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Think Talk Create: Building Workplaces Fit For Humans
A brilliant counter-narrative for restoring humanity to the bottom-line, numbers-obsessed culture of the modern, 21st century workplace.
In a time of unusual stress, with a pandemic raging and economic insecurity and dislocation increasing, we need to rediscover the values that make us human, that give us a sense of meaning in order to increase our potential for productivity and success. What stands in the way, however, is a professional culture where human connectedness is a lost art: the frenzied numbers-obsessed, bottom-line thinking, the "scratch and claw" workplace, and organizations where the boss can literally be an algorithm.
Through moving stories and a modern spin on the ancient framework of Socratic dialogue, David Brendel and Ryan Stelzer show how to move forward and build workplaces fit for humans through what uniquely defines us as human beings: our ability to think, talk, and create.
By thinking carefully about a challenge, engaging peers in dialogue via open-ended questioning, and building a strategy collaboratively. Think Talk Create enables us to cultivate trust and define collective values, seemingly "soft" attributes that nonetheless markedly increase innovation and, ultimately, financial performance.
Think: Step back, slow down, avoid impulsive, short-sighted decision making.
Talk: Ask non-judgmental, open ended questions, with your mind as a blank slate, pursuing the problem like an empirical scientist or a judge presiding in court.
Create: Bring something new and meaningful into play, a novel solution to a pesky problem that can move the world in surprising, positive directions.
In a time of unusual stress, with a pandemic raging and economic insecurity and dislocation increasing, we need to rediscover the values that make us human, that give us a sense of meaning in order to increase our potential for productivity and success. What stands in the way, however, is a professional culture where human connectedness is a lost art: the frenzied numbers-obsessed, bottom-line thinking, the "scratch and claw" workplace, and organizations where the boss can literally be an algorithm.
Through moving stories and a modern spin on the ancient framework of Socratic dialogue, David Brendel and Ryan Stelzer show how to move forward and build workplaces fit for humans through what uniquely defines us as human beings: our ability to think, talk, and create.
By thinking carefully about a challenge, engaging peers in dialogue via open-ended questioning, and building a strategy collaboratively. Think Talk Create enables us to cultivate trust and define collective values, seemingly "soft" attributes that nonetheless markedly increase innovation and, ultimately, financial performance.
Think: Step back, slow down, avoid impulsive, short-sighted decision making.
Talk: Ask non-judgmental, open ended questions, with your mind as a blank slate, pursuing the problem like an empirical scientist or a judge presiding in court.
Create: Bring something new and meaningful into play, a novel solution to a pesky problem that can move the world in surprising, positive directions.
- GenresNonfictionLeadership
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First published September 21, 2021
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July 8, 2023
Really interesting book that gives you a powerful framework with which you can deconstruct some of the principles of your own thinking as well as the frameworks that people use for their thinking to try to get to the crux of truth and have honest open conversations which ultimately lead to results. As the books title suggests it's about thinking then talking then Co creating solutions to whole variety of problems. Here are some of the best bits from the book:
Active inquiry, derived from our time studying the ancient Greeks, teaches individuals how to think carefully about a challenge or opportunity, how to engage peers in dialogue via open-ended questioning, and how to collaboratively build a strategy.
In one study, nearly one hundred managers were broken into small groups and asked to solve a specific strategic challenge. But before they could begin brainstorming, one group was asked to go around and share personal stories of success, while the other group was asked to share personally embarrassing stories. After just ten minutes of conversation, the teams that had shared embarrassing stories generated 26 percent more ideas than those that had shared personal success stories. A psychologically safe environment in this case, an environment in which people had been willing to reveal their foibles and vulnerability fosters creativity and enhances performance. It allows ideas to be shared freely and teams to collaborate without fear of judgment, reprisal, or loss of status?
It was after carefully analyzing and discussing these statistical models that Project Aristotle began to present a clearer picture of what precisely contributed to unit effectiveness- or, more plainly, what made certain teams perform better than others. The researchers identified four supplementary and one principal marker of performance. The four that played a supporting role were well-known, popular sentiments: dependability, clarity/structure, meaning, and impact. These were everyday words in both personal and professional arenas. Dependability meant for the employees of Google what it means for a parent and child: to be reliable and accountable. So, too, did the concept of clarity and structure: goals and responsibilities were well defined and understood by the team. Meaning likewise meant significance, while impact meant that, in the eyes of employees, their work actually mattered. But as we mentioned at the outset, the factor most closely associated with organizational performance, the one that far and away stole the show, was a concept little known out side academic circles: psychological safety. "Google's data," reported the New York Times, "indicated that psychological safety, more than anything else, was critical to making a team work.?
