It’s important to GET right, not to BE right

Welcome to the “The Catalyst,” Kevin Noble’s weekly newsletter about becoming a more effective leader.

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How you do anything is how you do everything.

Recently I was out running my typical 5K route, and for whatever reason, I decided to let myself go harder. Instead of staying in Zone 2 (about 130 bpm), I figured I could go to Zone 4 (about 165 bpm).

As I got going, I noticed my pace on the flats was around 8.5 minutes per mile. I started wondering; could I finish a 5K in under 31 minutes? That would be a new record for me.

About two miles in, as I was walking up a particularly large hill, where my pace is more like 18 minutes per mile, I started to worry about my finish time goal. I was slightly under the pace, but I knew I had a lot of big, slow, hills like this one ahead of me.

My brain was like: “I know what to do! At the upcoming fork in the road, go left. It’s sort of down hill and flat. We’ll make up time and be sure to hit our goal!”

My brain was telling me to veer from my normal route, which had two more slow hills to go, to improve my odds of hitting the goal time.

After my brain suggested it, the rest of me was like, “Cool. Good suggestion.” This was mostly my System 1 thinking.

Eventually my System 2 got involved, and thought, “Wait a second. That’s cheating!”

Cheating might be a harsh description, but I was altering my route for the sole purpose of hitting an arbitrary goal. It felt like cutting corners.

The deeper part of my self is more in tune with my values. I’m not the kind of person who cuts corners. Even if no one would know, I’d be cheating myself. If successful, that time would have a little footnote in my mental records: “Kevin had to run downhill to hit this time.”

In the end I decided on my normal route – up the hills towards home. I didn’t want to cheat myself, and I wanted my benchmark runs to be on my normal route so I could gauge my progress.

Interestingly enough, I managed to finish in 29m18s; a modern record for me. I was so thankful I didn’t cut corners to get it.

Does your brain ever suggest something that your deeper, more values-aligned System 2, has to override? Email me at heykev@kevinnoble.xyz and let me know about it!

Kevin

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PS – The June Leadership Ruck has been scheduled for Saturday June 15th. If you’re in Austin, I’d love for you to join me! Last month was fun 🤩 It’s a good way to get off a screen, connect with people, and move your body. Sign up here: https://lu.ma/xtu6k92x​

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A Quote

“ Some leaders took this too far and became humble to a fault. But being too humble can be equally disastrous for the team. A leader cannot be passive. When it truly matters, leaders must be willing to push back, voice their concerns, stand up for the good of their team, and provide feedback up the chain against a direction or strategy they know will endanger the team or harm the strategic mission. — Jocko Willink and Leif Babin in “The Dichotomy of Leadership”

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Three Things

1 – 💌 Hey Email – I recently created a Hey email address to begin the process of migrating away from Gmail. Check out the 2 minute overview video on the top of their main page for some of the cool features not available in other clients. When you email me at heykev, I’ll be reading it in Hey! (Calendar overview here)

2 – 🪙 ETH ETF Approval – The SEC approved applications that allow the cryptocurrency, Ethereum (ETH), to be traded as a “spot” ETF. It marks a huge political and regulatory shift in the US. It essentially confirms that ETH is not a security, and unearthed bipartisan support for crypto. Now, we await the S1 filings that make these products tradable.

3 – 👽 Aliens are Feelings, and other Musings from the Jungle – I loved hearing all the detail about the Amazon rainforest from this podcast that was itself recorded in the Amazon rainforest. There was a brief excursion into aliens that was a little out there, but otherwise this was a very grounded and neat discussion of animal life I don’t have access to.

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Deeper Dive on Getting Right vs. Being Right

In life and at work, focus on getting right, not being right.

When you’re focused on “being right,” it means your ego is protecting your sense of self. It does this by preserving a narrative about yourself – you’re correct, you’re brilliant, you’re capable.

In “being right,” you close off to new perspectives and ideas around you, because to be open to them would be to admit that you were “wrong,” and possibly “bad.”

Feeling “bad” and “wrong” isn’t true, but it can feel true in the moment.

Most of the time people are not even conscious this is happening! They just know they’re being challenged, so they fight right back. This can be unconscious behavior, which is part of what makes it so insidious.

On the other hand, when you’re focused on “getting right,” you’re curious and humble. You recognize that your own ideas will be imperfect, so you delight in receiving new perspectives and information. This gets you incrementally closer to the truth you seek. You actively search for people to poke holes in an idea because you watch the idea become stronger.

Today I’ll talk through:
– Why it’s so important to cultivate the “getting right” view
– What “being right” looks like
– What “getting right” looks like

I’ll wrap the newsletter up with a summary and action items as always!

Are you feeling open, curious, and ready to get started? 😉 Let’s dive into it!

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Why is it important to cultivate the “getting right” view?

