The Vision Architect

If your thinking gets hijacked by certainty, emotional reactions, or untested assumptions, better plans and better outcomes become harder to reach. This conversation unpacks a practical way to understand belief formation so you can make stronger decisions, communicate with more influence, and build visions people actually commit to.

At the center is the idea of inner propaganda: the mind does not simply present neutral thoughts; it constructs a version of reality that often feels unquestionably true. That matters because many unhelpful beliefs do not sound like opinions in the moment. They sound like facts. The result is overconfidence, self-defeating stories, and strategies built on shaky assumptions.

A key distinction explored is the definition of a belief: an idea you feel certain about. That feeling of certainty can come from emotion, memory, group agreement, or desire, not just evidence. This becomes especially relevant in leadership and planning, where people often mistake conviction for accuracy. The better approach is not to eliminate conviction, but to pair it with regular updating as new evidence appears.

The episode also applies this lens to teams and organizations. Strong leadership requires a balance: project enough certainty to align people around a direction, while still creating space to challenge assumptions before full execution. Concepts like Bayesian reasoning, red teaming, and agile iteration help leaders test priors, update strategy, and avoid half-hearted execution that produces weak data.

For future planning, the discussion recommends rating predictions by degrees of certainty instead of treating them as all-or-nothing truths. That allows leaders to prioritize action around high-confidence trends, prepare for lower-confidence risks, and separate what is known from what is speculative. This creates more resilient strategy without pretending the future is fully knowable.

The conversation also introduces two actionable frameworks. First is the Four Ds of decision-making: diffuse emotion, de-bias thinking, model the decision, and apply discernment. Second is DELP for influence: understand the people involved, establish credibility, build a logical case, and create the right emotional experience. Together, these frameworks help turn insight into action.

The overall payoff is clear: if you can spot the stories your mind is selling, evaluate beliefs by usefulness, and combine conviction with evidence-based adaptation, you can think more clearly, plan more intelligently, and influence others more effectively in uncertain environments.

Highlights
  • Replace self-judgment with better questions that create useful next steps
  • Build team alignment without becoming trapped by false certainty
  • Rate future assumptions by confidence level before betting resources
  • Make stronger decisions by separating emotion, bias, evidence, and judgment
  • Increase influence by making ideas feel right before making them logical
  • Test beliefs by usefulness, not just by whether they seem true

Important Concepts and Frameworks
  • Inner Propaganda — the mind constructs a reality that feels true, especially under stress. | https://innerpropaganda.com/
  • Belief definition — an idea you feel certain about
  • Narrative fallacy — the urge to force messy reality into a neat story
  • Bayesian reasoning — start with a prior, then update it with new evidence
  • Red teaming — deliberately stress-test an idea to find flaws and failure points
  • Control the controllables, influence the influenceables, accept the rest — a practical focus framework under uncertainty
  • Usefulness over truth-testing — ask whether a belief helps produce the outcome you want
  • Certainty mapping — assign percentage confidence to future assumptions
  • Four Ds of decision-making — diffusion, de-biasing, decision modeling, discernment
  • DELP influence framework — demos, ethos, logos, pathos
  • Feels right, fits identity, makes sense — sequence for changing beliefs effectively

Tools & Resources Mentioned
  • Inner Propaganda — book on belief formation, influence, and decision-making.  | https://innerpropaganda.com/
  • Agile — iterative project management approach for regular adjustment
  • Thinking Fast and Slow — decision-making and cognitive bias reference
  • Thinking in Bets — decision quality under uncertainty
  • Predictably Irrational — behavioral economics and irrational decision patterns
  • LinkedIn — platform mentioned for connecting and researching people
  • Perplexity — AI tool mentioned for research
  • Claude Code — AI tool mentioned for research

Calls to Action
  1. Write down one belief you currently feel certain about and ask whether it is useful, not just believable.
  2. Before a major decision, separate your emotional state from the evidence and delay action if emotion is too strong.
  3. Score your future assumptions by percentage confidence and prioritize action around the highest-confidence trends.
  4. In team planning, challenge assumptions aggressively before commitment, then execute the chosen strategy fully.
  5. When trying to influence someone, research their goals, pain points, values, and language before presenting your idea.
  6. Replace identity-based questions like “Am I good enough?” with progress-based questions like “How do I improve from here?”

Key Quotes
  • "A belief is an idea that we feel certain about." — Owen Fitzpatrick
  • "I've learned I'm wrong a lot, and that's a good thing." — Owen Fitzpatrick
  • "The problem isn't the answer; the problem is the question." — Owen Fitzpatrick
  • "Your brain's a prediction machine." — Owen Fitzpatrick
  • "It needs to feel right, fit in, and only then make sense." — Owen Fitzpatrick

Chapters
00:23 — Why thoughts feel like truth
01:24 — Inner propaganda and constructed reality
04:35 — What beliefs really are
08:04 — Replacing self-judgment with better questions
11:14 — Certainty, red teaming, and team alignment
14:28 — Vision-building under uncertainty
20:27 — How to identify and change unhelpful beliefs
28:33 — The Four Ds for better decisions
33:16 — DELP: a practical persuasion framework
40:53 — Why beliefs change through hearts first


This Episode's Guest:

Owen Fitzpatrick 


About the Host:

Simon Vetter

Creators and Guests

Host
Simon Vetter
Simon Vetter, known as The Vision Architect, is an international executive coach, professional speaker and author of "Leading with Vision". He helps leaders create crystal-clear vision and practical execution, aligning teams and accelerating performance. His work is trusted by organizations including AbbVie, Cisco, Lennar, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Siemens. Born in Switzerland and shaped by 27+ years in San Diego, Simon blends Swiss precision with Californian innovation: pragmatic, energizing and actionable for real-world leadership pressure.

