The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck with Dr Christian Busch
Graham Allcott 0:06
My guest today is Dr. Christian Busch. Christian is the director of the global economy programme at NYU, and a former director of the LSCs Centre for innovation. He advises companies all over the world on how to foster creativity, innovation, and luck. He's also the author of connects the dots, the art and science of creating good luck. So if you want to know how to get luckier in your career, this episode is for you. And we also talk about biases, curiosity, productivity, and much more. This is Dr. Christian Bush.
I'm with Dr. Christian Bush, how are you doing? Good, thank you. Great to be here. And I think I can hear Washington Square Park in the background in Manhattan. Is that right?
Dr Christian Busch 1:34
Yes, and most likely a squeaky baby, we just had a newborn.
Graham Allcott 1:38
So you have a squeaky baby in the room and New York in the background. So. So that's that's a cool start. And we're going to talk about your book, connect the dots. Just before we get into that. So when they send the little biog through, it said that your director of CGA, director of the CGI global economy programme at New York University, and a former director of LSCs innovation lab. So just before we get into the book, I thought I'd just ask you the question like, What is your day to day work? look like? What's a typical day? Like for you? Well, it's
Dr Christian Busch 2:14
very focused on what we'll probably talk about today, in terms of the question of how do we take that mindset that we've seen work around the world and take them to curricula and take that into, you know, understanding in our research, how does that develop? So it's all research, a lot of kind of wondering why things happen, and what the patterns are behind things, and then teaching and running those programmes. And the centre itself is all about the question of, you know, what's the future of capitalism? How do we think about organisations differently? How do we, you know, bring together profit and purpose at scale? And what's the kind of mindset we need for that?
Graham Allcott 2:48
Yeah. And have you figured out what the future of capitalism is yet?
Dr Christian Busch 2:52
Well, it's, I guess it's a long journey. But you know, it's interesting, because when you think about it that way, how much of the focus on capitalism is always about systems and structures and things. But at the end of the day, it all comes back to mindset, right? How do we, at the end of the day design systems that allow us to, you know, become we were truly capable of becoming? How do we, you know, incentivize people to live a life that's joyful and meaningful. And I think that's probably not what we'll talk about today as well.
Graham Allcott 3:20
Yeah. And that fits in really well with beyond busy. So let's talk a bit about the book. So the book is connect the dots, the art and science of creating good luck. And I thought I'd start with a question that you do cover in the book. But so the first question is, when in your own life, have you been lucky?
Dr Christian Busch 3:40
Oh, numerous times, I think. I mean, the first, the first time that that that I feel was very formative for me was actually more of a bit of a blind luck in terms of you know, I used to be that kid in high school, who was kicked out of high school had to repeat a year probably held the unofficial world record of how many dust bins and trash cans you can knock over on your way to school when you're driving. And then one day wasn't so lucky anymore, and crashed into four part cars. And one of them completely destroyed, including my own. And, you know, that was kind of a formative moment, because I won't forget the policeman who came to the scene. And he was like, Oh, my God, he's still alive. And you know, that idea that I was supposed to be dead that stuck with me. I asked myself all these weird questions, you know, if I would have died, who would have come to my funeral who was like, who would have actually cared? And at that point, I had only depressing answers. And so, you know, that was kind of like the moment that set me on that path of trying to figure out what feels meaningful to me. And I started reading that book, highly recommended. Victor Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning, which is all about how do we find meaning and crises. And from then on, you know, I've realised Hey, what what gives me meaning is connecting ideas connecting people and that spark that comes from it when you do that?
Graham Allcott 4:47
Yeah. And you turn in the book, that story how your friend was supposed to be in the car with you and then at the last minute, sort of changed their mind and then weren't in the car with you. So even though you survived, you may have ended up leaving with the idea that you had killed your friends. So it's like, lots of lots of luck are happening in that moment.
Dr Christian Busch 5:06
Right? Absolutely. And, you know, the way I live live now, I just said, you know, two years ago at the outset of COVID, I had another near death experience. And it, you know, kind of makes me very aware that we might have less time on this world, and we think we have, and so we could run in front of the car every day, we could, you know, get COVID. And it might not work out, well, we might get a terminal disease. And so the point is, I think a question that I asked myself a lot is, what is really meaningful, what feels meaningful? And if I would be on my deathbed tomorrow, do I feel I really lived a meaningful life?
Graham Allcott 5:40
Yeah, absolutely. And what's interesting about luck is, so that's an example of sort of pure chance, but what you're talking about in the book is something slightly different from that. So do you want to just break down? Like what you see as luck? And then what you see is serendipity.
Dr Christian Busch 6:02
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, usually, when we think about luck, we think about something that just happens to us, right? It's very passive. It's kind of being born into a nice family that loves you things like this. We can't really do a lot about this, right? It's very passive. But serendipity is about smart luck. It's about intelligent luck, where we created ourselves. And so to give you an example, you know, imagine you have erratic hand movements like I do, then you spill a lot of coffee. And so imagine you spill coffee over someone in a coffee shop, and they look at you slightly annoyingly. But you sense there might be something there, you don't know what it is, you just sense there might be something there. And now you have two options, right? Option number one is, you just say I'm so sorry, use a napkin, you walk outside, and you think, ah, what could have happened had I spoken with that person, option number two, you start that conversation, that person turns out to become the love of your life, or your co founder or your next client. The point is our reaction to the unexpected, us making the accident meaningful. That's what serendipity is a lot about. And so when thinking about serendipity, I think there's two pieces that it's not just an event that happens to us. But yes, there is some randomness, there's an unexpected event, but then it's about us, what do we do with this? How do we connect the dots and turn that into something positive?
Graham Allcott 7:12
Yeah, and connecting the dots is about seeing the triggers. And then using tenacity. Right?
