Speaker 1: Pushkin Hey Revisions History listeners, I have something different today.
Speaker 1: It's an episode of work Life with Adam Grant. Those
Speaker 1: of you who know me know I'm a big admyer
Speaker 1: of Adam's work. You may remember a certain privilege experiment
Speaker 1: I ran with his class this season on Revisionist History.
Speaker 1: Adam has a new show out called Rethinking with Adam Grant.
Speaker 1: He's had some fascinating guests on such as Lynn, Manuel Miranda,
Speaker 1: and Ava du Vernay and even me. Follow the podcast
Speaker 1: now to hear his new season. What's your favorite movie?
Speaker 1: One of them is Bracket Ralph and another ah mister
Speaker 1: p Body and Truman. My kids have seen a lot
Speaker 1: of cartoons, a lot on the TV and in the
Speaker 1: movie theater. My wife and I love animated films too.
Speaker 1: When we were growing up, there was only one name
Speaker 1: in animated movies, Disney. For about six decades, they were
Speaker 1: pretty much the only game in town. By the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: Disney films had started to follow a formula. They would
Speaker 1: take an old story at a few musical numbers and
Speaker 1: voila Pocahannas, Hercules Mulan. But then something new happened in animation.
Speaker 1: To Infinity and beyond. Pixar reinvented how you make an
Speaker 1: animated movie. Instead of drawing characters, you code them on
Speaker 1: a computer, which makes them come alive in three D
Speaker 1: instead of being flattened two dimensional. I'm sure you remember
Speaker 1: Pixar's first computer animated movie, Toy Story. It was a smash,
Speaker 1: not just because the tech was cool, but also because
Speaker 1: the story was fresh. It was just so vivid and funny,
Speaker 1: and the characters were original. This is Brad Bird. He's
Speaker 1: a writer, animator, and director, and they weren't doing the
Speaker 1: ten songs and all that stuff that was getting very
Speaker 1: standard in animation at the time. Pixar's first three films
Speaker 1: got multiple Oscar nominations. They grossed over a billion dollars.
Speaker 1: The studio was a perfectly calibrated hit machine, and that's
Speaker 1: when they made a strange decision. They hired Brad. He
Speaker 1: was coming off a big project that tanked. Don't make
Speaker 1: Me Go back there, Man, Don't make Me go back
Speaker 1: and it wasn't his first failure. I got fired from
Speaker 1: Disney and I was actually fired from two of the
Speaker 1: first three jobs I held, But Pixar saw promise in Brad.
Speaker 1: He came to the studio with a bold vision for
Speaker 1: a new film, and he didn't recruit the star teams
Speaker 1: who had created their earlier hits. Instead, he deliberately assembled
Speaker 1: a band of Pixar's biggest misfits. Black Sheep disgruntled say,
Speaker 1: Pirate doesn't exactly sound like a dream team, but somehow
Speaker 1: the movie they made together gross over six hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars one two oscars and was Pixar's biggest hit yet.
Speaker 1: It was incredible in the critics loved it almost as
Speaker 1: much as my kids did. I want to see it
Speaker 1: again again. I get it. I'm Adam Grant and this
Speaker 1: is Work Life, my podcast with Ted. I'm an organizational psychologist.
Speaker 1: I study how to make work not suck. In this show,
Speaker 1: I'm inviting myself inside the minds of some truly unusual
Speaker 1: people because they've mastered something I wish everyone knew about
Speaker 1: work today, shake ups and the value of the outsiders
Speaker 1: inside your workplace. Thanks to Nobos for sponsoring this episode.
Speaker 1: What's the best time to shake things up? In most workplaces,
Speaker 1: it happens when you're struggling, when the chips are down,
Speaker 1: you're desperate, and you have nothing to lose by taking
Speaker 1: some risks, but by then it's often too late. You
Speaker 1: don't have the resources to run bold experiments. The evidence
Speaker 1: suggests that the best time to shake things up is
Speaker 1: actually when you're doing well. That's when you have the time, energy,
Speaker 1: and freedom to innovate. But sadly, research shows that success
Speaker 1: often makes us complacent. Experts call it the fat cat syndrome.
Speaker 1: Think about a time when you've been at the top
Speaker 1: of your game. Did you really want to embrace something
Speaker 1: radically different? Of course not. You probably became overconfident in
Speaker 1: your recipe and resistant to trying new things. Take Blockbuster Video.
Speaker 1: At one point they were apparently opening a new store
Speaker 1: every seventeen hours, so they didn't see any reason to
Speaker 1: buy a little mail order company called Netflix. Oops. One day,
Speaker 1: the CEO of a successful company gave me that line.
Speaker 1: I hate, but that's the way we've always done it.
Speaker 1: My answer, Blockbuster, BlackBerry, Poor Toys, r us. Do you
Speaker 1: want me to keep going? So? How do you shake
Speaker 1: things up before it's too late for that? We're going
Speaker 1: to the movies. In nineteen ninety nine, Warner Brothers released
Speaker 1: the first animated movie directed by Brad Bird Iron Giant.
