WEBVTT 00:00:03.660 --> 00:00:08.700 Matt Abrahams: Community and communication not only have the same root word, but they 00:00:08.700 --> 00:00:11.220 work together to make us more effective. 00:00:11.580 --> 00:00:14.760 My name is Matt Abrahams and I teach strategic communication at 00:00:14.760 --> 00:00:16.470 Stanford Graduate School of Business. 00:00:16.740 --> 00:00:19.950 Welcome to Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. 00:00:20.459 --> 00:00:22.979 Today I'm excited to have a conversation with Sandy Pentland. 00:00:23.279 --> 00:00:27.060 Sandy is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he helped 00:00:27.060 --> 00:00:29.460 create and direct the MIT Media lab. 00:00:29.970 --> 00:00:32.970 He's also a Stanford Institute of Human-Centered AI Fellow. 00:00:33.120 --> 00:00:36.120 Sandy is recognized as a pioneer in computational social 00:00:36.120 --> 00:00:38.010 science and wearable computing. 00:00:38.400 --> 00:00:41.955 He has just released his newest book, Shared Wisdom Cultural 00:00:41.955 --> 00:00:43.890 Evolution in the Age of AI. 00:00:44.930 --> 00:00:45.740 Well, welcome Sandy. 00:00:45.740 --> 00:00:48.830 I have long admired your work and I'm very excited for our conversation. 00:00:49.010 --> 00:00:50.360 Sandy Pentland: Well, I'm really happy to be here. 00:00:50.480 --> 00:00:51.170 Matt Abrahams: Shall we get started? 00:00:51.170 --> 00:00:51.830 Sandy Pentland: Yes, please. 00:00:52.070 --> 00:00:53.630 Matt Abrahams: Well, let's start with Honest Signals. 00:00:53.630 --> 00:00:56.000 That's where I first got to know you and your work. 00:00:56.270 --> 00:00:59.690 Can you define what honest signals are and how you studied them? 00:00:59.690 --> 00:01:03.020 And then can you share how mastery of these signals can actually be 00:01:03.020 --> 00:01:07.550 effective tools to help us build trust and foster relationships, more 00:01:07.550 --> 00:01:09.110 than words might even be able to? 00:01:09.440 --> 00:01:11.630 Sandy Pentland: A way to think about this is that if you look at our 00:01:11.630 --> 00:01:16.130 closest ancestors, big, great apes, they actually communicate with hoots 00:01:16.130 --> 00:01:17.930 and pants and other sorts of sounds. 00:01:18.050 --> 00:01:20.060 Language seems to be built on top of that. 00:01:20.060 --> 00:01:21.260 But we didn't get rid of it. 00:01:21.320 --> 00:01:23.930 We kept it at its contrast to the words. 00:01:24.080 --> 00:01:26.810 So you can tell when someone's excited, of course, because they get 00:01:26.810 --> 00:01:29.510 all, oh they, that's a signal, right? 00:01:29.810 --> 00:01:32.300 And you can tell when they're not paying attention because there's these 00:01:32.300 --> 00:01:34.370 sort of awkward pauses sometimes. 00:01:34.370 --> 00:01:38.290 And those are the things that are the signals about what's going on in the 00:01:38.290 --> 00:01:40.420 person's head and about the relationship. 00:01:40.570 --> 00:01:44.620 And the ones that are most interesting, I think to me, and perhaps to 00:01:44.620 --> 00:01:47.410 your question, are the ones about the patterns of interaction. 00:01:47.410 --> 00:01:51.190 So it's not just about the person, it's about how they interact with other people. 00:01:51.430 --> 00:01:56.140 And we find that the pattern of people using each other, communicating with 00:01:56.140 --> 00:02:01.120 each other for help, both ways, is almost a perfect predictor of trust. 00:02:01.300 --> 00:02:02.590 Which is really interesting. 00:02:02.590 --> 00:02:06.190 So it's a relationship where you give me something and I give you something 00:02:06.190 --> 00:02:08.020 back, and we do that for a while. 00:02:08.140 --> 00:02:10.960 It also is something that's very closely related to friendship. 00:02:11.410 --> 00:02:15.930 People who do that, say about out work things, tend to become friends. 00:02:16.110 --> 00:02:19.170 And not just occasionally, very regularly. 00:02:19.590 --> 00:02:24.450 And if you look at groups of people, you see these same sorts of patterns define 00:02:24.450 --> 00:02:26.520 who's interested in a topic and who's not. 00:02:26.520 --> 00:02:28.020 In other words, what's the community? 