1138: Breaking Free from the Invisible Norms that Limit Our Best Work with Nilofer Merchant

Pete Mockaitis
Nilofer, welcome.

Nilofer Merchant
Glad to be here, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m glad to be here as well. I’m excited to talk about your book, Our Best Work. And could you kick us off with a particularly surprising and fascinating discovery you’ve made about humans and work while putting this one together?

Nilofer Merchant
You know, I think right now we’re in this AI age where we’re thinking a lot about what is the role of technology in our work. And I think I’ve kind of come back to the basics, which is if we don’t understand how to actually create that connection between us humans, we’re never going to be able to take advantage of the technology. And it was not so much a surprise, but sort of like this deepest reminder that it’s all about people.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is an intriguing assertion. Tell me more.

Nilofer Merchant
Well, so one of things I wanted to just share is most of us are in a position where we think we don’t have power, especially now when people are cutting back. A couple days ago in tech, one of the companies, Block, ended up firing 40% of their staff.

And they’re having this conversation about, “Am I allowed to push my own agenda right now? Because it might be time to hunker down and crawl underneath a desk and just do whatever I’m asked to do.”

And I’m like, “Actually that will not lead to goodness, not for ourselves, not for companies, not for the industry, nothing.” And yet, I can see how much fear is in the room.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is well said because, emotionally, that’s natural in terms of, “Because there is fear and because there is risk, I am less inclined to put forward my stuff. It might be kind of out there. It might be rock the boat, disrupt things or it feels emotionally, like, not a great time.”

And yet, in some ways, it is the absolute best time because, one, you might not have that much to lose. And, two, I think when folks get jolted with something that wasn’t even on their radar, it’s like, we don’t know what we don’t know. And then someone’s like bringing these things up. I am personally inclined to think, “Oh, you are very valuable and I want you around. Thank you.”

Nilofer Merchant
Yeah, you know, one of the things about the Block news was really fascinating. Jack basically fired 40% of the organization, and people were asking me what I thought about it. And I said, “Well, I mean, if your only goal is revenue optimization and sort of profitability, I understand why you would do that because AI does lend itself to efficiency.” But that is really appropriating more value and values to capital.

If it were me, I would have sat there and thought, “Okay, if I can do twice as much with the tools, and I’ve already hired this exceptionally talented group of people, and they’re onboarded and running, why wouldn’t I figure out how to grow the business?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and not to go down an AI rabbit hole, although a reasonable proportion of my conversations are doing that these days. But that’s exactly the vibes that I feel when I read this news. It’s like, “Okay, yeah, I imagine because of developments, you’re able to do the stuff.” Like, I mean, in Block’s world in particular, “We’re making software features, additions, and we’re doing customer service-y things.”

So I can hear like, yeah, in that zone, yeah, that makes sense that you can pull off that amount of features and that amount of customer service requests with fewer humans handling it. Like, I buy that. That makes sense to me.

But what I find tricky is exactly what you’re saying there, it’s like, “Well, is that what we’re trying to do in this organization, is just to maintain the status quo more cost effectively?” And maybe there’s a time and a place where that is the right strategic business move, but I’m with you. I’d say, “Ooh, this is exciting. We have all this capacity to go create, invent, and push forward into new territories. So let’s have some fun with it.”

Nilofer Merchant
And if I was a listener to this conversation, one of the things I’d really be thinking about is, “How do I use this stuff for my own gain?” So whether it’s, “I do my job better at my own desk by using some of the tools and technologies,” it could also be as a team, we get together and say, “Hey, listen, we can reimagine who we are.”

And go, “Oh, if we can do more and we can do things better just using tools, then, okay, what else could we imagine for ourselves that we’ve not been able to do because we were so busy doing what we’ve already been doing?”

And there’s, I think, an upside there that any of us can kind of take on and go, “Oh, what is the thing?” In fact, a friend of mine just sent out a thing where he redesigned his website and did a whole series of things using tools, migration, etc., that he could have hired a designer for, but he could do it all himself.

And so he said, “I saved so much money. I’ve also taught myself new things.” And I was like, “Yes, isn’t that what we want to do?” It’s, “How do we take advantage of this stuff instead of it happening to us?”

It reminds me of the early days of the web, which I was lucky to partake in. And everyone was like, “Oh, the web will put designers out of business.” And actually, the designers who won were the ones who figured out how to use the web for their own gain. And I feel like we’re in a similar place, maybe at a little higher speed trajectory.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell us what’s the big idea or core thesis behind your book Our Best Work?