Speaker 1: I remember being so excited about it. This is Brad's producer,
Speaker 1: John Walker. It was the first big project for both
Speaker 1: Brad and John. On opening day, John went to see
Speaker 1: it in a big theater in Times Square and there
Speaker 1: were three people in there, and I want, what the
Speaker 1: heck is going on? And so I spent the rest
Speaker 1: of the day just hanging around in front of the Marquee,
Speaker 1: and whenever anybody would come by and look at the poster,
Speaker 1: I'd go, it's a really good movie. I'll buy your tickets.
Speaker 1: So I probably probably bought like ten people tickets to
Speaker 1: see it because there was no one in the theaters.
Speaker 1: It was empty, empty, It was just such So I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's that sets the end of me. I
Speaker 1: have the Iron Giant on my resume and nothing more.
Speaker 1: The film failed commercially, but it was wildly original and
Speaker 1: the leaders at Pixar saw potential there. So Bradbird and
Speaker 1: John Walker got the call from two of the studio's
Speaker 1: co founders, Ed Catmole and Steve Jobs. They go, you know,
Speaker 1: we'll bring this bacteria in from the outside and see
Speaker 1: if it gross in the Petrie dish. You know, they
Speaker 1: were actively choosing a guy to come up who had
Speaker 1: just made a big flop. Pixar was founded on a
Speaker 1: disruptive vision. Their leaders fervently believed it was never too
Speaker 1: early to throw your own recipe out the window. Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs wanted to keep raising the bar, bigger hits, longer
Speaker 1: run times. So we picked a couple of outsiders to
Speaker 1: drive a shakeup. They were feeling like, we're in danger
Speaker 1: of falling into certain habits because we have the same
Speaker 1: group that are doing things, and we're very proud of
Speaker 1: this group, and this group is very talented, but we
Speaker 1: want to shake things up, and they felt like whatever
Speaker 1: I was going to do, it was going to be different.
Speaker 1: And so they said, okay, well here can you guys
Speaker 1: do it? Can you do it? And half the time,
Speaker 1: half the money They gave the answer you'd probably give
Speaker 1: if Steve Jobs had ask you that question, Well sure
Speaker 1: we can. You know, you just say you can, right,
Speaker 1: and then you try to go figure out how to
Speaker 1: do it. So Pixar hired John Walker and Brad Bird.
Speaker 1: Brad had been working on a new story for an
Speaker 1: animated film. It would be called The Incredibles, and it
Speaker 1: was different than anything Pixar had ever done. Everything that
Speaker 1: the film was was all the thing that CG animation
Speaker 1: was then terrible at. It was full of humans, which
Speaker 1: they were the weakest thing in CG animation. If you
Speaker 1: look at humans circa that time, Pixar films had only
Speaker 1: had humans as minor characters, and they didn't look very convincing.
Speaker 1: To date, Pixar's movies were mostly filled with toys, monsters,
Speaker 1: and talking bugs. Now Brad was pitching a movie that
Speaker 1: would require animating a whole family of not just humans,
Speaker 1: humans with superpowers. It was full of water and fire
Speaker 1: and wind and all this stuff that CG animation was
Speaker 1: no good at doing the hair. It turns out hair
Speaker 1: was a real problem. Prior to The Incredibles, no one
Speaker 1: had even bothered a code long hair because it was
Speaker 1: just impossible in CG animation. It's almost like everybody used
Speaker 1: a ton of hairspray before they got filmed, because the
Speaker 1: hair doesn't move much. And you know, we were doing
Speaker 1: a film where kind of it was part of Violets character.
Speaker 1: Violet is a member of the Incredible's family, a shy,
Speaker 1: moody teenager norm What do you know about normal? What
Speaker 1: does anyone in this family know about normal? She was
Speaker 1: supposed to spend a huge part of the film covering
Speaker 1: her face with her long black hair. We'd seen these
Speaker 1: beautiful tests, producer John Walker, and it was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: she's shaking her head and the hair is flowing, and
Speaker 1: it's gorgeous, and it's going to be beautiful. But the
Speaker 1: tests were oversimplified. The hair moved right, but kind of
Speaker 1: looked like strips of rubber. When it was time to
Speaker 1: do the full computer animation, Violet's hair looked awful. So
Speaker 1: John asked what it would take to get it right,
Speaker 1: and he was shocked at the answer. We can't actually
Speaker 1: do the movie like that. That would take, you know,
Speaker 1: ten years and ten millions. Why did you show us
Speaker 1: that I was gonna I'm trying to get myself ready
Speaker 1: to go. Tell Brad that we're gonna cut Violet's hair.
Speaker 1: You can't do it. That's the character. She's gotta have
Speaker 1: the hair. As the film goes on, she feels enough
Speaker 1: growing self assurance that she pulls the hair out of
Speaker 1: her face. Her hair had a story arc to do,
Speaker 1: hair and water and all these other new images Correctly.
Speaker 1: Pisar exacts guests that the film could cost half a
Speaker 1: billion dollars and take a decade to make. Brad needed
Speaker 1: some original thinking, So this unconventional director went looking for
Speaker 1: a team of unconventional recruits, the outsiders. Among Pixar's insiders,
Speaker 1: the black Sheep. They're not always the smilingest, easiest people
Speaker 1: to work with. Sometimes they're a little grumpy. Brad, have
Speaker 1: you ever been a black sheep yourself? Yeah, yeah, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: My family was kind of like the Family and Incredibles.
