Navigating Cognitive Biases in Networking: Insights from Mike Bushong

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How do cognitive biases shape not only our professional decisions but also our personal interactions? In this episode, Mike Bushong shares his expertise on cognitive biases and his experiences transitioning to Nokia while working within data center technologies. We break down how our brains' natural shortcuts, like confirmation bias, can influence everything from our social media interactions to critical business decisions. By understanding these biases, we aim to foster more effective communication and collaboration, whether in high-stakes negotiations or everyday conversations.

Mike and the team delve into practical strategies for making your presentations and pitches more persuasive by leveraging cognitive biases. From whiteboard tactics that feel spontaneous yet are carefully crafted, to storytelling techniques that lead your audience to their own conclusions, we explore how to make your messages stick. We also tackle emotionally charged discussions, such as political debates, by emphasizing empathy and recognizing the constraints others face. Through personal anecdotes and lessons learned, you'll gain insights on balancing skepticism with action and the importance of direct communication.

We wrap up with a deep dive into the power of storytelling and constructive criticism in professional settings. You'll hear about a pivotal moment in my career when a colleague's candid feedback reshaped my approach to leadership and workload management. Mike also discusses the challenges of selling new solutions to committed clients, highlighting the necessity of understanding past decisions and guiding customers toward new choices. Whether you're a network engineer or just fascinated by the psychology of decision-making, this episode offers valuable strategies for improving your communication and problem-solving skills. Don't miss our engaging discussion on the Art of Network Engineering!

More from Mike:
https://x.com/mbushong 

Find everything AONE right here: https://linktr.ee/artofneteng

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Art of Network Engineering podcast.
In this podcast, we exploretools, technologies and talented
people.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
We aim to bring you information that will expand
your skill sets and toolbox andshare the stories of fellow
network engineers.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to the Art of Network Engineering.
My name is Andy Laptev, I am atAndy Laptev on Twitter and
tonight I am joined by one of myfavorite people in the whole
wide world, Tim Bertino.
How's my buddy Tim?

Speaker 3 (00:36):
I'm good, andy, because you are not only the
center of my heart, but you'rethe center of my screen tonight
as well.
Don't tell my wife that she'snot going to be watching.
So it's fine.
Oh, yay, but no, I'm doing.
Well, andy, I'll let youintroduce it, but we have been
wanting to cover what we'regoing to cover tonight for a

(00:57):
long time with the person thatwe wanted to cover this with.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
So really looking forward to it.
Yeah, and I don't know if heknows that he's also one of my
favorite people, but hedefinitely is.
Tonight we are joined by theman, the myth, the legend.
I know you know him.
His name is Mike Bouchon.
He was on episode 105.
We did a leadership series andduring that episode Mike I quote

(01:21):
said we should do an hour oncognitive biases and how to
handle those.
So here we are with Mike.
Hi, mike, how you doing?
Welcome to the show, welcomeback.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
How you been.
I've been doing a little bit ofthis, a little bit of that.
Super happy to be here.
Last time I think I had to singa South Park song.
He remembered, yes.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Mike, when Andy told us that he was going to reach
out to you to make this happen,I said that sounds great, but on
one condition he has to sing usanother song.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
That's fine.
What would Brian Boitano do?
What would Brian Boitano do ifhe were here today?
I'm sure he'd kick an ass ortwo.
That's what Brian Bo boy tanawould do.
When brian boy tana was in thealps fighting grizzly bears, he
used his magical fire breathfire breath and saved the

(02:15):
maiden's fair.
You did not disappoint againthank you.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Thank you, mike buchang.
Um real quick for the peoplelistening.
Uh, where are you?
We don't work together anymoreand I miss your face and your
voice.
So where are you at these days?
Before we get into the topic,what are you doing?

Speaker 1 (02:30):
I made the move over to Nokia.
No one really knows how to saythe word, but I'm over there
doing data center things at avery large networking company
that has a strong routingheritage and absolutely just a
good technology foundation.
They don't know exactly whatthey're up to, though, and so
it's trying to get the rest ofthe world to understand the

(02:52):
things that we do, and I'm doingsuch a job from.
If you see, there's a littlesun on this side sunny San Diego
, where the temperature isalways between 64 and 74.
So I feel bad for all of youfolks out there suffering in the
snow, yep.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
It has been raining here for three straight days and
in the 40s Fahrenheit, and it'ssupposed to rain for the next
three days.
I don't want to live hereanymore, Mike.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
We have an extra room upstairs, Andy, if you and your
family wants to come.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Like to move or to visit.
That's a lot of people to livein your room.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
Details.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
You'll probably hate us in a week yeah, we'll figure
it out later and two dogs.
I got too many people here, man.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
We got three dogs, so that'll be good.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
All right.
So why on God's green earthwould a network engineering show
talk about something as strangesounding as cognitive bias,
right?
So I guess we should start withsome kind of definition.
I kind of had to.
I mean, I feel like I have ageneral idea of what it is, so
I'll I'll massacre it, mike, andthen maybe you can step in and

(04:01):
be our expert, resident expert.
So my understanding of cognitivebias is and you actually turned
me on to this If you're tryingto influence anyone, I guess, or
try to understand theirthinking and their behavior, and
whether it's your child, yourwife or your team at work,
knowing how people processinformation, form the reality,

(04:22):
this might get real crazy, realquick.
But you turn me on to that book, thinking Fast and Slow, with
Dan Kahneman, and it was a hellof a read and I still didn't get
through it.
There's a couple of other booksI can recommend later that are
easier intros into that.
But basically my understandingof cognitive bias is it's how we
and maybe I'm screwing up withlike heuristics and stuff but

(04:44):
basically how we perceive theworld, how we build our reality.
Our brains take shortcuts whichI think are called heuristics,
and then that creates all thesebiases, and my favorite is
confirmation bias, just becauseI guess we're ensconced in
social media in our lives, butit's the echo chamber in social
media, right, we're looking forinformation that confirms our

(05:05):
previously held beliefs, andthat's a really great way to
never see or hear newinformation, challenge your
beliefs and have new ideas.
Right, and I think we've seennot to get on the soapbox, but I
think we've seen how that playsout on social media and the
things it's done to society atlarge.
So how did I do, mike?
Where would you start acognitive bias?

(05:25):
And, more importantly, why isit important on social media and
the things it's done to societyat large?
So how did I do, mike?
Where would you start acognitive bias?
And, more importantly, why isit important for people watching
the show?
Right, how, how can we leveragethis as we learn from you?
What's the value here?

Speaker 1 (05:36):
And so I kind of got into the cognitive bias idea.
I want to.
I probably before I used toread a lot more books than I do
these days.
It's amazing what kids will doto you and sports schedules.
But the more I read about itand really kind of unlocking how
people think and how they getentrenched in what they believe
common in some cases, modelsthat people use, in some cases

(06:05):
deficiencies, and how they reachconclusions, if you can unlock
that predictably, you knowsomewhat reliably, then you can
maneuver a bit.
And for me it was kind of cametogether when I realized that my
job was essentially to sell,and I don't mean like externally
trying to sell product topeople who want to buy products.
I have always been sort of anon-conventional thinker and

(06:28):
what that means for me is thatI've got to convince other
people to think the way I think,and I tell my teams this, by
the way if you think that you'rea thought leader of any sort,
by definition you've setyourself up to be disagreed with
by everybody you run into right.
If people agreed with you, youwouldn't be a thought leader,
you'd be a consensus thinker,and this means that for anybody
who wants to make waves, anyonewho has observations that things

(06:48):
ought to be different than theway they are.
They are salespeople, whetherthey like it or not.
And so, even if you're anengineer and you don't ever talk
to like a classic customer, Iwill tell you today that you are
still a salesperson.
You have to convince people toreach conclusions they haven't
already reached.
And the question is, how areyou going to do that?
And I would tell you that mostpeople view fundamentally if

(07:09):
people don't agree with them.
I'm just going to educate youinto submission.
If you just knew what I knew,you would agree with me.
And it turns out that thatrarely works.
Rarely is that the reasonpeople don't agree?
And so the more I startedreading, the more I realized
that there's just ways ofthinking.
And if we could tap into that alittle bit, if we could, I
guess, steer into the skid, soto speak, you could be more

(07:31):
effective.
And when I did that, what Ifound out and I'll end my
monologue here, I promise I wasmore and more effective at
getting people to.
You know, go along withwhatever it was I wanted to push
, and that started to develop alittle bit of a reputation for
me where I could get people tomove beyond their positions and

(07:52):
that, for me, that was the fuel,that was the catalyst for my
entire career, you know, goingback the last 15, 20 years.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
Convince people of new conclusions.
That's a big one, right?
That's not easy.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Well, let me give you an easy example.
So you guys, every one of ushas been in some presentation
where somebody is trying to hawksomething to you.
So do you prefer PowerPoint ordo you prefer a whiteboard?