I say cultivating this view because this is not a binary thing you learn and employ perfectly forevermore. You’re rewiring parts of your default network, so this is about awareness and incremental progress, not a binary switch. We’re setting a direction and then working in that direction.

To make the brain rewiring work worth it, let me share the following four ideas for why this is so important. There are more than four reasons of course, so if you have a reason that I don’t share here, please email it to me!

1️⃣ It strengthens your ideas, making it more likely you’ll hit your goals

The primary reason to focus on getting right is because it makes your ideas stronger! I don’t care how brilliant you are – and everyone who reads this newsletter is brilliant – your ideas are strengthened when exposed to other’s thinking. (see my past newsletter deep dive on this topic)

Even the great Einstein didn’t figure everything out on his own. An Indian physicist, Satyendra Nath Bose, wrote a letter to Einstein explaining how Satyendra had found the solution to an issue that had stumped Einstein. In addition to Bose, Einstein had other scientists he corresponded with, all in service of debate and discussion. Einstein wasn’t trying to prove he was right; he was in search of the truth.

Very simply, if you want to get it right, you must open your ideas to the scrutiny of others.

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2️⃣ If you don’t, people will stop sharing ideas

If you’re closed off to the ideas of others, if you don’t engage in honest and respectful debate, if you don’t show how you can be influenced; people won’t bother anymore.

I mean, would you? If you kept trying to partner with someone to solve a problem, but they didn’t listen to you and didn’t act on what you shared, would you go through the effort to share it? Eventually, no, you’d stop.

You can’t strengthen your ideas if you don’t demonstrate to other people that their work can influence you.

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3️⃣ It creates psychological safety and a healthy environment

One of the principles of psychological safety is that you want to create an environment that has increased intellectual friction and decreased social friction. “Being right” is the opposite; it increases social friction because it’s setting up a zero-sum, us/them, winner take all framing. If you’re “right,” then the other person leaves feeling “wrong.”

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4️⃣ You’ll extract the tools that make you more effective over time

Let’s pretend that you’re actually right 100% of the time. How do you make sure you stay right in the future?

You extract the mental models, frameworks, perspectives, and assumptions from other people and add them to your library.

That means that there’s value in the discussion and hearing other points of view, even if ultimately you act on your idea anyway. You’re improving your skill set for whatever problems you’ll tackle in the future.

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What does “being right” look like?

There are many illustrations of what “being right” looks like. I’ll share a few that I’ve seen here.

Seeing the behaviors below doesn’t automatically mean something’s wrong (e.g. you might want to Not Ship for perfectly valid reasons), but they are clues.

Check in with yourself if you ever notice that you, or your team, is engaging consistently in this behavior. Maybe there’s something you can change, or maybe there’s something in the system that needs to change.

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1️⃣ Playing King of the Mountain

A classic illustration of “being right” is where the leader of the organization acts like the classic kids outdoor activity, King of the Mountain. This is where one child is designated king and is on top of a large rock. The other kids try to knock the king down. If successful, they are now the king.

At work leaders do this when the debate feels more like conflict than discussion. The leader may not realize they’re doing this, but the more intense and argumentative they are – and the more they set up either/or propositions – the less healthy the debate becomes. They’re acting like the kid on top of the hill and forcing others to push them off before ceding the position.

The real life and work examples of King of the Hill are tiring and fraught with peril. Don’t make your team fight you; they can’t sustain that amount of energy that feels like conflict.

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2️⃣ Debating Too Early

Have you ever offered a new idea into the room, and as soon as you shared one point, someone else immediately challenges it?

They’re not asking questions to understand and learn more. They’re telling you why that won’t work. They’re telling you the risks. They’re telling you the issues they see.

It shuts down the discussion.

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3️⃣ Individuals Holding On To Ideas Too Long

When someone is working in an environment that’s more about “being right,” you’ll find people holding on to their ideas for longer. They’re trying to polish off the rough edges. They’re trying to anticipate and address challenges.

This isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s an issue if it goes on for too long. If all the individuals on your team are workshopping by themselves for weeks before sharing with another person, that’s going to slow down your org.

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4️⃣ Group Silos

In larger organizations, one byproduct of “being right” is having large departments or teams work independently, in parallel, developing solutions to a shared problem.

Since these teams have to work together, eventually they’ll show their work to each other. The result is the dynamic played out on a larger scale. Is the engineering department correct, or is the marketing department correct? Which solution do we choose? It’s an either / or framing that doesn’t need to be there.

An even worse version of this is where one team is working independently, then shows an idea to the partner team for the first very time. The partner team resists that idea, and decides to start over by themselves!. Instead of taking the idea and building on it, they want to figure out a new solution on their own so they can “be right.”

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5️⃣ Not Shipping

When a team is so worried about “being right,” they often stop shipping.