Dr Christian Busch 7:21
Exactly. I mean, it's really a lot of times, you know, we might miss serendipity, because we don't see the initial potential serendipity trigger. And I'll give you an example in a second. And then a lot of times, we might see something unexpected, but not do anything with it right and or have the tenacity to actually go through with it. And so that's really behind a lot of this. But to give an example, I mean, take one of the quintessential ones, which is a couple of decades ago, some researchers were giving people medication against angina, victorious, the disease, and they realised unexpectedly, so there was some kind of movement happening in male participants, trousers. And so what we usually do, if we recognise it, we will probably say, Oh, my God, that's embarrassing. Lead, that's what a bloody side effect, let's try to kind of either ignore it or, you know, find a better way to cure angina without having that kind of side effect. They did the opposite. They said, You know what, that's unexpected. But there's probably a lot of men in the world who might have a problem in that department. So why don't we develop a medication around this, and this is how Viagra became one of the best selling medications. And, and you'll see that with a lot of innovations, you know, up to 50%, of innovations and inventions come out of moments where something goes wrong, or there's some kind of unexpected thing, but we have to see it, and then we have to do something with it. And a lot of times similar to this example, in the coffee shop, it's not enough to just have that initial kind of moment of serendipity. You've got to go on dates, you got to go on meetings, you got to actually then turn it into something in the long run.
Graham Allcott 8:43
Yeah, and there's some lovely examples of that. In the book I left the one with Shah was summoned and she goes to interview Chris Eubank, the boxer and so she thinks he's just writing an article for him. And then basically, they sort of struck up a conversation, and then he ends up becoming like, he offers his the job as his like, personal PR person, is that right?
Dr Christian Busch 9:07
Yeah. And that's the fascinating thing, right? That in a way, it really comes to this idea that serendipity comes, by definition from the most unexpected of places. And like this example, right? A lot of times, it might come out of something where you expected something completely different to happen. And Graham, I think the exciting thing about this is, I grew up in Germany, where we are used to planning we're used to kind of like having a plan, having a strategy and figure it all out. And then you go into real life, and you're like, Oh, my God, this is scary. This is anxiety, triggering hear that like that we can't control everything. And so at the core of this mindset is to say the unexpected doesn't have to be just a threat to our plan. Actually, it might lead us into the really interesting directions. Once we also see as a potential partner, and that's what she did. She essentially said, Look, this is unexpected, but let me do something with it. Maybe I didn't want to go into xyz direction. Maybe this could be my new direction.
Graham Allcott 9:57
So is part of what you're saying? In this book really kind of backing up this idea of you make your own luck. So do you believe there are kind of people who are inherently set up to be lucky because of what they do? And then people who are unlucky for the same reason?
Dr Christian Busch 10:14
What, you know, it's interesting. I mean, one of the reasons why I'm so fascinated by this, you know, current work is that, essentially, it's a science based framework for saying, you know, it's not just us believing something, but actually we've we've, we've studied it, we've seen it over years and years and years, across different stories, right? You would have stories of entrepreneurs in Kenya to the CEO of XYZ company to the person in London. They all very different stories, but there's patterns behind what they've been doing that made it more likely that serendipity happens. And so, you know, we can talk about the different ways we can study it being at experiments or being at longitudinal studies, or else but the fascinating thing is, then you can derive what are exercises for building that muscle? And so to give you one example, maybe to to show how an experiment could help us to understand a little around this one of my favourites, that's around kind of how do we look at the world? How do we perceive the world? How alert are we towards the world, which then kind of frames a little bit, how we actually can live in the world? And I'd love to ask you and your viewers actually, do you consider yourself to be a lucky or an unlucky person? lucky or unlucky,
Graham Allcott 11:22
so you say I, I would probably go along with the thing of, I've been lucky. I feel like I've been really lucky in my career, and in my life, and I think some of that is sort of unearned, you know, just privilege or just things happened that were, you know, I was lucky to be born in certain in a certain place at a certain time and to be able bodied, and all those kinds of things. And then I think in my work, there's probably a lot of stuff where I've, like I've been, I've been very open, I think there's a real theme in your book of just being open to possibility and being curious. And I think there's been a lot of times in my career where I've just kind of, you know, like, send a book just met somebody, and then it's turned into something that's turned into a client or turned into a thing. And, you know, so I think I would probably classify myself as a sort of consciously lucky person. Yeah.
Dr Christian Busch 12:22
And that's great. And I think you made a really interesting differentiation there between what is just given to us, right? I mean, a lot of my work is in in context of extreme poverty, that the base level where someone starts out there in terms of potential serendipities is obviously much less than the base level we have in the way we can start out. And yet at the same time, you see, in every context, some people seem to have a little bit more luck than others. And so that's the first thing thing. And the reason I've been asking you why you consider it or if you consider yourself to be lucky, is that a lot of experiments show that people who consider themselves to be lucky tend to have more luck in the future, not because of some kind of voodoo type things, but because of the way they look at the world. And so there's one example that I'm a big fan of, which is more of an entertaining one. But again, there's a lot of other kinds of experiments like this is they pick, you know, people who consider themselves to be very lucky. And people who consider themselves to be very unlucky, you know, people who say, bad things tend to happen to me, I'm always an accident, and so on. We probably all know people on this continuum between very lucky and very unlucky. And so they pick one of each and they say, walk down the street, go into a coffee shop, grab a coffee, sit down, and then we'll have our interview our conversation. Now, what they don't tell them is that there's hidden cameras along the street and inside the coffee shop, there's a five pound note. So money right in front of the coffee shop. And inside the coffee shop, there's this one seat next to this extremely successful businessman that can make big dreams happen. Now the lucky person walks down the street, sees the five pound note picks it up, goes inside the shop, or does the coffee sits next to the businessman. They have a conversation, exchange business cards potential opportunity coming out of it. We don't know that the unlucky person walks down the street steps over the five pound notes or doesn't see it goes inside the shop or does the coffee sits next to the businessman ignores the businessman. That's not the end of the day, they asked both people How was your day to day. So the lucky person says well, it was amazing. I made new friends found money in the street and you know, potential opportunity coming out of it. The unlucky person just says well, nothing really happened. And that's really the point that every situation has some kind of opportunity in it. And we can talk more about this also, even in the toughest of circumstances that that is the case because then it can become an inflection point for something good. But it's really this idea that the way we frame the world, the way we look at the world makes us more alert to a lot of those kinds of opportunities. I find a lot of money in the street because I expect it to be there. Unfortunately, mostly pennies so it doesn't really help my lifestyle but it's it's those kinds of things.