00:02:28.320 --> 00:02:32.190 And so this is not something we're generally aware of, but you can 00:02:32.190 --> 00:02:35.910 look at these patterns and once you begin thinking about them, you 00:02:35.910 --> 00:02:37.980 can say, yeah, that makes sense. 00:02:38.370 --> 00:02:42.090 This guy must be interested in it and he gets something valuable out of it. 00:02:42.090 --> 00:02:44.700 So yeah, there's a certain level of trust there. 00:02:45.090 --> 00:02:46.410 Matt Abrahams: What I found really interesting is how you 00:02:46.410 --> 00:02:48.359 actually looked at these patterns. 00:02:48.359 --> 00:02:51.030 How did you study and look at the reciprocity that you found? 00:02:51.525 --> 00:02:53.325 Sandy Pentland: Oh, we've done it a number of ways. 00:02:53.385 --> 00:02:57.105 The one that people always remember is we built these little badges that 00:02:57.105 --> 00:03:00.704 would wear around your neck, and they had a microphone that didn't record the 00:03:00.704 --> 00:03:05.834 words, but did record how you moved and where you were and your tone of voice. 00:03:05.894 --> 00:03:10.125 And that turned out to be very informative about what was going on. 00:03:10.365 --> 00:03:15.795 For instance, who was leading a group, who was dissatisfied with it? 00:03:15.945 --> 00:03:17.954 And that's what the Honest Signals book is all about. 00:03:18.275 --> 00:03:21.484 Matt Abrahams: Did you find that there are certain signals that are more 00:03:21.484 --> 00:03:26.644 likely or more effective in determining power in relationships than others? 00:03:26.644 --> 00:03:30.215 So is it vocal intonation versus gestures versus physical orientation? 00:03:31.050 --> 00:03:33.060 Sandy Pentland: I think that's not the right way to think about it. 00:03:33.090 --> 00:03:36.300 What it is, is certain patterns of interaction, and those are 00:03:36.300 --> 00:03:39.990 accented by excitement or delay. 00:03:40.200 --> 00:03:44.400 In fact, we built a little, uh, sort of AI tool, which is actually in most 00:03:44.400 --> 00:03:47.820 call centers, and what it does is it tells the person when to listen, when 00:03:47.820 --> 00:03:52.079 to shut up, when to be excited, when to be a little cautious about it. 00:03:52.410 --> 00:03:55.590 What it does is it gets rid of the call center people fighting with the 00:03:55.590 --> 00:03:58.380 customers, so everybody has a better time. 00:03:59.340 --> 00:04:01.440 Matt Abrahams: What I've taken away from the Honest Signals work that 00:04:01.440 --> 00:04:08.010 you've done is that observing the patterns can be very insightful to what 00:04:08.010 --> 00:04:11.459 the results will be, and many of us don't pay attention to those patterns. 00:04:11.489 --> 00:04:11.670 Sandy Pentland: No. 00:04:11.700 --> 00:04:15.030 'Cause we're focused on the words or we're thinking about something else. 00:04:15.030 --> 00:04:15.239 Yeah. 00:04:15.480 --> 00:04:18.779 Matt Abrahams: I'm curious, now that we've shifted more to remote and hybrid 00:04:18.784 --> 00:04:22.680 work, what are your thoughts about that impact on Honest Signals and are there 00:04:22.680 --> 00:04:27.155 new things that we should develop and hone to help maintain stronger ties now 00:04:27.155 --> 00:04:28.835 that we're doing a lot of this remotely. 00:04:29.075 --> 00:04:32.225 Sandy Pentland: The obvious thing about say remote things and Zoom 00:04:32.225 --> 00:04:35.975 and all that is that it gets rid of a lot of the body language. 00:04:36.215 --> 00:04:37.745 The tone of voice is diminished. 00:04:37.745 --> 00:04:39.605 You can't tell about a lot of things. 00:04:39.905 --> 00:04:44.900 What I try to do with these things is have casual interactions, and in fact, we've 00:04:44.900 --> 00:04:46.805 built a little tool to help you do that. 00:04:46.835 --> 00:04:48.005 It's all free, all that. 00:04:48.005 --> 00:04:49.545 It's called Deliberation.io. 00:04:49.835 --> 00:04:53.585 It lets people talk about things in a sort of less structured way. 00:04:53.780 --> 00:04:57.800 And prevents overly large voices and gives people sort of 00:04:57.800 --> 00:04:59.300 summaries of what's going on. 00:04:59.570 --> 00:05:02.659 But the real thing is you have to have a personal connection 00:05:02.659 --> 00:05:04.159 that goes with these patterns. 