If they make a decision and it’s “wrong,” that would be “bad.” The team feels like their brand would take a hit, so they choosing to sit in indecision.

They view shipping as a validation/invalidation of their idea as opposed to a learning step on the path to their ultimate goal.

Instead of shipping they ask for: More data! More research! More time!

If they just pull a new data set, or create a new metric, or do some more benchmarking, the “right” answer will appear, and then they can ship, confident that their idea will be correct.

Shipping is part of learning, and teams that want to “be right” often have low volume of shipped outcomes.

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What does “getting right” look like?

I’m glad we’re finally talking about “getting right,” because I find it to be the more fun and impactful way to work!

Let me be bring back what I said in the beginning; this is rewiring your brain. You’re teaching yourself to view challenges to your ego as positive, not negative. It’s eventually fun, but in the beginning it might be tough!

Let’s jump into some of the ways an organization, team, or person behaves when they’re focused on “getting right.”

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1️⃣ Humility and Curiosity, Drive and Judgment

I introduced these characteristics in the last newsletter, and they’re present when teams and people are focused on “getting right.”

Humility is knowing that you don’t have all the answers.

Curiosity is seeking out the perspectives and insights from others.

Drive is pushing into the intellectual challenge of solving hard problems.

Judgment is knowing when to move forward.

And in case it hasn’t been clear so far, “getting right” is about action. It’s not a purely intellectual exercise that you have infinite time to pursue.

We’re running a business, and velocity matters. There are times when you need to move forward even if you’re not confident the idea is ready.

Sometimes a good idea executed today is better than a great idea executed next month.

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2️⃣ Validate, Clarify, and Ask

In a discussion of ideas, make sure the other person feels heard. You don’t always have to act on new information, but you need to validate and clarify.

When someone shares an idea, don’t immediately shoot it down. Validate that you’ve heard what they said. “Let me be sure I’ve heard you. You’re saying…”

If there are any points you don’t understand, ask for clarification. It’s asking, not telling. Don’t tell someone it won’t work because of “x” reason. Instead, ask how they’ve considered “x”. Ask how the idea is robust to different scenarios.

Validating, Clarifying, and Asking supports the psychological safety points I brought up earlier. You’re giving a person space to share their thoughts openly without fear of your reaction.

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3️⃣ “Yes, and…” – Not “No, because…“

I brought up this point in “Mind the Momentum,” so I’ll be brief. If you want to “get right,” you want to keep the conversation moving forward. Steal the technique from improv comedy where you respond to other people’s suggestions with a “yes, and…” instead of responding with a “no, because…”

The “no” brings the conversation to a halt. It shuts down the other party and limits their interest in making suggestions in the future. When you use an “and” framing, you’re building on the momentum. You’re validating that person’s input and seeing where the conversation could go.

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4️⃣ Learn by Doing. Ship and Adjust.

Very often the best way to “get right” is to ship something.

Test your ideas in the reality of the market or system. If you’re stuck in debate, figure out what the competing hypotheses are, and test them in an experiment.

There are ways to minimize risk, if that’s your concern. Limit the population you’re testing against. Limit the test duration. Make sure you have a fallback plan in case something goes wrong.

But don’t get stuck in your head and writing on paper. “Get right” by exposing your idea to your customers.

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Wrapping it all up

Cultivate the desire to “get right,” not to “be right.”

“Being right” is your ego protecting your identity. It’s short-term thinking and closes you off to new perspectives and ideas from those around you.

“Getting right” is recognizing that your own ideas will be imperfect, so you delight in receiving new perspectives and information. This gets you incrementally closer to the truth you seek.

Having a mindset of “getting right” can be tough because it’s rewiring your brain’s default network. It’s worth it because:
– It strengthens your ideas, making it more likely you’ll hit your goals,
– If you don’t, people will stop sharing ideas,
– It creates psychological safety and a healthy environment, and
– You’ll extract the tools that make you more effective over time.

A team or person focused on “being right” can look like:
– Playing King of the Mountain
– Debating Too Early
– Individuals Holding On To Ideas Too Long
– Group Silos
– Not Shipping

A team or person focused on “getting right” can look like:
– Humility and Curiosity, Drive and Judgment
– Validate, Clarify, and Ask
– “Yes, and…” – Not “No, because…”
– Learn by Doing. Ship and Adjust.

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Call to action

This week, start with awareness. Do you notice your ego protecting you? Do you notice yourself shutting down debate and discussion, or over-advocating for your own idea?

See if you can let go of that need and explore the unknown. Seek other people’s perspectives on your own idea. Make sure you’re listening to theirs.

Strengthen your ideas through this healthy discussion so that you’re more likely to hit your goals.

As always, I’d love to know how it’s going for you. Email me at heykev@kevinnoble.xyz and tell me what you noticed. What did you try? How did it go? How’s it working for you?

Kevin

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