Adam Grant on the future of work
Adam Grant, a professor of organizational psychology at Wharton, joins Dan to discuss the future of work.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] It's kind of ridiculous that we had to be stuck at home to realize, huh, I should block out time to think and work as opposed to just having meetings and interruptions all day. Welcome to Post Corona, where we try to understand COVID 19's lasting impact on the economy, culture, and geopolitics. I'm Dan Senor.
Today, we sit down with Adam Grant, a prolific writer, podcaster, and professor of organizational psychology at Wharton. Adam has been thinking a lot about how COVID will change the way we work. Now, there are a range of strongly held views on this topic, just based on the experience of the past six plus months.
Some employers think productivity is way up and employees enjoy the increased flexibility and time. Others believe businesses are ultimately human organizations, and humans need human interaction to be effective. Will company [00:01:00] cultures thrive? I
am very pleased to welcome my friend, Adam Grant, uh, to this conversation. As I mentioned earlier, Adam is not only Uh, an organizational psychology professor at the Wharton School. He has been the top rated professor for seven years. It's the kind of thing that, that guests typically don't like to be mentioned in an introduction, but the guest's mother typically likes it for it to be, uh, widely promoted.
He's the host of the Work Life podcast, which is one of my favorite podcasts right now. He's the author of three books, which I am proud to say, I have read all three. Originals, How Nonconformists Move the World, Give and Take, and then also Option B, which he co wrote with Sheryl Sandberg. And [00:02:00] he is a contributor to New York Times Opinion, so he's, he writes a lot, he talks a lot, he teaches a lot, uh, and he's been weighing in a lot on some of the issues that we are dealing with in this COVID world.
So Adam, thanks for being here. Don't thank me yet, Dan. We'll see where this goes. Well, actually, I was thinking when we would hang out in the past, pre COVID world, and it occurred to me that I could categorize the two, like, uh, places I have seen you. One are like at conferences, uh, and the other is actually at a Sixers basketball game.
I remember bumping into you during the playoffs. I can't remember if it was last season or the season before, but that was back when the Sixers were, you know, um, relevant in the postseason. So I don't wanna, um, I don't wanna make a thing of that. But of the conference scene, that is like a, that feels like a bygone era, right?
I think that's temporary. I think people are gonna appreciate those gatherings more than ever. Once, uh, once we're past this pandemic. So let me, let me just, [00:03:00] for, before we get going, let me ask you just your current work situation. So, can you just tell us how you've been doing your jobs and what you like about how you're doing your jobs now?
And when I say jobs, I mean your writing, your teaching, and your podcasting. So the only things that have really changed are teaching and speaking. Both of which I, you know, I used to do either in a classroom or on a stage and now I do for my home office. Otherwise, you know, my work life is exactly the same as it was before.
I think the, the worst part of this, for me, is there are just times when it feels like I'm talking into a black hole. Right? You make a joke over Zoom and you can't hear anybody laugh. Right. Uh, you, you know, you ask a question to the audience and it's either crickets or then you're frantically scrolling through the chat.
One of the things I really love, though, is the multi channel engagement. So with my students, for example, I've been using a series of hashtags to try to figure out what people want to contribute to the conversation. And so if [00:04:00] students want to ask a question, they use hashtag question and then they type their question out.
And then I can call on people who have non redundant questions, which is great. And then we also have hashtag on fire. If somebody, if somebody desperately wants to get into the conversation now. That's a cue for me to shut up and call on them immediately. And what I've loved about that is, you know, normally when, when I get questions from an audience, I have no idea what people are going to say.
And so, you know, I'm just rolling the dice and now I feel like I can choreograph a much richer conversation and a much more inclusive discussion of both people and perspectives than I ever would have before. Okay. So let's, let's use that. What you just said is a, is a mini case study because you had tried to conceive of that pre COVID.
Every aspect of that is complicated. First of all, the term's complicated. What is it? Multi channel, multi channel engagement? So the, so the concept is complicated. The technology one would think is complicated. The management of the technology and the people would seem complicated. And yet you were thrust [00:05:00] into this because of COVID?
Had you ever thought of doing something like what you just described in your teaching, you know, environment pre COVID? A little bit. So I'd thought about, I thought about a few things. One thing I've done from time to time in the classroom is I've had students write down their key takeaways and their unanswered questions after each class and then originally I did that on paper Then at some point it migrated into a slack channel But you know, it didn't it didn't have the the real time back and forth that that we're doing now So when you know for years we have been told for really like almost a decade we had been told that we're headed to a world of remote work work from home and The, the technology was there, and people wanted it, and it was just a matter of time before they lived it.
