I guess to tim's points early on. I mean, he asked the question, he's I see. So I flipped it on its head, because I he thinks about like, how do you break, break away from your own bias, right, that's, that's like a good way, and I'm talking about how do you leverage other people's biases to be more effective, you know. Then the question is, how do you hack yourself? Because I will tell you that it's, there's, there's very few things that are as destructive as being, like, anchored in your own way of thinking and incapable of movement. And if you can't identify that that's where you are, then you'll be one of the ones that's left behind, because you're the're the dinosaur, you're the one that couldn't change and it's where we all, by default, right, so we have to actively fight it.

Speaker 2: 45:32

At least, that's how I feel. I am constantly seeking out people I disagree with and trying to understand them, because I do not want to become stuck in my way as a dinosaur who may?

Speaker 3: 45:42

yeah, it's seeking out people that disagree with you, but mike you, you, you actually that last statement, I don't think you could have laid those breadcrumbs any better because you talked about hacking yourself. So what I wanted to ask you was in your career in IT, in leadership, what are some specific scenarios or situations that you've come across that you have really had to slow down and be aware of potential biases before you make a big decision?

Speaker 1: 46:17

Probably the biggest. There's two that were like really foundational in my and I've shared these in various settings. Apologies if some of this is a repeat, but there was a woman, michelle Batia, who worked with me when I was at Juniper, when I was kind of at this pretty big inflection, like a kind of a step function growth point for me. I had taken on strategy and operations and business planning and and and and, and I actually quite, quite intentionally, was taking all this stuff on because I was like, look, if I control all of this, then I will be indispensable. I was, I made myself the center of everything and I was secretly building your empire.

Speaker 1: 46:56

I was and I was doing it by, by trying to own everything, and I was late on everything as a result, because I was so instrumental to everything that everything ran through me. I couldn't keep up. And so she told me we had a strategy deliverable and I was late on it. And she said you know, you're always late. And I basically said don't you know all the things I'm doing? And I snapped at her and she said something back that was sharp but needed. And I dropped an F-bomb in her office and she looked at me and she said get out, don't you ever talk to me like that. So I slammed the door, I walked out, I stood outside her office and it took me, you know, maybe a minute to have the sort of the world ending. Shame on me. It was like so wildly inappropriate. And I opened the door and I apologized and she said like don't talk to me like that, it's inappropriate. I'm like I know. And then she gave me the kindest, most courageous advice anyone ever gave me. She said you think you're helping yourself by doing all these things, but nobody knows all the things you do. All they know is that the thing they're waiting on is always late and you're always grumpy because you don't sleep. And she said you think you're helping your career, you're actually killing it, and that I mean that cut me like a proverbial knife. I, and it forced me to rethink all like I I had. Survivorship bias is really powerful. I had ascended through a couple, two grade, two promotions and I had accumulated all this power, thinking that I was doing all the right things, and so I was more resolute in the decisions I was making because I had seen some traction. And when she came in and gave me a counterpoint, that was undeniable and it was surrounded by this moment where I had acted like an absolute, like inappropriate oaf. I was laid bare in that moment and it forced me to rethink everything, all of my assumptions, and that was the visceral connection I needed to be able to set aside, like any survivorship bias I had, and then any confirmation by, like all the other biases, that sort of go along with that. That moment did more for my career than any other moment in my entire career and it changed the way it's then.

Speaker 1: 49:02

Now, like my view, I actually don't build empire. Since that moment, I've never consciously built an empire. Actually don't build empire. Since that moment, I've never consciously built an empire. I'll stray, I'll make mistakes now and again. I'm a deeply flawed individual and probably more flawed leader.

Speaker 1: 49:17

I am forever aware of what I'm taking on and how I'm serving myself and how I'm serving the team around me, and that requires separation and a very sober assessment, and that for me personally.

Speaker 1: 49:34

I have these moments of clarity, these moments of, let's say, sobriety, late at night, when I'm like it's me in my bed, I'm getting ready for sleep and I have. Or if I'm driving sometimes, or I travel a lot, so if I'm on an airplane where I'm just I'll put my headphones on and I will just block out the world, and then I'll have these moments where I'm forced to be really truthful with myself. And in those moments when I'm at my very, very best, I will reach conclusions that I can carry with me when I'm during moments where I'm not at my best. And so it's about developing conviction when I'm not in the moment and then having the discipline to stick by my conviction when the moment arises. And it's served me well in my career. It's served me even better in my home life podcasts. But if anyone knows Michelle Batia, tell her that she paid the greatest service to me that anyone in my life has ever done, because she changed everything about me, and it was because she had the courage to say what needed to be said and to do it in a way that was forceful enough to knock me off my perch, but then kind enough to pierce the armor that I had essentially put up around me.