Speaker 1: We had these dinners where everybody vented and said what
Speaker 1: they thought. That's the attitude that I kind of grew
Speaker 1: up in, and I found very quickly the world doesn't
Speaker 1: work that way. Brad searched Pixar's ranks for people who
Speaker 1: are frustrated with the status quo, people who had risky
Speaker 1: ideas that had been dismissed or overlooked. You might have
Speaker 1: one of those people on your team, or maybe you're
Speaker 1: the black Sheep. There's a big impetus, especially with success,
Speaker 1: to repeat whatever's worked before. You know, if it ain't broke,
Speaker 1: don't fix it. But I was looking for a bunch
Speaker 1: of people that were kind of dissatisfied with the way
Speaker 1: things were. Turns out, Brad was onto something. Research shows
Speaker 1: that the kind of frustration he harnessed can fuel creativity.
Speaker 1: In other words, the curmudgeons on your team could be
Speaker 1: great untapped resources. I'm sure you've seen companies hire external
Speaker 1: consultants or executives to shake things up, but there's evidence
Speaker 1: that you don't have to turn to outside hires. You
Speaker 1: can go to the black sheep already working within the company.
Speaker 1: Consider one study that was done at a company that
Speaker 1: makes oil drilling equipment. Supervisors evaluated how often employees brought
Speaker 1: new and innovative ideas to the table. The employees who
Speaker 1: are rated the most creative were the ones who felt
Speaker 1: dissatisfied with their jobs. Their frustration with problems motivated them
Speaker 1: to develop fresh solutions. But dissatisfaction didn't always lead to creativity.
Speaker 1: It only helped when people felt committed to the company
Speaker 1: and had access to the feedback and support they needed.
Speaker 1: When you ignore them, disgruntled people channel their frustration in
Speaker 1: unproductive or even counterproductive directions. If you're aware they're out there, though,
Speaker 1: and you really listen to them, they can become your allies.
Speaker 1: They always say innovation as the pirate ship that sails
Speaker 1: into the yacht club nobody likes it, but then they
Speaker 1: appreciate it later. This is Lisa Bodell. She spent part
Speaker 1: of her career in advertising and startups. And I came
Speaker 1: there to do really great, motivating, inspiring things, and I
Speaker 1: was spending my day just managing processes and procedures and crop.
Speaker 1: Lisa got fed up with the dozens of meaningless tasks
Speaker 1: that to find so many work environments, so she started
Speaker 1: a company called future Think to help organizations shake up
Speaker 1: the status quo and ideally walk away with things that
Speaker 1: will help you simplify your work and your life to
Speaker 1: get you moving forward. And what I thought we could
Speaker 1: do is go through about I don't know, five hundred
Speaker 1: power point slides. Does that work for you all? No?
Speaker 1: Her big breakthrough came when she was giving a talk
Speaker 1: to a few dozen executives at a manufacturing company. I
Speaker 1: realized quickly that these people didn't give a crap about
Speaker 1: what I was talking about, and so I called a
Speaker 1: break and I said, listen, I'm going to shake things up.
Speaker 1: She looked at all these board executives and told them
Speaker 1: to kill their own company. I challenged each of those
Speaker 1: groups to identify who their number one competitor was, and
Speaker 1: then I said, pretend you're that competition, pretend you have
Speaker 1: that hat on. I want you to put yourself out
Speaker 1: of business. I mean, just the room lit on fire.
Speaker 1: They were so excited because I gave them permission to
Speaker 1: talk about the things that were literally verboten. It was
Speaker 1: a mindset ship as well as a business strategy shift.
Speaker 1: When I heard about the exercise, I was expecting a
Speaker 1: room full of complaints and cynicism. Then I watched it happen,
Speaker 1: and I have never seen a more energized group of
Speaker 1: leaders in my life. Really, what it does is give
Speaker 1: people a framework and permission to start attacking things that
Speaker 1: aren't working. And that's what's energizing to people is that
Speaker 1: they don't know the difference at them between being in
Speaker 1: a groove and being in a rut. And most people,
Speaker 1: when you talk about complacency, are in a rut. And
Speaker 1: until you talk to them about what do you wish
Speaker 1: you could change why you frustrated, they get pumped up.
Speaker 1: One thing that's always fascinated me about this exercise is
Speaker 1: how different it would be if you ran it as
Speaker 1: save the company. And I was interested in hearing sort
Speaker 1: of what led you to the boldness of killing the
Speaker 1: company rather than saving the company. Save means safe and preserve.
Speaker 1: You know, I think of a life preserver. How can
Speaker 1: we keep what we have safe? Versus how can we
Speaker 1: get rid of what we have and do things better?
Speaker 1: It's mission to admit that things might not be right,
Speaker 1: so you can look at what's not working and make
Speaker 1: space for things that are. If you were asked to
Speaker 1: kill your company, where would you start? You might begin
Speaker 1: the way Lisa does. Gather some people together to give
Speaker 1: their frustration a voice, put them on offense, not defense,
Speaker 1: by asking them to attack the problems they see, and
Speaker 1: then invite them to run with their best ideas. Lisa's
Speaker 1: approach has worked in all kinds of environments, banks, tech companies,
Speaker 1: city governments, schools, and Brad Byrd did his own version
Speaker 1: of it at Pixar. Pixar kind of invented a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff that now everyone takes for granted. I
Speaker 1: mean they were the best in the world at it.