And people like me were skeptical, because I felt like the technology isn't that accessible, the technology's gonna be really expensive, the technology's gonna be hard to use, the technology's gonna have all sorts of [00:06:00] security issues, and, you know, and people are kind of in their routines, you know, they like their commutes, they like their subway rides, they like all the transitions in the day.
That go along with a work day. Really? Do, yeah, I mean, I like the transitions in my day. I like taking my kids to school, dropping them off, walking them from the school to the coffee shop, getting a coffee, listening to a podcast, then getting to the office. I like those breaks in the day. The idea of being hunkered down all day.
You know, with no, no transitions, would have been, like, hard for me to imagine. And yet, we were, like, instructed to do it overnight. Like, mid March, we were told, everyone shut down, everyone's working from home. So, are you surprised by how quickly we've all settled into this new routine? No, I'm surprised by how slow people were to preempt the pandemic and try it on their own.
You know, the funny thing about all this, Dan, is that if you rewind the clock to the early, it was the winter of 2018. I started reading some research on, [00:07:00] on the effects of working from home. And there were some, there were some great data, meta analyses of studies of studies looking at. every possible data point that have been gathered on what happens when people have the flexibility to work wherever they want.
And then also some randomized controlled experiments where people are given the chance to, to work from home. And then we track the effects on productivity and retention. And, and across the board, it was really clear that on average, for most people in most organizations, the benefits of at least some flexibility outweighed the costs.
And so I went to, uh, 10 CEOs in Silicon Valley and I said, look, I'd love to run a A work from home Friday or remote work Friday experiment, and none of them were willing to try it, they said. You know, we're gonna lose the water cooler conversations were we're gonna end up in a, you know, in a position where in a nutshell, we feel like we'll have open Pandora's box and we'll never be able to close it up again.
And the funny thing is now. at least three of those CEOs have announced that they may never come back to the [00:08:00] office. And so, you know, I'm looking back saying, why were they so unwilling to try the experiment before? And how many other routines should we be testing out that we're not even thinking about right now?
I've been struck in my own work environment. I've heard this from colleagues of mine who run, who run companies and run firms that they say that Once they pivoted to work from home in the middle of March, they were surprised by the degree to which productivity did not go down. And in some cases, most cases, people say productivity went up.
Do you think that's sustainable? Do you think productivity stays where it was or continues to go up? Or are we going to expect to experience like a little bit of burnout and then it goes down? It's a great question. I think we don't know the answer yet. I'd love to see. I'd love to be able to fast forward a couple years and look at the evidence.
But let's start from the data that do exist. Yeah. So one of the most rigorous experiments that's been done pre pandemic was a Nick bloom led study where he goes to see trip in China. It's a call center and hundreds of people are randomly assigned to have the chance to work from home. And then there's a control [00:09:00] group who doesn't.
And over the next six to nine months, productivity goes up 13 and a half percent. If you're working from home, people are half as likely to quit. And that's, that's a, that's a pretty strong effect. And if you break down why some of it is there's, you know, there's a tremendous sense of gratitude and loyalty.
That people feel when, you know, when they know that their employers trusted them to work wherever they wanted. And most people tend to reciprocate that with a lot of motivation and commitment. And then there's also the reality that a lot of us have been living, which is when people work from home, they actually work longer days because they're less likely to get distracted by a bunch of conversations with their colleagues.
They don't go to lunch. Uh, they might start earlier and finish later cause they don't have the commute. And so you could ask yourself whether that's sustainable or not. I don't think we know yet. But the other thing that we need to be really cautious about here is we don't want to overcorrect. Because in that experiment, roughly half of people when it was over said, I want to come back to work.
I don't want to work from home anymore. They said, I want more [00:10:00] structure in my life. I want a sense of community. I even sort of miss my boss. And I never thought I would say that, but I do. The other thing that I think is really important here is that despite being more productive in their jobs, They were less likely to get promoted because they didn't have face time with senior leaders.
And so I think any organization that's, you know, that's not fully remote in the future and that's dealing with some kind of hybrid model is going to have to deal with some real status inequalities between the people who are in the office and have the face time and the people who don't. You referred to the water cooler combos as, as distractions.
They could be distractions or they could be. kind of part of the creative energy that's sparked by the serendipity of kind of bumping into someone and bouncing an idea off them where you in the moment may bounce an idea off someone that you otherwise Wouldn't have if it involved scheduling a call, getting on Zoom, it becomes like a production.