Speaker 3 (08:16):
That's a good question.
I would say, depending on theroom, the amount of people, the
audience, I probably wouldprefer a whiteboard.
However, PowerPoint usuallyseems to be the path of least
resistance for larger groups ofpeople.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
But if you're like in a smaller group, I mean like a
whiteboard.
So why do we want whiteboards?
What is it about?
Like if you ask, if you asked aroom of people, you know if you
were in a conference room,would you prefer a PowerPoint or
whiteboard?
I'm telling you that almost100%, if not 100%, will say
whiteboard.
What's?
The number one reason you thinkeveryone gives.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
To me it's more dynamic and intimate.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
It is more dynamic right, and so I used to.
When I was at Juniper before Iwas the architect of what was
known as the one Junos message.
It doesn't matter that much fortoday what that is.
Just understand that it was awhiteboard pitch that I gave
literally thousands of times,and I would begin every one of
my presentations.
I would go to the whiteboardand then I would do a little bit
of theater with the room.
I would basically ask them whatdo you guys want to talk, or

(09:16):
what do you all want to talkabout today?
And they would say some randomthings.
Sometimes they wanted to talkabout software architecture,
sometimes it was some routingthing, things like QoS, whatever
, and I write each of thesethings down in small print on
the board.
I would step back, I wouldstare at it as if I was trying
to formulate a plan, and then Iwould say this is exactly why I
don't bring slides, because Iwould never have a deck that

(09:39):
covered all these things.
Then I would pause for a minuteas if I was trying to figure
out what I was going to say.
And Then I would pause for aminute as if I was trying to
figure out what I was going tosay, and then I would return to
the board triumphantly and Iwould give this whiteboard talk
that was catered to what theywanted.
Now, would it surprise you if Itold you that, doing this
thousands of times, thepresentation was like identical
every single time, and that thatwas all theater?
Now, the reason it worked,though, and I'll bring it to

(10:00):
cognitive bias here so one ofthe things that were so you
mentioned, andy, mentionedconfirmation bias.
Another one that's sort ofrelated to it is choice
supportive bias, so we will,inherently, we will see things
that support a decision thatwe've made.
Confirmation bias is about,like your worldview.
Choice supportive is that I'vejust chosen to buy a Hyundai,
and so everywhere I look, I'llsee Hyundai commercials or data

(10:21):
or reports that say that Hyundaiis the safest or most
economical, or whatever it isthat I care about, and so, when
we make these decisions, we tendto see things that support our
point of view.
Now, if I'm trying to convincesomebody to do something
different than what they'vealready decided, I have to
overcome choice supportive bias.
I can't just tell them here'sthe better thing, because I know
that they'll nod their head allalong, and then they'll reach

(10:42):
the same conclusion they reachedbefore, which means I'm on the
outside.
So when I do my whiteboard,what I would do is I would draw
things on the whiteboard and Iwould pace them out, right,
because we know that if you hearsomething.
Actually, let me cite adifferent study, and I know it's
a bit convoluted, but I'm goingto bring it back, I promise.
So there's another book.
This book's called Better and itwas written by a neurosurgeon

(11:05):
talking about, like, how do youimprove medicine?
And one of the things they didand I'll get the summary wrong,
so if somebody's read this andit's like Mike, your detail is a
little bit off.
You know, I'm cooking man,don't get in the way.
But so they went to a hospital,right, and they audited the
hospital, they observed, and doyou know what?

(11:27):
The number one cause of deathin hospitals is?
By chance.

Speaker 3 (11:30):
Do not.
You're going to pull somethingin Medication errors.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Oh, that would be good.
No, that should be very scary.
If they're messing that up allthe time, it's actually
infection.
Infection was the number onecause of death in hospitals, and
so when they observed the waythat everyone was working inside
this hospital, they realizedthat there's these things you
could do.
So they made a recommendation.
Here's the 27 things you shoulddo to drive an infection down,
and it was simple.
Things right, like train peopleon this, move sinks closer to

(11:55):
the doors.
There's just a bunch of fairlyeasy things that were all about
how people do their jobs.
So then they went andimplemented the 27 things, and
what do you think?

Speaker 3 (12:07):
happened to the?

Speaker 1 (12:07):
infection rate.
It plummeted, right yeah, itstayed the same.
So it stayed the same.
They implemented the 27 thingsand it stayed the same.
So they went to a differenthospital.
They made the same observations, but this time, instead of
telling them what they should do, they just said here's the
observations, what do you thinkwe should do?
And so the group came up withthe same basic list of 27 things

(12:29):
, or whatever the number was.
And this time, what do youthink happened to the infection
rates?
Up, down or the same?

Speaker 2 (12:33):
I was wrong last time .
I'm afraid to answer Tim.
I'm going to say it got worse.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
No, no, no.
They got better because theteam came up with their own
recommendations.
They weren't listening tooutside consultants tell them
what to do.
These were their own ideas andwe know that when it's our own
ideas, we more faithfully followthem.
This is actually choicesupportive bias.
This means that if I come upwith the idea, then I believe
I'm right.
So I'm more likely to go dowhat I have to go do In the case
that somebody else comes upwith the idea.

(12:59):
It's their idea, it's not myidea.
So I don't follow it likefaithfully and so I'm not going
to.
I don't.
I don't pull that in Now.
Let me pull this back to thewhiteboard thing.
So if what I do on thewhiteboard is, I reveal
information slowly, I put thebreadcrumbs out at a pace so
that the audience is always onestep ahead of me.
When I deliver the punchline,I'm not asking the audience to

(13:21):
agree with me, because they'vealready reached the punchline
before I say it.
What I'm doing is I'm agreeingwith the audience and so I take
that entire sales thing andinstead of trying to convince
them that I'm right, what I'mdoing is reaffirming to them
that they're right, and now theyhave an idea that they never
had in the first place.
What whiteboard allows me to do?
Even though it's always thesame, it feels better to the

(13:42):
audience.
What it allows me to do is topace things out and to make it
so that it's all about them andnot about me, and then it
reaffirms all of the thinking.
That's an easy sales way to usecognitive bias towards my
pursuits.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
So I've got a question here, mike, because
you've already turned this onits head for me, because when I
was researching, getting readyfor this conversation, I was
looking at this from all of thedifferent cognitive biases.
I was looking at it from a lensof me.
How do I perceive my own?

(14:18):
And, like I said, you kind offlipped it on its head.
For me is that you're taking ayou know, a quote seller focus
lens and you're trying to getpeople to think the way that you
think in not so many words.
So do you then need to back tothe whiteboard example?
Do you feel like you need tounderstand the cognitive biases

(14:40):
of your audience, or can youtake like a templative approach
to how you go after that and tryto get them to think the way
that you want them to?