Speaker 1: Those methods weren't going to work for our film. Brad
Speaker 1: challenged the Black Sheep to try different solutions to their
Speaker 1: toughest animation problems, like Violet's hair. They don't want to
Speaker 1: do something the way that it's always been done. For
Speaker 1: every twenty people that say this is how you do it,
Speaker 1: there's usually one person going, you don't have to do
Speaker 1: it that way. There's another way that you could do it.
Speaker 1: But there was one problem that neither Brad nor John
Speaker 1: Walker had anticipated. There were different rooms, they were doing
Speaker 1: different things. The technical people had been unleashed to build
Speaker 1: all these new tools, but the creative people didn't really
Speaker 1: understand how to use them. Something would go wrong. An
Speaker 1: email would come from one side going, hey, your simulator
Speaker 1: is broken over to the people that were building simulator,
Speaker 1: and the simular guards would right back, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's operator air and they would go back and forth
Speaker 1: like that, and we go, oh my gosh, this is
Speaker 1: not worth going. Brad and John started listening to the
Speaker 1: people on the front lines, and they suddenly realized there
Speaker 1: was a simple solution to their complex problem. Put the
Speaker 1: technical people together with the animators in the same rooms.
Speaker 1: As soon as that started to happen, it was like magic,
Speaker 1: because somebody show them the problem and I see, look
Speaker 1: what happens. I do this, and the hair flies around
Speaker 1: the room and the guy who's building somebody goes, well,
Speaker 1: you gotta hit F three dash seven and put this
Speaker 1: little bit of a code in there. I didn't you
Speaker 1: know that? And they go, no, we didn't know that.
Speaker 1: The beautiful thing of when you go after black sheep
Speaker 1: you say, hey, I'll give you a crazy idea to try.
Speaker 1: That's kind of where they want to go. So wait, Brad,
Speaker 1: does that mean you're just trying to surround yourself constantly
Speaker 1: with angry people? No? I mean I don't want just
Speaker 1: disgruntled people. There's plenty of those, and they don't do
Speaker 1: a damn thing for anybody. I want people who are
Speaker 1: disgruntled because they have a better way of doing things
Speaker 1: and they are having trouble finding an avenue racing cars
Speaker 1: that are just spinning their wheels in a garage rather
Speaker 1: than racing. You open that garage and man, those people
Speaker 1: will take you somewhere. So you've got your team a
Speaker 1: dissatisfied people. You're ready for them to shake things up. Now,
Speaker 1: how do you get them all innovating in the same
Speaker 1: direction or on that after the break? Okay, this is
Speaker 1: going to be a different kind of ad. I've played
Speaker 1: a personal role in selecting the sponsors for this podcast
Speaker 1: because they all have interesting cultures of their own. Today,
Speaker 1: we're going inside the workplace at Binobos. A few years ago,
Speaker 1: Sam Gonzalez was on an all staff call at Binobo's
Speaker 1: when the top boss said something that took his breath away.
Speaker 1: She had said one of the things in that conference
Speaker 1: call was that we were going to embrace in our
Speaker 1: marketing campaigns. We're going to really start to think about
Speaker 1: gender identity. For Sam, a guide in one of Binobo's shops.
Speaker 1: The idea that a men's clothing brand was going to
Speaker 1: focus on gender identity wasn't just exciting, it was personal.
Speaker 1: I'd worked at Binobo's for a little over a year
Speaker 1: before I figured out the like, I am trans and
Speaker 1: I want to trans addition and that will include for me,
Speaker 1: and like letting everyone that I work with know and
Speaker 1: anyone who comes into my life know that you know,
Speaker 1: this is a part of who I am. Sam had
Speaker 1: prepared for the worst, what does it mean to transition
Speaker 1: at work? Because I had only heard horror stories. But
Speaker 1: then once I did, I you know, was proved one
Speaker 1: hundred percent wrong. People were super open, They were incredibly
Speaker 1: caring and respectful. And then just a few months later,
Speaker 1: Sam found himself on this all hands phone call. Mickey
Speaker 1: on Verall, then the co president and now Binobo's CEO,
Speaker 1: said the company was going to start a public conversation
Speaker 1: about gender identity. As soon as the call finished, Sam
Speaker 1: center an email. I said, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you know this, but I am trans and I
Speaker 1: have transitioned Epinobos, and I've been here for a while,
Speaker 1: and you have no idea what this type of representation
Speaker 1: means to someone like me. When I first got Sam's email,
Speaker 1: I would, to be honest, completely overwhelmed. I think I
Speaker 1: probably shed a tear or two. I'm Mickey Vall, I
Speaker 1: am the CEO of Binobo's. For me, it was very
Speaker 1: touching that someone felt comfortable enough to be able to
Speaker 1: tell me that personal story. Think about how rare that
Speaker 1: is for a junior employee to feel comfortable emailing someone
Speaker 1: that high up. I almost never see it. Even though
Speaker 1: I spend a lot of time encouraging senior leaders to
Speaker 1: be open Epinobo's. Mickey wasn't just receptive to new ideas
Speaker 1: from below, she actively encouraged them. And I had talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about in my email that I had
Speaker 1: met Chris Mosier, and I think that he would be
Speaker 1: a fantastic person for us to highlight. I mean, the
Speaker 1: first thing I did, I'd forwarded it on to our
Speaker 1: production team and I said, Sam just had this amazing
Speaker 1: idea of bringing Chris Moser in and shooting him in
Speaker 1: our clothes. Let's do it. Chris Moser was part of
Speaker 1: the American Men's do athlon team in twenty sixteen that
Speaker 1: made him the first openly transgender athlete to compete for
Speaker 1: Team USA. Chris was one of the first people that
Speaker 1: I saw that made me feel like being is a
Speaker 1: thing and you can do it, and you can transition
Speaker 1: and you can be happy. So Sam made a pit
Speaker 1: for Benobos to feature Chris in a commercial for a
Speaker 1: men's clothing company, to say trans men are men and
Speaker 1: can be a part of our campaign. To me personally,
Speaker 1: was a big deal. That's Chris. A few months later,
Speaker 1: Benobos launched a commercial that featured him. It was sort
Speaker 1: of what I was searching for when I was younger,
Speaker 1: Like if I would have seen out trans men being
Speaker 1: a part of men's campaigns, being a part of men's
Speaker 1: fashion magazines or commercials on TV that are talking about
Speaker 1: men in masculinity. I think that my trajectory would have
Speaker 1: been drastically different as a person. So, Sam, as you
Speaker 1: reflect on this whole experience of first transitioning at work
Speaker 1: and then bringing on Chris as a spokesperson, how does
Speaker 1: that make you feel? There's not really a word to
Speaker 1: describe it. I think awesome is too small of a word.