What is The Vision Architect?

The Vision Architect is the podcast about crafting bold, aspiring futures that inspires lasting change. It is for leaders facing pivotal moments or crucial challenges - those crucible experiences where big decisions shape the future. Each episode is filled with stories, ideas and tools to intentionally design a meaningful path forward, gain clarity amid uncertainty, and ignite the courage needed for enduring change. It's a powerful conversation about what's next - for your life, career, team, and organization.

[08/26] VISION 214 - How Beliefs Shape Our Thinking, Planning and Experiences with Owen Fitzpatrick | #214
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[00:00:23] Simon Vetter: Welcome to another session of The Vision Architect. Today, I'm joined by Owen Fitzpatrick. He is a social psychologist, and he has been studying for the last 20 years the very simple question: Why do we believe what we believe? He's also a professional keynote speaker. He has spoken in 33 countries to over 1,500 audiences, and he is a author of 10 books.

The latest, called Inner Propaganda, just got released, two weeks ago. I picked up a copy, and I cannot wait to dive into it. So Owen, welcome to the show.

[00:01:08] 214 owen-fitzpatrick_1_08-19-2026_131734: Thank you so much. Such a pleasure to be here and, and, and great to chat with you

[00:01:12] Simon Vetter: Yes. So you're joining from New York, and so let's talk about Inner Propaganda. You wrote the book, you published it. What's the premise and concept of the book?

[00:01:24] 214 owen-fitzpatrick_1_08-19-2026_131734: For many years, I was under the illusion that we have, like, a negative voice and we have a positive voice, and there's the two voices that argue back and forth, and sometimes we call the inner voice the inner critic. And it never really sat right for me, because every time I thought about it, when that voice was operating, let's just say, it didn't feel like it was a voice.

It felt like it was the truth. So, I realized very early on that whenever I was in a mode, whenever I struggled with my mental health, I was suicidal for a while when I was a teenager, I was depressed. Whenever I struggled with my mental health, it didn't feel like what I was doing was thinking. It felt what I was doing was experiencing reality, like it was my beliefs.

I believed in this was the way it was. And that reminded me of something I had experienced on a sort of a parallel journey. Over the course of my career, I've been fascinated with beliefs, trying to understand why do we believe what we believe? Why do they change? How do they change? And so, I traveled to so many different places, from Iran to Afghanistan to Rwanda to North Korea.

And when you're in North Korea, one of the things that you realize is it's heavily , propagandized. So wherever you go, it's very blatant in your face. They're organized in the way you think. They control the media. They control every story the more I thought about my mental health struggles and the more I thought about the external side, the more I realized that what we have in our head is not a collection of thoughts that we choose.

Often it is a reality that is built for us. We are convinced of a certain reality. Our brain literally acts as a sort of a double agent, a propagandist that paints a picture of what we're experiencing based upon optimizing for our safety and optimizing for making sure we're part of the group, and optimizing for simplicity and stability, but it builds a reality inside our mind.

And so I recognize most of the stuff that I'm thinking in my head is inner propaganda. It's my brain convincing me of a certain reality or a certain world. And when I'm in a bad state or when I'm depressed, that reality is extremely dark and negative and hopeless. When I'm in a happier state, the reality changes.

But I feel that we all have this inner propaganda going, this inner dictator who is the voice, who is absolutely certain of everything that they say. And I think it's a much more useful model for us to use, because I think so often in the modern world, one of the biggest mistakes people make in the business world as well as in their personal life, is that they're so certain about things that they've no right to be certain about, right?

We jump to conclusions and then we stay steadfast to those conclusions, this is the way it is. And I wanted to create a book or position an idea that gets people to go, "Hold on a second. The problem is not just out there, it's in here." And the beauty of it being in here is once you recognize it, you've a shot at doing something about it, which can help you in turn make better decisions, influence others more, com- you know, heal more and more of the polarization in society, as well as improving your mental health.

And so that's the main pieces of inner propaganda, if you will.

[00:04:35] Simon Vetter: One of the beliefs I have is that one of the most, important story is the one we tell ourselves about ourselves, so which is the basis of the beliefs. What is your definition of a belief?

[00:04:50] Owen Fitzpatrick: A belief is an idea that we feel certain about, and that word feel is the most important word in the sentence, right? If you believe something, it suggests that you feel a sense of certainty about an idea, and that doesn't mean that you're right. You could believe things that are false and you can believe things that are true.

But whether it's true or false, that's necessarily not always easy to prove. In most cases, many of the beliefs we have aren't objective truth. They might be desired truth, you believe it because you want to believe it. Or emotional truth, you believe it because you, you feel it's true. Or shared truth, you believe it because a lot of people agree with you.

