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Matt Abrahams: This Tech Tools miniseries
is brought to you by Prezi, the

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presentation tool that makes your ideas
easy to follow, hard to forget, and

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faster than ever to create with Prezi AI.

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The best investment is in
the tools of one's own trade.

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At Think Fast Talk Smart, we are
taking this quote by Benjamin

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Franklin, the famous US inventor
and founding father, very seriously.

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As you know, our show strives to share
tips and techniques to help you hone and

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improve your communication and careers.

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These practices and approaches can be
augmented with tools and technology.

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I'm Matt Abrahams.

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I teach strategic communication at
Stanford Graduate School of Business.

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Welcome to this Tech Tools miniseries
of Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast.

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In this multi-part miniseries, we'll
introduce you to tools we use at Think

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Fast Talk Smart to help us be better at
our spoken and written communication.

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And you'll learn best practices
from the founders who created them.

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Taken together, we hope these
communication tools will help you find

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new ways to think fast and talk smart.

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I'm excited today to speak with
Max Lytvyn, who is one of the

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co-founders of Grammarly Max, welcome.

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Thanks for being here.

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I always love to learn, what
was the origin of Grammarly?

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What led you to create it?

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Max Lytvyn: First, my co-founder,
Alex, and I previously ran a company

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that did plagiarism detection, and
we often had to answer a question

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why so many people plagiarize.

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And actually staggering
number of people plagiarize.

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In our user interviews, we learned that
actually the biggest reason for plagiarism

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is the difficulty, and even perceived
difficulty of just taking thoughts from

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your head and putting them in writing.

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So many people, most people who
plagiarize, they actually knew what they

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wanna say and it's just putting it in
writing was the barrier that they couldn't

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overcome because of lack of time or lack
of confidence or combination of things.

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And they resorted the plagiarism.

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So that gave us an idea why don't, instead
of policing plagiarism, we just create

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a tool that makes it much easier to take
your thoughts and put them in writing.

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But in addition to that, we looked at
where humanity and technology were going,

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and we saw that people make fewer and
fewer things and more and more knowledge.

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What's knowledge?

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Knowledge is essentially communication.

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When you write a book, your
communicating, when you make

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a video, you're communicating.

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Pretty much any knowledge
we create is communication.

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How do we create knowledge?

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In the process of creating knowledge we
collaborate through communicating as well.

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So communication is both
the process and the result.

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If we can improve that by even a
fraction of a percent for couple

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billion people, it's tremendous
impact on the humanity level, and that

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seemed like a very compelling idea.

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Matt Abrahams: It is incredibly
compelling and so important.

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I find it really exciting that you're
doing the work that you're doing

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to help people in this information
based world to communicate better.

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Personally, I think it's great that
rather than just building a better

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plagiarism detection tool, you actually
said what's causing all this plagiarism?

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Turns out people aren't comfortable
writing or feeling competent in

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doing it, so you work to help them.

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Some of our listeners might
not know yet what Grammarly is.

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Can you share what your product is using
the elevator pitch structure I teach

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my MBA students, what if you could, so
that, for example, and that's not all.

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Max Lytvyn: Absolutely.

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What if you could transform every
email, document, and post that you

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write into a effective, polished,
professional piece of communication

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without spending hours editing.

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So that you could focus on what
truly matters, sharing your ideas

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with confidence, building trust
with your audience, achieving your

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career and professional goals through
clear and effective communication.

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With Grammarly, over fifty thousand
teams and millions of individual users

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save time and mental effort by instantly
catching any challenges with their

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writing, improving their tone, addressing
their audience in a more effective way.

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And that's not all.

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Grammarly continues to evolve.

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Soon you'll see even more support
from real time suggestions tailored

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to your unique personal style to the
standards and norms and benchmarks of

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your industry, uh, your company culture
and company style, and even compliance.

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Matt Abrahams: Wow.

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So you get an A plus on using
the structure, and it sounds

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like you actually used your tool
to help you with that answer.

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Can you share more about that?

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Max Lytvyn: Exactly.

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I used some of the new AI based features
of Grammarly, and essentially I pointed

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it to the structure that you suggested.

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And I pointed it to some of the
pitches I made earlier, but also to

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make it a little bit more forward
looking, I pointed it to our roadmap.

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And that's what it produced.

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It took me about two
minutes to accomplish it.

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Matt Abrahams: Now you've spent
a lot of time thinking about

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how to help people write better.

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What have you learned that really
seems to make a difference?

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Max Lytvyn: I spent literally years
wracking my brain on this very question.

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'Cause Grammarly helps people to
communicate better and what is better?

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It's critical for our company's existence
to be able to answer that question.

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The answer we came to is, it depends.

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The definition of better or what makes
writing better is very situational.

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I think what really makes difference
is starting with a goal, understanding

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what you want to accomplish with
your communication, and it can take a

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moment just like, what do I wanna do?

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Do I want somebody to act or do I
want somebody to know something?

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Or do I want somebody to
change their opinion or do I

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just wanna entertain people?

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Having clarity on that before you
start communicating, it helps to

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communicate better and faster.

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Matt Abrahams: I one
hundred percent agree.

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And one of the foundational principles
in all of the work that I do and

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many of our guests have shared on the
podcast, is this notion of you have to

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understand your audience and you have
to have a clear vision of your goal.

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And once you have those two things, then
you can craft meaningful communication

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for them and you're just echoing that.

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So thank you.

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Before we end, I'd like to ask you two
questions that I'm asking everybody

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who is part of this miniseries.

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Are you ready for that?

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Max Lytvyn: Yes.

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Matt Abrahams: Great.

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I would love to know who is a
communicator that you admire and why?

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Max Lytvyn: This is difficult question
for me because my just personal

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philosophy is I can learn from everyone
and I pick specific pieces that a

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person does really well or differently
from everyone and learn these pieces.

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But one name that comes
to mind is Adam Grant.

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What I like in his communication,
and what I want to do better myself,

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is explain complex things simply in
a way that makes it easier to apply

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to practical situations, but without
obscuring the nuances, without

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obscuring the depths of complexity.

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'Cause it's easy to simplify things,
but that sometimes does a disservice

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to your audience because we just
don't get the lead into the nuance.

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But the way Adam does it is
making it simple, but without

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hiding that there is more.

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Matt Abrahams: The notion of making things
accessible is really critical, so it's not

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about dumbing it down or oversimplifying
it, as you said, that can be risky.

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In fact, what it's all about is finding
ways to make it accessible so people

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can appreciate the depth and the nuance.

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And Adam Grant does a great job with that.

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Thank you.

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Final question, question two.

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Beyond your tool, beyond Grammarly,
what is one communication hack or

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tool or shortcut that you use to be
more effective in your communication?

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Max Lytvyn: Oh, I love this.

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One thing that dramatically changed
my communication for the better is

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whenever I'm in a contentious situation,
an argument or just a high stakes

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discussion, and I have an instinct
to attack somebody's point or start

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focusing on like differences in opinions,
I just start my response with yes.

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And not yes, but, but genuine yes.

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And it's for, it's mostly for me.

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It's not for the other person.

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What it does, it switches my brain into
collaborative communication mode where

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I focus first on things that, where
there are commonalities, where there is

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mutual understanding, and then develop
into things that we see differently.

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And that is a simple thing, but it has
such a dramatic effect in the results.

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I'm sure you, you've dealt
with a collaborative versus

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competitive communication a lot.

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In competitive communication it's
usually a zero sum game at best.

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In many cases, it just destroys value.

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In collaborative communication
it's one plus one equals three.

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To explain that, I often use
analogy of Legos, that I have

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my Legos, you have your Legos.

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Instead of arguing whose Lego pieces
are better, we just put them in one

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pile and build something together.

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That's how it can explain collaborative
communication to people who are new

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to this concept, but that, starting
answer was yes is a great tool to first

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switch your brain into collaborative
communication mode, but then it also

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switches your audiences, uh, brain
into that collaborative communication

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mode and leads to better results.

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Matt Abrahams: People can't see this,
but I'm smiling from ear to ear.

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We have talked a lot on this podcast
about the principle from improvisation

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of yes, and, and how it really
brings you into collaboration.

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And I love that you have found somebody
in your role, as a senior leader of a

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company, that's doing really cool stuff.

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You start from the yes, and mentality
and you personally see your benefit.

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And I just wanna highlight for
everyone listening that what Max

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did was he actually followed some
of the things he's talked about.

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He repeated himself in
a couple different ways.

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He made something that's very complex,
the notion of collaborative communication,

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people have spent their academic careers
studying this, and through an analogy

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of Legos, made it more accessible.

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So Max, thank you so much for
the tool that you've created.

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Thank you for taking the time to
share with us key takeaways that can

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make us all better communicators.

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I appreciate your time.

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Max Lytvyn: And thank you, Matt.

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That was very enjoyable conversation.

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Matt Abrahams: Thank you for
joining us for one of our

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Communication tools episodes of
Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast.

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Please be sure to listen to all of
the episodes in this miniseries.

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We appreciate Prezi's
sponsorship of these episodes.

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This episode was produced by Katherine
Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams.

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Our music is from Floyd Wonder.

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With special thanks to
Podium Podcast Company.

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