Speaker 1: Awesome is too small a word. I like that, and
Speaker 1: I like the idea that big ideas can come from
Speaker 1: anywhere in a company as long as there's support at
Speaker 1: the top. Benobos makes great clothes that can fit every guy.
Speaker 1: Ordering on their website is easy. They ship fast, and
Speaker 1: if it doesn't fit, they want to know. Visit binobos
Speaker 1: dot com. Enter promo code TED at checkout and get
Speaker 1: twenty percent off your first order. That's binobos dot com
Speaker 1: and promo code ted for twenty percent off. When you're
Speaker 1: gathering a group of people for a major shakeup, how
Speaker 1: do you motivate them? Your first instinct is probably to
Speaker 1: inspire them. We've never lost an American in space where
Speaker 1: sure as hell not gonna lose one on my watch.
Speaker 1: Failure is not an off. Let them come. Hell, you
Speaker 1: can do it. If you're working with a bunch of
Speaker 1: disgruntled black sheep, you'll feel especially compelled to convey confidence,
Speaker 1: show enthusiasm, and make sure they don't get discouraged the
Speaker 1: sheer difficulty of the task. But if you're Brad Bird
Speaker 1: and you're making the Incredibles, you do the exact opposite.
Speaker 1: Brad told his team no one thought they could pull
Speaker 1: it off. That's the kind of challenge that lights a
Speaker 1: fuse in Brad, and that's how he leads our teams.
Speaker 1: This is Nicole Parody Grindel. She's been a producer at
Speaker 1: Pixar since the mid nineties. When Nicole joined the Incredibles team,
Speaker 1: they've been struggling with the animation for about a year.
Speaker 1: I was working with the engineers who were trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to do the hair and the cloth,
Speaker 1: and they were saying it was impossible. Brad was asking
Speaker 1: for too much, and they just kept saying, nope, nope, nope,
Speaker 1: we can't do it. And they were trying, and the
Speaker 1: stuff they were producing looked terrible. We have these crew
Speaker 1: meetings once a week, so everyone's wandering in first thing
Speaker 1: in the morning with their coffee, piling into this big
Speaker 1: theater that we have and he gets up in front
Speaker 1: of this room of people and he just starts yelling
Speaker 1: and telling him. They think we can't do this, they
Speaker 1: think we're too slow, they think we're not good enough.
Speaker 1: I tell you we're going to do this, you know,
Speaker 1: and people love it. I mean it's just pep rally.
Speaker 1: What Brad did by instinct is actually backed by evidence.
Speaker 1: If you want to motivate black sheep, give them a battle,
Speaker 1: to fight, a particular kind of battle. One thing that
Speaker 1: is very effective is to find a common enemy. But
Speaker 1: the enemy doesn't have to be a person. It can
Speaker 1: be a mindset. It can be a presumption, it can
Speaker 1: be a system that doesn't want to change, you know.
Speaker 1: It can even be something like a trend in movies
Speaker 1: that is just making movies stupider. You can make that
Speaker 1: the enemy, and you can put it up in front
Speaker 1: of people and say, you know what I don't like
Speaker 1: I don't like X, and here's how I think we
Speaker 1: can not do this thing that every one is doing
Speaker 1: and really dazzle the audience. And people like that because
Speaker 1: you're putting them on the pirate ship. But you're not
Speaker 1: going with the well funded, safe route. You're kind of
Speaker 1: striking your sales in a storm and you're okay with it.
Speaker 1: That fires people up. You know it fires me up.