Or past truth, you believe it because that's the way you remember it. So, there's a lot of things we believe that aren't necessarily beliefs because we've evaluated the evidence in a very scientific way and used our in- investigative powers to be able to deduce logically that this is what I've observed and this is therefore true.

Most of what we believe is not that. And we can argue for any case. I can convince myself... You said that the most important story is the story that we sell to our-- or the story we tell ourselves, and I say it's the story that we sell to ourselves because it's the that we buy into. Because there's lots of things we could say to ourselves or stories we could tell, we don't necessarily believe them.

But that becomes our identity. So if you believe that you're useless You can find lots of evidence. Every person on this planet can find lots of areas of their life, lots of reasons why they're not good enough, they're useless. Similarly too, you can find lots of reasons why you're great. And in many cases, whenever you're in the wrong kind of state, your brain only accesses the evidence that supports the conclusion that it's trying to promote.

It, it acts kind of like a, a news broadcast, right? It's like your brain is a news, station, and it's like going, okay, so Let's say we take CNN or Fox News, right? They both have different angles. And so if you take CNN, their angle is gonna be like, "We wanna make sure that this message comes across."

So they will look for evidence, and they will concoct and create a story that lines up with that. Fox News will do the exact opposite. Fox News will take their point of view and look for evidence that supports them and craft a story that, that manages it. Meanwhile, neither of them is, you know, describing what's really going on.

They're, they're talking about facts, but they're layering in with the facts emotions and feelings which direct how we think about the facts. And so our brains do the same thing. If we feel a certain way, the same piece of evidence, you can look at it a different way. Someone doesn't get back to me. If I'm in a anxious state, the story I'll sell to myself in that moment, I believe that they're not getting back to me because they don't like me, they're ghosting me, because they're no longer my friend.

If I'm in a totally different frame of mind, the reason they're not getting back to me is because they're busy. And the story that you sell to yourself in that moment will depend on what you're feeling at that state. Just like in the news, it depends what the editors want you to talk about

[00:07:51] Simon Vetter: The key phrase here is the story we sell ourselves and we start to believe it and become certain. And then that's also part of the identity. What have you learned about your own beliefs?

[00:08:04] Owen Fitzpatrick: I've learned I'm wrong a lot, and that's a good thing, right? That's a good thing. I think so often we equate being wrong as a, a really bad thing, or changing our mind about something as a bad thing. "Oh, you're flaky. Oh, you don't have the courage of your convictions." A lot of times people don't need more courage in their convictions.

A lot of times people need less courage in their convictions. They need to doubt themselves more, because the problem is, is that we tend to jump to conclusions with a lot of certainty. In a world full of uncertainty and volatility and turbulence, it's very easy to be tempted towards wanting to get a sense of certainty and stability.

I wanna, I want a nice little narrative that explains everything, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb called this , a narrative fallacy, right? the desire we have to concoct a story that makes everything fit nicely and perfectly. And I believe that what I've learned to do over time is not become perfect, but become aware...

perfectly aware of how imperfect I am, and how the mistakes I make and, and the, and the decisions that I make that are wrong, and, and, and it doesn't make me feel bad about myself. So, years ago, whenever I would do dumb things or make mistakes, I would beat myself up for it, and I would use it as fodder or evidence to go, "That's because you're not good enough.

You're not a good person." Now I don't do that anymore, because I realize this is propaganda, and this designed to try to make me believe this.

[00:09:28] Simon Vetter: what do you do instead of being

[00:09:31] Owen Fitzpatrick: I- instead of that, what I will do is I will look at it and go, "This is... I mean, this is data, and this is giving me information about what I need to do moving forward."

So the problem isn't the answer to the question, the problem is the question is the wrong question to ask. So if I say to myself, " Am I good enough?" Well, then the answer depends on my mood. Some moods no, some moods yes. So answering that as if it's the objective truth is, is ridiculous. So instead of going, "Am I good enough?"

Whenever I hear myself ask that question, I go, "Well, whatever my answer is, it's inner propaganda," either positive or negative propaganda, but either way, it's still, you know, my own brain making up a story. Instead, what I wanna do is ask a different question, which is, "How do I get better than I currently am today?"

So I'm asking myself to look forward to how do I make it so that this data that I get about whatever mistakes I've made, whatever I've changed my mind on, whatever, how do I now adapt my identity to the point that I become better, smarter, more capable, more able, as a direct result of the data points that says that I'm not making the mark?

So if I don't reach a particular goal, instead of me going, "That means I'm not good enough," I'm going, "If I don't reach a particular goal, what's the gap, and what do I need to do in order to close that gap moving forward?" As opposed to using this example as the very reason why I'm just not good enough, which is, again, a nonsense story that we tell ourselves that we can find evidence for, but it, it doesn't serve us.

It's not useful

[00:10:58] Simon Vetter: Taking that concept, how does that apply to an organization working in a team and also getting people aligned and excited about the work in the future? How does that best apply in organizations, this concept that you just described?

[00:11:14] Owen Fitzpatrick: I think we have to be able to walk a sort of a, a fine line between demonstrating enough certainty to get people behind an idea and also challenging the beliefs themselves. So on the one hand, if you turn up to a team meeting and you're saying, "Hey, guys, I, I think there's this idea, there might be some good points, but I can see a lot of negatives and I think positives and negatives and positive..."