Speaker 1 (14:51):
A little bit of both.
So I think the thing aboutcognitive biases there's dozens
of them, but there's not likethousands of them, and so people
will think a certain way, andonce you understand the patterns
and the ways that people think,then you can more effectively
navigate.
You won't be 100% right, but ifyou're dealing with an audience
, you'll be in a better position.
So I typically go in with amental model about how can I be

(15:13):
as persuasive as I want to be inthis particular setting, and
then what I'll do is apply,frankly, a little bit of tips
and tricks to try to set thesituation up so I can do what I
need to do.
Now, in some cases I got to bereally careful how this comes
across right, so that can beseen as manipulative.
You know, I would just say if Iuse my powers for good, then
you know I'm a superhero.
If I use my powers for bad,then I'm a supervillain, and so

(15:37):
obviously, for me I would alwaysuse my powers for good.

(16:05):
No-transcript usually enough totrigger me to say, okay, what am
I actually anchored to?
A good example would be you know, like I've got 12 year old twin
boys and they're constantly,you know, like, fighting.
They like each other a lot andthey just it's like a lot of
fighting and they'll say somestuff and then every once in a
while I'll have this.

(16:25):
I'll have like a really strong,you know, negative reaction to
something and I'm like Irealized I'm not reacting to
what they said, I'm reacting tosomething that's inside me, and
so when that happens, you kindof then I'll try to pause and
then what I've taught myself isthat when I, when, in moments
where I'm clearly impacted bysomething beyond just the
situation, what I do is Ipractice silence, and it's not

(16:50):
just like count to three, I willactually sit there and try to.
I'll take 30 seconds of awkwardsilence because I'm like I
realize there's something goingon in my head and I don't
entirely know what it is, but Iknow it's not what the kids just
did and so it's a little bit of.
I know that's a long answer toyour question, but like, so you
got to be aware of it inyourself and then you got to be
aware of it in the situationsaround you so you can

(17:11):
effectively navigate.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
It's a very good trick is take some time.
When you're mad, I do the samething.
I get very quiet.
I'm like uh-oh, something'shappening inside of me.
I need to not say anything fora little bit because it's going
to come out wrong.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
Well, so let me give you a good example.
So I use this with my kids.
Actually, I try to teach themself-awareness.
I want you to picture yourselfnow on a crowded subway.
It's wall-to-wall people andeveryone's crammed in pretty
tight.
It's rush hour on a weekday andyou're standing there and
you've got your back to someonebehind you and then they elbow
you.
I mean like really hard in theribs, I mean it hurts, and so
you turn around with like ragein your mind, right, and then

(17:53):
you turn around and the person'sblind.
Are you still mad?
No, you're not mad, right,because now in fact, you
probably react like oh no, I'msorry, I should have given you
more room, like you're almostapologetic about it.
You know, I should have givenyou more room, like you're
almost apologetic about it.
You see, your, your anger, yourreaction in that moment wasn't
tied to being hit in the ribs.
It was tied to a story.
You had instantaneously toldyourself that the reason you got
hit was because the person wassomehow careless.

(18:14):
They were at fault, and so whenyou wheeled around, you wanted
to blame them for that.
And when you find out that theyweren't careless, then all the
rage it just dissipates like.
That's a good example where,like we tell ourselves these
stories, we're sort of wired tothink a certain way and then
when you find out the situationis a little bit different than
you'd anticipated.
Everything just dissipates.
Now imagine if you couldcontrol that at will, that if

(18:35):
all of your responses werereasoned.
Now look, I'm not a robot, so Iwould say my success rate on
controlling stuff is pretty low,but there are moments where I'm
a little bit better than Iwould have otherwise been, and
in those moments that's when Ifind either clarity or I find,

(18:55):
in some cases, just a level ofeffectiveness with either my
family or my co-workers or myfriends that I wouldn't have
before.
And it's tied to my ability tosit down, think and then stop,
the way that I'm hardwired toreact and actually deal with my
own in this case, cognitivebiases towards what I thought
was going to happen or what Ithought the cause was.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
Are the stories we tell ourselves, the biases that
we're talking about?

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah, they can be.
The biases will manifest asstories.
It's like another good one,right, and I'll pick up some
topics that I think are a littlebit controversial, because I
think it's it's good to talkabout.
So like, why is it that if wesay that, um, that, that, uh,
middle-aged white men haveprivilege, a lot of people will
fight you on that right?

(19:38):
Like a lot of people will.
And and why is it that theyfight you on it?
Okay, why?

Speaker 2 (19:43):
You said it in our last episode Hold on,
survivorship bias it is,survivorship bias, it is
survivorship bias.
Nailed it.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
Please explain.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
So survivorship bias we tend to attribute to
ourselves any success that wehave right.
So if we're successful, it'sbecause we tried hard or because
we had the capability or we putin the effort or whatever it is
that we think.
And when we fail we'll findconditions that are outside our
control.
So it's like someone else'sfault that I didn't succeed.
It's all me if I'm successful.

(20:14):
And so when we start talkingabout things like privilege,
it's actually very difficultbecause you're asking somebody
to conclude that maybe theydidn't succeed entirely on their
own merits, and so you're goingagainst.
So even if they're like, veryrational and you go through,
they will agree with you thatyes, I agree, yes, I agree, yes,
I agree.
No, I'm not, I didn't benefitfrom privilege, like I did it

(20:34):
all myself.
Because at that point you fallback on your cognitive bias, on
your way of thinking about theworld, and so it's very
difficult to overcome that.
And so some of thesediscussions where we again we
believe that we're going toproduce a bunch of reports, I'm
going to show you a bunch ofstatistics, I'm going to give
you the numbers and then I'mgoing to hope that you change
your position.
You don't usually educatepeople in the submission.

(20:56):
That's not usually the thingthat breaks through right.
It's very easy and this is whywe have cognitive dissonance.
It's because I have a beliefthat's strongly held in the face
of evidence that I can't deny.
What do I do in that moment?
And that creates these momentsthat are actually very difficult
to rationalize.
And that's one of the thingsthat creates a little bit of
energy and emotion in some ofthe debates that we have and it

(21:19):
actually makes people walk awaybecause at some point, if I
can't rationalize it, if I can'tget my point across to you, if
you're anchored to some report,study, number, and I'm anchored
to some sort of fundamental wayof thinking, if I can't get
things through, it'll be veryfrustrating and I will actually
walk away from that conversationor, in some cases, end the
relationship.
Obviously, we're in an electionyear, so people will end

(21:40):
relationships.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah.
So when you're faced with thoseperiods of what'd you call it
Cognitive dissonance, when ourbiases are challenged by
evidence that refutes it, Iguess we'd fall back to our
biases, because it's easier,right, it's harder to challenge
your own, like you, you would.
You would put, when we had youon last time, around
survivorship bias you would.
You had said something Ithought was really interesting

(22:03):
about you know, as a, you know,let's say, as, like a white guy
who grew up middle class, youthink all your successes in your
life not you, but the royal you, um, were because of you and
all the hard work you've doneand how smart you are.
But maybe you started on thirdbase, comparatively speaking to
other people, right?
So look how great I am.
Well, there was a lot of thingsyou didn't have to overcome

(22:23):
that other people would.
So that blew my mind, becauseto me that ties into, I don't
know, prejudice, racism.
It seems to go there, right,that's where a lot of that stuff
is, and I've had recentconversations, mike, with people
that I'm very close to aroundthe election year stuff, and I
tried to have and you have saidthis to me a hundred times, you

(22:46):
know trying to present data tosomeone trying to convince them
of to think differently isuseless, but I still do it, even
knowing a lot of these thingsthat you're talking about.
And I spent 45 minutes on a carride home talking to this buddy
of mine uh, just about theelection stuff, and how could
you and this and that, the otherthing, especially the who you
are and where you're from andyour heritage and all that.