Whereas you can just like walk across the hall or bump into them and get an, get instant feedback. Isn't there something lost there? [00:11:00] Maybe. I mean, I, I'm not entirely sure to be honest because if you look at the research on creativity, one of the things it tells us is that individuals are more creative than groups.
So, you know, we see this in brainstorming groups where instead of putting five or six or seven people in a room together, if you put them alone, you get more ideas and better ideas. Um, we know there's less conformity that people don't talk over each other, that people don't bite their tongues because they're afraid of, of looking stupid.
Uh, there's also a pretty neat, uh, Ethan Bernstein experiment showing that, uh, that individuals have more ingenious ideas than groups, but they also have more dumb ideas than groups. And so where you, where you really want the group is in the evaluation and refining. stage, you want to let people come up with their own creative ideas independently and then say, okay, let's, let's leverage the wisdom of crowds to figure out which of these are really worth pursuing and developing.
And I wonder if that's where the water cooler is useful, right? It's, it's not for Eureka moments. It's for people saying, Hey, you know, I've, I've got this idea. I'm not sure if [00:12:00] it's any good or not. What do you think of it? And then they get good feedback and they're also able to. potentially solve some of the biggest challenges around making that idea a reality.
So, this movement over the last, I don't know, 30 years it feels like, 20 years of, of, these offices redesigning around, you know, like kind of a newsroom culture, or trying to create a trading floor culture, even if it's not a trading floor, where everyone's in the scrum together, you know, Bloomberg was one of the pioneers of this, Mike Bloomberg even.
So much so that when he was mayor he ran city hall like it was a trading floor where he was in the middle on the floor and he thought it was valuable for people to overhear everyone's discussions and get quick feedback. Does the data belie the positive sense of why this was so important? You know, Dan, it's funny that you bring up the open office because I think one of the few silver linings of COVID is that it may finally bury that concept for good, which is something I've been waiting for for a long time.
So you've been a bear [00:13:00] on it for like a long I mean, even when it was even when the concept was cool. I never got why it was cool in part because, you know, my job as an organizational psychologist is to look at the data first and then say, okay, we should formulate our policies and practices based on that.
And the studies are very consistent in showing that, number one, when you have open offices, it's extraordinarily difficult for people to concentrate, right? Flow and deep work just fly out the window. Uh, and people are just constantly interrupted. They're dealing with a lot of noise. It's especially hard on introverts.
And then number two, ironically, the whole point of doing the open office is to encourage that kind of spontaneous collaboration and you get the exact opposite of it. Um, there's another Bernstein and Turbin experiment which showed that when, uh, when two different companies switched to open offices, face to face communication went down dramatically and people were more likely to email their colleagues who are sitting right next to them just as a way of coping with the overload.
So, you know, it's, it's an idea that I, I get why companies did it because it seemed to be a lot cheaper and you could fit a lot more people in your space. [00:14:00] But I think from a quality of work and collaboration standpoint, it was not a good idea to begin with. Wow. And I mean, I've got colleagues who say, and I felt this a little bit too.
Um, I have colleagues who say that for the first time during these last six months, they can actually think. Their words, they can actually think during the workday. I mean, if you're in one of these open trading floor formats, or you're actually in an office, it's just once you go in, you lose control of your schedule.
Because there's just a thousand things going on, there's always fire drills. And you can't think, whereas if you're at home, you actually have some control. Yeah, and there's no reason we couldn't have done this a lot sooner, right? So, uh, some years ago, Leslie Perlow went into a Fortune 500 software company in India.
And they just, they were dealing with this, I can't, you know, I can't get any work done. People are always, you know, controlling my schedule. And so, she ended up working with them to run an experiment where they set a quiet time policy. And the norm was that there were no interruptions allowed Tuesday, Thursday, Friday [00:15:00] before noon.
And you had 65 percent of engineers with above average productivity during those quiet time periods in part because they could get their work done those three mornings, but also in part because the efficiency gain of, you know, you check your inbox after lunch, you realize 12 people have the same question, and you can feel those conversations all at once, as opposed to having 12 separate individual meetings and, uh, I think the hardest part of that experiment was maintaining the boundary.
So they found this productivity gain and then the experiment's over. And you know, one day a manager comes into work and says, you know, Dan, I know we're supposed to do this quiet time thing, but this will really only take five minutes. And pretty soon your whole morning is shot. And so I think that my rule is it's never five minutes.
