This is an AMAZING podcast episode, totally in gamma mode all the 2 hours, my brain was on fire, I didn’t touch my phone, blink, or do anything else than putting all my senses into this. I will rewatch it probably 10 times more. Thanks for bringing all the wisdom on what science knows that business does or doesn’t. 🧠💡
Thanks for this great discussion, Lenny! A few of the things I mentioned might be a little hard to follow so I just wanted to post so people could ask questions if they have any. Have a great day and I hope this helps people’s brains!
As I listen back, probably the hardest thing to follow is how I answered how to improve the habitat at the end. Here are a few ideas that might help add structure for people interested in improving habitat: Habitat is comprised of: 1. What people believe (Cultural Beliefs) 2. The humans we choose to hire and how they choose to act (Cultural Behaviors) 3. The structure, processes, tools, data, etc (The Employee Experience) It's important to realize that 3 comes from 2, and that 2 comes from 1. If we get 1 wrong, we will get 2 wrong. If we get 2 wrong, we will get 3 wrong. This is why we focus so directly on what people believe, and we need to do it proactively instead of just waiting to see what the humans act like. We talked about what the critical beliefs are in the episode: 1. Answering: Why are we doing this? (The Role we play) 2. What value does our work create for people? (get really precise) 3. What quality standard do we operate at / above? 4. What level of decision quality is sufficient for us? (most people use bias to action as an excuse to make dumber decisions, sub for bias to impact) 5. How do we believe we should treat each other? What state of mind do we want to put other people into? These are 5 things that every human being believes, usually because they figured it out for themselves. And what they figured out on their own is rarely aligned with the ideal approaches and outcomes, nor is it aligned with what the other people figured out on their own. Rather than mission, vision, values, you can just answer these 5 questions really straightforwardly and have a better culture than mission vision values could produce. It is more logical, therefore more believable, therefore faster and more potent (try it, you'll see). It's also easier to do right at the beginning of the company's life, which is why I brought up YC. Here to answer any other questions and clarify. Have a great week!
Hi, Evan! Amazing episode I loved all of it. In the show notes is a link to a Scientific American article "What is the function of the various brainwaves?" which doesn't mention gamma and presents theta as part of the "awake" brainwaves frequencies. I realize this article might not be a 1:1 for the modes you described but if there's anything you'd like to share about how this all adds up that would be greatly appreciated.
@@peterdouglasross7217 Great question. Take a look at the date on that particular article and you'll notice that it's pretty old. Since that was published, the community studying EEG results has settled on alpha, beta, and gamma, with theta being what some people think of as the "drowsy" state where you're sort of disconnecting.
Thank you. This episode is packed. It is difficult to follow probably because of too many insights per minute. It definitely pushed me into Gamma and I’m grateful for that 😅
Hi Evan, Thanks for sharing some deep knowledge. Probably the only Lenny Podcast I have watched, where the word 'tactical' was clearly put in its place. I know we all love it when somebody can not just give knowledge, but also tell us 2 or 3 things we can do with it, but in your case you never let that sidestep what was "core" to the conversation. People who get it will figure out for themselves that sometimes knowledge in itself is good enough. My personal viewpoint, there were a couple of times in the podcast, I felt you were sounding almost overtly apologetic for sounding deep, I can vouch that it didn't matter or should not matter. Strength to you, please continue to try to bring some sanity into the stupid ways all organised entities work and lay claim to "productivity"
This episode is packed. It is difficult to follow probably because of too many insights per minute. It definitely pushed me into Gamma and I’m grateful for that 😅