Graham Allcott 14:47
Do you know you say my son so I live in Bryce and on the south coast and if you've been to Brighton, you're know Brighton Pier has a big amusement arcade. My son loves getting into in the amusement arcade and they have the little two penny machine means. And every time I go go in there, I get a free play. And why is because I'm scanning like as expected. But there's always one that's just dropped out and no one's seen it. So it's sort of primitive. But there was also, I don't know, if you've seen, have you seen the Darren brown TV show where he talks about luck. And then he does a really similar experiment to that where he sort of stages people, you know, finding money or not finding money in the street, and then they, they have this guy with a sort of clipboard, and he says, I just need to ask you two questions. And then if you ask them, if you answer the two questions, I'll just give you 50 pounds. And so obviously, the lucky person is the open one who just says, yep. And it's like, what's your name? And he says, his name is like, what do you think of cheese or something? And he's like, yeah, and then he just gets 50 quid. And then the unlucky person is just like, No, no, no, I don't have time. And I'm just walking past. So yeah, it really is. It really is it kind of, it's about, you know, being open, isn't it and kind of scanning for possibilities.
Dr Christian Busch 16:01
While and there's a lot of hope, I guess. Also, in terms of, you know, for closeted introverts like myself, where, you know, yes, if you're more extroverted, you are more likely to speak to that businessman. And then more likely, you get opportunities out of networks and things like that. But you know, a lot of serendipity comes from quiet sources, from calm sources, when you take, you know, a different street to work in the morning, and you open your eyes and you realise, oh, that bookstore, there's this book in there, that could be a podcast, you know, those kinds of things where once we open our eyes to it to your point of your son, right, once you open your eyes to that tends to happen more often than it doesn't have to be interactions on.
Graham Allcott 16:35
Yeah, for sure. I liked your little sort of definition of the different types of serendipity, I think that might be quite useful to share with people. So you've got Archimedes serendipity, post, it notes, serendipity, and then fundable serendipity. Should we just talk about those? So I mean, Archimedes is I suppose the the most famous story when it comes to serendipity, right?
Dr Christian Busch 16:58
Yeah, exactly. And the way they differ, so they all have the same process, which is something unexpected happen, someone connecting the dots, and then it turning into a positive outcome, but where they differ, is someone already looking for something? Or is it kind of completely out of the air? And so So Archimede is, essentially he was already looking for something right? He wanted to help his king to figure out is this crown full of gold? Or was the king of kings swindled into a golden crown? And so it was trying to figure out, Oh, my God, what could be the solution to this, but it didn't find it. And she was like, okay, you know, what, I just got to chill out, they're going to go to the public baths. So he goes to the public baths, kind of, you know, puts himself into the water. And then he realises Eureka, wow, actually, you know, the way the water parts will tell us about the weight of and the density and so on. And so essentially, that's how then he found his solution unexpectedly, so to something he was already looking for. I mean, for your listeners, it might be, you know, let's say you're already looking for the kind of job you want to get. And then unexpectedly, so the sister of your mother's friend tells you about that opportunity, you wouldn't have expected to come from that source. But you actually were looking for something along those lines anyway. And then the kind of, you know, the most exciting, of course, is the kind of how a lot of love stories happen, which is the Thunderbolt one, which is kind of, in a way, you're not looking for anything, you might sit in coffee shop, but you were looking for nothing. And then from one second to the other, this is one person you bump into, and you're like, Oh my God, this could be it. And so it's kind of like you were not looking, but it just happened. And then the third one is really kind of the posted type where posted serendipity is around this idea that you are looking for something so in this case, someone was looking for a stronger glue, right? And then they realised Oh, my God, actually, it could be much more effective to make a weaker glue, and make that as opposed to nodes, and then kind of have that. And so that's essentially saying you're looking for something. But then in the process of looking for it, you find something else.
Graham Allcott 18:51
Yeah. Which I guess is also like the Viagra example that you mentioned before. The other Thunderbolt one which I thought was really nice, you tell the story of sofa sounds. So fer if people didn't know sofa sounds, which is a really good example of Thunderbolt serendipity. So that came about because people were annoyed at a concert.
Dr Christian Busch 19:13
Yeah, exactly. They were at the concert, they said, Oh, my God, it's so annoying that everyone's just on their phones and like, it doesn't feel like intimate to have this music experience. And so they were like, Oh my God, why don't we create an intimate music experience at home where everyone puts just the phones away, and everyone's just in the moment. And so that's how so far sounds became a really interesting kind of experience led organisation, right? Where around the world you have those kind of local experiences in people's houses, when you listen to interesting bands. And so that kind of in a way, came completely unexpected because they were just annoyed. And that's how a lot of entrepreneurial ideas emerge, right, that you're just annoyed about something and then they're like, Okay, let me fix that.
Graham Allcott 19:51
Yeah, there's a lovely quote, to just on this theme of being open. There's a lovely quote from Tony Shea, the Sadly, now no longer with us, but the founder and CEO of Zappos. And he says that Zappos aims to hire lucky people who can bring their luck to the company, which I just think it's just such a such a lovely idea. He had a really nice way of making, you know, management and business just feel like sort of fairy tales, and just something really, something really beautiful. What would you say would be like when you work with organisations? What would you say is like the best way to distinguish the lucky people from the all the open people from the sort of less than lucky in less than 1000? People?