If I had a nickel for every time someone says to me, I just need to talk to you for five minutes or it's a lie. My favorite is 30 seconds. Like, has there ever been a conversation that's actually been 30 seconds? I just need 30 seconds, and I actually have this rule. It's never less than 15 minutes. I, I think you're right there and I, I think because of that, you know, we, whenever, whenever [00:16:00] many of us do go back to the office, whether it's full time or whether it's in a hybrid schedule or even just occasional FaceTime, I think we should, we should try to preserve the same kinds of boundaries that we've seen during the past six months.
There, there's just, it's kind of ridiculous that we had to be stuck at home to realize, huh, I should block out time to think and work as opposed to just having meetings and interruptions all day. So, in this podcast series, we're focused on, a lot on the macro. We talked to Derek Thompson, who's, we've spoken to about the future of the labor force from a macro perspective.
In terms of your research, and what you've heard, I guess, anecdotally, about the, sort of the, the, the, the dividing line that's erasing between personal, uh, Life and work life during this time, you know, we've all remember that that YouTube video that went viral of that Professor Robert Kelly who I think was in Seoul who's doing that BBC interview and his kids walk in the background photo bombed zoom bombed or video bombed by his by his own kids and that was like comical sort of [00:17:00] endearing And, but like, it seemed otherworldly.
That has happened to me in the last six months, a million times. I mean, I sit there and I'm working and my kids walk in with some technical question about, you know, Zoom. Cause I'm basically, Campbell and I are now like school day IT people. And there's just no sense. of boundaries, and that's kind of new for at least the U.
S., right? I mean, people have been pretty rigid about keeping their work and personal lives separate, and it seems to me that that's not gone, but going. Yeah, I think so, and there, I mean, there are a couple interesting perspectives on this from a social science Lens. The first one is that, uh, that's more true if you come from a protestant background and you work for an organization with a protestant work ethic where there's a, you know, a very strong expectation that, uh, that work is supposed to be task focused, efficient, professional and relationships and emotions should be kept outside.
And the data on [00:18:00] Americans on that I think are fascinating, which is, you know, if you compare us, let's say with Poland and India, um, you We are, we are multiples less likely to invite our coworkers over for dinner and go on vacation with them. Really? And I think that's, you know, a lot of that is the, you know, the lingering effect of this idea that, that work is a separate sphere of life.
Um, but they're, Dan, to your point, there are huge individual differences here. My colleague, Nancy Rothbard studies. What she calls integration versus segmentation. And there are people who are integrators who are thrilled to blur the boundary between work and home. And, and they've actually been thriving during this experience of the past six months, whereas segmenters are more stressed.
They're more anxious. Uh, their wellbeing has been hurt by the fact that they feel like, well, I, I'm either working from home all the time, or I'm actually sleeping at work and it kind of bothers me that. I don't get to keep the separation and I think we, we haven't done a very good job trying to figure out how to create a work from home model for segmenters that, that doesn't just destroy any semblance of boundaries that they [00:19:00] had.
Israel also is more in the kind of India and Poland camp than the US one. I remember, I mean, Israel is such a Family centric and child centric society that it completely bleeds into the workplace and vice versa. I remember my sister soon after she moved to Israel, she lives there now, she's raised three children there, she had a meeting, she was doing political work at the time, and she had a meeting with then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
And it, she had some mix up with her babysitter. She had a little, like a one year old, or even younger, one year old girl. And she had a mix up with the babysitter, and the babysitter couldn't take her. And she suddenly, and she had this meeting with, in the prime minister's office, and she called the prime minister's chief of staff, and said, the guy's name was, was Dubie Wiseglass, and said, Dubie, I've got a huge problem.
I gotta, I have to reschedule the meeting. I apologize. I gotta, you know, deal with, he says, don't worry, just bring the baby. And so, and he says that, I mean, he all but said there are no boundaries here and she brought her baby to the Prime Minister's office [00:20:00] and the baby sat in the Prime Minister's office while my sister, like right next to the Prime Minister while she was having the meeting.
And that, that, I have like a thousand stories like that where it's just a completely different mindset. That's so interesting, Dan. It tops my favorite Israeli integration story, which was, uh, which was a student who went to class one day and, and did bring her baby and the baby was crying. And the professor picked up the baby and started soothing him while still lecturing in the class.