(23:07):
And at the end of 45 minutes wewere nowhere near a middle
point of you know.
At the end he was like, well,listen, buddy, I still love you.
You're my buddy, like you know,I don't care who you vote for.
And then he texted me laterlike hey, man, believe what you
believe.
Faced with all this evidence andagain, we're not talking

(23:28):
politics here, but it happensover and over again in my life I
try to understand wheresomeone's coming from, because
I'd really like to understandthem, because I'm not where they
are and maybe we're both in ourown, locked in our own biases.
It's.
It's really hard for me to tounderstand people.
You would said once about youknow, when we work together,
like Andy, don't assume malice,right.

(23:50):
And and that might be like oneof my own biases I used to get
livid.
If something you know wasn'tright or somebody did something
that I thought was malicious andyou're like sometimes people
just you know they have theirown, then you tie it in
constraints.
I like how you frame a lot ofthis stuff.
They're under differentconstraints and if you can find
those constraints inconversations, then you can

(24:10):
start to get to the meat ofwhat's happening.
Not, these people are dumb orthey don't understand networking
or they never manage a network.
That was my biases.
Coming into that role was likethese people don't know what
they're talking about and I needto educate them.
But that never went well for me.
Tim, you're laughing, right,but that's what I thought my
role was, and it didn't go wellfor me ever when I did that.

(24:32):
But then, when I started to tryto reveal constraints because
that's what Mike had showed melike they're just under a
different set of constraintsThen we were able to find out
that they weren't idiots, right,they just had different
parameters that they wereworking under.

Speaker 3 (24:50):
I want to ask Mike, I want to ask you for a hot take
and first off, maybe you canstart by educating me a little
bit, and by a little I mean alot, and I don't think I've
heard you say yet cognitive biasis inherently bad.
So maybe you can start withthat.
But my question is depending onthat answer, are there any
situations in which just blindcognitive bias is okay?

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Sure.
So if you believe DanielKahneman a lot of the way we
think so, daniel Kahneman, asAndy mentioned, wrote a book,
thinking Fast and Slow.
It's a pretty heady book, so Iwould say it's challenging to
get through the middle part ofit, but it's worth reading.
And then if you combine thatwith a book called Never Split
the Difference by Chris Voss, itwill give you all the
negotiating tools that you needto get whatever it is that you

(25:40):
need out of a situation.
If you put those together anduse them for evil, you can
become quite powerful.
I'm pretty sure it's howEmperor Palpatine started, was
those two books.
But so no, it's not so.
Bias is not necessarily bad.
So a lot of times it comes upout of survival, right.

(26:00):
So like a good example is ifyou talk to, if you take men and
women and how they behave insocial situations, men will be.
In general, we tend to be morerelaxed, more trusting.
We don't really think about theimplications because most of us
are never really afraid for ourlives.
Women are in differentsituations and so they'll
perceive like if you get off thesame floor as a woman in a

(26:22):
hotel and you get off and you'retrying to be chivalrous.
You're like, please get off infront of before me, and then you
make the same turn that shemakes.
That feels very intimidatingand so like and women are a lot
of that like it comes out of asense of survival.
It's not a bad thing, right?
It's in fact it's.

(26:42):
You know, it has in fact savedlives.
So there's nothing that'sinherently wrong with seeing
things the way you see them.
What I think you have to be isa little bit aware about how
these things come into play andthen understand in certain
situations when you want to dialthem up and dial them down.
I think that's because I thinkself-awareness and being
deliberate.
If you talk to anybody aboutleadership, one of the things

(27:04):
they'll say is they want you tobe deliberate.
What deliberateness reallymeans is I want to rely on more
than just muscle memory in asituation and be thoughtful
about what I'm going throughright now.
I think there's real value inthinking that way.
In corporate settings, peoplewill see things the way they see
them, which I think is fine.
It means they can identifyproblems very, very quickly and
I think going in and having aparticularly skeptical mind

(27:26):
because things have never workedin the past, that's actually
useful to have at least oneperson on the team that is going
in and really asking a bunch ofdetailed questions, presuming
it's going to fail, and forcingpeople to think through some of
the detail that's required toput a proper plan in place.
Now, of course, you don't want10 people all doing that,
because then you never getstarted, so there's a bit of a
balance in how you do that, butI think that's actually a

(27:48):
healthy.
When you think about teamchemistry, it's not just about
do I have people that have alldifferent types of skills that
can fill out the team.
It's also going to be do youhave people with different
styles, different ways ofperceiving things that allow you
to get a more broadunderstanding of what the
current situation is and how youmight maneuver?
I think that kind of diversityis really valuable.
And then again, that diversitywill frequently come out of

(28:09):
different walks of life, whichis why things like diversity are
important, not necessarilybecause you pick up somebody
that has a different character,race, gender, whatever, but
because you get people withdifferent backgrounds that have
experienced life in differentways, and those different
experiences will actually cometo roost in different base

(28:31):
beliefs, in some cases differentbiases and that will actually
ground out the team.
So I think that's where thingsgo.
And then for people who arelistening, it's like, oh my God,
what does all that mean?
What it means is you've got tobe a little bit aware of what
you're thinking, what the peoplearound you are thinking.
You should be at least somewhatable to identify why they're

(28:53):
thinking that.
And if you can't identify it,then you need to do something
transformative, like ask them.
And I'll give you a really easyexample.
So when I was at Brocade, I hada marketing counterpart.
Her name is Vasu.
She was super friendly.
We got along really, reallywell and I was a very frustrated
stakeholder and she could notfigure out why.
Because we always got along sowell.

(29:14):
We would have these one-on-ones, we'd get along great, we would
chat about things and we reallyconnected.
We would hug when we met.
I mean, we were like we'refriends.
And then I'd be frustrated inpublic settings about what the
marketing team was doing for meand public settings about what
the marketing team was doing forme.
And so we got in a meeting thisone time and she said Mike, why
are you so frustrated?
I said, vasu, what do you thinkmy number one concern is.
And so she quickly rattledsomething off.

(29:35):
And I said that's not it.
And she looked at me she's alittle bit like okay.
And then she quickly rattledoff a second.
I said, vasu, that's not iteither.
And then she got serious.
She said okay.
And she thought for a minute andthen she rattled off a third
thing.
I said Vasu, that's not mynumber one concern either.
And she looked at me and shesaid what's your biggest?
She said what do you mean?
That's not your biggest concern.
I said Vasu, has it everoccurred to you that you've

(29:56):
literally never asked me what mybiggest concern was?
And she was mortified.
And then she sat back.
She said Mike, what's yourbiggest concern?
See, we assume that there mightbe constraints, there might be
different things that aredriving people.
We do all this work trying toread people, which is fine.
I think it's good to beobservant and try to put it all
together.

(30:16):
But in the absence of all ofthat, it's actually okay once in
a while to just ask thequestion, right, what's your
primary concern?

Speaker 3 (30:25):
Mike, why do you think we don't do that?
Is it like fear that we'regoing to get embarrassed by
asking somebody a question likethat?
Or what are your thoughts?

Speaker 1 (30:35):
I think we're mostly transactional and so we work the
issue and we don't always workthe person.
So you're inside, like ifyou're in the middle of this
heated thing, and especiallywhen you disagree, you get this
fight or flight.
Like a lot of people, it'sreally hard to debate Like I
actually get fight or flight, asconfident as I am in some of
these settings.
For me my adrenaline kicks inwhen I have a disagreement with
somebody, whether it's big orsmall.
You know small meeting, youknow big meeting, I will.

(30:57):
Like the adrenaline kicks inand I don't always think like
why don't I just ask thisquestion to diffuse the
situation or to betterunderstand?
I'm so concerned with tellingpeople why I'm right and when
they're talking I mean we allknow this right.
Someone's talking and you'resitting there formulating your
response already Like oh my God,like here's exactly what I'm
going to say, and then you losekind of the art of the exchange.

