889: Deploying Your Unique Problem-Solving Strengths with Cheryl Strauss Einhorn

Pete Mockaitis
Cheryl, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Cheryl Einhorn
Thank you. So good to be here with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m excited to talk about your book, Problem Solver, and get some more insights into problem-solving goodies. But one problem I understand you’ve been working to solve for years is the perfect spice cookie. What’s the story here?

Cheryl Einhorn
Oh, I’m always experimenting. They say that cooking is an art and baking is a science, so that means that you can keep experimenting until you find what you think is just right.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when you say spice cookie, what spices are we talking about here?

Cheryl Einhorn
Oh, I really throw in the kitchen sink. I like a lot of ginger. I think ginger is, like, this secret ingredient. And then a little bit of cayenne and all sorts of nuts thrown in so you get really good texture.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you go with the spice ginger or the powder ginger? Sorry, not spice, the fresh ginger or the…yeah.

Cheryl Einhorn
No, no, I like the fresh ginger. I like the fresh ginger, and I think something that people don’t appreciate enough is that you actually don’t have to peel it. The peel is actually good for you.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding?

Cheryl Einhorn
So, I do recommend cleaning that first, but make sure that you leave that on.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you’ve already blown my mind about one minute into the interview, so this bodes well for the future. You don’t have to peel your ginger. Who knew? Okay. Well, talking about your book, Problem Solver, any particularly extra-surprising or fascinating or counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about problem-solving while putting this together?

Cheryl Einhorn
Well, absolutely, because what the research talks about is that there are five dominant ways that people approach their decisions, and that each of these different decision-making archetypes, I call them problem-solver profiles, and that’s why my book is called Problem Solver, each of them has some beautiful strengths but each of them also is correlated to a couple specific cognitive biases.

Those mental mistakes that can impede clear thinking and, therefore, each of them is actually optimizing for different things in their decisions. And if we can learn about which problem-solver is ours, we can better understand why we engage with our decisions in the way that we do, what kind of information do we think is important for making a decision, and we can also learn how to make better decisions with others based on understanding the other problem-solver profiles that are not our own.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Cheryl, this is exciting stuff and I’m eager to almost just dive in, table format, what’s the archetype, what are they optimizing for, what’s their strengths, what’s their bias. But maybe before we get to that level of meat, could you first share what’s at stake in terms of if we are great at problem-solving versus just okay at problem-solving, if we really know our archetype and we’re dialed into it versus we are just blissfully unaware of that knowledge?

Cheryl Einhorn
I think it’s a great question. The only thing that we truly have agency over in our lives are our decisions. And so, our decisions are the data of our lives. If we feel confident as decision-makers, if we have conviction that our decisions can move us forward into our good future, we can have a greater sense of wellness and of resilience. We can take on bigger challenges, and we feel like we can move through our day more easily.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Do you have any cool stories of someone who learned some of your stuff and was able to upgrade their decision-making, problem-solving to see some cool results?

Cheryl Einhorn
Well, absolutely. My company, Decisive, we work with decision-makers around the world. And what we’ve found is that, as we begin to work with almost anybody, whether it is somebody who would like to help their aging parents find the right house or housing accommodation as they age, or whether it is somebody who’s thinking about starting their own business, as people learn their problem-solving skills and feel better about what actually is a quality decision-making process, they feel better about themselves, and they feel like they can reach their goals and their dreams.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Any particular goals and dreams reached that was super inspirational?

Cheryl Einhorn
Well, we recently worked with a team that had been together, a senior leadership team, at an organization, a big international company, and what they had found is they had been working together for so long that they had sort of fallen into certain habits and patterns where they had some preconceived notions about who they can work well with, and who they kind of wanted to go around.

And by working together to uncover these problem-solver profiles, they now really felt like they could reduce their friction and work better together because they understood why each person was approaching a decision a certain way, why they were asking the questions they were. They weren’t being sluggish, or slow, or confrontational, but they needed to understand certain parts of the process in order for them to feel confident in the decision that they were making, and it really amplified and reignited what this team could do together and for the company.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Cheryl, I’m curious, in terms of our direction here, do you think it would be worthwhile to provide a refresher on the AREA Method for those who missed our first interview or do you think we can jump right into the archetypes?