No one's gonna listen to you, right? Because you're not demonstrating the kind of quality that people are craving at that time. So it's really important to have, on the one hand, the ability to be able to, with quite strong certainty and conviction, to be able to articulate your point of view, your perspective, that's well thought out, that this is what you believe.

but at the same time, you have to be willing to be able to update it if needs be. There's guy called Thomas Bayes, who a few hundred years ago came up with this formula, and it became known as Bayesian probability or Bayesing reasoning, which is, something that is used a lot even in, you know, AI and science to this day.

But it's the notion that you go into any situation with a prior, A prior is a belief that you have currently, then you look for evidence not to look for evidence to prove that your prior is correct, but you look for evidence to see if that prior changes.

But you look to try to update your prior, and you update it in the light of new evidence, so you're constantly updating and iterating your perspective. And why I love that point of view is because when we talk about beliefs, we use them as a sort of an on/off, I do believe or I don't believe. And I think we need to start to see it more as a, continuum, right?

So if you believe, for example, AI is the worst thing that's ever happened to the planet, right? That's a, sometimes a binary belief. You either believe AI is the worst or you believe it's the best or you believe it's okay. What I think is that is much more useful is to be able to recognize how, accurately, like what percentage would you say your certainty level is when you think about AI being the worst thing ever?

And a person might say 90%. And then I would look at that 10% and go, "Okay, so why did you give it 10%? Why, why you're not 100%?" And then they would give me their... This is known as motivational interview, and they then give me information that they have that says, "Well, this is a reason to doubt it. This is around, I suppose it can help in this way, and I suppose it can help in this way."

And what's cool is the more that they tell me about that 10%, the more that 10% becomes 15 or 20%, because they're the ones that are influencing themselves as we go into that conversation. And so for me, when I think about it from a business standpoint, as a leader, for example, you have to balance demonstrating your certainty, but also checking your certainty.

You have to, behind the scenes, be able to have conversations with the folks and have opportunities where people can red team an idea. Red teaming means challenging an idea to the nth degree, finding out all the reasons why it might be wrong or why it might not work. But at the same time, once you've made a decision, you then need to switch into conviction, certainty.

Let's do this 100%. Let's give this 100%. Let's not be like kind of doing it going, "Well, I'm not sure if this will work. Well, maybe." No, give it a go, but then be prepared to take the evidence and iterate. But every time you give it a go, it needs to be like a proper attempt, not just kind of half-hearted dipping your toes in the water

[00:14:28] Simon Vetter: Now it's this, what you said, this fine line between being certain but also questioning and looking at the evidence. Now when we look at the future, how do we craft the future? How do we create a future that is compelling and inspiring?

we're gamblers. Our brain is a, a gambler. Our brain makes bets. Our brain bets on the future. your brain's a prediction machine. It's optimized to keep you alive, and though to do that, it makes predictions as to what it thinks is coming next. And this is on an everyday basis, so it figures out what is the situation and what do I need to do in order to get this person to stay alive.

[00:15:06] Owen Fitzpatrick: So your brain, back in the hunter-gatherer days, spots the lion, automatically triggers a release of , adrenaline or norepinephrine or epinephrine or whatnot through the system to the point where we're now able to run, hide, or fight, So our brain makes a prediction about what it experiences in the world.

Now, we also make predictions more, let's say, strategic predictions about what's gonna happen in the business world, what's gonna happen in the industry, what's gonna happen for our organization moving forward. So we have those. But they're guesses, and they're gambles, and we're not necessarily always gambling money, although sometimes we're gambling money, but we're gambling time, we're gambling energy, we're gambling resources, we're gambling effort.

And when you make a, a decision as to what to gamble on, what to guess at, you can only make the best decision possible given the information that you have at this moment. So when I'm working with organizations and helping them to be able to handle uncertainty and handle and navigate the world of turbulence and whatnot, one of the most important things that I'm trying to get them to do is, number one, control the controllables,

influence the influenceables, and accept what's outside of their control or influence.

From a mindset point of view, this is back as, as far as, you know, stoicism back in the day ha- had come up with that concept. But when it comes to deciding on the strategic goal, you have to be clear over how do you think the world is going to be? And the more that you've studied the trends, the more you know your industry, the more you've evaluated the competition, the more you've p- planned out and prepared using strategic thinking, training, which often we'll do.

It's like the more you spend time thinking through it, probably the better your guess is going to be. because you're looking at the data points of what's working, you're looking at your own experience, and you're mining that to be able to go, "Based upon this," and this is like an exercise we bring people through.

"But based upon this, how do I get people to go from where they are to where they need to get to be? How do we get from where we are to where we need to get to be?" And so from that experience, they're then in a much better position to strategically paint a picture of the vision of where they wanna get to, as well as the strategy that will get them there.

