>> Amy Draves: Thank you so much for coming. I am … thanks for coming to the Microsoft Research
visiting speaker series. My name is Amy Draves, and I’m pleased to welcome Al Pittampalli, who’s here
to discuss his new book, Persuadable: How Great Leaders Change Their Minds to Change the World.
Changing your mind—or in politics, flip-flopping—can be perceived as a weakness. It shouldn’t be; in a
world that’s changing faster than ever, having a genuine willingness to seek new perspectives and be
open to changing your mind is the ultimate competitive advantage. Al is an author and business
consultant; his first book, Read This Before Our Next Meeting, is a best seller; he founded The Modern
Meeting Company to help organizations transform meetings, make decisions, and coordinate complex
teams; he speaks and blogs on making revolutionary change happen. Please join me in giving him a very
warm welcome. [applause]
>> Al Pittampalli: So the date is March fourteenth, two thousand eleven; the president and his war
cabinet are meeting in the white house; and they’re discussing how to attack the Pakistani compound
allegedly housing Osama Bin Laden. So at first, the discussion is all about coming in from the air; they’re
talking about firing a small missile from an unmanned drone or dropping a large bomb from a B2. But
there’s a couple problems: if you fire a small missile, you might miss; if you drop a large bomb, there’s a
high risk of civilian casualties; and in either case, hard to really know if you got the guy. That’s when the
administration and the president began, for the first time, to discuss the possibility of a special
operations raid—a ground raid. And in many ways, this was the riskiest strategy of all, because what if
the raid team, while helicoptering into the Pakistani compound—the air space—was detected? What if
the Pakistani military, which was stationed dangerously close to the compound, engaged the raid team
in a fire fight? What if troops were injured or killed? These were frightening questions that required
answers. So in order to answer those questions, the president consulted the man who’d ultimately be
tapped to lead the mission—a man by the name of Admiral William McRaven.
So Admiral William McRaven is actually one of the most successful military commanders probably in
history. He’s the leader of JSOC—Joint Special Operations Command—and he’s responsible for the
capture of Saddam Hussein, the rescue of Captain Philips from Somali pirates, along with many classified
accomplishments still unreleased. And the guy certainly looks the part—you could probably see right
here—he’s six-foot-one; he’s got this impeccable posture; he’s got this domineering presence—a fourstar general—and he’s the kind of guy that you want to put your faith in, right? He looks that way,
especially in such a daring mission. But there was one thing about the guy that the administration didn’t
expect—something that was atypical of military brass—McRaven was humble; he was modest, open to
suggestion, and unusually willing to change his mind. So for the very beginning, he admitted he didn’t
have all the answers; in fact, the first time he present his plan to the president, he said, “Mister
president, we haven’t link … we haven’t thoroughly tested this out yet, and we don’t know if we can do
it, but when we do, we’ll tell you straight up.” And still, even after he tested the plan, we was unusually
cautious and reminded everyone of his fallibility.
Over the course of many meetings, McRaven … the president and his administration actually started
grilling McRaven, challenging his plans, second-guessing his thinking, but McRaven didn’t seem to mind;
he approached the scrutiny without ego; and in fact, in response to a really good question, he would
say, “You know what? I haven’t thought about that, but I need to.” And he wasn’t just paying lip
service; he was making substantial changes to his plans in the face of criticism. For example, he had
proposed having backup Chinook helicopters stationed on the Afghan-Pakistani border—you know, this
would make sure that the team wasn’t infringing on Pakistani sovereignty—but the president disagreed.
He said he wanted those helicopters closer to the compound in case the SEAL teams need to get the hell
out of there; McRaven was persuaded. So the helicopters would be flown deep into Pakistan, near the
compound, ready to move. On April twenty-ninth, two thousand eleven, after a careful deliberation
process with his team, president Obama officially ordered the SEAL Team Six raid overseen by Admiral
William McRaven. Why? Afterwards—years later—people would ask him, “Why did you choose that?”
And he would say, “It’s because of McRaven. The guy just never seemed surprised by anything.”
Remember that, ‘cause that’s exactly what happened.
During the raid, one of the Black Hawk helicopters went down. The white house, which is watching via
secure link, started to panic; they were blindsided. One of the people on the call—one of the
administration—felt like he might throw up is what he said. But not McRaven; McRaven was calm; he
was expressionless; and he simply said, “We had a contingency plan; we executed that contingency plan;
and we continued on with the mission.” And that’s what they did: they continued on with the mission
and completed one of the most successful military operations in United States history.
Ladies and gentlemen, my name’s Al Pittampalli; I’m the author of a book called Persuadable; and I’m
here to talk to you about what I think is the most critical leadership skill for modern leaders—and that’s
what I call persuadability. Persuadability—or being persuadable—is the genuine willingness to change
your mind in the face of evidence. It means rejecting absolute certainty; it means treating your beliefs
as temporary and acknowledging the fact that, no matter how confident you are about any particular
opinion, you could be wrong. Now, you might say to yourself, “Well—you know—that’s great. I already
know that open-mindedness is good, right? Of course leaders should be open-minded.” But we’re not
just talking about being open-minded, ‘cause open-mindedness is like a passive thing; we’re talking
about what Jonathan Baron, who’s a professor of psychology at University of Pennsylvania, calls actively
open-minded, which means not just waiting for information to come to you; it means actively going out
to prove yourself wrong—and that’ll be one of the themes of this presentation.