Speaker 1: It sounds like in that moment, Brad was shaping how
Speaker 1: his team perceived those outside of their team and basically
Speaker 1: frame those individuals as critics are naysayers. This is Samir
Speaker 1: nor Muhammad, my colleague get Warden. He studies what happens
Speaker 1: when we're cast in the role of underdog. Stories of
Speaker 1: underdogs and favorites permeate societies. David versus Goliath, Horatio alger
Speaker 1: Ivan the Fool in Russian literature. You see these examples
Speaker 1: of underdogs going from ranks to riches or performing against
Speaker 1: others low expectations across the world. An underdog isn't a
Speaker 1: kind of person, it's a mindset that can help you
Speaker 1: approach problems the way black sheep do. You can position
Speaker 1: people as underdogs by telling them they're not expected to succeed,
Speaker 1: and surprisingly, the uphill battle is often the one that
Speaker 1: people are most excited to fight. In a study with
Speaker 1: job seekers who had faced discrimination in their careers, Sameir
Speaker 1: randomly assigned some of them to tell a story about
Speaker 1: how they had been underdogs against the odds. It almost
Speaker 1: doubled their chances of landing a job. In the following month.
Speaker 1: You actually experienced more efficacy and more confidence to do well,
Speaker 1: and it leads to higher performance. In another study, samere head,
Speaker 1: people fill out a survey about their negotiating style. Then
Speaker 1: he told them that, based on their results, he'd calculated
Speaker 1: the probability of their success in a negotiation. He told
Speaker 1: some participants they were the favorites, some they were evenly matched,
Speaker 1: and told others that they were the underdogs. The underdog
Speaker 1: actually ended up reaching the more creative solution. People who
Speaker 1: were told that they couldn't succeed actually ended up performing better.
Speaker 1: And the reason for this is that they essentially to
Speaker 1: prove the researchers wrong. The favorites had nothing to prove,
Speaker 1: they got complacent. The underdogs were driven to show they'd
Speaker 1: been misjudged, which happens in all kinds of jobs. Even
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan motivated himself this way. Even in his Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame induction speech when the world came out to
Speaker 1: celebrate with him, he was calling out his school coach
Speaker 1: who chose another player over him, and how this fueled
Speaker 1: his motivation to prove them wrong. What's remarkable is that
Speaker 1: Jordan was talking about being underestimated. After being universally recognized
Speaker 1: is not only the greatest basketball player ever, but as
Speaker 1: one of the greatest athletes of all time. Jordan was
Speaker 1: still constructing that perception of being underestimated and using that
Speaker 1: as motivation to prove others wrong. But before you start
Speaker 1: cutting down all your colleagues in the name of motivation,
Speaker 1: keep in mind that there's a wrong way to do it.
Speaker 1: This doesn't mean you go around the workplace telling everyone
Speaker 1: that they can't succeed. That's not the way to instill
Speaker 1: is motivation. As a person in this position who's seen
Speaker 1: as an underdog, you have to feel like you have
Speaker 1: the capabilities to succeed. For the underdog approach to work,
Speaker 1: the low expectations need to come from the right messenger,
Speaker 1: a natural adversary. When a really credible person tells you
Speaker 1: you can't succeed, in some sense, you basically internalize those expectations.
Speaker 1: Your confidence drops, you actually believe them, and you don't
Speaker 1: perform as successfully. On the other hand, when you receive
Speaker 1: low expectations from someone who's not seen as credible, you
Speaker 1: perceive them as really incompetent or not knowledgeable about either
Speaker 1: the domain that you're performing in or your own abilities.
Speaker 1: This is what sparks that desire to prove others wrong.
Speaker 1: So if you're rallying salespeople, you can emphasize that R
Speaker 1: and D doesn't think they can hit their targets. And
Speaker 1: if you're trying to motivate technical or creative people, you
Speaker 1: can tell them they're being doubted by a bunch of suits.
Speaker 1: That's what those black sheet probably are looking for, is
Speaker 1: an opportunity to show what they can do. Pixar producer
Speaker 1: Nicole Grindel saw Brad's underdog gambit payoff the black sheet
Speaker 1: at Studio felt the naysayers had no business judging their
Speaker 1: abilities or the new animation techniques they were about to invent.
Speaker 1: The idea that we're proving folks wrong, I think is
Speaker 1: the prime motivator. I mean, of course, we want to
Speaker 1: make a great film and a great story, and that's
Speaker 1: a given. But proving that, you know, proven to the
Speaker 1: man that we're better than they think we are, that's exciting.
Speaker 1: And that's what folks in this industry live to do,
Speaker 1: is you know, act in that kind of a story.
Speaker 1: The last step for energizing or shakeup team is to
Speaker 1: calibrate the degree of difficulty. How challenging should the goal be.
Speaker 1: I think you always have the impossible task because basically,
Speaker 1: to do really good work is hard, and if you're
Speaker 1: doing it right, you are kind of an underdog. You
Speaker 1: should be shooting for something that's out of reach, and
Speaker 1: maybe you don't hit it. But at the end of it,
Speaker 1: if you are reaching for something that's beyond your reach,
Speaker 1: you're probably going to extend your reach from your previous work.
Speaker 1: In psychology, we call that kind of reach a just
Speaker 1: manageable difficulty. It's a challenge that tests and stretches your
Speaker 1: skills to the very edge of what you think is possible.