(31:19):
I think that's part of it.
And then I think, just when youcare about the issue and you're
not really tied into the person, like there's the question like
what are you, what are yourconstraints?
Like that's so far upstreamfrom whatever it is you're
working right now that itdoesn't always like and it feels
like foundational.
So look at it this way how manyof us have made fun of leaders

(31:41):
because they say something likethis, like oh, let's all take a
step back.
Like it's a meme in leadership.
Like you're like, oh're like,oh, they're not adding value,
they don't know much.
There's actually value in that.
Now, I'm not saying that 100%of the time that's a value
adding statement.
Of course it's not.
But there actually is somethinglike okay, what are we trying
to do?
Sometimes it's actually notclear.
Two teams will have a differentview of what you're trying to

(32:02):
do.
What are we trying to optimizefor?
What are the constraints thatexist?
And once you start to surfacesome of these things, you start
to have more real exchanges onwhat's going on, and then you
can start moving people pasttheir positions.
And you don't move them pasttheir position because you're
just educating them on a topicthat they already know.
What you're doing is creating avisceral connection between the
person and some other systemicthing that's around, and

(32:26):
sometimes that's enough todislodge or to kind of get past
this position that they don'teven know why they hold it.
What you're going to do iscreate these moments that give
people the opportunity to changetheir position and again just
to kind of wrap up.
So I make my living in thevendor space and I'm trying to
sell stuff to people who'vepurchased other stuff, which

(32:49):
means 100% of the time I have toconvince them that the
decisions they've made in thepast are wrong.
I'm constantly swimmingupstream, and if I believe that
my data sheet is enough to getthem past that, then I should
never have a sales meeting.
I should just mail data sheetsto everybody.
But instead, if we presumethat's not particularly
effective, then what I've got todo is figure out okay, what's

(33:10):
the set of conditions thatexisted to get you here, and
what might those conditions beto get you there?
And how do I surface that?
So it's your decision and notmine.
That's what my job is.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
And frankly, it's hard to do.
If I think fundamentally, if Ijust talk about one more
protocol, need of scouring thewhole network for a particular
configuration usually takes alot of time in many terminal
windows.
Unimis shrinks this tediousprocess into a couple of clicks
and keystrokes.
The config search feature letsyou easily look up and list all
devices in your network with aparticular config, with regex

(34:01):
and time range search options.
You can also performnetwork-wide validations of your
device's running state.
With Unimis automation featuresyou can, for example, query any
show command outputs from yourdevices at scale, with the
results automatically grouped.
You can easily find non-workinglinks in LACP bonds, stp root
bridges, wireless frequenciesused by access points or any

(34:25):
other operational parameters ofyour devices.
Interested in a device agnosticNCM software to automate
configuration management foryour entire network, check out
Unimus.
Now back to the show.
I know Tim has a question.
I have a question from 20minutes ago that I didn't ask
because Tim asked a greatquestion, but I really just want
to touch on it to confirmsomething.
The whiteboard scenario no, I'mlying Before that.

(34:50):
The hospital infection scenarioAre you saying that the people
who came up with their ownsolution were more effective in
reducing infection.
Yes, because they thought itwas their idea, as opposed to an
external person told them whatto do.
Their behavior was differentbecause the external people
telling them what to do, theydidn't follow protocol as
closely as.
Hey, we have an idea, we aredoing this, we are invested.

(35:12):
Did I follow that?

Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah, that's right, and it's not just because they
thought it was their idea, itactually was their idea.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
What's interesting, especially in situations where
you think that everybody should,once they see the situation,
everybody should reach the sameconclusions.
When that's the case, you don'thave to tell them the actions,
you just have to make theevidence available to them and
then let them reach theconclusion on their own.
And once it's their decisionand not yours, they will more
faithfully follow it.
So it's actually a lot easier.

(35:39):
So in my, if I go back to mywork thing where I have to
convince people to takedifferent decisions, a way
that's effective is if I pointout the conditions that existed
when they did thing A and thenpoint out the change in
conditions and then ask them, inthe presence of these
conditions, what's the rightanswer.
They will frequently reach thedecision on their own, and I
don't have to say it.
And when they reach thatconclusion, then all of a sudden

(36:01):
they'll start rethinkingthrough well, maybe, actually,
and then they'll work their wayto whatever a better decision
for them is.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
And this is what you might do on a whiteboard.
That's how you tie the yeah,you're walking them through.
Okay, yeah, because it was animportant connection that I
missed.
That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
It's also the pacing of the story.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
You've said this before the decisions they made
at a point in time made sense,then Correct.
Made at a point in time, madesense, then correct.
But but they're tied to thosedecisions because of some bias I
wrote down, you know, whateverthe hell it is availability or
like they're.
They're tied to a decision theymade but they're probably not
even aware of it, like the waythings have always been done.
I think that's a particularbias here I'm looking at right,

(36:43):
but I like how you tie it towell, it's a decision they made
at a point in time.
they don't have stay forever.
Like, here you are and you'retrying to convince them of
something different.
Well, if it's the way they'vealways done it and nobody gets
fired for buying whatever thefunny little thing is today that
they change.
It used to be IBM and then itwas Cisco or whatever.
But I guess, like I'm readingone of the how cognitive biases

(37:03):
can impact your career, likepoor decision making, you might
continue to make the samedecision over and go over again
and keep implementing vendor A'ssolutions, because it's the way
you've always done itPre-existing beliefs based on
experience, even though if thosedecisions started 20 years ago,
Mike right Like you're stillholding onto that.
Well, we've always done it thisway.

(37:24):
We have to keep doing it thisway.
And there's places stillrunning mainframes, probably
because they always runmainframes.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
Let me tell you like an easy example, right?
So we think through how youlike what's the right way to
make a presentation.
We've all heard the mantra tellthem what you're going to tell
them, tell them and then tellthem what you told them In that
model that presumes that whatthey're missing to make the
right decision is information.
If they merely knew, that'sgood.
But you're not going to thatmodel.
Tell them what you're going totell them, tell them and then

(37:50):
tell them what you told them.
That model actually doesn't letthem reach any conclusions on
their own.
It says in the very first slidehere's what I'm going to tell
you, here's the conclusion Iwant you to reach, and then I'm
going to litigate that case tosort of prove why I't tell them
what you're going to tell them.
Let them discover it and thenlet them reach the conclusion on
their own and hope that theyreach the conclusion, or set it

(38:12):
up so they reach the conclusionbefore you tell them.
It's a very different salesstyle.
But are you more likely tochange your position because
somebody boldly asserts here'sthe way you should be thinking
and they back it up?
Or are you going to be like,yeah, that person is a
consultant.
They're an empty suit.
There's like think about allthe words we use to describe
people who do that versussomebody who comes in and they
sort of almost like Columbo,where they go in and they kind

(38:34):
of ask a couple of questions.
You don't entirely know wherethey're going.
And then they get to wherethey're going and you're like,
wow, I have like a totallydifferent point of view than I
have before, don't entirely know, I can't really tell where the
idea came from.
Those are very differentapproaches.
And then, instead of imaginingit in a sales setting, now
imagine that, you know, putyourself in the middle of

(38:55):
corporate politics and you'retalking to your supervisor, or
your supervisor's supervisor,maybe a peer on the other side
of the organization.
Like, are you going to tellthem what you're going to tell
them?
Tell them and tell them, tellthem and then tell them what you
told them.
Like, is that really going tobe effective?
Because I've been in thatsupervisor chair.
When people come up and theytell me what they're going to
tell me, and as soon as theytell me what they, when they
tell me what they're going totell me, you know what I'm doing

(39:16):
In my head.
I'm thinking of all the reasonsthat they're wrong because they
don't understand this theydon't understand that.
So they actually they hearted meby going in with that approach.
So now it's actually moredifficult for them to convince
me because I'm giving into myown cognitive biases, which is
like you know, don't you tell mewhat I'm going to do, because
you don't know me.
This is my position, right,like like it actually steals me

(39:37):
against the, against.
Um, you know what they'retrying to convince me of.
It's a but it's.
It's very common, right?
If you go to, like almost allthese presentation classes, they
all tell you to do the samething, and I'm just telling you
that that works in some cases.
Doesn't work in all.
I'm not saying change how youpresent all the time, but I am
saying be aware of what you'rewalking into and maybe be

(39:58):
thoughtful about which tool isthe right tool for the job in
whatever the situation is.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
I think I know the answer to this question, but how
do you pull them along to plantthose seeds?