00:05:04.400 --> 00:05:07.940 So when I do Zoom calls, I almost always start with five minutes of 00:05:07.940 --> 00:05:11.300 how are the kids doing and, you know, what's the weather, so that there's a 00:05:11.300 --> 00:05:16.219 sense that people actually care about the human and not just about the work. 00:05:16.555 --> 00:05:21.655 That's not the best thing because it's so much better to have that water cooler 00:05:21.655 --> 00:05:25.675 conversation or the little conversation after the meeting or before the meeting. 00:05:25.975 --> 00:05:29.875 Those are when things really get established in terms of trust and 00:05:29.875 --> 00:05:31.855 alignment and things like that. 00:05:32.385 --> 00:05:33.615 Matt Abrahams: It's really interesting 'cause when you and 00:05:33.615 --> 00:05:36.375 I were walking over to the studio we're in today, you did just that. 00:05:36.375 --> 00:05:40.365 We had this small talk to sort of get connected and it's very useful. 00:05:40.905 --> 00:05:44.625 You've pioneered the use of data to map social networks. 00:05:45.225 --> 00:05:49.095 How can this data be used to identify communication bottlenecks in a company or 00:05:49.095 --> 00:05:53.235 help create more effective and efficient teams once you understand the network? 00:05:53.610 --> 00:05:56.340 Sandy Pentland: We started with these little things that recorded 00:05:56.340 --> 00:05:59.700 sort of where you were, the tone of voice, whether you were talking to 00:05:59.700 --> 00:06:03.120 people or stuff, and we began to see that there were these bottlenecks. 00:06:03.120 --> 00:06:05.730 You say, these people don't talk to those people, they're gonna have 00:06:05.730 --> 00:06:07.510 a hard time coordinating, right? 00:06:07.840 --> 00:06:11.910 But what you can do with these is you can look at patterns of Slack messages, 00:06:11.910 --> 00:06:15.120 look at email, look at things like that, and you can do a really good 00:06:15.120 --> 00:06:18.850 job of saying, well, this group talks to this group, but not to that group. 00:06:18.850 --> 00:06:21.370 And maybe that's a problem and you want to think about that. 00:06:21.730 --> 00:06:25.060 We are building things here, we call AI buddies. 00:06:25.300 --> 00:06:29.110 It's basically a replacement for the manual that you never read, or all 00:06:29.110 --> 00:06:30.640 the newsletters that you never read. 00:06:30.910 --> 00:06:35.470 But what it does is it informs you about what other people are doing that 00:06:35.470 --> 00:06:39.760 are relevant to you and what's going on in the company or the organization, 00:06:40.060 --> 00:06:41.860 just to give you more context. 00:06:42.150 --> 00:06:46.380 And more sort of social awareness, and that's a huge amount of it, particularly 00:06:46.380 --> 00:06:51.390 with remote work, with international organizations, you lose context, 00:06:51.390 --> 00:06:55.650 you're not really in the loop anymore, and that's something that AI's can 00:06:55.650 --> 00:06:58.020 do really easily and fairly safely. 00:06:58.020 --> 00:07:02.005 Because, you know, they're not likely to hallucinate things like that very much. 00:07:02.215 --> 00:07:05.125 It's sort of like an automated newsletter that's meant to the 00:07:05.125 --> 00:07:08.515 particular thing you're doing right now, and people love it. 00:07:08.665 --> 00:07:09.205 It's good. 00:07:09.205 --> 00:07:10.315 It helps people connect. 00:07:10.555 --> 00:07:13.855 It helps business leaders actually change the organization. 