Dr Christian Busch 20:38
Yeah, well, it's interesting question, because I guess the one one part is, how do we differentiate? And then the other one, how do we turn the unlucky ones into into luckier ones, right? Because we probably really want to help people to do that. And so the first piece really comes back to Tony's idea that what they did when they hired people, they, in their application process essentially, put something in questions like, you know, on a scale of one to 10, how happy sorry, how lucky Do you think you are? And there's no right or wrong answers in those kinds of questions. But But essentially, it's a red flag, if it's either one or 10. Right? If it's one, you're like, Okay, this is probably someone who's gonna, like bring a really like interesting vibe in here. So maybe that's not right for us. And 10 means maybe you're a little bit too overconfident that like you can shape everything in your favour. And so if you have an eight or something that's kind of like someone who, according to our experiment, also red would be the kind of person probably attracts a bit more luck and things like that. But the core idea is really to trigger more conversations around this and to really kind of see, what's the mindset of the type of person I'm hiring. And, you know, when I work with organisations, one of the things we focus a lot on is, how do we essentially work also with the people we already have? So if we have people are ready, how do we incentivize them to look out for the positive unexpected, in very simple ways, right? Nobody wants to, everyone's always talking about innovation, and so on, but nobody really wants to change. Nobody really wants to, you know, have that anxiety of Oh, my God, things are all changing at once. And so I think the core idea with this is to say, you don't have to change everything at once you can start in small steps. One, for example, being in the weekly meeting, asking people what surprised you last week, and then people might say, Oh, it really surprised me that expose that and give an example, one of my favourites that you would have discovered, if you were to ask these questions in meetings, is the potato washing machine, the potato washing machine, essentially, a couple of years ago, a company in China that I've been collaborating with, they received calls from farmers, and the farmers told them, so they produce washing machines, refrigerators, white hole, like, you know, white goods. And so the farmers called them up and said, your crappy washing machine is always breaking down. While Why is the washing machine breaking down while we're trying to wash our potatoes in it, and it doesn't seem to work. And so you know, what will usually tell them, we will probably try to, quote unquote, educate the customer, right? We'll probably say, our marketing plan says that we are supposed to sell these to people actually wash their clothes. Now, they did the opposite. They said, You know what? That's unexpected. That's very surprising. But there's probably a lot of farmers in China and in the world who have a similar problem. So why don't we build in a dirt filter and make it a potato washing machine. And that's how the potato washing machine surprisingly emerged. Now, if you had a weekly meeting, where you ask what surprised you last week, someone might say, well, it surprised me that people use our product differently. And then you might be like, Oh, interesting, we can probably either innovate, or a lot of times, actually, it saves you a lot of costs, because you identify mistakes and Miss planning much earlier in the process. Because people can share their unexpected ideas. And I think there's a lot to learn from companies like Pixar around how to, in a way increase that kind of psychological safety, because a lot of times unexpected ideas don't feel mature enough, yet. They don't feel like oh, they're there yet. And so pics are, you know, they would start meetings with a question or with a with the idea. Look at the beginning, all ideas are bad. Now let's start the meeting. And what you're doing here is you're de risking it for people to bring in unexpected serendipitous ideas.
Graham Allcott 23:58
Yes, this idea of psychological safety, which I've been writing a lot about for my new book as well. And, you know, essentially this idea that often, you know, the things that organisations really need to hear are often the things that it's most risky personally, for one person to voice right. So if it's like, the brilliant genius idea, then often unless you're the most confident person in the room, you probably think I'm gonna look a bit foolish if I give this idea and it doesn't actually fly or it just feels like it's such a good idea that there must someone must have thought of it before. And then the opposite is also true, right? So when someone else has a an idea that is being championed, and you've got some really good data or reasons why it wouldn't work, and you're, like, not comfortable with speaking up and sort of going against the consensus or going against the grain that stuff's really hard. So you have to create a very trusting environment where people feel able to, to innovate and to quit. sternum to be curious and open, then what do you what do you kind of do? So I love some of those exercises. And I'd love to come back to a couple of those questions in the book. Is there anything that you do in terms of the way like you manage people or you set teams up that really helped to sort of derive that, that sort of higher level of communication with more psychological safety?
Dr Christian Busch 25:21
Yeah, I mean, one way that and obviously, I'd love to learn more about your new book. That's, that sounds very intriguing, would you bring it together there. But but you know, it's, I'm a big fan of a very simple practices that allow us to create that. And that allowed to create the trust and the sense of belonging, that we need to create serendipity amongst people, a lot of times, you know, we might talk about the individual that comes up with an idea. But usually, a lot of times it's a social process, right, where people interact and come up together. And so I'm a big fan of things like the project funeral, where the project funeral is all about saying, whenever an idea doesn't work, instead of, you know, just hiding it, which we most of the times tried to do, right, we don't want to be the loser, who mess something up, or who didn't know that an idea wouldn't work and things like this, which is a pity because we don't really learn from each other, right successes don't have that much insight versus usually things that don't work have a lot of insight. And so the idea of the project funeral is to say, whenever a project doesn't work, the person who is responsible for it, presents it in front of project managers from other divisions, and reflects on what didn't work and why it didn't work and what to do better next time. And so the idea here is that you give people a platform not to celebrate failure, but to celebrate the learning from what didn't work. And so in this one example, and there was this kind of amazing window technology that doesn't absorb the light. And, you know, the project manager laid it to rest and said, Look, I learned that the market just wasn't big enough. And, you know, I'm putting it to rest now. Now, someone in the audience goes, like, Hey, have you considered what this could mean, for solar? Have you considered if you take that technology into the solar context, how much energy that might absorb, and that's how, quote, unquote, serendipitously, so part of their solar division emerged and became one of their key business arms. And so the point is that they created the practice and a culture that allowed people to connect the dots for each other, which is where most of the serendipity tends.
Graham Allcott 27:13
Yeah, for sure. I love that this list that you've got in the middle of the book around making it happen. So you know, really, so you call it the serendipity workout. So you've got sheduled times in your diary that reserved for making and treat that calendar item as if it was a real meeting. So Joe, talk to us about that, like just the idea of having that really kind of scheduled making time?