Nilofer Merchant
I started with this question, “Our best work changes based on how you define those three words.” So if you define “our” as a small group, you know, the people maybe who are capitalizing the business, or you define it as “our” as the entire organization and team.

If you define best as, “Oh, it’s about making money and capital optimization of revenue,” or, if you define best as solving really meaningful problems. If you define work as the contract, right, “I scope this job for this person to do,” or we define it as a calling and a way for each of us to express ourselves and be a part of the world, those aren’t just linguistic choices. Those are like forks in the road.

And one grows, you know, if you go towards a couple people benefit and it’s about how fast we can make money and it’s about we scope out jobs and ask people to do those jobs, that creates one type of economy and one type of workplace.

And then you go towards the definition of inclusive and meaning and really doing things that call to us, and you end up in a completely different place. And I feel like if we could explore those questions, if we could just even examine, “What are we doing today that might hold us down to the sort of existing model?” instead of going, “Oh, what could we possibly create?” that was, I don’t know, motivating for me to explore.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Okay. And can you tell us a cool story of a professional who zeroed in? You identified 24 invisible norms that limit us. Can you share with us a fun story of someone who identified, “Oh, wait a sec, here’s a norm that’s been limiting me,” and what they identified and how they busted it and what cool stuff happened on the other side?

Nilofer Merchant
Yeah, so one of my really good friends came to me after her boss said to her, “If you have good ideas, they’ll get stolen. Just get used to it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, the boss said this?

Nilofer Merchant
The boss said that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Nilofer Merchant
“Just get used to it and make your next set of ideas.” And she was basically asking me this question about, “Is it me? Like, is it me that I’m not accepting that as true and I should just get on with it and be an adult and go on and come up with the next idea? Or is it him? Like, is he being an ass by not protecting the interests of my team and the work we’ve been doing for a while?”

And I said, “Actually, it’s neither of you. It’s that the organization has accepted that idea theft is a good thing. That as long as we get the flower from the field of wildflowers, as long as the organization benefits from it, it doesn’t matter who came up with the idea.” And I was actually saying, “What it does is it kills the entire field of wildflowers.”

And so that norm of saying, “Ideas get stolen,” which almost all of us have heard in our careers. We’ve been told, “Oh, don’t worry about it if your idea gets stolen. It’s actually a compliment. Just move on.”

And she was basically saying, “Is that a norm I should accept?” And I was like, “No, it’s not a norm we should accept, because it says that the genesis of an idea, that original source, that point of view, that creativity is not to be valued enough. And that’s actually on the organizational norm that we allow bad behavior to happen.”

And then we say, “Whatever happens, happens.” And I’m like, “No, no, no, it’s whatever we allow to happen, happens.” And so that’s a big shift in how we can think about accountability at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, certainly, whatever happens happens, I mean, that’s true only in so far as it’s completely outside your control and influence. But inside an organization, it’s like, “Well, hey, actually, you know, we’re the humans kind of who make the rules and the norms, and the incentives, and the carrots and the sticks associated with what sorts of behaviors we think are fine and not so much fine, as opposed to just victims of the economy or the climate, you know, that, are sort of beyond us.”

Nilofer Merchant
Or the culture.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Nilofer Merchant
And one of the things that people often think is that, “If a management norm has been here for a long time, it must be like working for a reason.” And I’m basically saying, “Listen, just because it exists does not mean it’s persuasive, right? It’s just persistent.”

Pete Mockaitis
Or helpful, useful, beneficial in any way, yeah.

Nilofer Merchant
Yeah, right. So we get a chance to examine that water that we swim in and go, “Hmm, is this helping or hurting?” And I think the book is really doing that sort of, “Is this helping or hurting?” examination. And then, more importantly, “What else could we do?” And holding open that space for, “What else could we imagine that we could create as a norm at work?”

Pete Mockaitis
Now, in that story, we had some concern about idea theft. What became of it?

Nilofer Merchant
Well, so she had actually been working on a plan with her team for six months, had conceived the plan, had gotten the plan funded, had done all the vendor management, in addition to their day job. So it’s not like they got relief.

And so they were really pushing for a brand new thing that they thought the team would benefit from. And somebody else came along and basically presented that idea to the CEO and CMO as if it was theirs, not so explicitly, but enough where it kind of gave that appearance.