00:07:14.400 --> 00:07:18.300 I was talking to the chairman of a large consulting firm, and he was going 00:07:18.300 --> 00:07:22.200 to reorganize how he ran his three hundred and fifty thousand employees, 00:07:22.290 --> 00:07:26.310 so he accepted the idea that there'd be fewer people in office, but use these 00:07:26.310 --> 00:07:30.600 sort of AI buddy techniques to have more remote people, more in the loop, 00:07:30.660 --> 00:07:34.800 and also to bring in people that are sort of on particular gigs or projects 00:07:34.980 --> 00:07:39.270 and have the confidence that they'll know what to do because they have this 00:07:39.270 --> 00:07:42.060 customized news and reminder service. 00:07:42.295 --> 00:07:45.085 Matt Abrahams: I really like that idea of giving people the information they 00:07:45.085 --> 00:07:48.535 need when they need it, to fill in those gaps and give the context, and 00:07:48.565 --> 00:07:50.455 AI allows you to make it very specific. 00:07:50.820 --> 00:07:54.990 Sandy Pentland: In many ways, not a new idea at all, but the new AI's are actually 00:07:54.990 --> 00:07:59.010 pretty good at this without all the concerns about hallucinations or whatever. 00:07:59.250 --> 00:08:01.770 And you don't need the frontier model to do this at all. 00:08:01.770 --> 00:08:03.930 You can do this with any of the open source ones. 00:08:04.050 --> 00:08:06.450 Matt Abrahams: So something that's germane and available to everybody. 00:08:06.930 --> 00:08:11.070 In your book, Social Physics, you discuss how ideas flow through a group. 00:08:11.354 --> 00:08:15.765 What's the best way for a leader to seed a new idea in a team, and what 00:08:15.765 --> 00:08:19.965 communication patterns will help that idea gain momentum over time? 00:08:20.145 --> 00:08:22.185 Sandy Pentland: You told me about this question and I sort of don't 00:08:22.185 --> 00:08:26.385 like it, and the reason is, is this idea of the leader in control and the 00:08:26.385 --> 00:08:30.585 leader defining the language about it, and those are both mistakes. 00:08:30.645 --> 00:08:34.304 Because in a group, what you need to have is you need to have people 00:08:34.335 --> 00:08:38.745 understand why something happens and what are the consequences 00:08:38.745 --> 00:08:40.125 and what do other people think. 00:08:40.515 --> 00:08:44.295 The reason we have so much polarization in this country, turns out that people just 00:08:44.355 --> 00:08:46.125 don't know what the other people think. 00:08:46.215 --> 00:08:51.390 If you set up a situation that let them know that, then they become rather 00:08:51.390 --> 00:08:54.239 dramatically more aligned with each other. 00:08:54.239 --> 00:08:55.650 It's really rather shocking. 00:08:55.949 --> 00:08:58.380 So the same thing is true in companies and so forth. 00:08:58.680 --> 00:09:03.449 So what a leader should do is say, here's something I'd like to discuss. 00:09:03.449 --> 00:09:04.439 Here's this idea. 00:09:04.880 --> 00:09:07.170 Have people talk about it, comment about it. 00:09:07.170 --> 00:09:09.930 And that's why we built this thing, Deliberation.io. 00:09:09.989 --> 00:09:13.515 You can just use it, it's free, but what it does is it doesn't 00:09:13.515 --> 00:09:15.495 allow the loud voices to dominate. 00:09:15.675 --> 00:09:18.464 And what you wanna do with this is you want to look at what 00:09:18.464 --> 00:09:20.025 is the language people use. 00:09:20.535 --> 00:09:24.225 I did some stuff with some political survey people, and they were talking 00:09:24.225 --> 00:09:28.334 about inflation and stuff, but humans, most people don't talk about inflation. 00:09:28.785 --> 00:09:30.074 They talk about cost of living. 00:09:30.405 --> 00:09:34.905 Oh yeah, sure, they're related, but one is far more salient than the other. 00:09:34.905 --> 00:09:36.045 Much more connected. 00:09:36.435 --> 00:09:41.010 And so, you need to have your conversation in the terms that the people understand. 00:09:41.220 --> 00:09:44.760 You need to listen to them because then they feel like they've been heard 00:09:45.209 --> 00:09:48.540 and they actually have been heard because they understand more about it. 00:09:48.540 --> 00:09:49.949 They've influenced a little bit. 00:09:50.310 --> 00:09:54.630 And all of that is this notion of shared wisdom, which enables 00:09:54.630 --> 00:09:57.510 action by the community, right? 00:09:57.510 --> 00:09:58.560 So collective action. 