But just the whole idea of talking about the genuine willingness to change your mind in the face of
evidence as a leadership skill can seem a little bit strange, because in many ways, the leadership that we
believe is strong in our culture is the opposite, right? I mean, just think about the language of successful
leaders, right? We talked about … when we talked about strong leaders—the best leaders—they stay
the course; they prove others wrong; they stand firm in their covictions; they defy the odds, right? And
what about leaders who do change their mind? We think of them as weak; we think of them as
indecisive, especially in politics, right? We call them flip-floppers or pushovers. This is kind of the way I
thought of leadership my entire life, right? I mean—you know—anybody who watches the movies gets
indoctrinated with this kind of cultural idea of what I call the three Cs: confidence, conviction, and
consistency. Just think of any movie that you’re … you’ve watched in recent years, right? Like look at
Hunger Games, where Katniss Everdeen is resisting the attempts to be persuaded by the capitol. Or you
got Concussion, where you got Doctor Bennet Omalu, who’s resisting the attempts of the NFL to
pressure him and discard his research. Or you have Star Wars, obviously; you got all these strong-willed
jedis that are resisting attempts by the dar … by their enemies to convert them to the dark side, right?
So I’ve always believed that this is what leadership is; it’s this strong conviction, consistency, and
confidence. But for three years now, I’ve been studying the most successful leaders in the world, and
what I’ve been finding is that many of them buck the traditional leadership archetype. More and more,
the most successful leaders in business, in politics, in philanthropies and science are changing the way
that they lead. Instead of this decisive form of leadership, they’re moving to what I call persuadability—
and that’s what I want to talk to you about today. I want to talk to you about why that is. What is the
persuadable advantage? What is … we know what the costs are, right? People might call you a flipflopfer, right? But what are the advantages? And then I want to talk to you a little bit about how to be
persuadable, okay?
So let’s start with the persuadable advantage—okay—what exactly are the advantages of being
persuadable? The first one is agility. So let’s revisit the raid—Admiral William McRaven’s raid of the
Abbottabad compound—to find out, okay? So the thing about the Abbottabad raid which you have to
understand is it was a special operations mission, okay? And special operations are, well, special, right?
It means they’re constantly evolving; they’re changing; there’s new information coming up at all the
time; the enemy is unconventional, right? And so they’re constantly adapting. And when you think
about this kind of environment—right—when the world is simple and static, this decisive form of
leadership—right, these three Cs—make a lot of sense. It’s like you have a target, and the goal is to
persistently, with resolve, go after that target until you reach it. But what happens when the world
changes? What happens when the world is complex and fast-changing? Then this decisive march
towards the target is actually a march towards the oblivion, right? It’s in this fast-changing environment
that the leaders who are able to change their mind and to adapt to changing circumstances are the ones
that win. Now we know why president Obama had so much confidence in McRaven. He said, “He’s
never surprised by anything.” Now, leaders who per … who think they have all the answers, right? We
look at them, and they look like have all the answers. That looks really seductive, right? We want to put
our faith in them; we want to trust them, because confidence is really magnetic. But those guys are very
surprisable; when things change, they’re caught blindsided. No, the only way to be unsurprisable is
actually to admit you don’t have all the answers and to be ready when the world changes.
The second benefit of being persuadable is accuracy, alright? And in order for me to demonstrate this, I
want you … I want to tell you the story about this guy. This guy’s name is … anybody know who this is?
Ray Dalio, who’s the head … the founder of Bridgewater Investments, the largest hedge fund in the
world. So story of Ray Dalio is: in 2007, he goes to the white house—lot of my stories revolve around
the white house for some reason—goes to the white house, and he has this dire warning for the
administration. He says the economy is headed towards catastrophe, and he wasn’t just talking about
some regular downturn; he was talking about a global, deep recession. The economic staffers of the
Bush administration completely ignored Dalio that day. That would turn out to be a big mistake,
because a year later, the economy went into freefall; the government and Dalio’s competitors were
blindsided—they were all losing their shirts—but Dalio was prepared. He actually set up some early
warning indicators in his trading system, and he programmed them to tell him when he should pull out
of certain investments. One day, the … one of his trading … one of his indicators told him he should pull
out of certain banks, including Bear Stearns; a week later, Bear Stearns collapsed. This is Ray Dalio;
some people call him the Da Vinci of investing; some people think he’s dealing in black magic; people
want to know how the heck he gets things right all the time. John Cassidy of the New Yorker says he has
an uncanny ability to anticipate market trends, and everybody’s tearing their hair outs, asking, “How
does he do it? What does he know that we don’t?” That’s the wrong question. He doesn’t know
anything that we don’t; it’s not what he knows; it’s how he thinks.
Let me explain what I mean by this. So there’s a famous study—you may have heard of it—operated by
a guy named Philip Tetlock. So Philip Tetlock is an academic juggernaut; he’s at the university in
Pennsylvania. Thirty years ago, he had this conundrum: do experts really know what they’re talking
about? How many times do you go on CNN, and you see these pundits making all these predictions
about who’s gonna win the election and whether intervening in Syria’s a good idea? The problem with
those predictions is: when judgement day ultimately comes, there’s no reckoning, right? We lose track
of the posi … predictions, and we never know whether or not these guys actually know what they’re
talking about. Dalio couldn’t … or Tetlock could not live with this; he found it intolerable, so he said,
“You know what? I’m gonna find out once and for all if these guys know what they’re talking about.” So
for two decades, he meticulously followed the predictions of two hundred and eighty-four experts—
we’re talking about eighty-two thousand predictions in total—and he followed them meticulously to
find out if they actually came true or not. And what he found made huge headlines; turns out, it wasn’t
very good for the experts; [laughter] the experts performed abysmally on average. But there was one
silver lining that didn’t get much headlines, and that is: there was a subset of experts that actually did do
fairly well; they did better than average; they did significantly better than everyone else. And so Dalí
was very curious on what made these people so much better, and it turns out, like Dalio, it had less to
do with what they knew and instead how they thought. So the unsuccessful forecasters had these
theories about the world—grand theories about the world—that they used to guide their forecast, and
when an event would happen or an information would come up that contradicted their theories, instead
of throwing out the theory, they would throw out the information. But the successful forecasters—he
called them foxes—were much more flexible thinkers. What … they would have theories, but they were
just way more skeptical of them, and when information contradicted their theory, they would just
change the theory. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the simple secret of Ray Dalio: when the world
presents him with evidence that he’s wrong—that he has an inaccurate understanding of the world—he
just changes it. For thirty years now, he’s been writing down every single prediction that he’s made—
every trade—and he follows the trade to see if it’s successful or not, and if it is, he celebrates, but if it’s
not, he asks himself, “What did I get wrong? Why was my world of … my understanding of the world so
inaccurate that it caused me to make this bad prediction?” And then he would change his mind. That
is—my friends—is the secret of Ray-Dalio-like accuracy.