And when this friend came to me and said, “What should I do?” I said, “Well, if your boss is unwilling to protect your team, then what’s going to happen is the idea might be executed, but it won’t link back to the original genesis, right?”

Like, all of us, when we come up with an idea, have a rootedness and a fullness of an idea that we want to see manifest. And so if they sort of take credit and we do the skimmed version of the idea, it will never actually be what it needs to be.

So that idea ended up becoming an ad for a Super Bowl. And then by the time they kind of came around to, “Oh, gosh, we need the next new idea,” my friend had already left because she wasn’t going to stay in an organization that didn’t respect her and her ideas.

And so the organization lost the ability to do the next big success because they lost the person who was that great idea generator. And so I always define success as not the ability to do one thing well, but the ability to do things well over time. Like, that’s what causes real growth.

And so they lost the ability to do things well over time. And my friend was disillusioned and disheartened, but she also knew that talent doesn’t beg. And she was able to go on and find another place that really respected her.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And just to close the loop here, when it comes to idea theft, call me naive, idealistic, a softy. But so, my understanding of idea theft is just that folks want the credit and the status and the advancement and the associations of it, “There’s a clever, smart, creative professional right there.” And that’s why they do it.

But, I mean, in my world, I just think, “Wow, like, that’s so easy just to say, ‘Oh, yeah, Nilofer has been working on this and it’s brilliant. Why don’t we loop her in and see how far we can take this thing?” I mean, that takes like a sentence.

And I’m thinking like, if I witnessed that behavior, I think more of that person. I think more of the person who’s sharing credit and including other folks. I think that person’s more awesome than the person who I’m misled to believe has had the idea.

Nilofer Merchant
Yeah, it’s a difference between scarcity and abundance. Like, if I believe, “Hey, man, I’m talented and you’re talented, then I’m going to give credit to a whole bunch. I’m going to figure out how to get all of our talents on the table.”

But if I believe that the world is a scarce world, and only so many of us can get credit, and only so many of us can win, and I have to out compete you, then I’m going to nudge you aside from the table. I’m going to use all my elbows doing it, and in order to “win.”

And so it’s also the cultural norm that that CEO and CMO didn’t ask, “Hey, who all has been working on this? And tell me more about what the genesis of the story was?” and so on and so on. They could have just asked in a couple questions and been able to go, “Oh, let’s bring those people in,” so they could have also been the fix. So that’s where it becomes more than the people involved. It becomes, “What do we accept as valid behavior within an organization?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’d love to dig into your chapter four, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” I think that there’s a lot of wisdom there. Can you unpack a little bit about what’s the norm you’re zeroing in on and what is to be done about it?

Nilofer Merchant
Yeah, so the norm in that chapter is the fact that a lot of people inside organizations have been taught that politics is icky. And it is that person elbowing at the table and getting credit and getting advancement because they play politics well.

And so one of the things I was doing there was saying, “Okay, politics is about the icky behavior of shoving other people aside in order to win, and it’s been labeled as icky,” none of us really want to be icky. And so we’ll go, “Oh, we’ll leave politics to those self-serving people, and we’ll do what’s right for the business.” So we kind of, like, distance ourselves from it.

And I’m actually arguing that we ought to think about the definition of politics a little here, and understand why we need to play. And I basically define politics as the way we decide what we’re going to do. And so if it’s about the way we decide what we’re going to do, then you’re really hurting yourself, your team, the work, if you’re not sitting in there advocating for what you need.

It’s the people who say, “Well, so-and-so is going to get credit anyway, and so-and-so is going to do it, then I will just pass.” And I’m like, “The minute you stop showing up for yourself, you’ve actually given up on yourself.” And so at least you owe it to yourself to be able to say, “Hey, this is what I think we need and this is what I think we want.”

And in this idea’s economy, original ideas come from that place, only one stance. And so we actually need to put ourselves back on the table and go, “Yeah, I owe it to myself and to the business to show up and advocate for what I want.” And it’s hard, right? It’s really hard to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I really like that definition. Let’s hear it again. Politics is…?

Nilofer Merchant
The way we decide what it is we’re going to do.

Pete Mockaitis
And what I like a lot about that definition is it’s neutral as opposed to, “Aargh, politics are just the worst.” Or, maybe if you’re one those rare birds, like, “Ooh, I love politics. Let’s play the game,” you know? But it’s neutral. like, that’s what it is.