Okay. How, how many countries on earth would that, would that happen in? But that actually, that actually goes to something I wanted to ask you, which is you wrote startup nation. You spent a lot of time thinking about how creativity and innovation flourish in an economy like Israel's. Um, what's, what's your reaction to this, this whole idea that, that maybe independent thinkers are more creative and does it match up with what you've seen in, in some of the most impressive startups that you've had a chance to observe?
The part I'm having a hard time with is The communal mindset, [00:21:00] everyone's on top of everyone, and everyone's in each other's lives, and they have all these shared experiences, and all these communities, and sub communities, and sub sub communities, and it could be your, your, the team you do reserve duty with in the army two weeks a year.
Into your 40s, it could be your kid's school community, it could be your work community, and they all are kind of mingled up, and sort of everyone for better for worse is in everyone's business. So you're right that it takes like an independent thinker to take a step back and think about a problem and solve it.
But I, I just wonder this sort of, the, the, the information sharing that goes on when you have a cluster like Israel. Um, you know, I, I've always viewed that as an advantage. And I, I worry that if everyone's locked up at home, you lose that advantage. Yeah, this goes back for me to one of the early questions you were asking about these spontaneous water cooler conversations And I think that people who have the kind of network you're describing are actively [00:22:00] seeking these out and they're benefiting from all this flow of information But we we don't have the creative collisions Whatever purpose they serve anymore.
And so I've been starting to pay attention to what organizations are doing to substitute for that. And I've heard from a growing number of people at different levels of organizations that they're holding open office hours now, even an hour or two a week, just so people can drop by whenever I've, I've watched a couple of companies create an open zoom room.
So that, you know, people can just pop in like they might the cafeteria or, you know, a break room. And I, I wonder what else we're gonna see evolve to, to try to substitute here. What, what have you seen, Dan? Uh, in my day job, we're wrestling with that right now. I, I have not seen anyone really pull it off. I think initially Uh, the first couple months, there was like this flurry of webinars and, you know, all these different, you know, live conversations that tried to basically tried to take the equivalent of like a book party [00:23:00] or an interesting conference like one you and I participate in together over the summer and just try to move it onto Zoom.
Or move it on to Google Meet, like just, we're going to take this offline experience, and we're just going to move it online, and it kind of worked early on, and I think it was almost exciting early on, like it was fun, you sit at your desk in the middle of your day, and you participate in, you know, different conversations, you know, these discussions about a book, or working groups, and now I think, it's just again, this is anecdotal, I think people are burning out on it, and they just don't want to Stare at a screen and be part of like a big kind of conference that's moved online.
So, you know, I've, I've started to see some companies run executive roundtables where instead, yeah, instead of bringing the, the huge group speakers, they, you know, they'll gather a small group and, and actually make it more of an interactive discussion. And I think the benefit is, is obviously that there's a lot more engagement and idea exchange there.
The downside is that the company loses access to the shared vocabulary. [00:24:00] Right. And. I don't think this is something I first appreciated when when I became an organizational psychologist, but I think a huge part of my job these days is to help people develop and communicate in a shared language, uh, to, you know, to be able to describe what it means to have a culture of givers or takers, for example, um, and And I think that's I think that, you know, that very often when you bring a speaker for the whole organization, all of a sudden people can say, okay, there's a dynamic that I've, I've probably felt, but I hadn't fully articulated.
And now I have a framework and a body of evidence around it. And now we can begin to, you know, to make sense of, of how we want to move forward in the direction we're hoping to go. And I don't know how to substitute for that. Right. So let me, let me ask you then let's sort of pivoting off of that new hires.
So. I am struck when I talk to friends at different firms and different companies, and I should say, just, you know, as a parenthetically, that I feel like we're mostly talking in this conversation about the [00:25:00] sort of knowledge economy. And anyone, you know, what is derisively referred to often on Twitter is the pajama class.
You know, people who can actually work from home. There are a lot of You know, parts of the labor force that can't, can't work from home. So we're really talking about people who work in, you know, who work in offices, a lot of, you know, white collar professional service work. Um, I'm hearing from, from friends and colleagues at other, you know, at other institutions.
We have a great culture. We have a great work culture, and we're kind of In this environment, spending down the kind of, the culture capital. Because we, we've been working with each other for so long, because we can finish each other's sentences, Um, you know, we, it, it's working. And, and, but we're spending it down, we're not refreshing it.
But the real prob, and that's a problem, but the real problem is, what about our new hires? Imagine onboarding to an, an organization in this environment. And, you know, I don't, I haven't heard any really creative ideas on how to deal with [00:26:00] that. Well, let's see. I'll, I'll, I'll take a crack at that before that with a couple of data points.