The third—so we have agility and accuracy—the third advantage of being persuadable is growth. So in
1974—I’m gonna tell you another story—a guy by the name of Alan Ricks went on this study; he was
following up with a group of patients that were highly disturbed as kids. All of these patients had got …
undergone treatment with psychotherapists, and he wanted to follow up to see how they were doing as
adults, alright? What he found was that there was only a few—unfortunately—a few adults that were
actually doing well, but what was most fascinating was that there was … all of those—those subset
that’s … those, just a small group of boys—were treated by the same provider. Ricks came to the
conclusion that in the field of psychotherapy, there are a few therapists who are achieving exceptional
results compared to their peers; he called these high-performing therapists super shrinks. Now, at the
time, Ricks’s discovery gained little attention—right—because the whole field was much more
concerned with what makes for good therapies, not what made for good therapists, until this guy—Scott
Miller, who’s the head of a research team called the International Center for Clinical Excellence—came
across Ricks’s finding, and he was fascinated by it. He wanted to go one step beyond Ricks; he wanted
to find out what made super shrinks so super. And so he—luckily—he had access to lots of data—right,
lots of data, outcome data from, like, thousands of patients and tens of thousands of practitioners—and
what he would do is he would made a … make a list of all the attributes that you would think of that
might separate the good therapists from the great. You have—you know—the mode of therapy; you
have level of experience, level of education; and one by one, they would compare the … this … their
attributes to the data to see if they got … found a match. They kept striking out. In fact, they struck out
so often that they decided to throw in the towel; they said super shrinks don’t exist—just noise in the
data. But two years later, this guy—Scott Miller—was on a plane, and he was reading an article by a
psychologist who you guys might be familiar with—his name is Anders K. Ericsson.
Anders K. Ericsson you might be familiar with, because he’s the one who’s the father of the concept of
toli … deliberate practice. Anders K. Ericsson followed lots of experts, from chess players to viet … to
violinists—lots of wide-ranging, cognitively complex skills—and what he found is that the quantity of
practice is important in determining whether or not these people became experts, but which is … what
is way more important is the quality of practice. They underwent a very specific type of practice, which
is called deliberate practice—this is practice that paid close attention to feedback, right? So what these
practitioners did—these deliberate practitioners—is they really paid close attention to their
weaknesses—right—‘cause that was the only way they would know what they needed to improve. And
so instead of just practicing over and over again, they would continue to practice differently each and
every time. This was the eureka moment for Scott Miller: when he realized—Anders K. Ericsson—his
insight, he went back into the data, and he looked at his super shrinks, and what he found was: the
same thing was true of super shrinks. The seek it of super shrinks is that pay … they pay very close
attention to negative feedback; they are obsessively concerned with evaluating accurately their own
performance.
See, there’s a thing that stands in the way of our growth—and every … it’s …. everyone is experiencing
this—it’s called illusory superiority, right? This is, in lay terms, the better-than-average effect. We all
want to believe that we’re better than we actually are at everything, right? We want to believe we’re
more intelligent than we actually are, more honest, more attractive, better drivers than we actually
are—and this is something that shows up in the research over and over and over again. And this is what
gets in the way of our ability to engage in deliberate practice—right—because in order to grow, we need
to be able to see our weaknesses, but illusory superiority is this confounding thing that makes us not
want to see our own weaknesses. But there is this fascinating insight from the research, which is that,
even though we’re really bad at assessing our own weaknesses, it turns out we’re really good at
assessing other people weaknesses. [laughter] So for anybody who wants to become an expert—anyone
who wants to become a master—there’s this obvious conclusion: allow other people to point out your
weaknesses for you. And that was the secret of super shrinks; super shrinks would constantly go to their
patients and ask them for negative feedback, right? Patients are so used to getting the feedback, but
this time, they were actually asked, “Tell me feedback.” They would ask, “So how am I doing?” Right?
“How empathetic am I being? Did we talk about, today, what you wanted to talk about?” All these
questions gave them the feedback that they needed in order to improve at an accelerated rate, but they
didn’t just listen to the feedback; they were persuadable to it; they actually changed their mind.
So now that we know the persuadable advantages—accuracy, agility, and growth—I want to talk about
how to be persuadable, right? Because we all have this concept of how to be more persuasive, right?
The way I position my book all the time is like: there’s a mi … you go to the book store, and there’s a
million books on how to be more persuasive, right? There’s How to Win Friends and Influence People,
Get Anyone to Do Anything, and my personal favorite is a book that’s called How to Persuade People
Who Don’t Want to Be Persuaded. [laughter] I—as a culture—I think we’re obsessed with being
persuasive; persuasiveness books are like the new diet books is kind of how I think about it. But if I’m
right—and I hope I am, but I’m persuadable [laughter]—that being persuadable is a competitive
advantage in business and in life, then we need to take changing our mind very seriously, right? And
that’s what I found the most successful leaders do; they’re not just—again—open-minded, saying, “Oh,
yeah—you know—I’ll be ready for information that changes my mind.” No, they actively seek it out.
And so what I want to talk about is a recipe for how to actually be this actively open-minded leader on
anything, when it comes to opinions, beliefs, and decisions.
So there’s a four-pronged … my book, I outline the seven practices of persuadable leaders; we don’t
have time for that, but there’s four steps that will put … get you moving in the right direction here. So
step one is recalling your moment of opacity. So here’s what I want you to do right now—this is kind of
the interactive portion here—I want you to think about something that you’re really sure about, okay?