Dr Christian Busch 27:40
Yeah, well, I'm a big fan of that idea of micro versus manager schedule, which is essentially saying, most of us tend to be in a constant manager scheduled mode, right, which is essentially the idea meeting, meeting meeting. And then, you know, talk to Chuck. And usually what happens is, for people like this, grabbing a quick coffee is just grabbing a quick coffee. But if you're doing conceptual work, which might be writing a paper, which might be doing a strategy plan, which might be anything that that involves deeper thought, where you have to be focused for a while, or coding, things like that, they're actually you need longer periods of time where you can be immersed. And if you now want to grab someone for a quick coffee, that takes them completely out of this. And it's not just the five minutes for the coffee, it's the kind of getting back into it, and so on, so on. And so I've become a big fan of saying, I have to protect my makerspace, I have to protect my maker time, because I used to be the kind of person I love going for coffee with people and stuff. So it'd be like, Yeah, great, quick coffee. But then I realised I would be frustrated in the evening, because I didn't get stuff done. To your point, right? I wasn't productive in the sense of actually, I was busy but not productive. And so it's, it's kind of like what what I find fascinating is to think about how to protect that makerspace. And it really comes back to you know, there's a lot of studies around how, for example, open office spaces lead to less productivity, because if you're a coder, and you have constantly people just like picking your brain for a quick second, you don't get stuff properly done. Same with academics, I remember when they tried to introduce open office spaces at one of my universities, people literally started working from home because they were like, I can't be interrupted all the time. And so it's really this kind of idea of how do you protect your time to actually get stuff done and be productive versus just busy?
Graham Allcott 29:20
Yeah, and I'm a real fan of that as well. So most of my mornings are kind of blocked out. It's like, that's the that's the sort of create time for me. I love this one, you got a couple near the end that sort of have the same sort of energy to them, but basically really reaching out to the top people in your field and asking for feedback on the ideas and, you know, creating that connection, saying that you're inspired by them, but then then saying, Can you give me some feedback on on my work? Like it's hard to see that if you did that to the top five people in your field and you got a couple responses that something good wouldn't come of that right.
Dr Christian Busch 29:55
Exactly. And that's really it's a numbers game, right? You do that with 10 people Ball, and one of the two of them will get back and say, hey, great, I just retired from XYZ that have more time at the moment happy to do it. So the point here really is how do you, I think, like a lot of us have a lot of respect from people who made it right. So so if you have someone who's extremely kind of high up in some kind of hierarchy, or something, we might have a lot of respect for this idea that this person is kind of far removed from us because they made it and we're yet on that journey. And so who are we to kind of target like to speak with that person? And so actually, funnily enough, when you go to high level conferences, the most interesting person and a lot of times, you know, like, talks with the people that already know, because they're kind of like, well, everyone else seems to be too shy to actually speak with me. And so I think what's what's really interesting is, to your point, to think about who are the kind of five to 10 people in my field, who are the most inspiring people like really being kind of ambitious in that, and then really kind of with LinkedIn, second degree contacts, or, you know, there's all these email databases where you can literally find everyone's email nowadays, and being very non obtrusive, right, but really kind of saying, hey, look, I've been extremely inspired by your work, and would love to kind of like briefly talk about XYZ thing. So just kind of like very open, honest, inspiring way. And a lot of times, especially those people who made it, when they are now at the point where they want to mentor people, or else, if you're the kind of person who feels like someone they would actually want to mentor, it's actually quite likely at all times they go back, I've always been fascinated by how it's more probable that someone extremely senior gets back to you than someone who's kind of like mid manager, because the mid manager is still on this kind of rat race, they have to make it they kind of, you know, very focused on this versus if you if you're the CEO who just retired, maybe now's the right time to mentor someone, right. And so it's kind of those things where it's really kind of aiming high. And assuming that you have something to give, which is making someone feel special, and making them feel special in a way that others who kiss their behind might not make them feel.
Graham Allcott 31:56
And I suppose also, the part of that is it's a numbers game, isn't it as well. So probably that person who's on their way up and still in the rat race, they probably get approached 500 times a week, whereas the people right at the top of their game, who've already made it, people are generally quite intimidated by the Edit idea of reaching out to them. So they just get few requests, probably too. So what until until this podcast goes out, and then it a lot of change, right. And even
Dr Christian Busch 32:25
if they get a lot of requests, I mean, that's always the first thing thing, right? If you, if you look at someone, like Adam Grant, right, he he's the kind of person he gets so many requests, as you can imagine, because he's so visible and one of the best like are probably the best in his field. But at the same time, he's extremely responsive to things that feel meaningful to him. And I've seen that with a lot of people across different fields, especially kind of SEO type people who they are extremely responsive to things they care about. And then the rest they have they're bound like the gatekeepers, right, like the executive assistant just directly deletes it. But I think that's why it's so much about making it meaningful, versus just kind of like sending a mass email to 20 people, nobody gets back to
Graham Allcott 33:02
that. Absolutely. There's a couple of other sort of ideas from the book that just feel like they're sort of stepping stones into other things. I wanted to really briefly just talk about something that's very close to my heart, which is in a cancer free way resurrecting the smoking room. So you talk about the smoking room in your book, like so I've got this story from early on in my career where I was, I was in the smoking kind of shelter outside. This is it, you know, the days where you weren't allowed to smoke inside anymore. But I got to know like a really senior manager when I was working for this bank, like 100%, just because we were both smokers. And so he needed a lighter and so we had those five minutes and stuff. What are some of the ways that we can recreate just that that serendipitous connection, sort of, you know, vertically horizontally across organisations that doesn't involve us getting cancer?