I think Daniel Pink made that observation best (holding the two in contrast). Here are a couple starting points: Science knows that humans aren't motivated the way business thinks they are. Dive into Thaler's Misbehaving, Eurich's Insight, Never Split the Difference, and Greene's Laws of Human Nature, in addition to a lot of the research Gallup does about employee motivation. Most of what business does to motivate humans is almost completely wrong; often choosing things that demotivate humans. Science knows that humans have different personalities; business usually ignores that and focuses on job/role instead. Learn about the Big 5. Take our profile if you want, but focus on the most modern models: Big 5, HEXACO, Hogan. Learn the dimensions in which humans are different. Human beings are highly-dissimilar. Science knows how chemicals like cortisol and norepinephrine work. Business acts as if these have little/no effect on cognition, decision making, or performance. Learn about these two, plus dopamine, endorphin, serotonin and oxytocin. Learn their stimuli, their effects, and their after-effects. RUclips / wikipedia, etc. are perfectly fine resources for this. Very eye opening. Science knows the true sources of things like innovation, customer retention, and quality decision making. Business tries to recreates these outcomes using completely incorrect inputs. Many chapters in Greene's book do a great job of this (however Greene doesn't do much to segment humans into different groups in his writing). Shreyas has also done an incredible job of weaving these insights into his product sense course, from what I have heard. If you really want a geekfest, check out Stanford's Introduction to Human Behavioral Biology, which is truly incredible: ruclips.net/video/NNnIGh9g6fA/видео.html MIT has also added their introduction to the human brain curriculum. The punchline of all of this will be crystal clear: WE ARE DOING IT WRONG. :)
To find the shownotes you need to follow the link in the description (www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/understanding-your-brain-evan-lapointe), but here's the PDF itself: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/gm21cj0vi0bjosyu8kd69/CORE-Sciences-Tips-on-Priming-Great-Meetings.pdf?rlkey=6fznhv7bbsxm8nj8m4luej17t&st=2eduirad&dl=0
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This is an AMAZING podcast episode, totally in gamma mode all the 2 hours, my brain was on fire, I didn’t touch my phone, blink, or do anything else than putting all my senses into this. I will rewatch it probably 10 times more.
Thanks for bringing all the wisdom on what science knows that business does or doesn’t. 🧠💡
Thanks for this great discussion, Lenny!
A few of the things I mentioned might be a little hard to follow so I just wanted to post so people could ask questions if they have any.
Have a great day and I hope this helps people’s brains!
As I listen back, probably the hardest thing to follow is how I answered how to improve the habitat at the end. Here are a few ideas that might help add structure for people interested in improving habitat:
Habitat is comprised of:
1. What people believe (Cultural Beliefs)
2. The humans we choose to hire and how they choose to act (Cultural Behaviors)
3. The structure, processes, tools, data, etc (The Employee Experience)
It's important to realize that 3 comes from 2, and that 2 comes from 1. If we get 1 wrong, we will get 2 wrong. If we get 2 wrong, we will get 3 wrong. This is why we focus so directly on what people believe, and we need to do it proactively instead of just waiting to see what the humans act like.
We talked about what the critical beliefs are in the episode:
1. Answering: Why are we doing this? (The Role we play)
2. What value does our work create for people? (get really precise)
3. What quality standard do we operate at / above?
4. What level of decision quality is sufficient for us? (most people use bias to action as an excuse to make dumber decisions, sub for bias to impact)
5. How do we believe we should treat each other? What state of mind do we want to put other people into?
These are 5 things that every human being believes, usually because they figured it out for themselves. And what they figured out on their own is rarely aligned with the ideal approaches and outcomes, nor is it aligned with what the other people figured out on their own.
Rather than mission, vision, values, you can just answer these 5 questions really straightforwardly and have a better culture than mission vision values could produce. It is more logical, therefore more believable, therefore faster and more potent (try it, you'll see). It's also easier to do right at the beginning of the company's life, which is why I brought up YC.
Here to answer any other questions and clarify. Have a great week!
Hi, Evan! Amazing episode I loved all of it. In the show notes is a link to a Scientific American article "What is the function of the various brainwaves?" which doesn't mention gamma and presents theta as part of the "awake" brainwaves frequencies. I realize this article might not be a 1:1 for the modes you described but if there's anything you'd like to share about how this all adds up that would be greatly appreciated.