This is one of the most frequent questions I've been getting from organizations about how to teach a culture. Yeah, and how do you, how do you, how do you build a culture when people are never in the same room? And how do you help people who are now onboarding, you know, having not been physically co located understand what the culture once was?
You know, it's almost like they have to be archaeologists. Go and find all the artifacts that were preserved from last year and then say, okay, well, how do we make these visible? So there are, I know of three things that can help with this. The first one. Yeah. So, so number one is culture, organizational culture, just like any kind of culture is communicated through stories.
And so one thing we, we see, and this is, this has been true since. Let's see. Research goes back to at least the 1980s on this is when you really understand a culture is when people tell stories about defining moments when core values were upheld or violated. And so I think the [00:27:00] first thing you do with new hires is you bring in your culture carriers, the people who exemplify the values and norms of the organization on you ask them to talk about the moments that really brought the culture to life when somebody went above and beyond to live it or when somebody fell short of it.
And that, you know, those stories start to crystallize for people. Oh, that's what we're all about. Okay, so number two, this is some research that, uh, my colleagues, Dan Cable, Francesca Gino, and Brad Stotts did. Uh, they, they were interested in, in socialization, and this was also pre pandemic, but their, their fundamental question was, should organizations basically say, look, whoever you were when you came here, you should abandon that sense of self because we want you to take on our values.
And a lot of organizational socialization has gone that way in the past couple of decades, especially if you're going to join a strong culture and their intuition was we ought to do something different, which is instead of, you know, telling employees to become like the organization, we should find out what's already great about the [00:28:00] employees and then bring that in as part of who we are.
And so they did this experiment where, where some people were very much socialized in the existing culture. And others were invited to, um, the exercise is actually pretty fun. They were asked to come up with their personal highlight reel, which was like the work version of, you know, the sports center, uh, you know, here are my greatest plays here are the moments when I've been at my best and the, the employees who were randomly assigned at hiring to do that self expression exercise and, and share the times when they were at their best, uh, they perform better and they also were more likely to stick around in the first half of the year.
And so, you know, I think there's something to be said for, for recognizing that whenever you onboard people, they're bringing talents and strengths to the table that you're not aware of, and may not even be in the job description that you hired them for. And if you can find out what those are, not only are you going to leverage more of their potential, but you're also putting them in a position to feel like what's unique about them is valued from day one.
Do you think [00:29:00] we're going to see coming back to the point about your earlier point about all the independent thinking and the, and now having the space and time for independent thinking. Do you think we're going to see a rise in entrepreneurship or a new breed of entrepreneurs? You know, after, like, Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, you know, have talked a lot about the classes of entrepreneurs that have come out of different crises.
They talked about the class of entrepreneurs that came after the, trying to start a company during or right after the dot com crash was a pretty bad time to try to start a company. And yet there's a class of entrepreneurs that are unique to that period. They say the same thing about the 2008 financial crisis.
Entrepreneurs who tried to build a company after 2008 or immediately, like 2008, 2009. There is something to what they, to that class of entrepreneurs, their skills, their talents, the adversity they had to face. Is this environment going to, is there going to be something interesting about this environment, you know, and the entrepreneurs it will, it will give birth to?
That's a fascinating question. [00:30:00] I definitely need to give it more thought. But if I had to guess, I would say that, you know, they're, they're actually competing forces at play here. So there's this actually kind of startling study that Emily Bianchi did where she was interested in what happens to people who graduate from college and start their careers in a recession.
And she showed that if that's you, and you know, you're in a tough situation when you start your career, that a decade to two decades later, you are more satisfied with your job. And that's controlling for industry, the kind of work you do, the salary you get paid, because you just appreciate having a job.
And I wonder, given that, you know, that a lot of people are starting their careers in a crisis, if a lot of people are going to accept work that they would have thought was not good enough before, um, and that might depress entrepreneurship a little bit. On the other hand, we've also just seen some atrocious company responses to the pandemic.
I mean, the, the mass, the mass layoffs and downsizing, which are the most [00:31:00] common and the least effective form of organizational change. Um, you know, I think, I think they've just, they've shattered whatever faith a lot of people had in, you know, in companies. And so, I think there's going to be a group of people who just are deeply cynical about the motivations of corporations, who think that at will employment is absurd, and will just say, you know what, I'm going to opt out.