Cheryl Einhorn
I’d be happy to give a refresher. So, AREA is an acronym for my system of complex decision-making that uniquely controls or counters cognitive bias so that we can expand our knowledge while improving our judgment. And, basically, it’s an order of operations where the A, absolute, gets up close on the target of your decision, the R, relative, then puts that decision into the broader context and collects information from related sources.

E, exploration upgrades your research beyond documents to identify good people and ask them great questions, it’s interviewing. Then AREA exploitation is a series of creative exercises to test your evidence against your assumptions. This is a new piece of decision-making which really helps you to strength-test your decisions.

And then the final A, analysis, helps you think about failure, which is so important because if you can identify how and where your decision could fail, you can shore up and prevent that weakness and also have a signpost to tell you when something is going awry in the execution phase, and when you might need to make a new decision.

So, that is just a brief summary of the AREA Method as an end-to-end system for complex problem-solving that includes all of the different perspectives, and really helps you to end up with a decision that has a good chance of succeeding.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cheryl, that’s lovely. Thank you. So, we’re all situated there. And now, okay, so we talked about cognitive biases a couple times. Now, I am familiar with this term and I find them so fascinating. I, one time, in my prior home in Chicago, had this beautiful poster, the Cognitive Bias Codex. Maybe you’ve seen it. It’s got a brain in the middle, and then it’s just nicely sorted, like all these cognitive biases.

I think they’re, like, over 150 into segments. It was lovely but it didn’t successfully make it through the move but we’ll link to that in the show notes for anybody who wants to buy this beautiful piece of art. But what is a cognitive bias?

Cheryl Einhorn
So, basically, it’s a heuristic. It is a mental pathway, a way of thinking that actually can help us to make the many small decisions that we have during the day but that don’t go away when we’re solving for complex problems. Let me give you a couple examples of things I think we all do. One is the liking bias. We tend to overweight information that comes from somebody that we like. Or the planning fallacy, which is even if we’ve done a task before, we may believe that it can be done faster than actually the number of steps and the time that it takes.

Or, another one is the confirmation bias where we look to confirm a favored hypothesis instead of thinking about disconfirming data which has far more diagnosticity. So, those are just a couple of examples of how we sort of move through the world to help us go a little faster but they don’t necessarily help us to really be present in the moment to think about the decision that we’re actually facing on its own.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good. That’s good. And I pulled up the image of the Cognitive Bias Codex in terms of it has categories, like, “Why do we have these shortcuts? Well, it’s sort of unclear. What should we remember? We’ve got too much information. We can’t make enough meaning out of something and we crave meaning. Or, we got to act fast and we can’t analyze every tidbit.”

Cheryl Einhorn
Our brain likes to conserve energy and it likes to take these shortcuts, and it definitely allows us to multitask. If you’re in the supermarket and you know exactly where the box is in the cereal aisle that you want to get, you can also be on the phone and maybe thinking about something from earlier in the day. So, you can be doing many things, but by reducing that cognitive load, it’s also not actively thinking through whatever it is you’re facing.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. All right. So, lay it on us, these archetypes. We’ve got the adventurer, the detective, the listener, the thinker, the visionary. I guess that’s alphabetical. Is that how you like to, the sequence you like to move in or should we go at it? What’s your order of preference?

Cheryl Einhorn
That’s perfectly fine. One is not better than the other. As I said, they each have beautiful strengths but each of the problem-solver profiles are optimizing for different things in their decisions. So, the adventurer is a confident decision-maker, and he or she really favors making a lot of decisions. And there’s an underlying optimism bias to this because if they make a decision and it doesn’t work out the way they want, guess what? They always can make a new decision. And so, this is really a great person to have in your friend circle, in your colleague circle. They really help to make sure that you continually have momentum.