Speaker 1: It has to be tough, but it can't set you
Speaker 1: up for certain failure either. As Pixar producer John Walker
Speaker 1: puts it, sometimes you have to swim upstream. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: have to swim upstream. But if you swim upstream too long,
Speaker 1: something is probably wrong. Okay. I came away from Pisar
Speaker 1: convinced that to shake things up, it can help to
Speaker 1: recruit the people you'd least expect, frustrated people and listen
Speaker 1: to them, then motivate them by making them into underdogs
Speaker 1: against the odds or a difficult enemy. But I was
Speaker 1: curious about whether this could all work in a place
Speaker 1: that's the total opposite of Pixar, the ultimate bureaucracy, an
Speaker 1: environment where strict orders are followed, old traditions crushed new technologies,
Speaker 1: and creativity isn't just not rewarded, it's sometimes actively punished.
Speaker 1: Recruit training, where a man has taught the basic skills
Speaker 1: for the seat the US Navy, he learns to be
Speaker 1: part of the team. He learns where he might fit
Speaker 1: in a few years ago, a military general told me
Speaker 1: that if I wanted to understand innovation in the armed forces,
Speaker 1: I had to talk to a junior naval officer named
Speaker 1: Ben Coleman. My grandfather was a World War Two aviator,
Speaker 1: and my great uncle was an Air Force pilot who
Speaker 1: was shot down over Vietnam and spent five years in
Speaker 1: the Hannah Hilton with John McCain and Jim Stockdale, and
Speaker 1: those stories infuse my upbringing. And I just wanted to
Speaker 1: be leading carrier battle fleets against whoever was attacking the
Speaker 1: United States. So I was surprised to hear Ben his
Speaker 1: colleagues call him a black sheep, a rabble rouser, a troublemaker.
Speaker 1: Troublemaker is is an amusing term for me, and I
Speaker 1: think my parents would get a kick out of that.
Speaker 1: Do you think you are one, though, or you became
Speaker 1: one in the navy. I think I became a troublemaker
Speaker 1: in the sense of challenging established wisdom. Ben may have
Speaker 1: been a sailor, but he didn't start out as a pirate.
Speaker 1: I was in a fraternity that was known for its parties,
Speaker 1: but was the guy doing risk management in the outside,
Speaker 1: making sure nothing too crazy went down. Ben became a
Speaker 1: naval aviator, just like the pilots in Top Gun. Their
Speaker 1: callsigns were Maverick and Iceman. My call sign was professor
Speaker 1: because I had this this habit of reading long books
Speaker 1: like the American History of Law and listening to classical music.
Speaker 1: When Ben flew Missions is a naval pilot, he had
Speaker 1: a huge amount of autonomy. Being at twenty seven year old,
Speaker 1: who's leading to sixty five million dollar jets with you know,
Speaker 1: four or five hundred pound bombs. This is an incredible
Speaker 1: amount of responsibility on a daily basis. You were the
Speaker 1: onseen commander. But when Ben came back from overseas deployment.
Speaker 1: He started getting frustrated, Frustrated that people were getting rewarded
Speaker 1: based on seniority instead of performance, Frustrated that people were
Speaker 1: getting promoted for conformity instead of original thinking. Frustrated that
Speaker 1: a field tested combat pilot couldn't even have a beer
Speaker 1: on a Friday night without seeking approval from a senior commander.
Speaker 1: You know, there's five or six levels of approval. Even
Speaker 1: if the first four people say yes, it only takes
Speaker 1: one viewer to kill an idea, and so that becomes
Speaker 1: very discouraging, and you stopped caring to some extent. So
Speaker 1: Ben wrote an essay for a military news site. He
Speaker 1: explained his frustration and challenged the Navy to start supporting
Speaker 1: and promoting junior people with disruptive ideas. Piping up like
Speaker 1: that is sort of not done in the military, and
Speaker 1: I said some pretty intemperate things on reflecting on it,
Speaker 1: but it got the attention of a lot of seniors
Speaker 1: who were a gas that I would write something like this.
Speaker 1: But some leaders were open to Ben's perspective. A Navy
Speaker 1: admiral was setting up something called a rapid Innovation Cell,
Speaker 1: and he asked Ben to directed now to give you
Speaker 1: a sense for how slowly the Navy adopts new technologies,
Speaker 1: Some of their computers are still running wind knows ninety five.
Speaker 1: Yet over the next year, Ben's Rapid Innovation Cell succeeded
Speaker 1: in getting three D printers installed on ships. They also
Speaker 1: tested a robot fish affectionately named Silent Nemo for stealth
Speaker 1: underwater missions. It looks like a tuna in case you
Speaker 1: were wondering. Ben fueled these advances with the same strategy
Speaker 1: as we saw a pixar. His first step was to
Speaker 1: recruit black sheep. Many of them had been disciplined for insubordination,
Speaker 1: like one guy who was fired from a nuclear submarine
Speaker 1: for disobeying an order and ended up being one of
Speaker 1: the key innovation catalysts. How did you find them? Was
Speaker 1: that a signal that you're deliberately looking for Let me
Speaker 1: just find a bunch of people who are pissed off. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you had the guts and the willingness to put
Speaker 1: your name onto an idea and publish it, that already
Speaker 1: set you apart from the crowd and disruptors. While they're
Speaker 1: lone wolves to minute, to some extent, they also find
Speaker 1: each other, whether it's in the cubicle next door, or
Speaker 1: the building across the way, or even across the country. Second,
Speaker 1: Ben gathered them together to really listen to their frustrations
Speaker 1: rather than squash them. One of the phrases that really
Speaker 1: makes me angry is when senior leaders say, if you
Speaker 1: have a problem, don't tell it to me unless you
Speaker 1: have a solution. Oftentimes junior people have lots of problems
Speaker 1: they don't know the solutions to, and they need guidance.