Now, that doesn't mean the strategy's always gonna work, but inside of the strategy, you build in the kind of Bayesian, notion of being able to be flexible and adaptive, and you do regular check-ins, and any good project management system has this. I mean, if you look at Agile, the concept behind Agile was for...

pretty much based upon On the idea that especially in the tech world, we gotta constantly adjust and iterate all the time. So you bake into your strategy to achieve this vision, this flexibility, the ability to check in with yourself on a regular basis so you can adapt accordingly. But you have to balance the pursuit, the conviction that you use to pursue your, your current strategy or implementing the strategy with, an ability to challenge or check yourself.

But never, never in the middle. So never kind of giving it a go to see, because then you won't fully give it a go, therefore, you won't get real information. If you give me, a task to do, let's say I, I say, "I want to try to make this a best-selling book," and I work on as hard as I can to figure out a marketing plan to do that, and I implement it.

If I give it 100% and it's not working, now I've got real data that lets me know what I need to do differently. But that's only if I give it 100%, because if I don't give it 100%, then the data is not good enough. Why? Because whereas the data might tell me that I'm missing a few tricks, because I'm not giving 100%, maybe the reason I'm not succeeding is because I'm not giving 100%.

But at least if you give it 100%, believe in it 100%, do all you can to make it work, then the data points that tells you, "Hey, bro, you, you know what you're trying to do is not working," that's then valuable information because you know you can rule out the fact that you haven't given it 100%.

[00:19:00] Simon Vetter: How do we create more certainty about a vision?

[00:19:03] Owen Fitzpatrick: I think ultimately recognizing that you can't be certain about it is the first step. Ironically, recognizing that this is not you suddenly developing a clairvoyant sense of being able to tell what's in the future. I think recognizing with humility that that starts out with. and then a big part of it is deciding best upon your best guess ba- based upon everything we just talked about, this is the vision.

And then to build that certainty, you just have to make it as vivid as possible, describe it as vividly as possible, paint a picture of it, talk to people, go all in on it, decide that we're gonna really, bring this to life to the best of our ability, and ask ourselves, if this was a reality already, how would we be talking about it?

How would we be thinking about it? And how do we make sure that this becomes permanent? So often a sense of certainty in a vision isn't always certainty in the vision, but it's certainty in how great the vision will be. and we can construct that the more we vividly imagine it and we organize all of the different strategy to ensure it works to the best of our ability.

But it's not that we're sure that the vision itself will transpire, we're sure that it needs to transpire, and that's kind of what keeps us going and what allows us to be resilient through the ups and downs which often will, will challenge us.

[00:20:27] Simon Vetter: We all have beliefs, and beliefs are formed by a lot of different aspects, where we grow up, the environment, the culture, the experiences we have, and then we bring all that beliefs into our experience. What do you suggest about changing beliefs for better experiences, better outcomes?

[00:20:49] Owen Fitzpatrick: I think first of all, we have to learn to recognize beliefs. There's good news and bad news. And the bad news is there's so many beliefs out there. Like, we have so many beliefs that we're not even aware of. The good news is almost everything we think is a belief, or so m- so many of our, thoughts are actually beliefs.

A belief is an idea we feel certain about. So everything you think you know is a belief, and some of them are based on fact, and some of them are based on fiction. Some of them are, like I talked about, because you wanna believe it, some are not. So the first step is to identify, how do I see what's true here?

And as you let yourself talk about that, that's where you reveal your assumptions, which are just beliefs that you're just accepting without, you know, necessarily verifying. Once you talk about the story of what you think is going on or what's the truth here, that will reveal what the beliefs are. And what I like to get people to do is instead of trying to figure out whether your beliefs are accurate or whether your beliefs are true, I wanna know, are they useful?

Like are they helping you, right? Just because you believe it, you can find ways to make it really plausible. Like, you can convince me of something, and you can find evidence to prove something is true, but that doesn't make it so. And when you talk about the future, when you talk about being certain in a vision, you can find reasons why it's gonna work, and you can find reasons why it's not.

So there's no real way to, prove this is the right vision. But you elect to do it because you think, , "This is the best chance I have." Now, once you pursue that, the reason I went back in the last answer was like, you need to give it 100%, is by you believing in something 100%, you will use all of your resources to make it work.

You'll be significantly more likely to make it a real thing. And so, as you work, with organizations about their vision, you're helping them to generate the ideal future scenario. But once more, there's no way they can know whether or not that's gonna happen. But they have to believe because when they believe in it, that allows them to do all they can to the best of their ability.

So I'm looking at number one, what is the belief? And you can figure that out by identifying what do I believe is true about this. And then second of all, you go through the beliefs and you ask yourself, "Are all of these serving me to help me to move towards what achieve?" And some of them will, and some of them won't.

So for the ones that won't, you ask yourself, "Is this helping me achieve what I want? If not, what other belief that would be plausible to me might actually help me achieve what I want in this context?" And that's the key, is you're not trying to change your mind from this is, the best idea in the world to this is the worst idea.

You're going from " This is the best idea in the world," to, " What is the most useful way I can think about this that would allow me to get closer to the results that I'm looking for in this context?" It's all about what works, what helps you to move forward

[00:23:49] Simon Vetter: One of the concept I use for myself also is make assumptions about the future and kinda look at potential predictions, and then also what is it that I want to experience in the future? Create that, that vision, that ideal state. And then challenge my own beliefs and say, okay, good, how do I think about that?