00:09:58.590 --> 00:09:59.760 'Cause that's what you really want. 00:10:00.030 --> 00:10:02.520 You don't really care about the ideas and the conversation. 00:10:02.520 --> 00:10:04.170 You want to actually do stuff. 00:10:04.440 --> 00:10:08.010 But that depends on having shared understanding, shared wisdom about 00:10:08.010 --> 00:10:09.270 what's the right thing to do. 00:10:09.570 --> 00:10:12.090 And that depends on people understanding each other. 00:10:12.645 --> 00:10:14.564 Matt Abrahams: So it's not the leader coming in and saying, 00:10:14.564 --> 00:10:16.005 thou shalt work on this. 00:10:16.005 --> 00:10:20.324 It's really posing questions that bring forth what's salient and even 00:10:20.385 --> 00:10:24.405 linguistically, what those words are that people use to describe what's salient. 00:10:24.584 --> 00:10:26.775 Sandy Pentland: Another sort of aspect of this is getting the right 00:10:26.775 --> 00:10:29.265 people in the room, the people that actually have skin in the game. 00:10:29.505 --> 00:10:33.610 So org charts, I have this joke is if you have an org chart, you have a map 00:10:33.610 --> 00:10:37.150 of how to have a stupid organization, because org charts don't reflect the 00:10:37.150 --> 00:10:41.410 sort of piece by piece, task by task type of thing that needs to happen. 00:10:41.410 --> 00:10:43.990 There's things that cut across all these different things. 00:10:44.400 --> 00:10:48.450 You need to have a way of getting those people discuss things in the same room 00:10:48.450 --> 00:10:49.890 and feel like they can really do it. 00:10:50.370 --> 00:10:54.270 It's intended to deal with some of that, not that it's perfect, but, 00:10:54.360 --> 00:10:58.380 but it gives you an idea of how you can actually build digital media 00:10:58.710 --> 00:11:00.420 that work for these sorts of things. 00:11:00.570 --> 00:11:01.800 Matt Abrahams: So using the tools to help. 00:11:01.800 --> 00:11:03.420 So you have to have the right people in the room. 00:11:03.420 --> 00:11:07.380 You have to use the right language, and you have to give people an opportunity 00:11:07.380 --> 00:11:09.180 to understand how others see it. 00:11:09.465 --> 00:11:11.055 And that's how you propagate ideas. 00:11:11.055 --> 00:11:11.325 Sandy Pentland: That's right. 00:11:11.355 --> 00:11:15.075 They have to sort of in their own heads say, oh yeah, that's why we're doing this. 00:11:15.825 --> 00:11:18.165 Matt Abrahams: You mentioned earlier that you study communities. 00:11:18.345 --> 00:11:21.975 I'm curious, what is the most surprising or counterintuitive finding your 00:11:21.975 --> 00:11:25.365 research has shown on how people interact and form communities? 00:11:25.905 --> 00:11:29.035 Sandy Pentland: I think the main thing is how smart communities can be. 00:11:29.395 --> 00:11:33.375 There's this sort of general sort of jokes, you know, stupid communities, 00:11:33.375 --> 00:11:35.265 madness, you know, et cetera. 00:11:35.594 --> 00:11:39.495 But actually when we look at things like people making financial decisions, 00:11:39.795 --> 00:11:44.204 people making other sort of decisions, if you have good patterns of communication 00:11:44.204 --> 00:11:47.685 between people and they have skin in the game and they're actually focused on it, 00:11:47.745 --> 00:11:50.234 they're usually better than the math. 00:11:50.415 --> 00:11:53.204 Take something like economics or trading where you know you can 00:11:53.324 --> 00:11:54.885 do all this quantitative stuff. 00:11:54.885 --> 00:11:59.355 The community version of that, which you know, has people who know the math, 00:11:59.355 --> 00:12:03.375 but now they're also talking to each other, works better over the long term 00:12:03.375 --> 00:12:05.385 than the people who just use the math. 00:12:05.775 --> 00:12:09.765 And the reason is, is that the community version of it has a broader 00:12:09.765 --> 00:12:13.695 view of what are the risks and opportunities than the math does. 00:12:13.995 --> 00:12:17.355 So it's a sort of myopic view when you're just trying to solve 00:12:17.355 --> 00:12:19.125 the equations or engineer it. 00:12:19.335 --> 00:12:21.945 You need to ask, how does this fit with everything? 