Something in your life that, right now, you’re … you have absolute certainty in, right? I mean, it could be
something like a decision you’ve made that you thought was a great idea; it could be the idea that your
spouse really loves you; or it could be the idea that—you know—you know that your address is a certain
address. Whatever it is—it doesn’t matter—think about that right now. It’s got to be something that
you have conviction in—something that you feel very strongly about, right? The feeling that you’re
experiencing right now is what Doctor Robert Burton calls the feeling of knowing, right? It’s that strong
sensation that we know that makes us know that whatever it is we’re thinking right now is true. The
problem with the feeling of knowing is it’s completely unreliable; sometimes it’s right; sometimes it’s
wrong. It turns out that that feeling of knowing, we want to believe that it comes after rational
evaluation, but that feeling actually arises out of mechanisms in the brain that are independent of
reason, and they’re involuntary—right—the feeling of knowing happens to us; we don’t make it happen,
right? We don’t make it happen just like we don’t make love happen; love happens to us; anger
happens to us; we don’t actually choose it. And so this feeling of knowing actually gets in the way of our
ability to make accurate decisions to be persuadable—right—‘cause the first step of being persuadable
is to be humble; it’s to recognize that you could be wrong; and the feeling of knowing doesn’t want to
help to make us recognize that we could be wrong.
So here’s the key: we can’t make the feeling of knowing going a … go away, but we can learn to distrust
it, and so that’s why I have this strategy called the moment of opacity. We all know what a moment of
clarity is, right? It’s something that happens to you that instantly, it’s as if you have a new, profound
understanding of the world, right? It’s like everything just makes sense in that moment. A moment of
opacity is the opposite, right? It’s a moment in time—it’s an experience—in where you were so sure
that you got something wrong … or that you were gonna get something right, and then it happened to
be wrong, right? Every political pundit that predicted that Donald Trump wouldn’t make it past the first
primary—would never make it to the primary [laughter]—had … should’ve had a moment of opacity,
where they realize—hopefully, it was last night—where they realize: “Wow, I was very wrong about
this.” [laughter] Now, here’s a thing: in that moment, there was a great gift that occurred, which is: you
had this relationship to the feeling of knowing where you began to distrust it. The problem is—and
you’ll see with these political pundits—two seconds later, they forget about it; they say, “Uh”—you
know—and then they’ll move on to the next prediction and be just as certain about it. Great leaders—
the most persuadable leaders right now—never forget their moment of opacity. So want you to think
the … take that moment of opacity, keep it in your pocket, and next time you have this feeling of
knowing when you’re about to make an important decision, or when you have this strong sensation,
remind yourself.
The second step to being persuadable is to argue with others. Arguing with others is the gold standard
for getting closer to the truth. So think about our justice system; our justice system is the one area in
which we most want, as a society, to get to the truth, right? Nobody in society wants an innocent
person to go to jail for the rest of their life for something that they didn’t commit, right? So what’ve we
do as a society? How did we design our justice system? We didn’t—you know—assign a group of
people to go out there on a fact-finding mission and come back to us with a result. No, we created this
adversarial system, where you have a defense and a prosecutor argue with each other, right? Because
this exchange of ideas … you know, the confirmation bias often leads us astray—right—when we’re by
ourself, but when we’re arguing with somebody else who’s got an opposing confirmation bias, those
two forces actually balance each other out, and it makes it more likely that the best idea will prevail.
But you have to find people who are willing to disagree with you—honestly disagree with you, right?
And people don’t like to disagree; people hate conflict; but you have to find them; you got to seek them
out; and you got to be willing to make sure they understand that you want the truth—right—you want
to be second-guessed, okay?
But there’s a different way we have to argue, because usually, we argue to win, and that is not the kind
of arguing that actually leads to the better idea. The really … the kind of arguing that I’m talking about is
arguing to improve the accuracy of your beliefs, okay? And I have a metaphor for this—this is step
number three—it’s called arguing with your hand on the dial instead of your hand on the gun, okay? So
my metaphor for how people actually argue is skeet shooting—right, everyone know what skeet
shooting is? It’s where clay targets are flung into the air, and you try and shoot them down—that’s
what we do when we argue. Think about the last argument you’ve been in, whether it’s been—you
know—with a spouse, or with a colleague, or with your uncle over some political issue, what you’re
trying … what … the way we do it is: it’s almost as if we have this position, and when somebody makes a
good point, it’s like a clay target flung into the air that we automatically shoot down as quickly as we
can, right? And we’re obsessive about it. There’s like five good points, and we’re just try to shoot ‘em
all down. And we only win if we shoot all of them down—that’s the goal of our … that’s our goal in
arguing. And again, if you want to argue to win, maybe that’s a good goal, but if you want to argue to
improve the accuracy of your beliefs—to get closer to the truth, to be a persuadable leader—that’s the
exact opposite of how you want to argue.
So I have a different metaphor for arguing, and that is: imagine … first of all, the reason why we argue
like that—one of the reasons—is because we fall into the trap of dichotomous thinking, right? We beli
… we want to believe in absolute certainty—right—whether it’s a decision, an opinion, you want to
believe that you’re a hundred percent certain on something, right? And you can either be totally right
or totally wrong. Either LeBron James is the best basketball player in the world, or he’s not. Either the
decision to go into Iraq was either the … a terrible idea, or it wasn’t, right? The problem is the logic
goes: if you believe in black and white—right—and somebody makes a good point, unless your belief is
totally defended, well, that means you must be wrong. So we need to let go of this black-and-white
thinking and realize the world is in shades of grey, right? And we need to realize that we need to make
decisions based on probability assessments—inherent uncertainties. So here’s what you do—right—
next time you’re in an argument, think about whatever position you’re trying to defend, right? Think
about your opinion, your belief—maybe it’s a certain feature of a product that you think is gonna be
great for users, right? I want you to think about a radio dial right in front of you. All … if you turn the
dial all the way to the right, that means you have a hundred percent confidence in your belief; if you da
… if you turn the dial all the way to the left, that means you have zero confidence in your belief. When
somebody makes a good … when you’re arguing with somebody who’s a thoughtful disagreer—when
you’re arguing with them—don’t worry about shooting their points down, just worry about turning the
dial—that’s your focus. If they make a good point, then turn your dial a little bit to the left—meaning
you’re a little bit less confident—if you make a good point, or evidence surfaces—you know—bolstering
your position, then turn your dial a little bit to the right. By the end of your argument, if your dial is to
the left or to the right of where it once was, congratulations, you’ve just learned something.