Speaker 1 (40:08):
For me.
I paste the information out, soI put breadcrumbs out because
I'm and I let them discover ontheir own right.
So if I believe fundamentallyso, even in this conversation,
by the way, I've been doing itright, my pacing.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Oh, come on, You're hacking us.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
Yeah, I am, I'm hacking and I'm hacking and
truthfully I'm hacking theaudience, but I'm doing it
intentionally.
So when I say things slowenough and I'm so I'll be more
verbose, I'll be more expressive, I will show my work in more
detail and I will wait longeruntil I reveal the punchline, so
that by the time I reveal thepunchline, everybody's there
before I am.
There's nothing I've said inthe time that we've been talking

(40:47):
, where I went straight to thepunchline.
Everything I've done I'veintentionally taken circuitous
paths, I've used storytelling toget there.
I've said one thing Thank you.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
That's what I was looking for so I thank your
superpower and your trick andI've been studying it the past
six months is storytelling.
I've seen you do it masterfullyand one or two other folks and
I've been dabbling on my own.
But storytelling seems to be away to disarm people and they
forget.
This book I'm reading it's likewhen somebody says, hey, let me

(41:18):
tell you a story.
Everybody gets quiet andlistens.
It's just because we arestory-driven people from forever
and ever ago, and it seems tobe this magical hack of getting
people.
If people are going to listen toyou, like you said, mike,
somebody comes in and they'regoing to tell you what they're
going to tell you.
You're not listening already.
You're like screw you, youdon't know what you're talking
about, and I'm right.
But if somehow they can compelyou with a story and now get you

(41:40):
in this narrative, and now allof a sudden you're in
imagination land and you'regoing along for the story
because you have no other choice, because that's how our brains
are wired, I think that's thekey, right.
That's how you can pull peoplealong and put breadcrumbs and
get them to start to see thingsslowly is through story.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
I love how you speak in story.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
I find it very effective.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
Well, let me give you two examples.
So imagine that you hear a songon the radio you've literally
never heard before, but even theway it's going, you sort of
know what the next note islikely to be.
And you may not be 100% right,but you know kind of where it's
going, because these stories orsongs, or whatever, they have an
arc and that arc allows me topredict what is next.
Picture yourself watching amovie.

(42:19):
10 minutes in, you're trying tofigure out what the plot of the
movie is, and this is whatmakes the twist so effective, is
that it's it's not what youexpected, but the twist only
works because you had anexpectation.
You're watching it play out andthen you have.
It's when you, when you, whenyou use these, these moments
like theatrically, you can havegreat effect on your audience.
It turns out you can do thesame thing with people, right

(42:41):
when you're, when you're tryingto work towards a conclusion,
like, if you have a story, thatstory has an arc and people will
follow Again, I'm doing thesame thing I just told you.
All I'm doing is repeating thesame thing I told you, but I
told it in stories before andnow, when I go and lay it out.
It's like you already knowwhere I'm going, and so then,
when I reach my conclusion, youwill have been there two steps

(43:02):
before I get there, when in fact, I'm the one that plotted the
course the entire time.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
So our brains take shortcuts that Dan Kahneman
called.
What was it Thinking one, orwhatever the hell.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
System one, thinking System one and system two Right.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
It takes shortcuts, which he called heuristics.
And there are ways that ourbrain just take all this
information and tries to distillit down into something more
simple and understandable.
I think those heuristics createbiases, the shortcuts create
these gaps in rational thinkingthat we have, and then we get
stuck there.
So I guess awareness of allthis is step one, and then

(43:37):
storytelling to me seems to bewhere you can start to.
Once you understand how peoplethink and why bombarding them
with information and data sheetsis frustrating and doesn't
change anything, then maybe youcan leverage storytelling to
make progress that you couldn'tmake before.
Does that sound fair Likeshould people be studying
storytelling after they learnabout cognitive bias?

Speaker 1 (43:59):
Yeah, I think it's really about like how do you get
information to somebody in away that they can absorb based
on where they're at?
And stories are a great way todo it, because I'm not talking
to you about the moment.
I'm talking to you aboutsomething that's maybe you know
it's related, but it sounds likeit's different.
It's somehow far afield.
It's frequently like I'll drawon, like one of the things I do

(44:20):
with my teams is I draw on mypersonal experiences, because I
try to make it so that it's realand it's things I've actually
done, and so that it's real andit's things I've actually done,
and so that makes itapproachable.
And then when I go and tellthose stories, then you connect
with the story and then thestory itself has a meaning.
You don't need the author totell you the meaning of the
story.
I mean, we've all been throughthese classes.
You read the story, you developa sense for the meaning and

(44:44):
then when I come along and offerthe meaning again, it's your
conclusions, not mine.
Like these are the ways.
This is how you interceptpeople where they are.
Um, and then I guess to tim'spoints early on.
I mean, he asked the question,he's I see.
So I flipped it on its head,because I he thinks about like,
how do you break, break awayfrom your own bias, right,
that's, that's like a good way,and I'm talking about how do you

(45:05):
leverage other people's biasesto be more effective, you know.
Then the question is, how doyou hack yourself?
Because I will tell you thatit's, there's, there's very few
things that are as destructiveas being, like, anchored in your
own way of thinking andincapable of movement.
And if you can't identify thatthat's where you are, then
you'll be one of the ones that'sleft behind, because you're
the're the dinosaur, you're theone that couldn't change and

(45:28):
it's where we all, by default,right, so we have to actively
fight it.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
At least, that's how I feel.
I am constantly seeking outpeople I disagree with and
trying to understand them,because I do not want to become
stuck in my way as a dinosaurwho may?

Speaker 3 (45:42):
yeah, it's seeking out people that disagree with
you, but mike you, you, youactually that last statement, I
don't think you could have laidthose breadcrumbs any better
because you talked about hackingyourself.
So what I wanted to ask you wasin your career in IT, in
leadership, what are somespecific scenarios or situations

(46:06):
that you've come across thatyou have really had to slow down
and be aware of potentialbiases before you make a big
decision?

Speaker 1 (46:17):
Probably the biggest.
There's two that were likereally foundational in my and
I've shared these in varioussettings.
Apologies if some of this is arepeat, but there was a woman,
michelle Batia, who worked withme when I was at Juniper, when I
was kind of at this pretty biginflection, like a kind of a
step function growth point forme.
I had taken on strategy andoperations and business planning

(46:40):
and and and and, and I actuallyquite, quite intentionally, was
taking all this stuff onbecause I was like, look, if I
control all of this, then I willbe indispensable.
I was, I made myself the centerof everything and I was
secretly building your empire.
I was and I was doing it by, bytrying to own everything, and I

(47:00):
was late on everything as aresult, because I was so
instrumental to everything thateverything ran through me.
I couldn't keep up.
And so she told me we had astrategy deliverable and I was
late on it.
And she said you know, you'realways late.
And I basically said don't youknow all the things I'm doing?
And I snapped at her and shesaid something back that was
sharp but needed.