00:12:21.945 --> 00:12:23.145 Have things changed? 00:12:23.145 --> 00:12:24.915 What are the things that are coming up? 00:12:25.065 --> 00:12:26.475 And we see that again and again. 00:12:26.505 --> 00:12:30.225 So it's possible to have wisdom, which is a capacity to make 00:12:30.435 --> 00:12:35.295 good decisions as a group, that outshines the scientific things. 00:12:35.685 --> 00:12:39.285 Not ignoring them, but incorporating them in a broader context. 00:12:39.615 --> 00:12:43.275 And I think that's the thing that people don't know and don't respect. 00:12:43.605 --> 00:12:45.465 Matt Abrahams: I wanna turn our attention to your new book. 00:12:45.465 --> 00:12:48.765 In your new book, Shared Wisdom, you state, and I'm quoting, it is 00:12:48.765 --> 00:12:52.305 important to remember that story sharing is as least as much for 00:12:52.305 --> 00:12:54.765 communities as it is for individuals. 00:12:55.065 --> 00:12:59.355 Can you help unpack this quote and discuss what story sharing does for us? 00:12:59.870 --> 00:13:03.500 Sandy Pentland: So the way to think about human society, and we'll imagine 00:13:03.500 --> 00:13:07.820 that it's five hundred years ago or ten thousand years ago, is that there's a 00:13:07.820 --> 00:13:11.630 constant conversation between people about, oh, this thing's interesting. 00:13:11.630 --> 00:13:12.740 Oh, that's terrible. 00:13:12.740 --> 00:13:13.820 Why did you think of that? 00:13:13.939 --> 00:13:18.740 And that's a type of deliberation to establish community norms. 00:13:18.920 --> 00:13:19.760 We like this. 00:13:19.760 --> 00:13:20.630 This is a good thing. 00:13:20.630 --> 00:13:21.500 We don't like that. 00:13:21.500 --> 00:13:22.650 That's a bad thing, right? 00:13:22.870 --> 00:13:26.240 And it's not a formal thing like where we sit down, we're gonna have the rules. 00:13:26.540 --> 00:13:31.970 It's this community sense or wisdom about how things should operate. 00:13:32.210 --> 00:13:37.610 And so that's really critical that you have people understand that why 00:13:37.610 --> 00:13:39.740 things are this way and not that way. 00:13:39.740 --> 00:13:43.940 And had the stories of, oh yeah, so and so ate those berries and got deadly sick. 00:13:43.970 --> 00:13:44.990 Don't do it, right? 00:13:45.350 --> 00:13:49.610 The sharing of stories educates the community 'cause it's passed on. 00:13:49.880 --> 00:13:52.070 It helps them define their culture. 00:13:52.440 --> 00:13:54.300 And they're incredibly sticky, also. 00:13:54.330 --> 00:13:59.490 If you look at Australian aborigines, they have stories, these, uh, songs 00:13:59.490 --> 00:14:03.990 about where to go and what to do that are authenticated to be more 00:14:03.990 --> 00:14:05.910 than seven thousand years old. 00:14:06.210 --> 00:14:07.260 It's just incredible. 00:14:07.440 --> 00:14:12.295 And what that's doing is defining the worldview and culture of that group. 00:14:12.975 --> 00:14:16.665 And different groups have different cultures, different songs that they sing. 00:14:17.145 --> 00:14:20.865 Matt Abrahams: Storytelling is a great vehicle to get your information across, 00:14:20.865 --> 00:14:22.305 but you're taking it to a new level. 00:14:22.305 --> 00:14:27.630 That stories help a society, a culture, a community to get their ideas across. 00:14:27.630 --> 00:14:29.370 So it's not just about the individuals. 00:14:29.370 --> 00:14:31.110 Sandy Pentland: Stories are the stuff of culture. 00:14:31.140 --> 00:14:33.450 You know, people talk about, oh, we need a good culture in this 00:14:33.450 --> 00:14:34.710 company, or whatever, right? 00:14:34.770 --> 00:14:37.260 That has to do with the stories you're telling each other. 00:14:37.410 --> 00:14:40.980 And it's not the official like newsletter or the CEO, it's the 00:14:40.980 --> 00:14:42.480 things that people tell each other. 00:14:42.600 --> 00:14:46.920 Usually before or after the meeting or, and the lunch room, something like that. 00:14:47.220 --> 00:14:52.200 And those stories permeate in various ways to be able to define the attitudes 00:14:52.200 --> 00:14:53.640 of people, which is the culture. 