Speaker 3: 50:46

You know, mike, and I think that's where, when dealing with these biases I think that's where leadership is especially difficult, because I'm thinking about just some real world, day-to-day scenarios You're having to make big decisions around things like hiring, things like business decisions that I think you really need to slow down and understand how you're thinking and what the end goal is and how to get there in a fair way.

Speaker 1: 51:14

I think that's right, like it's, it's. It's hard. For me. Muscle memory is like the, the. I mean cognitive bias. Is muscle memory Like I? We all fall into muscle memory.

Speaker 1: 51:22

The way we behave, um, you know companies have it too. You know we call it culture when it's at a company level, but it's how you behave in the absence of direction. And so we have this and then, and then you know, and sometimes it serves us well. Again, it's not always bad, but in the moments when you, when you need to be more deliberate or you need to reach a different outcome, it's like do you have the awareness, do you have the tools to separate yourself and make a decision? And I will tell you that the average person does not. And it's not because they lack the capability, but they do lack the awareness. They don't exist in the moment.

Speaker 1: 51:56

And so I guess I want to say this, because the difference between being wildly effective and, let's say, mediocre is actually not like, oh, you have to have all this talent or all this experience or maybe extra training. It's not necessarily that way. In some cases, it's just being aware and doing the small little things that make you more effective. And so if you're navigating a career and you build up, you look at Steve Jobs as your leader or pick leader of choice, and if you try to hold yourself to whatever standards they have, you're probably doing yourself a disservice of efficacy can be gained with a lot smaller, incremental steps.

Speaker 1: 52:37

Um, and it's going to start with just being thoughtful. There is no, there's no grandmaster plan, there's no, you know, archetype that's good for all such, all situations, all settings. What you've got to do is be authentically you, and then that's going to come out of being at least aware of who you are and then why you are, and then, if you have the ability to work within those constraints, then you will be far more effective as a leader, far more effective as an individual and far more capable of getting people around you to reach some of the same conclusions that have kind of got you to where you are.

Speaker 3: 53:12

So we've got an interesting question in the chat from Zatharian and you talked earlier, mike, about kind of your techniques for selling something to someone, or selling an idea or trying to get somebody to where you think you want them, and you talked about storytelling and leading them with breadcrumbs. And the question is have you encountered anyone in a conversation you've been having, or maybe a disagreement, that that person has tried those similar techniques on you while you're actively doing the same?

Speaker 2: 53:47

Have you been bouchonged? You're actively doing the same.

Speaker 1: 53:53

Have you been bouchonged? Yes, I have. So one of my mentors was a guy named Spencer Green and Spencer Green was, I mean, just very, very thoughtful. He kind of showed me a lot of things and there's been times where I could feel him manipulating me and I don't necessarily want to be manipulated, but you can see where he's going and so you kind of let it happen but he was wildly effective at doing this with me.

Speaker 1: 54:24

There's been other folks in my organizations that at times have Like Kathy Gidecki. She's been my go-to person for, I want to say, 15 years now and she knows how to manage me. So she knows when to let me kind of just go and she knows when to apply the constraints and how to kind of manage me a little bit in terms of, like my expectations and how to make things my ideas. She's particularly crafty, so I believe I'm a good communicator, so I have a lot of ego around my writing and she's one of the few people that's figured out how to edit my writing and move me off of my positions without me getting defensive about here's why I wrote it that way.

Speaker 1: 55:03

And she's very good. So she'll do the same things. I don't know if she does it with the same intent that I do, but she definitely uses some of the same tips and tricks. And when it happens I'll be honest, when I notice it, it actually makes me smile. It doesn't make me frustrated, because I imagine what the question behind the question is. If you know this is being done to you, does that make you dig in or does that make you lean into it? That's my yeah.