Dr Christian Busch 34:02
It's a great question. And I think especially in the virtual world also right? How do we recreate those water cooler moments that are beautiful and especially for people who are you? No, not yet. They're like that you could run into the boss of your boss every every week, right? That's kind of like also intriguing and, and so there's two things I found fascinating that one is to learn from settings like Burning Man, for example, they've been extremely good at so Burning Man, you know, when they have these tent villages, essentially, what they've been doing is they put art in the middle, for example of the square. And the art is slightly controversial or slightly kind of something that piques your interest when you walk by and so what you do is you walk by it piques your interest, and then you might come in to the person next to you. Oh my god, that looks strange, doesn't it? And so that's kind of the conversation starter. That's the equivalent of kind of briefly kind of like heavier lighter is essentially, oh my god, we're both facing the same strange thing right in front of us. And so I think art is an interesting kind of thing in terms of or other kinds of triggers. that could potentially have people talk about something. I do that a lot. When I'm in audiences, you know, that are bigger, I say something like, look, take the weird German as an excuse to not talk with everyone and ask them XYZ question and just kind of like, in a way, what you're trying to do is you try to give people an excuse of why they can talk with each other, and take the risk away that it looks weird, or that they're kind of creepy. And then the second, I think it's really around the virtual piece, right? Where if we had a lot of those moments in the smoking corner at the watercooler in the canteen, what do we do virtually and so I'm a big fan of things like random coffee, Charles, where the idea is that people across the organisation sign up for a couple of times, they're free. And then they get randomly matched with people across different layers of hierarchy across different parts of the organisation for a quick coffee, and they might have an inspiring prompt, like, what's the challenge you're facing in the organisation? And how can I help you, whatever it is, but the point is, now every week, you could still stumble into someone who can truly change your life or at least help you in some way or the other. Yeah, yeah. I
Graham Allcott 36:03
love that. You quote in the book, someone I'm a big fan of Oliver Berkman I've had on the podcast before. And yeah, feels like a kindred spirit on the subject of productivity. But his quote is essentially along the lines of everyone is winging it all of the time. So can I ask you like, when do you most feel like you're winging it? And what are your thoughts on the idea?
Dr Christian Busch 36:31
All at the moment with a baby girl now? I'm literally so you know, it, it. That whole idea that parenting is about letting go of perfection? I guess, you know, at the moment really, really shows itself. But But to your point, I think it is the first one Yeah, six months? And you know, Yes, completely. I but I have an amazing, you know, I feel like we have we found our my partners, wonderfully fantastic. And so, I've been learning a lot from her in terms of how to navigate this. But but but so what I found fascinating is exactly to your point that, I think when you start out or when you, you know, grew up in Germany and things like this, you assume you can like plan everything, map everything. And then real life happens. And it's not really pleasurable. And so what I found fascinating, I work a lot with senior executives, and after the fourth glass of red wine, everyone will tell you, you know, a lot of times, I'm just winging it, a lot of times, I'm just kind of making it up as I go. And then, and then I had, you know, they might be like, Oh, I had a hunch in the morning. And then I went to the shareholder meeting, and I told them about it. And I asked my assistant to briefly make up three reasons why that makes sense. You know, I mean, and so it's kind of these things where we tend to post rationalise a lot, because we had a hunch or a feeling and things like this. And one of the things I've realised is that a lot of times the most successful people we can learn the most from when we ask them about where their gut feelings came from and what they did with it, because it's really that shift from the kind of naive gut feeling, which is fight or flight, which is kind of a lot of times when you're like just starting out, like you have fight or flight, right, you either run away from something, are you excited. But then what a lot of these senior executives have is this kind of mature gut feeling where they've seen patterns they've seen, they've understood how people work, and then they tend to trust their gut, because the gut essentially, the subconscious, obviously perceives much more than the conscience. And so it's this fascinating thing that that I've become a big fan of of saying, yes, sometimes we have to wing it. But we can smartly wing it in the sense that we can, we can we can, you know, sense into our gut. And if our gut tells us something, do as much research as we can about why is that if I just had a meeting where cognitively I thought, this is the perfect business partner, but my gut tells me Something's fishy about this. Back in the past, I would have overlaid on my, you know, cognitive kind of system. That's all about saying rational and x y Zed. Nowadays, I'm like, Okay, if my gut tells me this, let me ask for one more recommendation letter before I start this relationship, because x y Zed, and so it's really this kind of mature gut feeling that helps us to win more smartly.
Graham Allcott 39:00
Yeah. And it's one of those things where you, I think, when you first get into your first job, you kind of look up to everybody, because you're at the bottom of the ladder, and everything's new, and you don't you know, that you don't know very much. And then it's kind of when you first get that promotion to the job that someone else had. And you were really looking up to them. It's like that really big, sort of aha moment, isn't it? Like, ah, maybe knows. And also when, when one of your like school friends growing up becomes either a teacher or a doctor, and then you go, it's like, everybody is winging it all of the time.
Dr Christian Busch 39:40
Absolutely. I mean, that's the first thing thing, right? That COVID showed again, I mean, go to a doctor and like a doctor, what is the doctor? A doctor essentially has a hypothesis, right? They would say, Okay, you tell me you have a headache. Why do you have the headache and then you test a little bit but you're just testing hypotheses and then the end you try to make a recommendation. And, you know, a lot of my work is in poverty contexts where if you have Non well trained doctor, a lot of the hypotheses are extremely wrong. And so they do more damage than good. And so the point really is around this, that I'd rather have a doctor who says, I don't know, let me try to figure it out, then a doctor who gives me the wrong hypothesis, and then the wrong medication. And so it's really, I think, to your point, the most successful doctors and the most successful teachers are also the ones who know the limitations to their knowledge and kind of like, try to figure something out and Google it, you will see a lot of doctors nowadays, I always enjoy this so much, you know, when the doctor says, I'm so sorry, I have to briefly do XYZ, that other thing, where, you know, they literally just have to google something, because they didn't know how I suppose that plays out, you know? So it's kind of it's those fascinating things.
Graham Allcott 40:41
There's a bit in the book where you, you quote, an anonymous CEO, and you're talking about, like, why do we struggle with the idea of serendipity? In business, and basically, it feels like it sort of goes against our culture quite a lot. And there's a discomfort because the CEO is saying, Well, I can't really stand up to my board and my investors and say, well, this success was just luck, you know, you kind of have to attribute it to something that builds your own credibility. So what do you think about the the general kind of relationship between serendipity? And then the way we think as a culture, like, do you think we need to kind of reframe how we think about luck and serendipity?