00:14:53.940 --> 00:14:57.840 And what we know also is that culture determines a great deal 00:14:57.840 --> 00:15:01.020 about the decisions we make and about the outcomes we get. 00:15:01.200 --> 00:15:03.300 So you really want it to get it to be right. 00:15:03.690 --> 00:15:04.740 And there's two ways. 00:15:04.740 --> 00:15:08.670 One is to make sure that good stories spread, but you also need 00:15:08.670 --> 00:15:13.380 to be able to have the stuff of stories to be able to spread. 00:15:13.380 --> 00:15:18.420 So you need to do things that are actually will help shape the community 00:15:18.469 --> 00:15:19.969 by saying, this is what we do. 00:15:20.150 --> 00:15:23.870 When somebody has a problem, we do this, and the conversation should end 00:15:23.870 --> 00:15:26.120 up being, yeah, we see why that's true. 00:15:26.479 --> 00:15:28.219 Matt Abrahams: Lots of rich ideas there. 00:15:28.310 --> 00:15:31.400 One thing I'm taking away from what you just shared is, if I am in a 00:15:31.400 --> 00:15:35.300 leadership position, in an organization, in a group, one of the ways to really 00:15:35.300 --> 00:15:38.540 understand the culture is to listen to the stories that are being told. 00:15:38.810 --> 00:15:42.795 Versus taking a survey or saying the culture is this, 00:15:42.795 --> 00:15:44.415 because I have said it is that. 00:15:44.415 --> 00:15:47.595 So this notion of listening and observing can be really helpful. 00:15:48.525 --> 00:15:51.135 Before we end, I like to ask three questions of all my guests. 00:15:51.135 --> 00:15:53.955 One I make up just for you and two are similar across everybody. 00:15:53.955 --> 00:15:54.555 Are you up for that? 00:15:54.824 --> 00:15:55.365 Sandy Pentland: Yeah, sure. 00:15:55.665 --> 00:15:58.185 Matt Abrahams: You are knee deep in AI. 00:15:58.215 --> 00:16:02.490 I'm curious what, what most excites you about AI and where it's headed? 00:16:03.210 --> 00:16:06.720 Sandy Pentland: The part that excites me most about it, first of all, 00:16:06.720 --> 00:16:10.710 I'm completely irritated by all the frontier model type of stuff, because 00:16:10.740 --> 00:16:12.120 that's not what people are gonna use. 00:16:12.120 --> 00:16:15.630 People are gonna use this much lighter weight specific type of stuff. 00:16:15.780 --> 00:16:19.980 I also don't like the sort of model where there's this big central company that 00:16:19.980 --> 00:16:21.930 runs everything and owns all your data. 00:16:22.050 --> 00:16:26.400 So I'm a real advocate of sort of personal AI tools to help people get along. 00:16:26.580 --> 00:16:28.890 Also for small businesses and so forth. 00:16:29.120 --> 00:16:32.060 I think that what we can get is a lot more of the things 00:16:32.060 --> 00:16:33.230 that we've been talking about. 00:16:33.230 --> 00:16:36.710 You can get things that are much more tuned to the preferences 00:16:36.710 --> 00:16:39.920 and needs of particular people in particular communities. 00:16:40.130 --> 00:16:44.210 And I think that will do an awful lot for making this more agile, for being 00:16:44.210 --> 00:16:49.970 able to address problems and feel a lot more like a member of the community that 00:16:49.970 --> 00:16:51.515 is doing something that we care about. 00:16:52.085 --> 00:16:55.445 Matt Abrahams: I really like that idea of using AI tools to help us even feel more 00:16:55.445 --> 00:16:57.455 tightly connected as part of a community. 00:16:57.545 --> 00:17:02.075 Sandy Pentland: Yeah, so AI for conversations, AI for community, not 00:17:02.075 --> 00:17:07.355 AI for big brain super intelligences that order you around, right? 00:17:07.535 --> 00:17:08.375 Matt Abrahams: Yeah, absolutely. 00:17:08.645 --> 00:17:12.115 Question number two, who is a communicator that you admire and why? 00:17:12.115 --> 00:17:13.744 Sandy Pentland: I like Steven Pinker. 00:17:13.949 --> 00:17:18.540 He has the courage to take things that everybody believes and aren't 00:17:18.599 --> 00:17:24.209 really necessarily exactly right and attack it sort of head on and with 00:17:24.209 --> 00:17:26.280 a lot of evidence and good argument. 