What's a thought how I ... to approach that? And what I do or what I think, is it empowering me? Does it get me closer towards that, or is it limiting me? Does it get me away from that? And so I evaluate and, and then make a decision, okay, what do I do right now? How do I think? What do I do that gets me closer to that ideal state?

Do you have a concept or an, an approach how to look at the future and become more certain where to go?

[00:24:37] Owen Fitzpatrick: There's a few things that I like to, to, to work with people on. So when it comes to the future, because again, it's a guess, the most important thing is to be able to be clear about the difference between what you know to be true, versus what you speculate and the degree of certainty that you speculate it.

So if we were to, for instance, talk about the future and we were to say, "What is the future of the consulting space in the-- over the next few years?" There's certain things that I would say, "Okay, this is guaranteed to happen," right? So we know... Or close to guaranteed. We know the American political system, with the exception of maybe what might happen in November 2026, we know that, generally speaking, we can make predictions based upon what Donald Trump decides to do or what the Democratic, you know, Congress or Senate would do.

So you could make certain predictions based upon what they've done in the past. Now, that's not always gonna give you all the information, because sometimes they're quite unpredictable. We, we take the tariffs, for example. But what you're looking to do is figure out percentage. What I like to do is get people to go, "Okay, let's look at all the things you think about the future, and let's give them all a percentage."

And the percentage is, how sure are you that that's going to be the truth? So you brainstorm a bunch of this is how I think 2030 is gonna look like. this, I would give it 90%. This, I think 85. This, I think 70. And when you do a sort of a map like that, where you're painting a picture of the future and you're giving everything a certain rating of, of, of certainty, that's when you then, then can start to go, "Okay, for all the things we're certain about, how do we make sure that whatever behaviors we engage in, whatever we do, whatever we, skills we learn, we're leaning in?"

Like one thing I would say, I'm 95% sure that AI is going to be extremely vital for everyone that works in the corporate environment in five years' time. Now, I'm 95% sure because I always leave 5% to you never know with the world, things could turn around and change. But my experience in using AI is it continuously is getting better, it's saving time, it's saved me a lot of time, and I think it's going to bring a lot of, a lot of jobs, it's gonna do a lot of jobs and gonna bring a lot of value into the marketplace, And, I think if that's my belief, then what I need to do is to go, given the fact that I'm 95% sure on that, I need to ensure that whatever actions I decide I'm gonna engage in, like to be ready for the future, consider that as a valuable piece of intel. Whereas if I turn around and I say, you know, "I think that, China is gonna be the dominant superpower and, and, and America is no longer gonna be that big," right?

Let's imagine I believe that, then maybe I'm like 60% sure of that. And the reason I'm 60% might be I see how China's doing, I look at the trends and I notice that China is getting, and I also see America losing some sort of credibility worldwide or whatever. But then the 40% is, but America is still America and there's still an attitude and ambition and there's still, you know, a certain reputation that America can't just lose overnight, as well as the fact that America has so much of Silicon Valley and all that sort of stuff.

So I guess what I'm saying is, is that with that belief, because it's only 60%, I'm not necessarily gonna be putting all my eggs in that basket. So the decisions I make, I'm gonna be making more decisions based upon the AI piece, because that's 95%, than I am at the 60% piece. So I'm gonna look at what are all my 90s, 95s, and I'm gonna start to focus on them first, and then start to move down the list as to what to be ready.

And then the other one is some things I'm not sure of, but I'm worried about, like these are risks, so how do I prepare for these potential risks? What are the kinds of things? And if this is a 80% risk, but with really high stakes, well then that's something I need to spend some time working through and preparing for.

[00:28:33] Simon Vetter: Decision-making is very complex. What's one of your tools or ways to make better decisions about the future

[00:28:43] Owen Fitzpatrick: I'll give you the sort of four-parter, which each have their own framework, but just a four-part framework that I use in the book. and it's called the four Ds, and the first one is diffusion, and this means diffusing the emotions. In a nutshell, we don't make good decisions when we feel strong emotion.

And I'm not saying negative emotion, but I'm saying strong emotion. When you're elated, or when you're depressed, or when you're anxious, or when you're fearful, or when you're terrified, you're not likely to make the best kind of decisions. Because the feeling is so strong, it can often get us to make decisions on what we want to be true, even though we've no evidence for it, or we make decisions just to keep us safe, even though they aren't the best decisions for us.

So diffusing means monitoring your emotions and working on those emotions. The second one would be de-biasing. This is identifying all the cognitive biases that are influencing your thinking, and this is where you get the area of behavioral economics. It's what, "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, "Thinking in Bets" by Annie Duke.

those kind of books by, Dan Ariely, about "Predictably Irrational." All of those kind of books are looking at the cognitive biases we have, things like confirmation bias, where we look for evidence to prove our conclusions as true, or availability bias, because we see something in lots of places, we're more likely to overestimate the likelihood of it being true or happening.

Or, the sunk cost effect, where we're more likely to keep pumping in energy, time, money to something because we've already put so much in. So once we identify those biases, the identification of them, the goal is to reduce their influence on the decisions that we make. So we've reduced the influence on our feelings, and we've reduced the influence of our biases.