And then it also inspires you a bit, I’d say, to not accept as an explanation for something. “Oh, politics.” It’s like, “That goes without saying, it’s politics. That’s because, definitionally, according to this definition. So let’s specifically say, what does that mean?”

“Oh, well, the SVP of operation was concerned about this and how that impacted that. And so he said, ‘Let’s not do that this quarter.’” It’s like, “Oh, well, now that’s something we can get our arms around and deal with.”

Nilofer Merchant
Exactly. And so the more transparent we are with that, it could be, you know, we actually think marketing is a bigger feature set in our team success than product, right, because we’re a plus one product or something. Then all of a sudden you kind of know where you are.

And so when we start saying what the actual thing is, it gives everyone more context to go, “Oh, this is what’s going on.” And that’s what we really want to do. We want to engage so that we have transparency. One of the stories I told in the book was when I was working with a big company who was really good at doing trade-offs.

It’s REI. So in America, one of the best sports retailer kind of organizations, one of my favorite places to go hang out. And I was working with the team, and they started to say, “Well, we can’t do that because so-and-so won’t like it.” And I go, “Have you asked if so-and-so won’t like it or do you just think so-and-so won’t like it?”

And they were like, “Well, the team in Tennessee always gets what they want. We never get resource, so we think that’s a no-go.” And I go, “You know, it’s totally cool if that turns out to be a no-go. Like, I get it. But if you haven’t asked, then you haven’t gotten clarity on what really matters here.”

And I’m always like, “Deny me, turn me down. That’s your job. If you’re in a leadership role and you have to make those kinds of resource allocation decisions, that’s your job to figure out what to say yes to and no to. But you owe me an explanation so I can understand how that fits in with priorities so I can make better decisions myself.”

“But I owe myself the full proposal. Like, let me bake it, let me complete an idea, let me pitch it to you, let me tell you it in context with other things, all of that. I owe it to my own belief system to show up and advocate for it.” And then if I get shut down, I get shut down and we can go, “Gosh, it’s just not a priority.” But you owe it to yourself.

And I always think the times I’ve regretted in my own career not showing up to myself are like the times when I feel crappiest about my career. And I feel the same way about every team I’ve ever worked with when they say, “Oh, so-and-so won’t care.” I’m like, “Well, give them a chance. Give them a chance to care.”

And, first, you start that by you caring about your own ideas and your own principles. And then you get to advocate for that, show up with your best work, and then people can decide if that’s also our best work.

Pete Mockaitis
And I like your perspective there that we start learning something and we illuminate what’s going on in terms of the priorities or the people or the power structures that are behind things, as opposed to if we just say, “Oh, well, they wouldn’t like that.” You’re just quiet and just do nothing with it. Well, then you’re completely stuck.

Nilofer Merchant
Exactly. And it’s like The Wizard of Oz. You know, we all think there’s a man behind the curtain who is managing everything and making everything happen. And then we pull back the curtain and we realize no one’s really there.

If we can pull back the curtain and realize most of the reasons why decisions are being made the way they are is because no one’s made a better argument. No one has shown us what the trade-offs are. No one has shown us what the downstream effects are.

And so if we can go upstream in our own thinking and say, “Let me at least show up to it,” then we get transparency and visibility and understanding. We’ve shown up for our own agency and we’ve revealed that, quite often, we don’t know why we’re making the decisions we’re making. It’s just what we’ve done. And so we get a chance to help the business grow, right, and show up.

I guess that part I feel like we all stand a little taller when we can show up and be our fullest self. Because work is a place where the self can meet the world, it’s not just what we do for money. It is also the way we become who we are. And so this is a way to practice becoming who you are and showing what you care about, even if we’re scared.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we also have to hear this Marie golf story.

Nilofer Merchant
So I was working at Apple in my 20s, and one day, one of the people that I worked with said, “Do you know, doesn’t it feel to you like the meetings are perfunctory, like the decision has already been made?” And I said, “You know, that’s funny, I was thinking that too. Like, every single thing I say, I feel like it’s just, you know, hitting a wall and kind of sliding down. And I keep thinking it’s me, like it’s a communication issue, I need to learn how to pitch this better or whatever.”