Speaker 1: This is untapped energy that is just waiting to be unleashed. Third,
Speaker 1: Ben rallied them around a common enemy, in this case,
Speaker 1: middle managers. You had this mismatch between senior officers who
Speaker 1: really and truly wanted the crazy ideas with those below
Speaker 1: them who had a mandate to slow those things down.
Speaker 1: And if we didn't get their approval, then we just
Speaker 1: jumped ahead of them to their senior who usually was
Speaker 1: in our favor. And you can use the bureaucracy against
Speaker 1: itself in this sense, because people will always fall in line.
Speaker 1: In Ben's view, the lasting impact of his work was
Speaker 1: in demonstrating that this kind of innovation could be fueled
Speaker 1: from the bottom up by black sheep inside the Navy.
Speaker 1: They planted seeds for dozens of other rapid innovation cells
Speaker 1: across the military. And so, for me, the greatest success
Speaker 1: is the mindset that it created within a very bureaucratic
Speaker 1: organization to take charge, to empower people to run with
Speaker 1: an idea and build a community of support around that,
Speaker 1: and do it regardless of whether or not you had
Speaker 1: official support. All Right, as much as I love this
Speaker 1: whole recipe, I have one little problem with it. You
Speaker 1: can only use it once. If you succeed, people aren't
Speaker 1: underdogs anymore. That was Brad Bird's big challenge when it
Speaker 1: came time to make a sequel to The Incredibles. This time,
Speaker 1: the team was stacked with hit makers, there was no
Speaker 1: common enemy, and they had three and a half years
Speaker 1: to make the film. It seems like it would have
Speaker 1: been harder to frame the crew as underdogs, given how
Speaker 1: remarkably successful the original movie was, except that they took
Speaker 1: a year off of our schedule, and suddenly we're the
Speaker 1: underdogs again. We had a hell of a mountain to
Speaker 1: climb that in many ways was taller than our first one.
Speaker 1: The studio asked us to release the film a year
Speaker 1: earlier than what we had originally planned a year is
Speaker 1: a lot. We tried to re establish that underdog theme,
Speaker 1: and taking a year off the schedule sure helped. That's
Speaker 1: one way to turn superstars into underdogs again. But to
Speaker 1: make it work, the new challenge has to be meaningful
Speaker 1: or exciting, not just an arbitrary burden. You know, there's
Speaker 1: an attitude out there, a bunch of people with their
Speaker 1: arms folded like it better be good, you know, which
Speaker 1: doesn't help inspire you to do anything good, you know.
Speaker 1: But what is challenging is can you take a year
Speaker 1: off to schedule and still come out with a great
Speaker 1: movie and come in on or under budget and you know,
Speaker 1: drop the mic. The team had the fuel they needed.
Speaker 1: It became a just manageable difficulty. Incredibles two grossed over
Speaker 1: a billion dollars in its first two months alone, eclipsing
Speaker 1: the original films total theatrical revenues. It was nominated for
Speaker 1: an Oscar but when the People's Choice Award for Favorite
Speaker 1: Family Movie, Yes it's cool for adults and kids. That's
Speaker 1: what a bunch of black sheep can do. And oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's now the highest grossing animated film in American history.
Speaker 1: Most importantly, it got six thumbs up from my favorite experts.
Speaker 1: What was the first thing you said when we came
Speaker 1: out of a theater? I want to see it again
Speaker 1: and then again. How many times have you seen it four?
Speaker 1: You've seen it four times? Why? Because I like it?
Speaker 1: I think it was choice In the same week. Work
Speaker 1: Life is hosted by me Adam Grant. The show is
Speaker 1: produced by Ted with Transmitter Media. Our team includes Colin Helms,
Speaker 1: Gretta Cone, Jessica Glazer, Grace Rubinstein, Angela Chang, and Janet Lee.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Dan O'Donnell. Our show is
Speaker 1: mixed by Rick Kwan. Original music by Hansales, Sue and
Speaker 1: Alison Layton Brown. Add stories produced by Pineapple Street Media.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to our sponsors Bnobo's Accenture, Hilton and JP
Speaker 1: Morgan Chase. Thanks to Bob Sutton for alerting us to
Speaker 1: the incredible story and Jamie Wolf, Chris Wigham, Rick Sayer,
Speaker 1: Alan Barilero, and Greg Brando for sharing their perspectives and
Speaker 1: helping with interviews at Pixar, as well as Rich Walsh
Speaker 1: in the Military for their research. Jing Zhao and Jennifer
Speaker 1: George on dissatisfaction fueling creativity, sim Sitkin and colleagues on
Speaker 1: Stretch Goals, and Jane Dutton and Bob Duncan on the
Speaker 1: fat Cat Syndrome Next time on work Life. We finished
Speaker 1: and I hear SCHELLINGO it was hard. I taste blood,
Speaker 1: and then she goes, that's so awesome. I was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm going to find out exactly what
Speaker 1: I'm made of. Shre Olympic rivals and pretty good friends
Speaker 1: too well. Explore how to get the best of both worlds.
Speaker 1: People be patty, I mean your studio. Let's ant zam
Speaker 1: miga fo