And finally, my final piece of advice—which I think is the boldest advice—is what I call kill your darlings,
and it’s not my expression; this comes from the writing community. Anybody hear about this expression
before? Kill your darlings? God, you guys must be writers. So in the writing community, there’s this
expression; see, the problem with writers is we’re very neurotic bunch, and so we get … we fall in love
with our ideas very quickly. So when you’re writing something—you know—you’re … you start to love
every paragraph, every sentence, every chapter, and if your editor or somebody points out that—you
know—maybe this sentence isn’t the best—maybe there’s another one that could be better—you …
you’re … you balk, right? You snarl at them, because every single sentence feels like it’s your baby, and
almost, it feels like to let go of your baby is to kind of abandon your own offspring—that’s how it feels,
right, to writers. And so there’s always been this indispensable piece of wisdom that’s given to writers,
which is: kill your darlings, right? Which means don’t wait for your editor to drag your sentences from
you—right—with tears running down your cheeks. Grab the knife, and take matters into your own
hands. Now, it’s a really crass expression—I get it—but that’s why it’s so effective, because it
acknowledges how painful this process is—how unholy, how twisted it can feel.
And this isn’t just good adrice … advice for writers; this is good advice for all leaders—right, anybody
who has opinions and beliefs, right? We need to go out of our way to kill our darlings. When … you can
turn your little knob all you want for the rest of your life, but at some point, you’re gonna have to take a
stand, right? Whether it’s a political position, whether it’s whether you want to stay with your—you
know—your boyfriend or the person you’re dating, or whether it’s a decision on whether to abandon a
product or a feature, at some point, you’re gonna have to take a stand. And instead of just waiting
forever, dragging your heels—right—slowly evolving—which is what politicians always do—kill your
darlings; take a stand. And the whole reason why I’m advising you to kill your darlings isn’t just for you;
it’s for me, right? It’s for all of us, because the argument that I make with this book is that being
persuadable is an advantage, right? That was the theme of this talk; it’s an advantage in accuracy,
agility, and growth for the individual; but there’s another advantage, and that’s the collective
advantage.
Being persuadable makes it more likely that the best ideas in a society prevail, right? So think about it:
we have this great marketplace of ideas—the marketplace of ideas is a brilliant, beautiful thing—and
what it says is that if we’re willing to engage with each other, if we’re willing to exchange ideas—buy
and sell ideas—then the best ideas are the ones that rise to the top, right? And that’s a beautiful thing
for solutions—for societal solutions, for ideas, for social movements, for progress. We want the best
ideas to rise to the top, but we have a broken marketplace of ideas right now in the business world, in
the scientific world, but most importantly, in the political and social world. It’s as if everybody wants to
sell their ideas—we have plenty of sellers, but we have very few buyers—we have very few people who
are willing to actually enable the chain. And if we look … when we look at every social movement in
history—every bit of social progress—we always see these great persuaders, right? We see Martin
Luther King; we see Mohamed … Mahatma Gandhi; we see Susan B. Anthony—these people who
miraculously compelled people, who won hearts and minds and were able to achieve change, right?
Now, they’re important, of course; I … we owe them a great debt, but there is a missing part to the
story—doesn’t tell the whole story—because in order for them to have sold change, there are other
people that needed to buy; there were lots of people who, along the way, actually changed their mind
and conceded that “Maybe I’m wrong about this, and maybe I need to change their mind.” And it’s only
when this critical mass of people that actually change their mind that allows social progress to occur. So
that’s why I say that one of the best ways to change your wor … to change the world—‘cause everybody
wants to change the world—is just to change your own mind. It sounds really cliché, and it sounds
Kumbaya, but the truth is: the ability to change your mind on an issue has ripple effects and has an
impact on the people around you beyond what you think it does.
So that’s why I’m asking you today … is so I hope you apply these ideas to your business, obviously, and
organizational life, but I hope you apply these ideas to the most purse … the issues that you care deeply
about, the key … the issues that you’re … that are most personal to you: the more … your moral beliefs,
your political beliefs, your religious beliefs—anything, right, and everything—because those are the ones
that change society. And so to leave you with this little mantra, I think that people—you know, when
you talk about the traditional leadership architype that I started with … this … these three Cs, this being
this confident, persuasive leader—the mantra that we’re constantly telling ourselves is “Let my idea
prevail.” What I want you to do is replace that with a different mantra—the spirit … the true spirit of
persuadability—which is “Let the best idea prevail.” Thank you very much. [applause]
So this is my favorite time, here, of the event, which is where I get to answer questions, so at this
moment, I’m happy to field any questions whatsoever about the presentation or anything related to the
talk. Yes?
>>: So I was unclear. When you had us think about something we’re certain about, and then you talked
about the moment of opacity—you said go back to that—but we didn’t really think about the opacity;
we were thinking about the time when we felt we were sure about something.