And she goes, “No, I have this other feeling that something else is going on.” And so we took that conversation to a couple other people down the hall, and everyone was like, “Yeah, actually, that’s it. That’s exactly what it feels like as the decisions are being made somewhere else.”

So we ended up thinking, “Well, how would we suss that out?” And a couple of us knew the admin. So we said, “Are they having a pre-meeting like the morning of or something that’s causing us to kind of go into meetings that are already decided?” And they said, “No, there’s no pre meeting, but they are playing golf the day before. They have an offsite every Thursday before the Friday meeting.”

So we said, “Oh, who’s invited?” Just like out of curiosity, right, like, “Oh, who’s coming?” And it was basically every decision-maker in the room was going to the golf game. And we thought, “You know, this is not Machiavellian. This is just opportunistic.”

They know there’s a bunch of decisions to be made. It’s on their minds. They’re probably just talking about it together to be like, “Hey, what do you know? And what do you know?” and blah, blah, blah. And they’re making some pre-decisions. So by the time they come into the room, they’re not probably listening very much.

So one of us decided that we weren’t game for that, but we didn’t know quite how to say anything or do anything without sort of it seeming like we were calling them out. We wanted to call them in. And we wanted to figure out how to participate in this conversation.

So one of the people, a really tall woman named Marie, Marie Schmidt, six-foot tall woman had played volleyball in college, like had played a bunch of sports. She’s really athletic. And that was the point of that story.

And she goes, “You know what? I’m going to learn to play golf. I’ve never learned, but I could do it.” And she went and took lessons. She played every single weekend. She got really good. I remember she even bought custom clubs so that it would suit her body type, which I thought, “Wow, that is a big investment.”

And then after her scores got good enough, she actually emailed the group and said, “Hey, I hear you guys play golf. I’ve actually come to recently love golf. And here’s my scores. And I wonder if I can join in on the team.” And, right away, the golf game went away.

Because what was being called out was, “Listen, you’re doing something that’s actually excluding a bunch of us. And maybe you meant to, maybe you didn’t.” But as soon as it became visible and got called in to that conversation, they ended the golf game. And they showed up to the meeting not predisposed to certain answers so that we could actually have the conversation in the room with all the people who needed to be in the room.

And that, to me, shows the power of showing up for yourself and just advocating for what you believe is right. Because it’s not like she made some overt like, “Oh, you guys suck,” kind of thing. She just did this beautiful, “Decisions need to be made in the room. Let’s make them in the room.” And have that changed to happen.

And I love that it also shows, like, you can play the long game quite literally and not do it as, you know, “Oh, tomorrow we got to fix this.” It can take a little bit to be like, “Hmm, how do I maneuver the chess pieces on the board so I can actually play the game really well?”

Pete Mockaitis
I like the story a lot for the similar reasons, in terms of that proactivity. Because, in some ways, it just feels natural emotional response to say, “Oh, that’s not fair. That’s dumb. I don’t like that.” And it takes quite a lot of effort, you know, to learn a new sport and get custom clubs and all the things. And then there could be an interior reaction of, “I shouldn’t have to do that and, therefore, I won’t,” and then it’s over and done.

But it’s also a choice of what we are free to engage, it’s like, “Well, you know what? If that’s where it’s happening and this is important to me, even though it’s pretty dumb and I shouldn’t have to, I’m going to go ahead and make the sacrifice and then see what unfolds.” And what might happen is you’re included, “Hey, great to have you.”

Or, what might happen is they say, “Oh, I guess, actually, this is not appropriate. That didn’t occur to me before you brought this up.” And either way, you’re making some advancement. Of course, it’s entirely possible they might just say, “No, you can’t play golf,” and they keep doing their thing.

And then, again, that is illuminating. You have additional information from which to decide, “Should I find another workplace? Should I challenge this in a fresh way?”

Nilofer Merchant
That’s right. It’s making progress. And making progress is how we actually, all of us, really can measure success. And one of the beautiful things about what you just, you know, we’re chatting about Pete, was that in that story, there are no villains and there are no victims.

And I love it when we move past this architecture of bad guy, good guy, right? Or the person who says, “Oh, I don’t want to go and, therefore, I’m the victim in this situation.” I’m like, “Well, we all have choice. We all have choice.”