@@peterdouglasross7217 Great question. Take a look at the date on that particular article and you'll notice that it's pretty old. Since that was published, the community studying EEG results has settled on alpha, beta, and gamma, with theta being what some people think of as the "drowsy" state where you're sort of disconnecting.
@@EvanLaPointe Thanks!
Totally agree with vision. The fluffy inspirational vision runs out of fuel pretty fast in most cases. Great podcast Lenny!
Thank you. This episode is packed. It is difficult to follow probably because of too many insights per minute. It definitely pushed me into Gamma and I’m grateful for that 😅
Hi Evan, Thanks for sharing some deep knowledge. Probably the only Lenny Podcast I have watched, where the word 'tactical' was clearly put in its place. I know we all love it when somebody can not just give knowledge, but also tell us 2 or 3 things we can do with it, but in your case you never let that sidestep what was "core" to the conversation. People who get it will figure out for themselves that sometimes knowledge in itself is good enough.
My personal viewpoint, there were a couple of times in the podcast, I felt you were sounding almost overtly apologetic for sounding deep, I can vouch that it didn't matter or should not matter. Strength to you, please continue to try to bring some sanity into the stupid ways all organised entities work and lay claim to "productivity"
I really appreciate you saying this.
Awesome episode, where I’ve learned more about myself than about the guest :) Great metaphors and examples!
This episode is packed. It is difficult to follow probably because of too many insights per minute. It definitely pushed me into Gamma and I’m grateful for that 😅
Priming sounds really great !
It's the first podcast I cannot fully understand... I will be back when my English is better...
you are one of my favourite podcast to listen to beside WTF by nikhil kamath podcast
Hi Evan, can you point to deeper resources that talk about "What science knows that business doesn't"?
I think Daniel Pink made that observation best (holding the two in contrast). Here are a couple starting points:
Science knows that humans aren't motivated the way business thinks they are. Dive into Thaler's Misbehaving, Eurich's Insight, Never Split the Difference, and Greene's Laws of Human Nature, in addition to a lot of the research Gallup does about employee motivation. Most of what business does to motivate humans is almost completely wrong; often choosing things that demotivate humans.
Science knows that humans have different personalities; business usually ignores that and focuses on job/role instead. Learn about the Big 5. Take our profile if you want, but focus on the most modern models: Big 5, HEXACO, Hogan. Learn the dimensions in which humans are different. Human beings are highly-dissimilar.
Science knows how chemicals like cortisol and norepinephrine work. Business acts as if these have little/no effect on cognition, decision making, or performance. Learn about these two, plus dopamine, endorphin, serotonin and oxytocin. Learn their stimuli, their effects, and their after-effects. RUclips / wikipedia, etc. are perfectly fine resources for this. Very eye opening.
Science knows the true sources of things like innovation, customer retention, and quality decision making. Business tries to recreates these outcomes using completely incorrect inputs. Many chapters in Greene's book do a great job of this (however Greene doesn't do much to segment humans into different groups in his writing). Shreyas has also done an incredible job of weaving these insights into his product sense course, from what I have heard.
If you really want a geekfest, check out Stanford's Introduction to Human Behavioral Biology, which is truly incredible: ruclips.net/video/NNnIGh9g6fA/видео.html
MIT has also added their introduction to the human brain curriculum.
The punchline of all of this will be crystal clear: WE ARE DOING IT WRONG. :)
@Lenny wheres the pdf on questions to ask when priming a meeting? Its on the shownotes as promised. 😢
To find the shownotes you need to follow the link in the description (www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/understanding-your-brain-evan-lapointe), but here's the PDF itself: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/gm21cj0vi0bjosyu8kd69/CORE-Sciences-Tips-on-Priming-Great-Meetings.pdf?rlkey=6fznhv7bbsxm8nj8m4luej17t&st=2eduirad&dl=0
Will adjust the show notes link to be easier to find in the future
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