(47:21):
And I dropped an F-bomb in heroffice and she looked at me and
she said get out, don't you evertalk to me like that.
So I slammed the door, I walkedout, I stood outside her office
and it took me, you know, maybea minute to have the sort of
the world ending.
Shame on me.
It was like so wildlyinappropriate.
And I opened the door and Iapologized and she said like

(47:43):
don't talk to me like that, it'sinappropriate.
I'm like I know.
And then she gave me thekindest, most courageous advice
anyone ever gave me.
She said you think you'rehelping yourself by doing all
these things, but nobody knowsall the things you do.
All they know is that the thingthey're waiting on is always
late and you're always grumpybecause you don't sleep.
And she said you think you'rehelping your career, you're
actually killing it, and that Imean that cut me like a

(48:07):
proverbial knife.
I, and it forced me to rethinkall like I I had.
Survivorship bias is reallypowerful.
I had ascended through a couple, two grade, two promotions and
I had accumulated all this power, thinking that I was doing all
the right things, and so I wasmore resolute in the decisions I
was making because I had seensome traction.
And when she came in and gaveme a counterpoint, that was

(48:29):
undeniable and it was surroundedby this moment where I had
acted like an absolute, likeinappropriate oaf.
I was laid bare in that momentand it forced me to rethink
everything, all of myassumptions, and that was the
visceral connection I needed tobe able to set aside, like any
survivorship bias I had, andthen any confirmation by, like

(48:50):
all the other biases, that sortof go along with that.
That moment did more for mycareer than any other moment in
my entire career and it changedthe way it's then.
Now, like my view, I actuallydon't build empire.
Since that moment, I've neverconsciously built an empire.
Actually don't build empire.
Since that moment, I've neverconsciously built an empire.

(49:12):
I'll stray, I'll make mistakesnow and again.
I'm a deeply flawed individualand probably more flawed leader.
I am forever aware of what I'mtaking on and how I'm serving
myself and how I'm serving theteam around me, and that
requires separation and a verysober assessment, and that for

(49:32):
me personally.
I have these moments of clarity,these moments of, let's say,
sobriety, late at night, whenI'm like it's me in my bed, I'm
getting ready for sleep and Ihave.
Or if I'm driving sometimes, orI travel a lot, so if I'm on an
airplane where I'm just I'llput my headphones on and I will
just block out the world, andthen I'll have these moments

(49:52):
where I'm forced to be reallytruthful with myself.
And in those moments when I'mat my very, very best, I will
reach conclusions that I cancarry with me when I'm during
moments where I'm not at my best.
And so it's about developingconviction when I'm not in the
moment and then having thediscipline to stick by my
conviction when the momentarises.

(50:13):
And it's served me well in mycareer.
It's served me even better inmy home life podcasts.
But if anyone knows MichelleBatia, tell her that she paid
the greatest service to me thatanyone in my life has ever done,
because she changed everythingabout me, and it was because she

(50:33):
had the courage to say whatneeded to be said and to do it
in a way that was forcefulenough to knock me off my perch,
but then kind enough to piercethe armor that I had essentially
put up around me.

Speaker 3 (50:46):
You know, mike, and I think that's where, when
dealing with these biases Ithink that's where leadership is
especially difficult, becauseI'm thinking about just some
real world, day-to-day scenariosYou're having to make big
decisions around things likehiring, things like business
decisions that I think youreally need to slow down and

(51:07):
understand how you're thinkingand what the end goal is and how
to get there in a fair way.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
I think that's right, like it's, it's.
It's hard.
For me.
Muscle memory is like the, the.
I mean cognitive bias.
Is muscle memory Like I?
We all fall into muscle memory.
The way we behave, um, you knowcompanies have it too.
You know we call it culturewhen it's at a company level,
but it's how you behave in theabsence of direction.
And so we have this and then,and then you know, and sometimes

(51:34):
it serves us well.
Again, it's not always bad, butin the moments when you, when
you need to be more deliberateor you need to reach a different
outcome, it's like do you havethe awareness, do you have the
tools to separate yourself andmake a decision?
And I will tell you that theaverage person does not.
And it's not because they lackthe capability, but they do lack
the awareness.
They don't exist in the moment.

(51:56):
And so I guess I want to saythis, because the difference
between being wildly effectiveand, let's say, mediocre is
actually not like, oh, you haveto have all this talent or all
this experience or maybe extratraining.
It's not necessarily that way.
In some cases, it's just beingaware and doing the small little
things that make you moreeffective.
And so if you're navigating acareer and you build up, you

(52:20):
look at Steve Jobs as yourleader or pick leader of choice,
and if you try to hold yourselfto whatever standards they have
, you're probably doing yourselfa disservice of efficacy can be
gained with a lot smaller,incremental steps.
Um, and it's going to start withjust being thoughtful.

(52:40):
There is no, there's nograndmaster plan, there's no,
you know, archetype that's goodfor all such, all situations,
all settings.
What you've got to do is beauthentically you, and then
that's going to come out ofbeing at least aware of who you
are and then why you are, andthen, if you have the ability to
work within those constraints,then you will be far more
effective as a leader, far moreeffective as an individual and

(53:04):
far more capable of gettingpeople around you to reach some
of the same conclusions thathave kind of got you to where
you are.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
So we've got an interesting question in the chat
from Zatharian and you talkedearlier, mike, about kind of
your techniques for sellingsomething to someone, or selling
an idea or trying to getsomebody to where you think you
want them, and you talked aboutstorytelling and leading them
with breadcrumbs.
And the question is have youencountered anyone in a

(53:36):
conversation you've been having,or maybe a disagreement, that
that person has tried thosesimilar techniques on you while
you're actively doing the same?

Speaker 2 (53:47):
Have you been bouchonged?
You're actively doing the same.

Speaker 1 (53:53):
Have you been bouchonged?
Yes, I have.
So one of my mentors was a guynamed Spencer Green and Spencer
Green was, I mean, just very,very thoughtful.
He kind of showed me a lot ofthings and there's been times
where I could feel himmanipulating me and I don't
necessarily want to bemanipulated, but you can see
where he's going and so you kindof let it happen but he was

(54:16):
wildly effective at doing thiswith me.
There's been other folks in myorganizations that at times have
Like Kathy Gidecki.
She's been my go-to person for,I want to say, 15 years now and
she knows how to manage me.
So she knows when to let mekind of just go and she knows
when to apply the constraintsand how to kind of manage me a

(54:41):
little bit in terms of, like myexpectations and how to make
things my ideas.
She's particularly crafty, so Ibelieve I'm a good communicator
, so I have a lot of ego aroundmy writing and she's one of the
few people that's figured outhow to edit my writing and move
me off of my positions withoutme getting defensive about
here's why I wrote it that way.

(55:03):
And she's very good.
So she'll do the same things.
I don't know if she does itwith the same intent that I do,
but she definitely uses some ofthe same tips and tricks.
And when it happens I'll behonest, when I notice it, it
actually makes me smile.
It doesn't make me frustrated,because I imagine what the
question behind the question is.
If you know this is being doneto you, does that make you dig
in or does that make you leaninto it?

(55:23):
That's my yeah.
And for me, when you realizeit's happening, especially when
it's the people, when you knowsomeone is, is we have a
relationship and you can tellthat they're, you know, let's
say pure of heart when ithappens, it makes me smile
because you look and you're likethis person is actively working
, with my faults, to help mereach a better place on my terms
and not their terms.

(55:44):
That's actually a greatkindness.
So I will.
When I notice it, and when I'mat my best, I will be thankful.
When I notice it and I'm not atmy best, I will be, let's say,
arrogant, and when I don'tnotice it and I'm not at my best
, I will be.
At times I will be frustrated.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
So Andy, you brought something up at the beginning of
this.
I planned on asking you thisquestion.
You already kind of led us intoit, but you only really touched
on it, so I want to push on ita bit further.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
You're asking me a question on Mike's episode.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
I'm asking you, Andrew.

Speaker 2 (56:21):
Oh boy.

Speaker 3 (56:22):
And, like I said, you kind of led us into it.
But I want you to go a bitdeeper.
Which cognitive bias do youthink you are up against or
think about the most?
Which one do you think affectsyou the most?