00:17:26.520 --> 00:17:31.500 And at least what he does is even if you don't buy what his thesis is, he changes 00:17:31.500 --> 00:17:35.040 the conversation substantially and he picks things that are really important. 00:17:35.315 --> 00:17:37.625 Matt Abrahams: I love the fact that you and he are friends because 00:17:37.625 --> 00:17:39.185 you both do such interesting work. 00:17:39.185 --> 00:17:42.065 He was a guest on the show and really enjoyed talking to him 00:17:42.065 --> 00:17:43.925 about indirect communication. 00:17:44.375 --> 00:17:46.025 Question three, our final question. 00:17:46.145 --> 00:17:50.885 What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? 00:17:51.284 --> 00:17:53.774 Sandy Pentland: I think that the things you need to do is first of all, know 00:17:53.774 --> 00:17:55.574 what people are talking about, right? 00:17:55.635 --> 00:17:59.595 So you need some way to be in the loop about what everybody's doing, and that 00:17:59.595 --> 00:18:05.385 requires avoiding dominance and status things, because I'm not gonna tell my boss 00:18:05.385 --> 00:18:07.485 or my boss's boss what I really think. 00:18:07.635 --> 00:18:11.449 So it has to be something where there's a certain level of anonymity, 00:18:11.550 --> 00:18:14.864 but also social consequence about it. 00:18:14.955 --> 00:18:19.155 And then you need to have a conversation about what should we do so that people 00:18:19.155 --> 00:18:23.625 understand what everybody's views are and why we're making certain choices. 00:18:23.925 --> 00:18:29.804 And then you need to also ask people, how are you going to help with doing this? 00:18:29.925 --> 00:18:30.354 What's your role? 00:18:30.975 --> 00:18:33.615 And I think that people are willing to do things. 00:18:33.825 --> 00:18:34.395 Matt Abrahams: Absolutely. 00:18:34.395 --> 00:18:39.135 So I heard awareness of what the issues are and trying to minimize the loud 00:18:39.135 --> 00:18:44.745 voices in the room, synthesizing that with the people, and then inquire into the 00:18:44.745 --> 00:18:45.985 action that people are willing to take. 00:18:46.535 --> 00:18:50.525 And I think those are really important ingredients if you wanna affect 00:18:50.585 --> 00:18:54.815 change, and your research certainly is affecting change and how people 00:18:54.815 --> 00:18:56.915 interact verbally and non-verbally. 00:18:57.155 --> 00:19:00.754 Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us today, and best of 00:19:00.754 --> 00:19:02.585 luck on the book Shared Wisdom. 00:19:02.795 --> 00:19:05.855 Sandy Pentland: I just hope it has some effect on our institutions 00:19:05.855 --> 00:19:07.055 and the way we do things. 00:19:07.085 --> 00:19:09.035 So thank you very much for having me. 00:19:11.340 --> 00:19:13.140 Matt Abrahams: Thank you for joining us for another episode of 00:19:13.140 --> 00:19:15.360 Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. 00:19:15.540 --> 00:19:18.030 To learn more about nonverbal communication, listen to 00:19:18.030 --> 00:19:20.520 episode 137 with Dana Carney. 00:19:20.880 --> 00:19:24.600 To learn more about communication networks, check out episode 65 with 00:19:24.600 --> 00:19:26.220 Michael Arena and Glenn Carroll. 00:19:26.635 --> 00:19:31.435 This episode was produced by Katherine Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams. 00:19:31.585 --> 00:19:33.145 Our music is from Floyd Wonder. 00:19:33.294 --> 00:19:35.305 With thanks to Podium Podcast Company. 00:19:35.514 --> 00:19:38.754 Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. 00:19:38.845 --> 00:19:40.915 Be sure to subscribe and rate us. 00:19:41.034 --> 00:19:45.965 Also follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram, and check out fastersmarter.io 00:19:45.985 --> 00:19:49.855 for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. 00:19:50.169 --> 00:19:53.770 Please consider our premium offering for extended Deep Thinks episodes, and 00:19:53.770 --> 00:19:57.490 much more at fastersmarter.io/premium.