Dr Christian Busch 41:29
Yeah, well, that's actually at the core of this work. And what I'm most excited about is essentially, I think the old school leadership style is what a lot of CEOs intuitively would do. Right? They would go into a boardroom and say, this was my strategy, this is exactly what I did. And that exactly, this panned out, that's exactly how we would present a CV to a new employer, right, we would go in and say, I wanted to do this, then I did this. And then I did exactly this. This is not how life works, right. And everyone's knows that how life usually works is you know, that, like something unexpected happens along the way. And so one of the key things of this work is to say, You know what, rather than seeing the serendipity as something that you feel you're out of control, or you kind of like you're not a good leader, see it that you created the mindset and the corporate culture that allowed that to happen. And so now you can go into the boardroom and say, I had this sense of direction, then we unexpectedly found this information, we incorporated this, and now we came up with something even better. And so now what you're doing is you're making it more active, you're saying, we were not surprised by this in the sense of his threatening us, we actually made that part of the plan. And I think, you know, we just did a survey or not a survey, but to interview series with over 40 CEOs who are running big companies, companies like MasterCard and others, we sat down with them. And we said, what is it that really makes it successful. And one of the key themes that came out of it was that they are extremely good at saying, we have some kind of sense of direction. So if I'm the CEO of MasterCard, I'm saying, I want to get 500 million people into the financial system. But then I actually built the unexpected plan, here's an approximate strategy. But I'm telling you right now that as new information comes in, we're building it in. And so what you're doing now is you actually take real control over uncertainty versus this kind of illusion of control.
Graham Allcott 43:11
Yeah, yeah, for sure. There's actually a thing in your dedication at the beginning of the book, which is a nice segue into the book that I'm writing at the moment. So you dedicate the book to your parents, and one of the things that you thank them for is kindness. And so this book that I'm working on, is about kindness and leadership. So this feels like something, if you're putting that in the dedication, the work is something that you have obviously admired in them, and presumably have a real kind of sense of connection with So can I ask you about that, I'd just love to hear your thoughts on how kindness is impacted and shaped your own work?
Dr Christian Busch 43:55
Well, you know, when you think about what it means, like, to me a lot of like, What kindness means is accepting people accepting someone for who they are want to be, and being, you know, treating them in, in, in a way that allows them to thrive in this world. And so, so what I've found and learned a lot from my parents is that, you know, they, they, they some, you know, they have their rules that things but they always, always, always gave me the feeling that, you know, they had my back and that I was worthy, I was valuable. And whatever would happen, the situation wouldn't define me like I would always be okay. And I think that kind of feeling of, of, you know, that you in a way are that you'll be okay. I think that's that's, that comes, you know, there's some privilege associated with that, right, that in a way, I think materially that like some people don't have but I think it's much more of the emotional and component that's much more around this question of how do you know that your self worth is not only related to your achievement or something else? And so, to me, kindness is a lot around when we approach some More, everyone just in this world wants to be seen, they want to be appreciated. And they somehow just want to make it some kind of meaningful life for them, whatever it means for them. And that's the context. And so, to me, kindness means a lot to try to understand the person to try to understand what drives them, versus kind of, you know, getting into some kind of like, impression management type thing where nobody anyways feels comfortable about, which is, by the way, I'm not a big fan of things like long, small talk or something, because I think people get into autopilot impression management and so on business, if you ask, you know, slightly different questions. So instead of, what do you do, asking something like, What do you enjoy doing? What it does? Is it shifted away from autopilot and pressure management to Oh, actually, I love XYZ. No, I love that too. And so then we find these deeper common denominators versus just kind of like making a statement about how impressive we are.
Graham Allcott 45:50
Yeah, for sure. I remember hearing years ago, someone giving another sort of version, one of those questions that you can ask to get away from the autopilot, small talk. And it was like, ask people what they're either scared or excited about right now. Instead of saying, what do you do? It's like another way of doing that. But we do spend so much so much time in those real, like small talk conversations. Just on the kindness thing. Can you think of examples of leaders that you've worked with, or sort of cultures of organisations that you work with that you felt particularly kind?
Dr Christian Busch 46:26
Yeah, I mean, I, you know, it's interesting, because I tried to self select, I tried to work only with people who are kind, I mean, I, I learned the hard way that when you learn with when you work with people who might not be as kind and who still could help you achieve things, at some point, you will have a values clash. And that's just not worth it. And again, that comes to the point where, how much can you afford to try to pick x over y, but I have become a big fan, I have a lot of these conversations with my students around, would you join x y Zed bank, where you have a competitive shock environment, where you know that you will not be valued for generosity and so on? Or do you want to be in an environment where yes, you will earn less and your student that, you know, you will need another year to pay that back. But at the same time, also, you will probably thrive with the person you are versus having to pretend you're someone you're not. And so I think we we talk a lot about these kinds of dilemmas and these kind of ideas of at the end of the day. If you want to be kind and you want to be generous, you need an environment that values that you can always try to shape your environment. But that's very hard when you just start out. And so I think I become a big fan of trying to select environments based on the question if those people have an interest in having other people thrive, to which, which to me, as mentioned is at the core of this.
Graham Allcott 47:43
Yeah, totally. Just before I let you go and ask you to just share where people can find out more about what you do. Something sort of struck me when I was when I actually first heard about your book, which was there's a lot of kind of YouTube influencers and Instagram influence out there doing this whole thing about manifesting. Do you know about all this stuff. So it's this idea that like, if you just channel and imagine that there's like luck and abundance coming your way, then it will come your way. And it's like, it's a really kind of, sort of exploitative little corner of the internet, right? Because it's all these people kind of signing up and sort of paying money. And it also comes into religious tithing sometimes where it's like, the more like they call it seed money. So you pay your seeds into the church. And then the idea is that God will sprout these bigger trees and stuff. So I just wonder if there's like, when, as you're writing the book, what did you did you come across that kind of stuff? And do you kind of think about the sort of dark side of telling people that luck is abundant for them? And it's going to be great.