I never want to be part of that again. I'm not going to let my future be in the hands of a bunch of greedy crooks. And so, you know, I'm going to build a better kind of organization. And I think we, we will see a breed of entrepreneurs, uh, that's, that's basically revolting against the lack of noblesse oblige.
What do you think? Yeah, I don't, I mean, I, I think the lines I've been, the line I've been thinking about it is just the extent to which people have more time to think about problems they want to solve. Without, I mean, just space and time during the [00:32:00] day to think about problems in the world they want to solve and to actually explore them.
I mean, I mean, an entrepreneur partly, you know, part of what makes an entrepreneur tick is being able to identify a big problem they want to solve. And, and then decide to try and go solve it when everyone. Potential venture investors, potential hires, uh, all the various stakeholders tell you you're crazy.
It's not going to work and kind of still drive through it. In 2008 and 2001 slash 2002, I think that what Mark and Ben were referring to, these entrepreneurs were just dealing with the horrendous macro environment. So if you could build a company in a horrendous macro environment, um, you could, you could overcome a lot.
What I think is. It's, in this environment, the macro environment's bad too, but I also think, one, you know, so it's not just about having to deal with a difficult time. You also have time to actually really think, like we were talking about earlier, and not deal with all the naysayers, and not go to meeting after meeting where venture capital investors say we're not going to fund you.
You have hours and hours. [00:33:00] Throughout your week to really go deep in a way that you may not otherwise if you are, you know, like you talked about in your, in your, you know, in the original about, you know, this, this notion that entrepreneurs go all in is not actually true. It's more myth that actually many entrepreneurs are very risk averse and they're, they want to keep their one job while they're thinking about this business opportunity or they want to stay in school while they're considering a business opportunity.
They don't drop everything. And, and, uh, you know, absorb a ton of, a ton of risk. And I think if that's, if that's true, which you have, like, a lot of research and great stories on in your book, I think it's true, it's, this environment lends itself to that. Because people, you know, people can, can get a lot done.
Yeah, that's, that's really interesting, Dan, because you're right, at a basic level, I can't go on vacation, right, in a, in a real way. Uh, you know, I, I can't do all the same hobbies that I had before. And so, you know what, maybe this is the year to tinker with that startup idea that I've always been [00:34:00] curious about or to see a problem in the world that the pandemic has caused that I actually think I might be able to tackle.
Right. And spend a ton of time going deep on it without scratching the surface and then being told by everyone. That you're wrong, you know, but you can actually spend time really reading, researching, I mean, anyways, to me it's, so I, I think that we could see a lot of that. One, one question, or two questions before we wrap up, one, you know, after the Spanish Influenza, 1918, 1919, you go into the 1920, and You know, some economists have talked about the twenties being this like, you know, the roaring twenties was in part because people, there was all this pent up energy from the, from the Spanish flu.
And once one way or the other, we had worked through the Spanish flu, people were rearing to go. And excited to do things, excited to do big things, and excited to get to work in the world. Do you think we could have some dynamic that's comparable to that coming out of this environment? [00:35:00] Could we? Sure. Will we?
Hard to say. I think, you know, a lot of it depends on the way that we bounce back and how long this takes. I think, but I think the general observation holds, which is that, you know, the human spirit is remarkably resilient. And You know, my favorite term to capture it from psychology is the opposite of post traumatic stress, which is actually post traumatic growth.
Right. The idea that, you know, that a lot of us don't just bounce back from adversity, we actually bounce forward. And that's not to say we're glad it happened, right? If we could undo this. This pandemic, all of us would in a heartbeat, but given that we're stuck with it, we, you know, a lot of us will, we'll take it as an opportunity to say, look, I need to, you know, I need to, to find a new purpose.
Uh, I need to reconsider what my path is in life. And I think that exactly to your point, there are a lot of people who are itching to go and do something interesting and exciting. Um, and you're also going to see a tremendous restoration of [00:36:00] control. Uh, as an antidote to the helplessness that a lot of us are feeling right now.
And yeah, I think that could ignite a lot of entrepreneurial energy and firepower. I just wonder how much of that gets offset by the fact that, you know, that many people have, uh, have been stuck jobless for a long time, that many people are extremely anxious about their health. And I don't know how to, how to weigh those, those two effects.
In, in the, you know, the post traumatic growth term is used a lot in Israel because, you know. People are often asking, people who visit Israel, who study Israel, how is it that they are so innovative? Because to be innovative and entrepreneurial, you've got to also be sort of dissatisfied with the current state of the world, and, or the current state of a situation you're dealing with.