The detective, that’s what I am, this is a slower and more evidence-based decision-maker. For me to make a decision, if you don’t come to me with data, I really have trouble hearing you. I want you to substantiate it. And that has an underlying confirmation bias to it, which is that I can find the facts that I need to be able to share with you why my hypothesis is the correct one. And so, this is somebody, when you really want to be able to prove it, the adventurer can help you find the data that you need.

The listener is a relational, collaborative, inclusive decision-maker. And for this kind of a problem-solver profile, they have an underlying liking bias. They tend to have a trusted group of advisors, and they tend to overweight information that comes from those people, and they are people-centered. The thinker is your slowest decision-maker. This is somebody who really likes to explore their options. This can have a kind of frame blindness to it because they tend to look at the options against each other, which can circumscribe how they see and understand the problem.

And then the visionary is a creative open-ended decision-maker. This is somebody who has an underlying scarcity bias. They overvalue things that are original and things that maybe have not actually been on the table in the discussion, and that can also make them seem off-topic. And so, what I think you can see is that each of these different problem-solver profiles value different parts of decision-making.

And in order to make better decisions, alone and with others, you can really rapidly build trust and increase the speed of your decision-making by knowing the problem-solver profiles of the people who you’re making decisions with so you can come to them with what it is that they need to be able to discuss their decision.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so let’s do a rapid recap there. So, the adventurer is optimizing for what?

Cheryl Einhorn
Forward momentum.

Pete Mockaitis
Forward momentum. And their cognitive bias is?

Cheryl Einhorn
Optimism bias.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And then the detective, they’re optimizing for?

Cheryl Einhorn
Data.

Pete Mockaitis
And their bias is the confirmation bias.

Cheryl Einhorn
That’s correct.

Pete Mockaitis
And the listener is optimizing for what?

Cheryl Einhorn
Collaboration, cooperation.

Pete Mockaitis
And their bias is what?

Cheryl Einhorn
Liking bias.

Pete Mockaitis
Uh-huh. And the thinker, likewise?

Cheryl Einhorn
The thinker is somebody who wants to understand their options, and a bias that would be associated might be the relativity bias.

Pete Mockaitis
And how do we define the relativity bias?

Cheryl Einhorn
Relativity bias is like the frame blindness. They see the world in a relative, “This versus that,” over a…

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, right. Option A versus option B.

Cheryl Einhorn
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And, finally, the visionary?

Cheryl Einhorn
The visionary is creative and really optimizing for originality. And one of the biases associated for them would be the scarcity bias. And in my book, I go through this in much more detail and I give you lots of what I call cheetah sheets. Can I describe why I call them cheetah sheets?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Cheryl Einhorn
So, the cheetah, while she’s the most fearsome hunter and can accelerate up to 60 miles per hour, her hunting prowess is actually from her deceleration, and she decelerates up to 9 miles an hour in a single stride. That gives her agility, flexibility, and maneuverability. And that’s what you need in quality decision-making.

And so, throughout all of my books, Problem Solved, on personal and professional decision-making, which introduces the AREA Method, Investing in Financial Research, about business, financial, and investment decisions, and this newest book, Problem Solver, I have cheetah sheets throughout which are worksheets that help you be a more agile and flexible decision-maker.

And each of these worksheets allows you to take the skill that you’re building and, basically, plug it right into your day. It gives you a series of questions that I ask that, as you answer them, help you to really be able to use the tools and the skills of each of these problem-solver profiles.

Pete Mockaitis
Nifty. All right. And I’m curious, do you have a sense of what proportion of people are adventurers versus detectives versus listeners?

Cheryl Einhorn
So, so far, I’ve collected information from well over 5,000 people. And for the people that take the problem-solver profile, we do have the largest group as thinkers. And I have been thinking about why that might be, and one of the things that occurs to me is the thinker is going to be very open to taking a quiz to help them to self-identify how they make decisions. They want to understand. The option for them is between the ears. They want to know the why.

An adventurer might hear about the problem-solver profiles on a podcast like this, and say, “I don’t need to take the quiz. I know I’m an adventurer.” Again, that forward momentum and the different ways that people are thinking about how they make their decisions, and the time to the decision.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And perhaps, to make it all the more real and concrete, could you walk us through a problem to be solved, or a decision to be made, and how each of the five archetypes would approach it?

Cheryl Einhorn
Yeah, one thing that I think is, in all of our common experience, might be going out to dinner with the five problem-solver profiles. When you get the menu and the adventurer looks at the menu, sees something on the menu that speaks to her, and she can put the menu down. She doesn’t have to read the whole menu because it’s not about all options. It’s about picking the first one that seems good to her.

The detective looks at the menu, notices that one of them has olives, loves olives, and thinks about, “Okay, based on that specific ingredient, that’s a dish that I’m probably going to like.” The thinker looks at the menu, and thinks about, “Well, what else have I had today? How do I want to balance out my diet for the day?” and maybe thinking about all of the eating that he or she has done as she looks at the menu to pick the dish.

The listener may be waiting to hear what all her friends order because she wants to hear what they think sounds good as well. And the visionary looks at the menu, likes the dish that has the olives, but looks at another dish and sees that the sauce might be better on that particular dish, and create something of her own. So, just from that example, I think you can see, again, that these different problem solvers are either skipping to decision-making or staying in problem-solving from very different vantage points.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, I have my own guess, but I’d love for you to diagnose me. When I’m looking at a menu, I find what I most often after is I want to be full and satisfied in a very efficient way per calorie while also experiencing deliciousness and novelty. So, I am looking at every option, and I’m sort of crossing them. I look at every option, and I eliminate every one until I’m left with perhaps two or three finalists.

And sometimes one just pops off because, hey, someone else is eating the other one so we’ve got the variety. And other times, I will, I’ve asked this question many times to wait staffs, like, “Which one is heartier? Or, which one is the most delicious and unique in your opinion?” And so, yeah, I guess I really am kind with everything. I’m all about optimizing experience relative to the criteria and values that matter most to me.

Cheryl Einhorn
Well, first, just the sheer amounts of things that you’re thinking about, and that you’re weighing against each other – hearty, savory, new, what does the waiter think – oh, my goodness, this sounds like a thinker to me. You’ve really got a lot going on. And while you can certainly have elements of listening, and elements of novelty, you’re not optimizing for forward momentum.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true.

Cheryl Einhorn
The pace of the decision doesn’t matter to you as much as making the right decision according to the criteria that you’ve identified.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fun. And when I do want it to go fast, I use the Chipotle app because I’ve already done all the thinking, and this is the exact bull that I want.

Cheryl Einhorn
And that’s very exciting to the thinker. The thinker, having it be like the three bears just so, that’s important. And that is in part why the thinker is such a slow decision-maker because the thinker has huge loss aversion. They are not optimizing for the best possible outcome. They are optimizing to mitigate the downside risks.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s true. I have had moments in a restaurant where I have intense regret, like, “I absolutely should’ve ordered what you had ordered.” And I regret having made the choice that I did.

Cheryl Einhorn
And that is something that really plagues the thinker. And regret is an emotion uniquely about our decisions, and it’s a very difficult decision. It’s a very difficult emotion.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, let’s say we are resonating with a particular archetype, or we take the assessment. Well, first of all, let us know, what is the quick and easiest way we can learn what our archetype is?

Cheryl Einhorn
Well, you can go to App.AreaMethod.com and you sign up for it, and you can take the problem-solver profile. And then you can learn more about it and how to use it by reading Problem Solver, my new book which goes through how to really put it into practice, or, obviously, by getting in touch with me, and working with me to help you and your team, or your family, or your friends, in making decisions using this new knowledge.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, let’s say we’ve got a sense for, “Okay, I’m a thinker and I’m working with an adventurer,” just for example, what do you think are the key implications in terms of, “So, now how do I live my work life differently with this knowledge?”

Cheryl Einhorn
Well, you have a really asymmetric risk-reward between these two because the adventurer wants the forward momentum, and the thinker wants to understand the why and to explore the options. And so, in a way, this can be just a wonderful group together because they’re really thinking about the problem differently.

And if you understand that, the adventurer then doesn’t have to feel frustrated that the thinker really needs to know that he or she has understood the why and the options, and the thinker doesn’t have to look at the adventurer, and say, “Why is this person in such a rush?” And together, you can really use each other’s strengths to make a decision that you both can feel good about.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, tell us, any other top tips or implications that we should bear in mind as we explore this stuff?

Cheryl Einhorn
Yeah, I think this is transformative. First, I don’t think that we really think that much about intellectual diversity, and the fact that the different problem-solver profiles are optimizing for different things means if you can bring in questions from all five of the vantage points, you can have a much more fulsome understanding of the problem that you’re solving.

And you also no longer, as I was mentioning, need to denigrate how other people approach their decisions. Somebody is no longer hasty. They are optimizing for forward momentum. And somebody is no longer sluggish or too slow, for instance, like the thinker. This is somebody who really wants to make sure that they’re mitigating the downside risks.

And so, I think it can give you a really beautiful appreciation for these different ways that people problem-solve and reminds you that your way is not better. It’s just different.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I’d like to delve into that a little bit in terms of I can understand the style and process can be neither better nor worse, just different. I suppose I’m wondering about if someone has a capacity as an officer, executive, director, agent of an organization, whether it’s government, or nonprofit, or corporation, like, “To maximize shareholder wealth” is the sacred, I guess, oath of executives of publicly-traded corporations, according to my finance curriculum from the University of Illinois.

So, in that world, in some ways it seems like what is to be optimized for is kind of the part of the job description, if you will. And so, from like a results perspective, I guess not so much from a process perspective, so just wrestling with that, how do you think about these matters?

Cheryl Einhorn
All of these problem-solver profiles are excellent leaders and bring very different kinds of energy to their leadership. So, all of them can be very successful no matter where they are in the for-profit or the nonprofit world.

But just like when we all were going to school and we needed to figure out how to succeed for a particular teacher, when you’re working with different problem-solver profiles, you will have an easier time building trust, strengthening the relationship, and making more successful decisions together if you have a window into which of the problem-solver profiles they are.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. Cheryl, any final thoughts before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Cheryl Einhorn
No, I just think that this is absolutely transformative. In my own life, as I have applied this, I never would’ve imagined how this was able to help me with relationships, both new and ones that I’ve had for my entire life. So, I think it’s an incredible piece of research, and I really hope that it can help other people in feeling better about their own decisions, but also very much in making decisions and having good relationships with others.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Cheryl Einhorn
Yeah. So, one of my favorite quotes is, “If you think you can, or if you think you can’t, you’re absolutely right,” which I think was said by Henry Ford. And this is really about you putting in some of your own motivation and your own effort, and it’s this idea that the agency that you bring to something is what really can help you to succeed.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And can you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Cheryl Einhorn
I’ve got a favorite study or piece of research, which is this research study about teachers, that the most success that the students have is, in part, by having a teacher who really believes in them. And I would think that this would be true outside of the world of education, that having somebody who really believes in you helps to give you incredible motivation and resiliency.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Cheryl Einhorn
One of my favorites is The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin. He is a former chess champion and also a champion in the world of martial arts in what’s called push hands.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Cheryl Einhorn
I would say that one of the things that I use is this idea of not leaving before you leave. When I finish something, or get up from the day, or finish a meeting, I stay with whatever that topic is for a few minutes after to sum up my thoughts and make sure that I can re-enter well.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Cheryl Einhorn
Well, I think it’s the same idea of not leaving before you leave.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget that you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Cheryl Einhorn
I think it’s this idea that there’s two kinds of learning – there’s knowledge and skill. And, for me, decision-making is a skill, which means I can teach you those skills and they can be yours.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Cheryl Einhorn
I would point them to my website, which is AreaMethod.com. And there, you can learn about my books, and my research, and my articles, and get in touch to work together.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Cheryl Einhorn
Yeah, if you can invest in your decision-making, it can unlock everything that you’re doing, personally and professionally.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Cheryl, thanks for chatting, and good luck with all your decisions.

Cheryl Einhorn
Thank you so much for having me today and for this conversation.