Supplementing the research on psychological safety is the burgeoning body of research on the power of trust. Paul Zak, author of Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High-Performance Companies, has demonstrated the high correlation between trust in a workplace and economic performance. 11 Zak describes how the hormone and neurotransmitter oxytocin, usually associated with childbirth and breastfeeding, actually stimulates trust in humans and other mammals. He presents an experiment devised by Vernon Smith (a Nobel laureate in economics), in which a study subject is given a certain amount of money, which they can keep or give to a stranger, for whom the amount would triple. The stranger would then have the option of returning the favor by sharing some of the increase, perhaps half the total. But would they? The study subjects given the money in the first place had no way of being sure, but when several of them were given either oxytocin or a placebo via a nasal spray, the oxytocin group displayed a significant increase in their willingness to trust, thereby possibly increasing their net gain. Companies cannot continually bathe their employees' brains with oxytocin, but, as Google's Project Aristotle reveals, creating an environment characterized by psychological safety can achieve the same kinds of positive outcomes. Emotional openness elevates oxytocin, which increases trust, which leads to further openness, and therefore more oxytocin and more trust. This creates the positive feedback loop known as a virtuous cycle also known as a great working environment.
It's possible that the antidepressant medications had contributed to reducing Ramon's depression, as reflected on the HAM-D. But since antidepressants often infuse a person with more energy, they may have also given him just enough drive to act on his hopelessness and actually end his life. It's also plausible that Ramon felt relieved and emboldened when, during his hospital stay, he settled on a definitive plan that he would kill himself soon after getting home. Assured by this decision that he wouldn't have to suffer much longer, perhaps he felt freed from his demons and glimpsed light at the end of the tunnel. Now, maybe, he could relax, laugh, and enjoy his final moments with the friendly staff members at the hospital.
Deaths of despair- which include suicides, alcoholic liver disease, and drug overdoses have been rising in a steady and alarming fashion in recent times. Case and Deaton point out that one of the major factors in this disquieting trend toward more self-inflicted death is that fewer people nowadays have "a long-term commitment to an employer who, in turn, was once committed to them, a relationship that, for many, conferred status and was one of the foundations of a meaningful life?
He sought to transform bureaucratic CEOs into "value-maximizing entrepreneurs" who were to be paid with "significant amounts of company stock" instead of fixed salaries. That way, if the shareholders succeeded, the CEO succeeded.
Urban legend tells of a story in which James was asked to deliver a lengthy speech in front of a crowd of academics and researchers eager to hear his thoughts on the history of psychology. Settled in for an extensive report, the crowd was shocked by James's choice to speak for just a few seconds. "They've asked me to talk about the last hundred years of psychological research," he is said to have told them. "It can be summed up in this statement: people by and large become what they think of themselves. Thank you and good night." James expanded further upon this idea of belief in oneself during another lecture entitled The Will to Believe," which was published as a book in 1896. According to James, the belief "I am capable of changing the world" can only be true- or become true if you first adopt the belief without prior evidence. In other words, assuming you haven't changed the world yet, the first step in doing so is believing strongly that you can.
The 737 Max 8 was looking to replace the 737 as Boeing's cash cow, as industry experts estimated the aircraft would come to account for up to 40 percent of Boeing's annual profit." But in a shortsighted move meant to trim a few dollars off the price tag, Boeing decided to make some safety features optional rather than standard, which was a bit like making lifeboats optional on a cruise ship. Boeing's quantitative analysts had been tempted by their confreres at the airlines, often operating in cash-strapped developing countries, to play their own numbers game and bet on cost savings rather than passenger safety. To round out this catastrophe in the making, Boeing neglected to tell airlines and pilots about a possible software glitch that could make the 737 Max 8 take an uncontrollable nosedive. Boeing was following the teachings of modern scientific management and keeping its eyes on the numbers: the dates on a calendar for delivery of the aircraft, the dollars to be made or lost.
When the Italian artist Raphael painted his masterpiece The School of Athens around 1510, he featured Plato and Aristotle as central figures, placing them directly in the center of the fresco. Their union at the center of the painting also highlights the disunion at the core of their thinking. Plato's hand points up, toward the heavens, as he believed our world did not consist of measurable absolutes. Aristotle, in contrast, is painted with his hand stretched outward, parallel to the ground beneath him, as he believed items in the world consist of measurable properties.
Active inquiry, derived from our time studying the ancient Greeks, teaches individuals how to think carefully about a challenge or opportunity, how to engage peers in dialogue via open-ended questioning, and how to collaboratively build a strategy.
In one study, nearly one hundred managers were broken into small groups and asked to solve a specific strategic challenge. But before they could begin brainstorming, one group was asked to go around and share personal stories of success, while the other group was asked to share personally embarrassing stories. After just ten minutes of conversation, the teams that had shared embarrassing stories generated 26 percent more ideas than those that had shared personal success stories. A psychologically safe environment in this case, an environment in which people had been willing to reveal their foibles and vulnerability fosters creativity and enhances performance. It allows ideas to be shared freely and teams to collaborate without fear of judgment, reprisal, or loss of status?