Dr Christian Busch 48:51
Yeah. Well, I think that's essentially exactly the big difference between kind of, I think, when you're going out there and think you can just sit there and then manifest things, and then they just happen. I don't think that's ever happened for a lot of people. I you know, what, what makes it interesting, I think, from a science based perspective is when you think about what makes it more likely that you're able to connect the dots is that you have a certain sense of direction, right? So if you're saying, in five years, I want to build a portfolio on my podcast, and I want to build this business in this business, this business, it's more likely now that when you bump into someone at a conference that they can like that you can connect the dots with them towards that, right. So that's not about manifesting it because you're sitting at home and like literally just thinking about it, essentially, you're going out there and saying I have a certain idea of where I'm going, and I'm connecting this to it. So I think that's the big difference that it's not just about waiting for it to come in. But what I find more interesting also in that regard is so let's say you have the kind of manifestation kind of crowd that's in a way, probably milking a little bit that there are ideas around around some of these questions. And then you have on the other side, I think, a very big valid question around You know, when you're very religious, for example, what is the role of fate or destiny or things where, in a way, there might be an idea of what is already given for me, and I'm just kind of like going through the motions. And I had that conversation recently with a priest or with a kind of very religious person. And I think we got to a conclusion that my wife beautiful is summarised in this kind of saying, I'm trying to do a justice, which was around this idea that it's this kind of story where there's this, this person who prays to God all the time, and says, God, please, please make me, you know, rich and make me win the lottery. And I really want to do it. And then he prays and praise and praise and nothing happens. And then at some point, God says, well, but you gotta buy a ticket, like, I can't let you win the lottery if you don't buy the ticket. And so that was kind of like, in a way where we ended up to say, look, there might be something there. But you also got to do something like you also kind of, you know, even if there is a plan for you, you might as well get in motion and do something around it. And I think that's kind of something where I, as someone who grew up with with kind of less religious influence, I can buy a little bit into that idea. But I think more philosophically speaking, the great question always is, I think having a sense of direction, whatever it is, right? Curiosity, interest, purpose, passion, you name it helps us a bit more, because it makes us a bit more alert to what kind of hooks could we cast out there? What kind of questions could we ask and so on? And so I think simply manifesting it without doing anything, and probably makes it a bit tougher to have more luck.
Graham Allcott 51:26
Yeah, I mean, it's just such a good lesson for life and a good place to close it up. It's just the idea that if you want to win the lottery, probably buy a lot of tickets, that's probably a good way to go about it. So Christian, the book is connect the dots where people where can people find out about you and connect with you and hope for some serendipitous connections along the way, no doubt.
Dr Christian Busch 51:48
The homepage is the serendipity. mindset.com, and I'm at Chris SERENDIP. On
Graham Allcott 51:53
Twitter. Perfect, thank you so much for being on beyond busy. Thanks so much for having me. So there you go. Dr. Christian bush, and thanks as always, to our sponsors for the show. Think Productive, , because I know I'm tired. So I don't pronounce the word THINK, THINK as clearly. And sometimes I'm on the phone, by the way, and they're like, what's your email address? And I say Graham at think productive.co. UK, they say is it sync productive? Like for the nicest? So yeah, I've got I've, I've kind of become that person that starts by saying it's think productive with a T H, I N, K. And just like pronouncing it. So yeah, go to think productive.com If you want to find out more about what we do, and we have offices all around the world, so there'll be someone near you that can help. And yeah, I really enjoyed that conversation. And Darren Brown, we touched upon there, so go watch that Darren brown episodes, the system and so much of his stuff is I just think he's so clever. I think a lot of it, you know, when he talks about Darren Brown has that thing at the beginning of a lot of his channel for specials, where he says I fuse suggestion, psychological tricks, and magic and whatever. I actually think most of it is magic, isn't it? I think that's the general thing with Darren Brown. But I think he's such a good thinker, like when he did that seance one. And it really kind of exposed the techniques of seances and the faith healing wire, and like, there's so many episodes that are really, it's just really like, you know, just like he's doing great work for society, isn't he by just really raising awareness of some of those kinds of charlatan behaviours and sort of magical, like illogical thinking and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, go and go and use it as an invitation to re check out some of Darren Brown's best work and a couple of really great books that he's written over the years as well. Was that one he did, the one about, there's the one about magic. And then there's one about happiness, which I really enjoyed. I'd have to get him on the show. At some point, I think I'm going to try and do that. Probably when we change the format later in the year. So anyway, there you go. Darren Brown. And then yeah, just busy working away on the final bits and pieces for my new book, kind of keep you posted on that. And yeah, if you haven't signed up for my weekly email, just go to Graham allcott.com. And just fill in the little form, and they will put a link in the show notes for that as well. And thinking slightly ahead, but November is the launch of six weeks to ninja again, which is my thing that I do once a year. And it's basically six weeks. It's a couple of hours on a Thursday night, it's on Zoom. And the whole thing is like get your productivity whipped into shape over six weeks with a whole bunch of people. So if you're interested in that, again, if you just go to Graham allcott.com And then it's forward slash six, like the number six and then w and then to n. So six weeks to ninja or think it's just six weeks, isn't it? Yeah. Just six and then the word weeks I think it is. We'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. But yeah, if you want to sign up for that, we'll start recruiting the cohort for November. And yeah, like that's very much the tour of all the content from my main book, my best selling book, which is how to be a productivity ninja. But like me coaching you through it. So if you've read that book and never really implemented it, then basically that's what six weeks in and just for if you have not read it before, but you just really feel like your productivity needs a bit of a kick up the ass and a bit of a transformation. Then we give you a copy of the book, and then we talk you through it and then you get to ask questions and it becomes almost like a kind of live book group for six weeks. So yeah, sign up to six weeks in India basically just greylock.com forward slash six weeks, the links in the show notes, what are you waiting for go and do that. We will be back in two weeks time with another episode. So until then, take care
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