>> Al Pittampalli: That’s a really good question. So let’s do that right now, okay? So I want you to think
of a time where you were … you felt you were so right about something, and then it turned out you
were wrong, okay? Maybe it was the—you know, again—the fact that you thought your sports team
was gonna win the pennant, and then—your baseball team—and then you found out that you were
wrong, or there was, like, a certain decision you made that you pert … was so sure it was the right
decision, and then later, you found out it was wrong, right? Think about something like that. And
hopefully, that comes to mind pretty quickly, because we’re wrong a lot. [laughs] And so the … it’s a very
pai … it’s often very painful experience for people, but that’s what’s so powerful—that’s why you should
pick a painful experience—because if you can kind of bottle that up and keep that bottle with you at all
time, it’s a real gift; it’s a real tool that you can use. So any time you’re too overconfident, or any time—
you know—you go into a meeting thinking that you’re certain about something, well, then you can
remind yourself of this moment of opacity, and basically, the logic is: you say, “Well, I’m sure this is right
now, but I was also sure I was right back then, and I was wrong, so maybe I’m wrong now too.” S’that
make sense? Yes?
>>: So at the start, you said about the leaders, so that they want them to be kind of certain—right—but
want them also to be changeable. So it sounds like there is this: you want to be certain in some highlevel goal and be flexible in the means. Like this admiral you gave an example had the goal of—I guess—
winning in this war, right? An operation is the mean to it, and then details to operation are the means
to the means.
>> Al Pittampalli: Yes. So that’s a really good question, whi …
>> Amy Draves: Please repeat the questions.
>> Al Pittampalli: Yeah, the question is: it seems like there’s this recipe emerging to be flexible when it
comes to the tactics or the strategy, but to be fairly certain about the vision or the goal. Is that …? And I
think that’s usually a good recipe, and that’s what some of the best leaders do, right? They’re very
certain, and optimistic, and confident in the goal, but they are very much open to suggestion when it
comes to the way to get to the goal. But I would just argue that sometimes, we need to abandon the
goal too, right? We need to be persuadable often on the vision or the destination as well. So the reality
is: there’s this tension happening, right? Like on—and I dedicate a whole chapter to this—we can’t be
too persuadable—right—at times, right? Leadership is also about certainty too—right—like the way I
think about it is: there’s this tension between persuadability and decisiveness, right? Persuadability says
we should be open-minded; we should take our time, and evaluate, and really try to make the best
decision; decisiveness is us saying, “Alright, we don’t have time,” or “We just need to make a decision,
and let’s go with it.” Both are important. My … the argument I’m—and actually, my first book, which
was called Read This Before Our Next Meeting, was really a manifesto about more decisive leadership—
but the argument that I’m making is that, as leaders, we know we need to be decisive, and I think a lot
of times, leaders feel like they need to be too decisive, and what I’m trying to do is give leaders
permission to be persuadable when necessary. And I think—you know—when it comes to decisions that
need to be … let’s put it this way: being persuadable—again—one of the benefits of being persuadable
is accuracy, right? If you are persuadable, you … all the decision-making research sa … shows that you
are more likely to make better decisions—you know, more precise judgements. If your—you know—car
is headed off of a cliff, and you have … and you got three passengers with you—right—you’re gonna be
able to come up with a grey … better decision or better plan by consulting everyone, but you don’t have
time to consult everyone, right? You just need to turn as quickly as possible. So sometimes, a good
enough decision is good enough, and therefore, go ahead and be decisive, but other times, when the
stakes are high, when there’s more time to evaluate, you need to be persuadable. And the most
important decisions—the most important issues, the most important topics—that we deal with in
organizational life, in your personal life, in your business life, it pays to be persuadable. So if I have to
throw in my leadership mindset, or—you know—throw in my money with one of those, I’m gonna be a
persuadable leader that’s often decisive versus a decisive leader that is sometimes persuadable. Yes?
>>: Yeah, just sort of building off that—I mean—I like the balance you put in there, because the thing
that I was thinking about is: if you look at successful entrepreneurs or people changing companies,
often, a lot of it is also about overcoming, maybe, old paradigms, right? And so people are in a certain
mindset, and so if you spent a lot of time kind of like having those discussions, those arguments, it might
distract you. So what you see with a lot of entrepreneurs, they’re actually sometimes a little singleminded—or obsessed, some people would say—about—y’know—where we need to go. And so the
tricky thing, it sort of feels like it’s balancing that, like, trying to get to the right answer, but at the same
time, knowing you want to go somewhere else—so maybe that vision versus the path to get there is
what … I …
>> Al Pittampalli: Yeah, I think you raise a good point, and to kind of—hopefully—rephrase your
question—or to kind of reiterate it—there’s this sense that if we continue to evaluate things forever
over and over again, we can never make any progress—right, we can never get anything done. If we’re
too persuadable all the time—like, for example, in businesses that solve a problem, and they find a
really good way to solve a problem, and then they’re making money off of it; it’s becoming successful;
and people are constantly trying to change … again, they’re trying to innovate; they’re trying to overinnovate, constantly, constantly, to try to find better ways to solve the problem. Sometimes, that’s a
great idea; other times, that can be … lead you to kind of paralysis of analysis, right? This often happens
in science, by the way, and there’s this problem in science, which is: people really love to use this
expression, which is that “The debate is settled—right—it’s over; we know exactly what’s going on.”
And the truth of the matter is: the debate is never settled, right? Maybe the probability that something
… that we’ve gotten something wrong is small, but there’s always the probability. Now, for all intents
and purposes, we have to say, “Listen, we’ve evaluated this to death; there’s a consensus in the
scientific community that we think this is the case. And so therefore, in order to make sure our
resources are well spent, we’re gonna spend our time over here.” That’s fine, but at some point along
the way, we lose sight of that, and we just think … we—again—we have this feeling of knowing; we
basically just presume that something is true or that’s a fact. You can never do that—not in science, and
not in business, not if you’re an entrepreneur nor anything. So if you want to consider any issue settled,
fine, but make sure you’re consciously acknowledging that and not convincing yourself that you’re a
hundred percent certain about something, because you be wrong.