Speaker 2 (56:36):
Affects my way of misperceiving reality or affects
me in business when I'm tryingto deal with people.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
Interactions with people.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
My experience in at least the vendor world has been
it's it's very, very difficultto pull people off of their
preconceived notions.
They're previously held, andcurrently held, beliefs, and I
failed miserably at trying tothrow information at them.
Um, you know, what I learned inthe two years working with Mike

(57:11):
has really been eye-opening andvaluable, and it's why we
wanted to have Mike back,because you know the awareness
of these concepts and then someworkarounds and if you can spend
in some storytelling, it canreally change the outcomes with
your friends, with your kids,with a girlfriend, with people

(57:36):
in the organizations you work in.
You know this is an engineeringtype show.
So I mean, tim, you were at apretty high level as an
architect and you know theremight have been times where you
had to try to convince thepeople who signed the checks of
a solution that you knew wasright, and I mean I'd almost
throw that back on you.
Have you?
Have you been frustrated tryingto convince people like you

(57:57):
knew you were right as anengineer?
Because really that's what Iwant people to take away from
this who are listening to thishow can you apply this in your
own life?
And I think we've.
We've spelled that out prettyclearly.
But, like for the engineer, youknow you can say the solution
is the best thing and we need tobuy this.
Have you run into this?
Have you had people on theother side of the table you knew

(58:18):
were wrong and you struggled toconvince?

Speaker 3 (58:21):
Absolutely.
I think what has been tough forme the most in the past is that
I may feel very strongly aboutsomething.
I feel like I've researched it,it just makes sense.
But in the past is that I mayfeel very strongly about
something.
I feel like I've researched it,it just makes sense.
But in the past there have beentimes where I have a difficult
time articulating that and I getfrustrated, sometimes to the
point it's just like why don'tyou just see it my way?

(58:44):
I feel like there shouldn't beanother way than this one.
So, yeah, that's been difficult.
I think something that isprobably wrong but I've leaned
into in the past is that I'vetried throughout my career to
build up credibility, credit,and that I do things a certain
way and I probably don't rufflea lot of feathers and I just

(59:08):
build a career out of I don'tknow if this is the right thing
to say killing people withkindness and just trying to
constantly get people on my side.
But I would say, yeah, that'sthe biggest thing.
And from a technicalconversation, I've had that
difficulty where it's like Ifeel like I understand something
and then we hire somebody new,bring somebody new onto the team
and my job becomes teachingthat person and I almost shit my

(59:32):
pants because it's like Iunderstand it in my head.
But how do I get thisinformation to this other person
in a way that they're going tounderstand?
And that's where I want tobring up what Mike said is that
you can be the smartest personin the room, and throwing
information at someone isn'tnecessarily the best thing to do
.
It's getting creative, tellingthat story, finding a way for

(59:56):
someone to get to the conclusionon their own that you want them
to get to.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
And you like how I answered the question by putting
it back on you.

Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
Hey, that's what I did to you in my very first
episode that you had me on threeyears ago.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
So payback?
I guess here's my mirror Pew.
I think we're just about time,if not over time, not that we
couldn't go all night if wewanted to.
Tim, did you have any?
I know you always have someamazing questions there.
Is there anything you wanted totouch on before we start to
wrap?
Or, mike, if there's anythingthat we should have asked you
that we didn't?

Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
We've hit everything I've wanted to touch.

Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
Yeah, what are we going to talk about next time?

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
I don't know.
I always give you a hard time.
Bring me back on.
I enjoy just the conversations.
I would say there's a lotthat's here.
You tend to hit the same coupleof biases, but if you just do
some basic searching, like iffolks are out there, it's
actually interesting and you'llsee some of the words that our

(01:00:57):
industry tosses about thesocials.
A lot of these things play in.
They're like a subset of theoverall cognitive bias topic.
I would encourage people justdo a simple search for a list of
cognitive biases and thenyou'll start to see what some of
them are.
And then it's not that you haveto master all of them, but it's
worth looking at a couple ofthem.
And I will tell you that if youcan be thoughtful about how you

(01:01:19):
frame up conversations, abouthow you approach conflict,
because that's really where thiskind of comes to play or I
guess, in some cases wheneveryone's agreeing you should,
maybe you need cases wheneveryone's agreeing you should.
Maybe you need to questionwhether everyone's agreeing out
of the merits of, on the meritsof the idea, or whether they're
agreeing out of the out ofsomething else that's there and
reinforcing.
This is actually how companiesgo go sideways, but it's worth

(01:01:41):
looking through that and, Ithink, developing a little bit
of a personal strategy.
I will tell you that if youspend, you's, say, five or six
years really honing it, thatmeans you only have about 15
more years to go after that.
So you'll always be a work inprogress.
But even a few extra successesalong the way, or a few easier

(01:02:03):
conversions as you move peopleto a different way of thinking,
those will propel a career andin some cases they'll propel a
family in ways that are deep andmeaningful, and so I do think
it's in people's best interestto at least be aware of what's
going on.
And then if you can pick up atip or two along the way and
learn how to work within that,then that will make you wildly

(01:02:24):
effective.
We've mentioned the DanielKahneman thinking fast and slow.
Read Never Split the Differenceby Chris Voss, because that guy
, you're going to read that bookand you're going to say there's
no way this thing works, andthen you're going to put it into
use with someone and you'regoing to be like, oh my God, I
can't believe that just worked.
So read those two.
And then the last one I alwaysrecommend is the book Switch by

(01:02:44):
Dan and Chip Heath.
If you read those three I wouldsay that's like 50% of my
leadership foundations.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Once you have that, then you don't need me and
around the thinking fast andslow stuff, everything we talked
about.
There's two books that I thinkYvonne turned me on to, that are
at least I think they're muchmore accessible than Kahneman's
work.
His work is the Bible of it,right, but I think I got halfway
through it and just smashed myhead into the wall and gave up
because it gets really toughthere in the middle.
But there's two books, thinkAgain by Adam Grant and Blink by

(01:03:15):
Malcolm Gladwell, that are waymore accessible, based on the
same information, much shorter,much more condensed, a little
more succinct and gets a littleless into the deep science of it
.
But I really found thosehelpful as well.
Mike, it's always a pleasure tosee you.
Thank you so much for coming onagain.
This has been fantastic.

(01:03:35):
We have a bunch of cool stuffcoming up.
We have a cool announcementcoming up that we can't talk
about yet, but stay tuned for apossible appearance of some Art
of NetEng folks somewhere.
We have a new merch store,which is pretty sweet.
We have some new stuff up there.
We refreshed it.
We have a new vendor thequality is better than the old

(01:03:56):
vendor the links to all of ourthings will be in the show notes
.
But AJ did an awesome thing andcreated one of those there link
trees.
So if you go to link tree One,of them there.
Link One of them there NickyTalk, linktree's yeah, linktree.
Art of NetEng.
It's literally got links toevery single thing that you
could ever want to see, listento, consume, interact with.

(01:04:18):
It's all about the JourneyDiscord server where we have
thousands of folks in theresupporting each other, studying.
We have a work with us link inthere if you are a potential
sponsor or vendor or businessthat wants to work with us.
And I also want to mention todefinitely check out our Cables
to Clouds podcast.
Some of the smartest folks inthe cloud space talking all

(01:04:40):
things cloud.
You know hybrid is the future.
If you're not in cloud, youwill probably be in cloud soon.
And the folks at Cables toClouds I really like how they
approach it.
It's very networking centric,it's very introductory, it's
easy to consume.
I follow them and I love tocomplain about cloud, so it's a

(01:05:01):
great show for anybody.

Speaker 3 (01:05:02):
And if you really want to see their personalities
come to the forefront, listen totheir bi-weekly news podcasts,
because they read the news butthen they give their own ideas
and spin and there's a fairamount of snark and it's fun.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
Yeah yeah, I really enjoy their new stuff too.
So thanks so much everybody forwatching Mike.
Thanks again for coming on.
Tim, always great to see you,and we'll catch you next time on

(01:05:42):
the Art of Network Engineering.
Artofneteng, that's artofneteng.
You can also find us on the webat artofnetworkengineeringcom,
where we post all of our shownotes, blog articles and general
networking nerdery.
You can also see our prettyfaces on our YouTube channel
named the Art of NetworkEngineering.
Thanks for listening.
We'll see you next time.