It was after carefully analyzing and discussing these statistical models that Project Aristotle began to present a clearer picture of what precisely contributed to unit effectiveness- or, more plainly, what made certain teams perform better than others. The researchers identified four supplementary and one principal marker of performance. The four that played a supporting role were well-known, popular sentiments: dependability, clarity/structure, meaning, and impact. These were everyday words in both personal and professional arenas. Dependability meant for the employees of Google what it means for a parent and child: to be reliable and accountable. So, too, did the concept of clarity and structure: goals and responsibilities were well defined and understood by the team. Meaning likewise meant significance, while impact meant that, in the eyes of employees, their work actually mattered. But as we mentioned at the outset, the factor most closely associated with organizational performance, the one that far and away stole the show, was a concept little known out side academic circles: psychological safety. "Google's data," reported the New York Times, "indicated that psychological safety, more than anything else, was critical to making a team work.?
Supplementing the research on psychological safety is the burgeoning body of research on the power of trust. Paul Zak, author of Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High-Performance Companies, has demonstrated the high correlation between trust in a workplace and economic performance. 11 Zak describes how the hormone and neurotransmitter oxytocin, usually associated with childbirth and breastfeeding, actually stimulates trust in humans and other mammals. He presents an experiment devised by Vernon Smith (a Nobel laureate in economics), in which a study subject is given a certain amount of money, which they can keep or give to a stranger, for whom the amount would triple. The stranger would then have the option of returning the favor by sharing some of the increase, perhaps half the total. But would they? The study subjects given the money in the first place had no way of being sure, but when several of them were given either oxytocin or a placebo via a nasal spray, the oxytocin group displayed a significant increase in their willingness to trust, thereby possibly increasing their net gain. Companies cannot continually bathe their employees' brains with oxytocin, but, as Google's Project Aristotle reveals, creating an environment characterized by psychological safety can achieve the same kinds of positive outcomes. Emotional openness elevates oxytocin, which increases trust, which leads to further openness, and therefore more oxytocin and more trust. This creates the positive feedback loop known as a virtuous cycle also known as a great working environment.
It's possible that the antidepressant medications had contributed to reducing Ramon's depression, as reflected on the HAM-D. But since antidepressants often infuse a person with more energy, they may have also given him just enough drive to act on his hopelessness and actually end his life. It's also plausible that Ramon felt relieved and emboldened when, during his hospital stay, he settled on a definitive plan that he would kill himself soon after getting home. Assured by this decision that he wouldn't have to suffer much longer, perhaps he felt freed from his demons and glimpsed light at the end of the tunnel. Now, maybe, he could relax, laugh, and enjoy his final moments with the friendly staff members at the hospital.
Deaths of despair- which include suicides, alcoholic liver disease, and drug overdoses have been rising in a steady and alarming fashion in recent times. Case and Deaton point out that one of the major factors in this disquieting trend toward more self-inflicted death is that fewer people nowadays have "a long-term commitment to an employer who, in turn, was once committed to them, a relationship that, for many, conferred status and was one of the foundations of a meaningful life?
He sought to transform bureaucratic CEOs into "value-maximizing entrepreneurs" who were to be paid with "significant amounts of company stock" instead of fixed salaries. That way, if the shareholders succeeded, the CEO succeeded.
Urban legend tells of a story in which James was asked to deliver a lengthy speech in front of a crowd of academics and researchers eager to hear his thoughts on the history of psychology. Settled in for an extensive report, the crowd was shocked by James's choice to speak for just a few seconds. "They've asked me to talk about the last hundred years of psychological research," he is said to have told them. "It can be summed up in this statement: people by and large become what they think of themselves. Thank you and good night." James expanded further upon this idea of belief in oneself during another lecture entitled The Will to Believe," which was published as a book in 1896. According to James, the belief "I am capable of changing the world" can only be true- or become true if you first adopt the belief without prior evidence. In other words, assuming you haven't changed the world yet, the first step in doing so is believing strongly that you can.
The 737 Max 8 was looking to replace the 737 as Boeing's cash cow, as industry experts estimated the aircraft would come to account for up to 40 percent of Boeing's annual profit." But in a shortsighted move meant to trim a few dollars off the price tag, Boeing decided to make some safety features optional rather than standard, which was a bit like making lifeboats optional on a cruise ship. Boeing's quantitative analysts had been tempted by their confreres at the airlines, often operating in cash-strapped developing countries, to play their own numbers game and bet on cost savings rather than passenger safety. To round out this catastrophe in the making, Boeing neglected to tell airlines and pilots about a possible software glitch that could make the 737 Max 8 take an uncontrollable nosedive. Boeing was following the teachings of modern scientific management and keeping its eyes on the numbers: the dates on a calendar for delivery of the aircraft, the dollars to be made or lost.
When the Italian artist Raphael painted his masterpiece The School of Athens around 1510, he featured Plato and Aristotle as central figures, placing them directly in the center of the fresco. Their union at the center of the painting also highlights the disunion at the core of their thinking. Plato's hand points up, toward the heavens, as he believed our world did not consist of measurable absolutes. Aristotle, in contrast, is painted with his hand stretched outward, parallel to the ground beneath him, as he believed items in the world consist of measurable properties.
March 24, 2022
Had some good points about the power of the individual to make a difference, and the need for the individual to take more responsibility in initiating the change they want to see. Everything else...pass. Too preachy and imbalanced for me.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews