Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques

Why we learn the most when we accept that we might be wrong.

Effective communication isn’t about having all the answers. As Astro Teller knows, it’s about finding (and sometimes fumbling) your way through the questions.
Teller is a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and inventor who serves as Captain of Moonshots at X, Alphabet's Moonshot Factory. In his work leading teams toward audacious solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems, he embraces what he calls “a learning journey,” where being wrong isn’t the end, but the beginning. “As scary as it is to be wrong,” he says, it’s a necessary part of the discovery process. Whether experimenting in the lab or testing our thoughts and opinions in conversation with others, it’s about having the humility and curiosity to face the limits of our understanding. “When do you learn something? You learn something when you have a model about the world, and then you get some data that tells you you're wrong,” he says. “You learn nothing when you're right.”
In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Teller and host Matt Abrahams discuss how embracing uncertainty drives innovation, why leaders should reward learning habits over outcomes, and how we learn the most when we’re not afraid to find that we might be wrong.

To listen to the extended Deep Thinks version of this episode, please visit FasterSmarter.io/premium.

Episode Reference Links:

Connect:

Chapters:

  • (00:00) - Introduction
  • (02:18) - Defining a Moonshot
  • (04:21) - Building a Learning Machine
  • (07:00) - Learning vs. Productivity
  • (08:35) - Capturing and Sharing Learning
  • (10:49) - Rewarding Habits, Not Outcomes
  • (13:17) - Moonshot Success Stories
  • (16:16) - The Power of Storytelling in Innovation
  • (17:46) - Launching The Moonshot Podcast
  • (19:37) - The Final Three Questions
  • (25:27) - Conclusion

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Creators and Guests

Host
Matt Abrahams
Lecturer Stanford University Graduate School of Business | Think Fast Talk Smart podcast host
Guest
Astro Teller
Captain of Moonshots (CEO) of X

What is Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques?

One of the most essential ingredients to success in business and life is effective communication.
Join Matt Abrahams, best-selling author and Strategic Communication lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, as he interviews experts to provide actionable insights that help you communicate with clarity, confidence, and impact. From handling impromptu questions to crafting compelling messages, Matt explores practical strategies for real-world communication challenges.

Whether you’re navigating a high-stakes presentation, perfecting your email tone, or speaking off the cuff, Think Fast, Talk Smart equips you with the tools, techniques, and best practices to express yourself effectively in any situation. Enhance your communication skills to elevate your career and build stronger professional relationships.

Tune in every Tuesday for new episodes. Subscribe now to unlock your potential as a thoughtful, impactful communicator. Learn more and sign up for our eNewsletter at fastersmarter.io.

Matt Abrahams: The best communication
is architected for understanding.

My name is Matt Abrahams, and I
teach strategic communication at

Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Welcome to Think Fast
Talk Smart, the podcast.

Today I am really excited
to speak with Astro Teller.

Astro is a computer scientist,
entrepreneur, and inventor.

He serves as Captain of Moonshots
at X, Alphabet's Moonshot Factory,

where he oversees audacious,
high impact technology projects.

He has written two novels, and the
nonfiction book, Sacred Cows: The

Truth About Divorce and Marriage
that he co-wrote with his wife.

He's also a new podcaster,
hosting the really fun and

insightful The Moonshot Podcast.

Welcome Astro.

I am super excited to
be chatting with you.

I've been excited ever
since we arranged this.

Thank you for being here.

Astro Teller: Thanks for having me.

Matt Abrahams: Excellent.

Shall we get started?

Astro Teller: Yeah, let's do it.

Matt Abrahams: To begin, I'd love
for you to define for our audience

what you mean by a moonshot.

Astro Teller: Sure.

So we think of this as the blueprint for
moonshots, and in order for us to have

something that counts as a moonshot,
it has to have three components.

One, there has to be a huge
problem with the world that you

can name and you wanna solve.

Number two, there has to be some kind of
radical proposed solution that, however

unlikely it is, you could make that thing.

This is like a science fiction
sounding product or service.

We could agree ahead of time if
you could make it, it would resolve

that huge problem with the world.

And then three, there has to be some
kind of breakthrough technology that

gives us at least a glimmer of a hope
that we could make that science fiction

sounding product or service that would
solve that huge problem with the world.

Once you have those three
things, we're not done.

That means you have a moonshot story
hypothesis, you have a testable

hypothesis, and from there the question
is how quickly can we verify that you're

wrong so we can move on to the next idea?

Because anything that fits those three
criteria that I just named, exciting

as they are, it is exactly because it
is so unlikely to work that we have to

be constantly pursuing the reality that
each one of them is likely to be wrong.

Matt Abrahams: So the goal is actually
to come up with these audacious

ideas and strivings and then to as
quickly as possible negate them.

Astro Teller: Yeah, of course, we want
any particular moonshot we come up with

to turn out to be a once in a generation
opportunity for the world, but since most

of them aren't, wanting to win, wanting
to get it to be right, each time leads to

sadness after sadness, and denial kicks in
that slows up the efficiency of being the

learning machine that we would aspire to
be, verifying which of the many that we've

started is in fact worth doubling down on.

Matt Abrahams: You said several things
there I wanted to dive deeper into.

So you see this as learning, and
it's a learning machine, as you

said, which leads me to wonder, is
there a particular type of mindset

that you try to bring about in your
organization that looks at it this way?

Because many people don't
think of projects this way.

They start a project, they want it
to be successful, not let's start

a project and figure out all the
reasons why it won't be successful.

Can you talk a little
bit about that mindset?

Astro Teller: Sure.

Lemme give you one or two examples.

I mean, the first is, if you were
working at X, I would say, can we

pre agree, before you've come up with
something and then fallen in love with

it, that if it's a one in a hundred
chance of working, it has a ninety-nine

percent chance of not working.

Which means that if you tie your
sense of self-worth to getting a

yes, you're just lying to yourself.

You think that you are the one
percent and you're always gonna win.

But this can't be Lake Wobegon,
where we're all above average.

So that's one way to help put
some intellectual guardrails

around what we're about to go do.

Here's another way of doing it.

Think of the last really hard
thing that you and a team did.

I'd ask each of your
listeners to think about that.

Now, imagine you lose all of the hardware,
all of the software, anything except

what's in your and your team's heads.

How long, once you've succeeded,
would it take for you to go

back and rebuild the solution?

Having already verified what it is.

Most people say somewhere between five and
twenty percent of the time that it took.

And for moonshots, it's much closer
to five percent than twenty percent.

Let's call it ten percent on average.

What are we gonna call that
other ninety percent of the work?

It's learning.

Most of the work isn't the making of
stuff, it's the learning what to make.

And the more you are shooting over the
horizon, which is what a moonshot is,

the more of the journey is exploration,
not the settling that happens afterwards.

So if you agree conceptually,
intellectually that we're on a

learning journey, then scary as it
is to be wrong, we need to focus on

the moments where we learn something.

And when do you learn something?

You learn something when you have
a model about the world, and then

in some way you get some data
that tells you you are wrong.

You learn nothing when you're right.

At best, you deepen grooves in your brain.

If you are wrong, whatever else
we wanna call it, that feels bad.

That's a failure of a kind.

If you hate failure, you will emotionally
avoid that moment, which means

you're emotionally avoiding learning.

If we just agreed we're gonna spend
ninety plus percent of our time

learning, then we need to destigmatize
failure so we can have our learning

loops be as tight as possible.

Matt Abrahams: So a moonshot mindset is
really about seeing learning as the goal.

How do you inculcate and support
that, and how do you produce

anything if, for many companies,
productivity is what's the goal?

So how do you produce the amazing things
that you've done and help people see

learning as the goal, not productivity.

Astro Teller: It's very hard to
prevent people from chasing progress.

Even at X, there's a decent amount
of it, even though I'm constantly

going around trying to stamp it out
and redirect people towards learning.

So it's not hard for the end result
of a lot of learning to turn into

something very valuable that looks
ultimately like great progress.

During the journey, the thing that
is hardest to fight is you feel,

especially, once you've done some
learning and you've found something

that works, it's so hard for you as
an X'er not to feel like I found it.

I'm right.

Now, just let me build it and
then I'll give it to the world

and we're gonna be great.

And I just have to say, we, the leadership
at X, have to say over and over again,

I know it feels like you found it and
you know more about the teleporter, if

that's what you're working on, than I do.

But I'm telling you from induction,
having watched this hundreds of

times, now you are not correct yet.

You have a lot to learn.

And what you think is the
answer isn't the answer.

It's not that I don't want you to be
right, it's just my experience tells

me you have a lot more to learn, so
I need you to stay in learning mode.

Keep your humility and your
curiosity really high for

another two or three years.

It's helping people to do
that that's really hard.

Matt Abrahams: I find it really
interesting that humility and

curiosity are what keep the
flames going for learning.

How do you capture the learning
across the different teams?

We had Amy Edmondson on, and she talks
a lot about the right kind of failure,

and learning from the failure, and
the processes you can put in place.

What are some of the best
practices you've implemented?

So if somebody learns something,
that learning is cascaded so others

can benefit from that learning.

Astro Teller: There's a
bunch of different ways.

The truth is, some of it is just
institutional knowledge, and that's

sort of a background radiation that's
very real at X. There are lots of things

that we capture, we actually have a
document called headwinds and tailwinds

to remind us of some of these learnings.

These kinds of things tend to
be tailwinds in our experience.

These kinds of things
tend to be headwinds.

That doesn't mean you can't
ignore one of them if you want

to or if you think it's worth it.

But these are good reminders
from the past that we've learned.

We have maybe twenty percent
of the people who work at X

aren't on one of the projects.

They're in these central teams.

So this is like finance, legal, public
policy, some business development, a

lot of sort of hardware prototyping.

And what happens is they go over
here and they help the teleporter

team, and then they go over here
and they help the time machine team.

And so they act as a kind of vector
transplanting interesting ideas and

learnings from one team to another.

So even if those teams don't talk to
each other very much, because they share

these central teams, the central teams
can move good ideas back and forth.

Matt Abrahams: So you actually have a
structural element where there are people

spoke and hub and the those folks in
the hub bring those learnings across.

I find that really helpful for
other people to think about in their

organizations, how they might do that.

Astro Teller: Yeah, it is hub and
spoke from a help perspective, but

it is not, as the concept of the
visualization of hub and spoke might

imply, a highly top down process.

Discovery is mostly a bottoms up process.

It's very hard to dictate, so you
have to create some structure and

guardrails, but then let people
be pretty free range within those

guardrails, or they won't ultimately
find things that are unexpected.

Matt Abrahams: So you have to have
just enough boundary setting to keep

things moving forward, but not so
much that people can't be creative.

And we've seen that a lot.

We've talked a lot about improvisation
and how that mindset helps.

And in improv, they have some rules and
that's what allows for that creativity.

Astro Teller: Right.

Let me give you an example.

Obviously we have to have a
performance management system.

It'd be weird if we didn't.

The temptation across the whole world,
so including at the Moonshot Factory, is

to have our performance management system
be one that rewards people for outcomes.

You rang the bell.

You got the million dollars
or the big deal you signed.

Good for you.

Bonus promotion, whatever that is.

That is the death of radical innovation.

Because if I'm asking you to do things
that have a one in a hundred chance of

success, and then you get rewarded on the
basis of a yes of a success, you'll very

quickly learn to pretend you're doing
radical innovation, but find ways to get

the safety of like, okay, maybe it's not
as radical, maybe it's not as innovative,

but I'll dress it up so it looks like
that, and I'm pretty sure I can make

this work even if it's not that exciting.

And so I'm gonna focus on this
thing because I know I'm only gonna

get rewarded when I get a yes.

All humans will do that.

And so the performance management system
we have directs people back towards

the habits, not towards the outcomes.

What are the kinds of things like humility
and curiosity that tend to have wild

success as a long-term side effect?

And then you have to trust, and this is a
big scary trust fall, that those outcomes

will happen when you focus on the habits.

Matt Abrahams: And you have
good evidence that will happen.

It's harder from a management point of
view to measure those kind of things

versus did you ring the bell or not?

That's a very binary, easy thing to do,
so you have to have more flexibility and

openness as managers, I guess as well.

Astro Teller: Yeah, and this is a struggle
to this day at X. It is so much harder to

train managers to hold people accountable
to habits rather than to outcomes that

they routinely will try to find ways to
hack the systems so that they can reward

people for outcomes, or they'll gripe
about their performance management system.

I get it, and that's an example where
we're trying to create some guardrails.

Let them use some creativity within
those guardrails, but also make sure

that they're pointed in this case towards
the habits rather than the outcomes.

Matt Abrahams: I really like
this idea of rewarding people

for habits, not for outcomes.

I want to take a step back.

We haven't actually heard
from you an example or two of

what you guys have created.

Can you share one moonshot that
was successful so we can have

an appreciation of the different
types of things you work on?

Astro Teller: Let me give a few examples.

Google Brain, which is one of the
places that caused the explosion of

industrialized machine learning that is
now the sort of hot topic in the world,

that came from X. That's an example.

Uh, the self-driving
cars now called Waymo.

Those came from X. Uh, Wing, the drones
for package delivery, which are actually

doing almost as well as Waymo and people
haven't caught on that it's going to

be as big a deal, that came from X.
And I will give some more examples,

but let me use Waymo as an example.

So this is now fifteen years ago.

Huge problem with the world.

More than a million people a
year die in car accidents in the

world because of human error.

More than a trillion dollars is
wasted between sitting in traffic

and all of the costs of the
accidents, even leaving death aside.

Between a million lives and a trillion
dollars, that's a problem worth fixing.

Radical proposed solution.

What if, just like we got to the
place with elevators where we

realized you didn't have to have
a human driving the elevator.

You could just trust the
elevator to drive itself.

We could get behind the idea that if they
could drive themselves, we could get to

the place where these metal boxes, like
an elevator, take the passengers where

they need to go, and you just push a
button and say, here's where I want to go.

And it takes you there much safer.

And there's all kinds of benefits,
including, maybe particularly, the lives

that are being saved because those metal
boxes can now take themselves there much,

much safer than a human driving the car.

So that's the radical proposed solution.

And then there was a set of, at the time,
new technologies, how to coordinate lidar,

radar, and cameras around a vehicle.

There had been some evidence, before
we started on what is now called

Waymo, from the DARPA Grand Challenges.

The first of which in 2006
was one by Stanford here.

That car was called stanley.

Matt Abrahams: And DARPA, just so people
understand, is something that the US

Federal Government, it's a funding
source for creative ideas that can

be used for defense and other things.

Astro Teller: Exactly.

And so there was this worldwide,
or at least countrywide, grand

challenge that was announced about
cars that could drive themselves.

And while even in the second time
it was run, there were three groups

that completed the hundred and fifty
miles, they were out in a desert.

It was one one thousandth the difficulty
of what Waymo currently has to do,

but it was enough evidence that
maybe it just, maybe it was time.

Matt Abrahams: I love that example
and many people listening perhaps

have not seen a Waymo or been in
one, I have, and where I live is

where a lot of them were tested.

So I'm a little more used to it.

It is freaky to be in the back
of a car that has no driver, but

it is absolutely cool as well.

I want to come to something
that you just did.

You just told us, not just about
Waymo, but you told us a story.

How important is storytelling in
defining and realizing moonshots?

Astro Teller: I think storytelling
is phenomenally important.

But I watch people at the Moonshot Factory
get a little bit confused about this.

At least when I say storytelling,
I don't primarily mean marketing

or just getting someone excited.

I mean, if you worked at X and you're
proposing that we start a moonshot for

teleportation, let's say, I need from
you an architecture of understanding.

Where are we trying to go?

What makes us think we might be able
to get from where we are to there?

And how should we interpret
things along the way?

What's that set of lily
pads that you can envision?

You'll be wrong.

I'm fine with the fact that you're wrong,
but if you can't paint that picture

so that we have a hypothesis to test,
it's very hard to get behind the idea

that the upside of getting there will
be worth the risks if you can't even

paint an idealized picture of how we
would get there in a controlled way,

where the costs aren't out of control,
where nobody gets hurt, et cetera.

Matt Abrahams: The idea of an architecture
of understanding is what a story provides.

And the outcome of the story for you
that's important is a hypothesis that

can be tested, and that's a really unique
way, I think, of looking at storytelling.

So you've added podcast host to your
list of titles and accomplishments.

What do you think about the hosting gig
and what motivated you to start the show?

I listen and I love it.

I've learned a lot.

It's really cool for me to be
in person with you after having

listened to you in my headset.

What brought it about?

Astro Teller: First, if people are
interested, they can just look up

Moonshot Factory, Moonshot Podcast.

We were turning fifteen years old and
at least one of the things was, you

know, we're trying to get a little
bit less secret and we wanted to

start exposing some of how we work and
what we've done, what we've learned.

Partly because we want to empower other
people to take their own moonshots and

giving them that learning opportunity,
hopefully gives them a boost.

Rather than me, just blah, blahing about
moonshot taking, what we've done is we've

sliced it up into about fifty minute
episodes, ten of them in the first season,

where we've given people who've come
through The Moonshot Factory a chance to

tell their stories, what they've learned.

So you get to hear in the
first person what it was like

to be taking those moonshots.

And these are some people who
are now luminaries in their

field, Sebastian Thrun, or Andrew
Ng, or Jeff Dean, and others.

And how did we get to
something like Google Brain?

How did we get to something like
Waymo, the self-driving cars?

And when you hear from them the mistakes
they made or those initial things that

gave them the faith to start, that,
that seed crystal that they thought

was worth building on, I hope it then
helps other people, not only understand

us and the moonshots we take, but
inspire them to go do some of their own.

Matt Abrahams: It's very inspirational
and it's really cool to hear in

their own words what they've done.

And there are learnings that come.

I have listened and thought
differently about ways I team with

people and the ways that I think
about the decisions I need to make.

So I'm excited that you're doing it and
I'm excited to listen to season two.

Before we end, I ask all
my guests three questions.

One I create just for you, and
then the other two are similar.

Are you up for that?

Astro Teller: Sure.

Matt Abrahams: I'd be very curious,
what's a current moonshot you're

working on that has you really excited?

Astro Teller: We started
this about eight years ago.

This is very typical of
the moonshots we take.

They seem crazy when we start them,
and then at least occasionally, much

later, they turn out to be in the
right place at the right time, is

a moonshot for the electric grid.

It turns out that everyone would
like to make software that helps the

electric grid get better, including us.

And you can't.

You can't until somebody has a
circuit diagram for the grid itself.

If you don't have a digital twin for the
grid where every wire is, where every

inverter is, where every transformer
is, no software on top of that will help

you manage what you have or plan for
the future or optimize it in real time.

And so what our team, Tapestry, did
over the last seven years was build out

the tools for taking in a wide variety
of data, including the very noisy and

imperfect data that grid operators
have about their own grid, 'cause they

don't have a map of their own grid.

And then using lots of different sources,
street view cars, drone data, satellite

data, lots of different inputs, we can
then use induction and deduction to do

the detective work and back out the exact
grid that a particular grid operator has.

And then we can help them manage
the grid they have, plan for

the future of their grid, and
optimize their grid in real time.

Matt Abrahams: So it's as if you've
decoded the genome for the grid and

now we can do some work with it.

That sounds very useful and
hopefully very beneficial.

Question number two, who is a
communicator that you admire and why?

Astro Teller: I enjoy giving
public talks, and so oration has

always been very interesting to me.

And I have watched a wide variety of
public speakers, not because I'm going

to be any one of them, but to understand
how each of their patters functions.

You know, Martin Luther King Jr., great
speaker, his preacher style, there

are things you can learn from that.

James Baldwin, amazing speaker, not a
preacher, somewhat professorial, but

with a calm angriness because of the
specifics of the life that he led.

Barack Obama very professorial.

My grandfather, Edward Teller,
actually, was another great public

speaker, and I learned a lot from
watching each of these people.

Matt Abrahams: Yeah, they each bring a
really interesting approach that you can

then synthesize, and by the way, your
TED talk is one that everybody should

listen to because you deliver it very
well and it's very exciting to learn from.

Final question, what are the first
three ingredients that go into a

successful communication recipe?

Astro Teller: I personally don't
love the start with a personal story.

I would encourage people to
get real, as in honest, get

specific, and you can be human.

So when we tell a story, like in our
podcast, we use visuals from the field,

from the actual people who were doing it.

We explain what we were trying
to do and how where we actually

ended up wasn't that, getting real.

We show people how we harvest value,
even from being wrong, and can have

fun in the process of learning.

And when you get a cycle of those three
things, while that doesn't feel like Mary

Jane in Idaho start of the sort of New
York Times article, it is deeply human.

You can feel what it feels like
for these people to go through it.

It's exciting, it's meaningful.

You can see yourself in it.

It's memorable because of those things.

So that's how we try to do it.

Matt Abrahams: Be real, be specific,
be human, and all of that allows

you to connect through emotion.

I appreciate that recipe, and I
appreciate this conversation, Astro.

This was fantastic.

You've talked about architecting to
understanding, and you certainly did

that for us, and I hope all of us can
build these habits and reward ourselves

for these habits and not just outcomes.

Thank you for your time.

Astro Teller: Thank you.

That was a lot of fun.

Matt Abrahams: Thank you for
joining us for another episode of

Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast.

To learn more about creativity and
innovation, please listen to episode 70

and 20 with Jeremy Utley and Tina Seelig.

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

Our music is by Floyd Wonder.

With special thanks to
Podium Podcast Company.

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