>>: Use the word “tension” a lot, and I’m just kind of … there’s the external tension of: “This is my ideas,
and as an organization, we’re gonna come together, and I’m gonna stand up and make a decision or not
or whatever.” But then there’s that internal debate, and so where does, like, conviction and standing up
for certain truths that you have fit into this?
>>: I think that … so the question was about conviction, and when is it appropriate to kind of stand up
for what you believe in? So I think the best kind of … Jeff Bezos has a great quote on this—I’m not sure
if he was the origin of it—but it’s: “It’s not that we don’t have a strong point of view; it’s that we treat
that strong … that point of view as temporary,” right? So it’s totally fine … “conviction” is a strong word
and I tend … and I hesitate to use it, because I think when people have conviction, they essentially stop
evaluating new information; they kind of treat it as truth. So that’s a little bit too strong for me, but am I
confident about things all the time? Sure—you know—I have very high confidence in certain things,
right? Very high confidence that gravity exists—right, that’s a real thing. Is there … and so I’m very
happy to stand up here and actually be very kind of confident in that with you guys, right? Because
that’s what … because that’s the truth of things. And so what I think is really important is that we
separate these two concepts, which is confidence and calibration. Everybody wants more confidence
these days; you can see tons and tons of books about being confident. Confidence is neither good nor
bad; it just represents certainty in any particular proposition, right? What you want is calibration, not
confidence—you want to be properly calibrated—and one of the best investors, the best leaders, the
best entrepreneurs in the world are calibrated, which means if there’s a lot of evidence for something,
that means you should have high confidence, right? You should be very confident about something; if
there’s not a lot of evidence for something, you should have low confidence. There’s no good or bad
about that; there just is. So of course … so conviction—if you want to call it—or high confidence is often
a fine thing as long as you have a sufficient evidence to justify that confidence. So just ask yourself, the
next time you’re really confident about something, just say, “Is it my feeling of knowing that’s making
me feel that way, or do I have really good reasons for believing that?” And if you do, go ahead—you
know—you have every right to be confident. Yes?
>> Amy Draves: Question online about: as a leader, if you decide to change your mind, what do you
recommend as key practices on how to lead your team into your new idea, because it is often seen as
being weak—a weakness?
>> Al Pittampalli: That’s a really great question. So the ans … the question is about when you change
your mind, how do you actually kind of communicate that change of position? And how do you kind of
lead your team? And that’s a really great question, and I’ll answer it this way, because this is a very
common thing: you have to give people a sense of your process and not just the outcome, right? So
focus on the process and not just the outcome. So just kind of imagine the scenario—which probably
happens to everyone, or it has happened to a lot of people—which is: somebody gives you … you want
somebody’s feedback on a decision, right? Maybe I don’t know what it is—you know—there’s a …
“Should I move, or should I buy a car?” So you consult somebody; you get your friend, and you say,
“Hey—you know—I’m about to make this decision; I want your advice.” They give you the advice, and
then you end up ignoring their advice, right? You take the other path; you take the path that you were
going on to begin with. Are they upset with you? Yes, sometimes they are upset with you, right? They
… it made you … it made them feel—‘cause we’ve probably all been on the other end of that, too—that
you didn’t listen to their advice; you didn’t care about it. See, being persuadable is something that
happens inside your head—right—so people don’t know. You could have been persuadable to their
advice and yet just not have been persuaded, right? Like they gave you advice, and you said, “Ah—you
know—that’s interesting advice, but I’m gonna go in this direction anyway.” And the problem is we’re
not giving people a sense of our process, right? So imagine … now take this other scenario, which is:
before I go to somebody and I ask for their advice—let’s say I’m … I have … I’m making a decision to buy
my car—I tell them my process, which is as … can be as simple as “Hey, Joe, I’m making a decision to buy
my car, and I want your advice. So first, I’m gonna ask your advice, and I’m getting—you know—two
other people’s opinions, and then later, I’m gonna make the decision,” right? That key word is “I” here,
which means that they’re not part of the decision-making process; you’re … I mean, they’re part of the
decision-making process, but they’re not the decis … they’re not the one of the deciders, right? So now,
when you give them a sense: “Oh, okay, I’m just contributing to their … to this guy’s decision,” now,
people know where they fit in their process. And there’s actually an entire field which is called
procedural justice, which basically says that the upshot is that people are way more interested in a fair
process, often, than a fair outcome. So you can make a decision that they didn’t like, but if they thought
the process was fair—that you treated them with respect and that you went to them the right way—
they’ll actually be fine; they’ll be much happier with the out … they might not love the outcome, but …
so when we talk about changing our mind, we always have to dec … we always have to figure out:
“Okay, how am I treating this person? And do … are they aware of my process?” And if they are, it’s
more likely that they’ll gonna be amenable to any change of mind or not changing your mind. Yes?
>>: So here at Microsoft, we’re … there’s been this cultural imperative around a growth mindset, which
I think is inspired by Carol Dweck, and I’m wondering what you’re arguing for—persuadability—how that
might relate or not relate to that area.
>> Al Pittampalli: Yeah, the … Carol Dweck’s growth mindset is phenomenal, and people should read
her book, because I think it’s very fascinating. And yeah, it’s … there’s a lot of correlates between
growth mindset and persuadability. I mean—you know—when you talk about … I think Carol Dweck’s
Mindset is basically—her book Mindset—is basically: we should treat intelligence as not a fixed trait, but
a very malleable trait, right? So she kind of … what she found really famously was that if you take kids,
and you just analyze them—you say, “Okay, wha …” ask them questions like “So—you know—what do
you think about intelligence? Right? Is it something you’re born with, or is it something that—you
know—you acquire over time?” If the kid says, “No—you know—I kind of have this amount of
‘telligence, and I’m kind of born with it, and there’s nothing I can do about it,” versus another kid that
says, “No—you know—I think intelligence is something that is … evolves and changes over time.” The
kids who have that latter answer have a growth mindset and way outperform their peers—right—they
do really great in a whole wa … range of different metrics. So what I’m talking about—what
persuadability is—just a little bit of broader scope than that. I’m saying, “Let’s treat all of our beliefs—
not just our beliefs in intelligence—let’s treat all of our beliefs as temporary and malleable,” right? Our
political beliefs, our morality, our—you know—religious beliefs—all of those things we should see as not
fixed, as things that we can grow in, that we can evolve in. And those people who have that mindset—
that persuadable mindset—have the ability not just to become smarter, but become more agile, or
become faster, or become better scientists, or doctors, or whatever it is. So basically, I’m trying to apply
that principle across the spectrum on a whole wide range of beliefs. Yes?