Speaker 1: 55:25

And for me, when you realize it's happening, especially when it's the people, when you know someone is, is we have a relationship and you can tell that they're, you know, let's say pure of heart when it happens, it makes me smile because you look and you're like this person is actively working, with my faults, to help me reach a better place on my terms and not their terms. That's actually a great kindness. So I will. When I notice it, and when I'm at my best, I will be thankful. When I notice it and I'm not at my best, I will be, let's say, arrogant, and when I don't notice it and I'm not at my best, I will be. At times I will be frustrated.

Speaker 3: 56:03

So Andy, you brought something up at the beginning of this. I planned on asking you this question. You already kind of led us into it, but you only really touched on it, so I want to push on it a bit further.

Speaker 2: 56:16

You're asking me a question on Mike's episode.

Speaker 3: 56:18

I'm asking you, Andrew.

Speaker 2: 56:21

Oh boy.

Speaker 3: 56:22

And, like I said, you kind of led us into it. But I want you to go a bit deeper. Which cognitive bias do you think you are up against or think about the most? Which one do you think affects you the most?

Speaker 2: 56:36

Affects my way of misperceiving reality or affects me in business when I'm trying to deal with people.

Speaker 3: 56:43

Interactions with people.

Speaker 2: 56:46

My experience in at least the vendor world has been it's it's very, very difficult to pull people off of their preconceived notions. They're previously held, and currently held, beliefs, and I failed miserably at trying to throw information at them. Um, you know, what I learned in the two years working with Mike has really been eye-opening and valuable, and it's why we wanted to have Mike back, because you know the awareness of these concepts and then some workarounds and if you can spend in some storytelling, it can really change the outcomes with your friends, with your kids, with a girlfriend, with people in the organizations you work in. You know this is an engineering type show. So I mean, tim, you were at a pretty high level as an architect and you know there might have been times where you had to try to convince the people who signed the checks of a solution that you knew was right, and I mean I'd almost throw that back on you.

Speaker 2: 57:52

Have you? Have you been frustrated trying to convince people like you knew you were right as an engineer? Because really that's what I want people to take away from this who are listening to this how can you apply this in your own life? And I think we've. We've spelled that out pretty clearly. But, like for the engineer, you know you can say the solution is the best thing and we need to buy this. Have you run into this? Have you had people on the other side of the table you knew were wrong and you struggled to convince?

Speaker 3: 58:21

Absolutely. I think what has been tough for me the most in the past is that I may feel very strongly about something. I feel like I've researched it, it just makes sense. But in the past is that I may feel very strongly about something. I feel like I've researched it, it just makes sense. But in the past there have been times where I have a difficult time articulating that and I get frustrated, sometimes to the point it's just like why don't you just see it my way? I feel like there shouldn't be another way than this one. So, yeah, that's been difficult.

Speaker 3: 58:49

I think something that is probably wrong but I've leaned into in the past is that I've tried throughout my career to build up credibility, credit, and that I do things a certain way and I probably don't ruffle a lot of feathers and I just build a career out of I don't know if this is the right thing to say killing people with kindness and just trying to constantly get people on my side.

Speaker 3: 59:16

But I would say, yeah, that's the biggest thing. And from a technical conversation, I've had that difficulty where it's like I feel like I understand something and then we hire somebody new, bring somebody new onto the team and my job becomes teaching that person and I almost shit my pants because it's like I understand it in my head. But how do I get this information to this other person in a way that they're going to understand? And that's where I want to bring up what Mike said is that you can be the smartest person in the room, and throwing information at someone isn't necessarily the best thing to do. It's getting creative, telling that story, finding a way for someone to get to the conclusion on their own that you want them to get to.

Speaker 2: 1:00:00

And you like how I answered the question by putting it back on you.

Speaker 3: 1:00:04

Hey, that's what I did to you in my very first episode that you had me on three years ago.

Speaker 2: 1:00:10

So payback? I guess here's my mirror Pew. I think we're just about time, if not over time, not that we couldn't go all night if we wanted to. Tim, did you have any? I know you always have some amazing questions there. Is there anything you wanted to touch on before we start to wrap? Or, mike, if there's anything that we should have asked you that we didn't?

Speaker 3: 1:00:30

We've hit everything I've wanted to touch.

Speaker 2: 1:00:32

Yeah, what are we going to talk about next time?

Speaker 1: 1:00:36

I don't know. I always give you a hard time. Bring me back on. I enjoy just the conversations. I would say there's a lot that's here.