Then the third piece would be a, decision-making structure, right? Which, which I call decision modeling, which is looking at what is the decision we need to make, and then we go, "Okay, what are the pros and cons or the benefits and disadvantages of choice A?" And we then break that further down into short-term and long-term.

So what are the short-term benefits of decision A? What are the long-term benefits of decision A? What are the short-term consequences or negative things of decision A? What are the long-term consequences of decision A? And then what you do is you go, "Okay-" What about decision B? What about decision C? And then you look at the evidence for decision A being the right one, decision B.

And then you, you can even, if you wanna go deeper, you can even look at the source of the evidence. " Well, I got this information from my Uncle Bob." Oh, okay. Who'd you get it from? "The National Scientist, Convention," right? The, the, there are two different sources of evidence. And then you look at how does the evidence...

Does the evidence actually prove that it is what you say it is, right? Just because you say, "I have evidence," doesn't necessarily mean it. If I say, you know, "I lost 200 pounds, because of this diet," well, that's not enough, because my brain will go, "Okay, so you just changed your diet. Were all the other variables the same?"

And the answer is, of course, no. The answer is, "Well, yeah, I also ran two marathons." Okay, now we're, going into murky territory, 'cause now we know that the evidence isn't enough to be directly connected to the conclusion. So that's the, the third piece, and then the final piece is my favorite one, is discernment.

And this red team thinking, challenging your assumptions, being prepared to be wrong, being comfortable with being wrong, finding the steel man argument for every single option. So there's steel man and straw man. So steel man argument is when you come up with the best possible argument for you. The straw man argument is when usually you do it for someone else, you come up with the weakest argument for someone else.

So I turn around and goes, "Oh my goodness, they believe in this, they're so du-" b- because of this ridiculous idea. Whereas what actually we need to do if we're to be better at making better decisions, and I would argue to be better at influencing as well, is that we give ourselves the steel man and we give the other choices the steel man as well.

So you go, what are all the possible best reasons to make an argument for choice A, choice B, choice C? and that allows us to discern and to challenge and to recognize when we might be leading ourselves up the wrong path.

[00:32:59] Simon Vetter: I love this concept and this approach, and I definitely will read into it and find ways to apply it. Now we talked about decision-making. What about influence? If you want to influence another person of a concept, of an idea, of a solution.

[00:33:16] Owen Fitzpatrick: So there's a four-part, structure to influence, and three out of the four parts comes directly from Aristotle, right? But I added a fourth piece to it, and, and it's called, what I call DELP, Demos, Ethos, Logos, Pathos. So these are the four elements you need to persuade anyone of anything.

If you're trying to change minds, if you're trying to get someone to buy your products, if you're trying to get someone to invest in your company All of it comes down to demos, ethos, logos, pathos. So let's start with demos. Demos is them. This is the piece I added, and it's Greek for the people, right?

But demos is your ability to read the other person, know what matters to them, know what they value, know what they care about, know what their pain points are, know what their problems are, understand a bit about their personality, their culture, their generation, their, situation in life, right? Do they have a family?

do they have 2.4 children, live in, you know, suburban America? Like, all you can understand about them, both demographically, psychographically, and to try to really understand even contextually what is it that you need to know about them. What is the language they use when they describe what they don't want versus what they do want?

Ultimately, what are their problems, pain points, goals, values, results? Once you know them and understand them to the best of your ability, you're in a much better position to be able to influence them. The second piece is ethos. This is how credible or believable you are, and this is really how do you position yourself with the right kind of qualities to make you persuasive.

So what makes a person persuasive? Well, there's tons of different terms. credibility, the more that you come across as someone who knows your stuff. Or competence, the more you're skilled in a particular area. Or consistency, you show up the same time each time. Or reliability, you do what you say you're gonna do when you say you're gonna do it.

Or likability, the more likable you are, the more people will want, will want to believe you, therefore they do. Or similar or empathetic or authentic, right? All of these are ways to cultivate a sense of trust, to cultivate a sense of even confidence or experience, are all ways to establish your ethos in a more powerful way.

Number three then is logos, and this is really about coming up with or constructing a logical argument that is really airtight. This is what most people are pretty good at, so I don't spend much time talking about it, because it's literally like this is what we want you to believe and this is the evidence as to why you should believe it, and making sure you're getting that steelman argument quite tight.

And then finally, we've got pathos, and pathos is the emotional pi- side of the thing, and this is what people forget the most, and it's probably the most underused but no- most critical of all four, and that's how are you making them feel? And so when you're trying to convince them to buy your product, it will come down to a feeling.

When you're trying to convince them to go towards this vision, it will come down to a feeling. When Simon Sinek talked about the start with why stuff, the main thing that he was moving towards is this vision of what it would be like to work in the world when you're focusing on why, and the why, to a degree, you could argue is kind of like a certain analogous to the notion of a vision.

But it's the feeling. The reason why works is because of how it makes people feel. -- Literally the title of that TED Talk that went viral for Simon Sinek was What Great Leaders Do to Inspire Action, and the word inspire Action was in there because it was ultimately about inspiring people, and that's what Y does.

So it's a feeling we wanna generate. And so how do we create those feelings with regards to pathos? We tell stories, right? We go in with our own emotional state. We feel the feeling we want them in first, and it becomes contagious based upon what we call emotional contagion. We ask questions. If I say to you, you know, "What is the greatest moment of your life?"