>> Amy Draves: This question about argument, and you had sort of said that it’s arguing differently,
right? And he specifically is saying, “Because successful people or entrepreneurs believe …” he says,
“believed and agreed, mostly, there is no winner or productive results from an argument.” I’m not sure.
Maybe you could just talk about argument little bit more.
>> Al Pittampalli: Yeah, so I would say that there’s a difference between an argument and a quarrel. So
most of the arguing … arguing gets a bad rap, because we confuse it with quarreling. Quarreling is the
kind of thing that you see on—you know—political debates, and—you know—family reunions, and that
kind of thing, [laughter] where people are just bickering back and forth, and it’s … there’s this
adversarial thing that’s happening, where this person if defending this position, and this person is
defending this position, and there’s almost nothing that comes out of it except for bad feelings, bruised
egos, and so … a winner and a loser, right? What I’m talking about is true arguing, right? Arguing in the
… in its real sense—in its strict sense—is about providing reasons to believe any particular proposition,
right? So I give you reasons on why I believe my thing, and you give me reasons on why you believe
your thing, and then we can compare the reasons—we can evaluate the reasons—and the whole point
of that exchange is to figure out who’s got better reasons, because I want true beliefs—I want accurate
beliefs, right? I’m operating this world; I want to be in the know. If I’m wrong about something, then I
want to know about it, so that’s the whole … when you approach arguing from that perspective, you
realize that the goal is not to win; it’s to improve the accuracy of your belief.
The problem is: it’s so … it sounds so great when I explain it like that, right—when it’s content-free—but
now, start to insert the content; start to think about your political beliefs; think about your religious
beliefs; think about—you know—certain interests you have—financial interests—and all those kinds of
thing. The … once you get to that—once you have a stake in it—it becomes very hard to kind of argue
just to improve the accuracy of your beliefs, and that’s what I’m talking about, though. I think that it
takes a lot of courage, and it takes a lot of awareness, and takes a lot more energy to do it that way, but
the advantages are extraordinary. I think some of the best leaders in the world right now—and that’s
what my book is about; it’s about a change in the landscape—some of the best leaders in the world are
approaching the world differently; they’re changing their mind; they’re going out of their way to prove
themselves wrong; and they’re arguing with people with the willingness to concede points. And that’s
my invitation for you, too, is to do the same.
>> Amy Draves: Let’s go with one last question.
>>: So … okay. So one of the other kind of books we’re … we’ve been trying to read is about: how do
we change cultures—within this company in particular, but just in general? And so this book by Gillian
Teft—I think—called Silos, which speaks about how this social grooming takes place—that people get
used to a certain way of working in groups, whether it’s in a business group, or product group, or even in
society by ethnic groups, like Koreans stick to each other. So what we want is dissuade people across
different groups. You know, do you have some ideas on how we can raise—you know—bring people up
or start to have that conversation to make change?
>> Al Pittampalli: Yes. That’s a great question. So the question was about cultures, and how do we kind
of apply this persuadability mindset to these different cultural silos that often occur in organizations?
And the word I use is often tribes, right? So we’re all a part of tribes—right—that have our own
cultures, right? So you might be part of the Microsoft tribe outside of here, or you might be part of the
sales tribe, or the marketing tribe, or the computer programming tribe, or the democrat tribe, or the
republican tribe, or the Toastmasters tribe, or the Detroit Pistons tribe. So there’s all these tribes that
actually govern our beliefs, right? A lot of times, we don’t believe things because there’s good reasons;
we just believe it because everybody else believes it in our little silo, right? That’s a very dangerous
thing, because that means that lots of people can be believing completely the wrong thing own … just
because everybody else is believing it.
So one of the things that happens—and this happens in the political world all the time—is that people
are so folks … focused on changing their own … or changing another tribe—right—another culture,
they’re saying—you know—“You’re wrong; you guys over there are wrong, right?” How effective is
that? Does that ever work? Has there ever been a democrat in the history of this country to stand up at
the RNC convect … convention and say, “Hey, you guys are wrong,” and actually live to tell about it?
[laughter] No, that never happens. So that’s why I … one of my chapters is called “Take On Your Own
Tribe,” which means that, instead of using the expression “You’re wrong,” the … a much more
persuasive message is “We’re wrong.” So that means actually looking to your own tribe. You have this
great benefit in your own tribe, which is that if an outsider tells you guys—you know, if somebody from
a competitor tells you guys you guys are wrong about something, you’re gonna be like, “Forget you
guys” … I mean, “Forget you. I don’t want to … you know? You’re my enemy.” But if one of you guys
stands up and says, “Hey, we’re wrong,” people are gonna give you leniency—right, it’s called leniency
contract in psychology—so you want to take advantage of that, right? You have power to change your
own tribe, and with great power comes great responsibility. So when we talk about these cultural silos,
whether it’s within an organization or it’s inter-organization, think very hard about—everybody …
anybody can talk about, you know, something wrong being in another tribe—but what I want you to
think very deeply about is: where are we wrong? Right? If it’s one silo in the organization, what’s
something that we can change? Because that’s the opportunity that’s available to persuadable leaders;
that’s how you’re gonna change culture, and ultimately, an organization, and beyond that, a society.
>> Amy Draves: Thank you so much.
>> Al Pittampalli: Thank you. [applause]