And incredibly optimistic that, you know, you can solve it. You got to be, you have a kind of confidence in tomorrow. And people say, how does Israel have confidence in tomorrow? I mean, they, you know, the, the, the, the war that established their independence, 1 percent of the [00:37:00] population was killed in that war, 1948, 1949.
You know, they've had waves like the early 2000s where thousands of Israelis. You know, are killed over a period of time, and suicide bombings, and restaurants getting blown up, and it just, you know, people sending their sons and daughters to serve in compulsory military service. It could be real combat situations.
I mean, it's just this, this cloud hangs over the country. How do they, how are they sort of so optimistic? And, and this, this is the term they use. This is sort of, it's trauma followed by growth. I think that there are ways in which it's helpful to be aware of the, of the concept of post traumatic grief, right?
Because you can, you can look at a terrible present and still see a brighter future. I also worry though that at times it creates, it creates an extra burden for people. Like, you know, okay, I was, I was barely hanging on here and just hoping I could scrape by. And now you're telling me I have to be better because of this tragedy?
No, thank you. [00:38:00] Um, wrapping up, what is one domain of our lives that you think will be forever changed by the pandemic and that no one is really talking about right now? That's interesting. Um. What will we have gone through during this time where we say, you know, nah, this one part of the COVID period, we're not giving that back.
Okay. I'm going to go out on a limb here. Bring it. And say. Okay. I. I think the odds that this will happen, they're actually pretty low, but they're higher than they were pre pandemic. I think it's, it's at least, there's a small possibility, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hedge like a social scientist here, because I am one.
Uh, I think there is a non trivial possibility that this is the last straw that will break the camel's back of the nuclear family. I think that, you know, the idea that we all live in our own houses and we do our own cooking and grocery shopping [00:39:00] and raising of kids, um, it's been, it's been kind of a silly idea for, for at least a number of decades, because if you were to just think about anybody who's in an impoverished situation, why would you want your child?
In the hands of one or two adults when there could be a whole system or community of caregivers, right? Aunts and uncles and grandparents. And one of the most interesting things that I've seen happen in the past six months is I know groups of entrepreneurs who are now living like they're in college.
You know, eight or 10 of them rented a big house together. Uh, they've, you know, they've agreed to a shared set of social distancing policies. So they've created a, like, it's a pod. It's a living pod. Yeah, it's a kibbutz. Perfect. Capitalist kibbutz. Yeah, exactly. And I don't think there's any reason why we couldn't be doing that right now.
And I think more people are going to say, you know what? Who knows when the next pandemic will hit? I don't want to be stuck just with two or three people. I actually want to be integrated into a community. And I wonder if we're going to see a renaissance of [00:40:00] real community living. That is, that would be revolutionary.
I mean, I would love it. I don't know about you, but the thing I miss most from college is the dining hall. Right. Not because, not, I mean, it was great that food was always there, but also because, you know, it might be midnight, and you just finished a project and you're not tired, and you go in and end up talking for two hours about the meaning of life with, you know, with a bunch of people who have different viewpoints.
And, I don't know about you, I don't have access to that anymore. No, not at all. I mean, I haven't, I mean, even pre COVID. Your point is even, yeah. No, that is, what's interesting is that really is, I mean, you look at, that is the kibbutz movement. I mean, it was, I mean, on a larger scale, these communities were much bigger, but maybe that should be a book.
How COVID will give birth to a kibbutz revolution in the West. You're giving me ideas. I think if there's one person on earth who could write that book, it is you, Dan. If you don't write it, no one else will. Alright, well, uh, Adam, thank you. I will say this is, uh, many of these conversations we have [00:41:00] are pretty dark, uh, and sometimes dystopian.
And this is actually Um, kind of uplifting and illuminating. So, uh, thank you for, for joining us and lighting a candle instead of, uh, another conversation that stares at the darkness. Well, thanks for that. I, uh I, I hope it's a, it's an uplifting but still realistic image of a possible future. Alright, hope to see you soon.
Stay safe. Likewise. Thanks, Sam.
That's our show for today. I highly recommend you keep an eye out for Adam Grant's work. You can follow him on Twitter. At Adam M. Grant and also look out for his podcast, Work Life, which is a TED Talks podcast. Before we wrap, I want to invite you, our listeners, to send in your thoughts, suggestions, and questions about what the post corona world might look like.
Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to me, [00:42:00] dan at unlocked dot fm, so I can share it on future episodes. Post Corona was produced by Ilan Benatar. Our researcher is Sophie Pollack. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.