Speaker 1: 1:00:48

You tend to hit the same couple of biases, but if you just do some basic searching, like if folks are out there, it's actually interesting and you'll see some of the words that our industry tosses about the socials. A lot of these things play in. They're like a subset of the overall cognitive bias topic. I would encourage people just do a simple search for a list of cognitive biases and then you'll start to see what some of them are. And then it's not that you have to master all of them, but it's worth looking at a couple of them.

Speaker 1: 1:01:16

And I will tell you that if you can be thoughtful about how you frame up conversations, about how you approach conflict, because that's really where this kind of comes to play or I guess, in some cases when everyone's agreeing you should, maybe you need cases when everyone's agreeing you should. Maybe you need to question whether everyone's agreeing out of the merits of, on the merits of the idea, or whether they're agreeing out of the out of something else that's there and reinforcing. This is actually how companies go go sideways, but it's worth looking through that and, I think, developing a little bit of a personal strategy. I will tell you that if you spend, you's, say, five or six years really honing it, that means you only have about 15 more years to go after that. So you'll always be a work in progress. But even a few extra successes along the way, or a few easier conversions as you move people to a different way of thinking, those will propel a career and in some cases they'll propel a family in ways that are deep and meaningful, and so I do think it's in people's best interest to at least be aware of what's going on. And then if you can pick up a tip or two along the way and learn how to work within that, then that will make you wildly effective.

Speaker 1: 1:02:25

We've mentioned the Daniel Kahneman thinking fast and slow. Read Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss, because that guy, you're going to read that book and you're going to say there's no way this thing works, and then you're going to put it into use with someone and you're going to be like, oh my God, I can't believe that just worked. So read those two. And then the last one I always recommend is the book Switch by Dan and Chip Heath. If you read those three I would say that's like 50% of my leadership foundations.

Speaker 2: 1:02:53

Once you have that, then you don't need me and around the thinking fast and slow stuff, everything we talked about. There's two books that I think Yvonne turned me on to, that are at least I think they're much more accessible than Kahneman's work. His work is the Bible of it, right, but I think I got halfway through it and just smashed my head into the wall and gave up because it gets really tough there in the middle. But there's two books, think Again by Adam Grant and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, that are way more accessible, based on the same information, much shorter, much more condensed, a little more succinct and gets a little less into the deep science of it. But I really found those helpful as well. Mike, it's always a pleasure to see you. Thank you so much for coming on again. This has been fantastic.

Speaker 2: 1:03:35

We have a bunch of cool stuff coming up. We have a cool announcement coming up that we can't talk about yet, but stay tuned for a possible appearance of some Art of NetEng folks somewhere. We have a new merch store, which is pretty sweet. We have some new stuff up there. We refreshed it. We have a new vendor the quality is better than the old vendor the links to all of our things will be in the show notes. But AJ did an awesome thing and created one of those there link trees. So if you go to link tree One, of them there.

Speaker 2: 1:04:07

Link One of them there Nicky Talk, linktree's yeah, linktree. Art of NetEng. It's literally got links to every single thing that you could ever want to see, listen to, consume, interact with. It's all about the Journey Discord server where we have thousands of folks in there supporting each other, studying. We have a work with us link in there if you are a potential sponsor or vendor or business that wants to work with us. And I also want to mention to definitely check out our Cables to Clouds podcast. Some of the smartest folks in the cloud space talking all things cloud. You know hybrid is the future. If you're not in cloud, you will probably be in cloud soon. And the folks at Cables to Clouds I really like how they approach it. It's very networking centric, it's very introductory, it's easy to consume. I follow them and I love to complain about cloud, so it's a great show for anybody.

Speaker 3: 1:05:02

And if you really want to see their personalities come to the forefront, listen to their bi-weekly news podcasts, because they read the news but then they give their own ideas and spin and there's a fair amount of snark and it's fun.

Speaker 2: 1:05:19

Yeah yeah, I really enjoy their new stuff too. So thanks so much everybody for watching Mike. Thanks again for coming on. Tim, always great to see you, and we'll catch you next time on the Art of Network Engineering. Artofneteng, that's artofneteng. You can also find us on the web at artofnetworkengineeringcom, where we post all of our show notes, blog articles and general networking nerdery. You can also see our pretty faces on our YouTube channel named the Art of Network Engineering. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.