It's not just that you'll answer me, it's that as you answer me, you're imagining that greatest moment, and you're vividly seeing it in your own mind, in your own mind's eye. So the generating of emotion is one of the best superpowers we have. So demos, the people; ethos, you and your credibility; logos, the argument logically; and pathos, the emotional appeal

[00:37:13] Simon Vetter: That's powerful. How do we practice those four steps to become more influential?

[00:37:19] Owen Fitzpatrick: I would say first of all, we sit down and we think about the person we're trying to influence, and we actually spend time trying to understand them. We put ourself in their shoes. We ask questions about their current circumstances or situations. We step into what their goals are. We-- When we talk to them, we ask them lots of great questions.

We listen to the answers that they give us. We try to understand them better than we've ever understood anyone before. We try to understand them better than they do themselves. We use AI to be able to do research on them in terms of LinkedIn or if they've ever, you know, communicated in some way. We try to figure out what their theses are.

Like, I'll give you an example. my-- O-One of the people that works for me full-time, she first reached out to me in 2010 looking to, to work with me part-time. But she went and instead of just going, "Hey, I'm some, you know, person we met briefly at a, a seminar you were teaching in, in, Barcelona," she reached out and said, "Hey, I watched the Celtic-Barcelona game, Glasgow Celtic against Barcelona game," and, you know, this was when I think Celtic did quite well.

Celtic are such an amazing team. Now, she knew, because I'd posted it multiple times, that I was a huge Celtic fan. I used to have season tickets. I've been to games. So she immediately did her research and knew who I was, and as a direct result, I was like, "I like her. She's great." And then we started working together, and that was 2010, and we're still working together, you know, 16 years later.

But it worked because she had done her research. Now, many years later, we have AI that can, at the drop of a hat, find out everything that you can possibly find about a person, and therefore it allows you to be able to do it. So if I'm trying to persuade you of something, what I'll do is I can research it myself, but I can also go to AI to go and go, every single thing that you've ever said on The Vision Ar-Ar-Architect, all 200 things I can use, I don't know, Perplexity computer or Claude Code or whatever, to be able to figure out what are all the most important beliefs that Simona has.

And therefore, I can start out and communicate that, and it's gonna sound to you like, "Oh, this person gets me." Why? Because I get you, because I've done my homework. Second of all, in terms of the ethos is what are the most, the three most important qualities that you want to position yourself in front of the other person as having from a persuasion point of view?

And then what you do is you turn around and go, "What are some actions I could take that demonstrate these qualities in the real world?" So I wanna be reliable. Okay, I can make a promise to someone with a deadline, and then I can fulfill that promise, reminding them of the deadline. So I can go, "I'll get you this report by 3:00 on Tuesday," and then at 10 to 3:00 on Tuesday, I can go, "Hey, I know I promised this report by 3:00, so here you go."

I'm reminding you that I did what I said I was gonna do when I said I was gonna do it. In terms of logos, it's what you're already doing, your proposition, your pitch, the reasons why they should buy whatever. And then in terms of emotions, again, what stories can generate the emotions you're looking for?

What questions could you ask them to get them to feel the way in which you want them to feel? How can you go into the conversation with them feeling the enthusiasm that you want them to have as well? Those are some immediate practical tools.

[00:40:36] Simon Vetter: I love it. I love it. I am excited to, read the book, learn from it. The subtitle is Leading Hearts and Minds in Turbulent Times. What's, one low-hanging fruit, in a world that is turbulent, chaotic, uncertain?

[00:40:53] Owen Fitzpatrick: Sure. , the hint is in the phrasing of the statement leading hearts and minds through turbulent times. It's not minds and hearts, it's hearts and minds, and that's because the hearts come first. In order for you to be able to change beliefs, my research came down to this one conclusion, which is for a belief to change, it needs to feel right, it needs to fit in with who they are, and only then does it make sense.

And most of the world, the business world, we spend our time trying to convince people that our ideas make sense. They need to feel right. We use stories, we use examples, we frame things, we use the right kind of language to make the idea feel right, but we need to know the person in order to do that. Once we do that, once we make it feel right, then we need to make sure it fits in with who they are as a person, and that means we need to understand their identity.

But once we do that, then we can make sense of anything, and that's what we do. So feels right, fits in, makes sense.

[00:41:46] Simon Vetter: This is awesome. Thank you so much, Owen. they can find you on LinkedIn,

[00:41:51] Owen Fitzpatrick: They can find me on LinkedIn. They can find me at owenfitzpatrick.com. The book is available. More information, about the book and how it mentions the accolades of USA Today, number two in the nonfiction, as well as endorsements from the likes of Robert Cialdini and Tony Robbins, and all of that plus some free stuff is available at innerpropaganda.com.

You can find me at LinkedIn. You can find me at owenfitzpatrick.com. I got a newsletter and a podcast called "Inner Propaganda." So, yeah, that's how to, how to reach me.

[00:42:18] Simon Vetter: Awesome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate all your insights, your time. Have a great the rest of the day. Cheers

[00:42:26] Owen Fitzpatrick: so much. My pleasure. Cheers