And the question is, “Do we understand our choices? And can we create more choices for them, for us, for all of us?” And as soon as we’re working from a place of choice, we have an ability to actually influence a lot of things. And so it’s more how we hold the mindset, how we invite people into conversation. And then as we move on in our careers, we get a chance to go, “Okay, what are the cultural norms I want to help create?”

And so if we create a culture where we say, “Listen, we’re going to call people in when things aren’t working. We’re going to be able to say, ‘Dude, do you realize that you monologue a lot? And when you monologue a lot, it takes up all the oxygen in the room. And it’s probably not the kind of behavior you really want to do. And do you want to change?”

And that person could go, “Oh, yeah, I was kind of taught that behavior, right? And the only way I ever got things amongst my siblings was to just talk it out with them. And so I need to change my ways.” Like, that kind of conversation can now start to happen instead of saying, “You’re an asshat and I don’t even want to deal with you.”

Which, by the way, might be true. It’s like, “Okay, well you’re here. So now what do you want to do as an agent of change? And how do you show up ready to create that best work? How do you show up with that agency and that power?” Not because we give in to people, but because we say, “What else is possible here?” And it’s going to be a test of imagination for us to reinvent how work works.

The engagement data, whether it’s Gallup or other data, says that we have something like 80% of people at work disengage. It’s crazy. And that number, by the way, hasn’t changed. It just keeps getting worse. The latest statistic was that middle managers were the group that dropped out last, and so they’re just miserable.

So many of the statistic at work says work isn’t working for most of us, which is why people become entrepreneurs and they find other ways of manifesting themselves, because work just generally sucks. And I think it’s about like, “Okay, well, yes, it does suck.” And the question is, “What part of the solution are we?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. And talk about solutions, you’ve got some pro tips, some key steps, some key questions you recommend folks engage with as they’re navigating the political side of things.

Nilofer Merchant
Yeah, one of the things I really want to do with this book is not to say, “Hey, here’s what’s not working,” but how do we become, you know, in just the smallest way, more agentic in our power? And so in the power, that politics chapter, I talked about how do you show up and actually ask people, ‘What’s happening here?”

So if you have an idea about the decisions being made a certain way by certain people, you might want to kind of map that out and then go to other people that you work with and say, “Is this how we’re making the decision?”

And have people have that conversation with you and say, “Okay, I’m interested in influencing that decision. How might I do that?” And enrolling other people with you, because this is not meant to be a go-at-yourself kind of work.

Change at this magnitude of actually changing our norms is going to take at least two of us gathering together and saying, “ I’m not in it by myself,” right? Because it’s easy to think, “I’m the problem or you’re the problem.” And, actually, if it’s the norm, then what we want to do is have a couple of us kind of sit at the same side of the table and look at it and go, “Hmm, what is that? What is the situation?”

And then, as we kind of kibitz about that, we can go, “Oh, well, then what are different ways we might navigate that situation?” And we can start helping each other to do that. So I think, my goal is read it with someone else, a bud at work, and then figure out if something’s important to you, how do you team up together and start doing this work? And then you can problem-solve and get creative about that because, otherwise, you’re going to feel alone and not as powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
And you mentioned, you know, “Who is the problem versus what’s the problem?” You mentioned William Ury and the distinction between people and positions, it can be easy to just accept something when, in fact, that is a position that ought to be challenged. Can you speak to that?

Nilofer Merchant
So when I was in community college, I got an opportunity to also represent the entire student body of the community college, not just at my one school, but then for the entire state of California. So for all 106 community colleges at the time, so it was a million plus students.

We were lobbying for community colleges to actually change from being trade schools, which they were at the time, mostly teaching mechanics and nursing and that kind of work, to actually being the front load for your education.

And he got brought in to teach us how to do that negotiation. And one of the things he said is we often assume what people’s interests are, and we assume that they’re baked. So we assume we know what they are, and then we assume that they’re unmovable.

And if we can actually really figure out what’s underlying someone’s interests, then we can often find other ways to accomplish that. So we might say their interest is, oh, what’s a funny one? Their interest is to have lunch. And then we go, “Well, it’s dinnertime, so we really can’t solve that problem of lunch.”

But if we sit there and go, “Oh, the goal is to have food,” or, “The goal is to have nutrition,” or, “The goal is to feel satiated,” there are other ways to solve that problem just by changing what the goal is from lunch to satiation, or lunch to nutrition.

And that’s where I think we kind of get stuck. We get stuck with the initial definition of, “This guy says he wants lunch.” And so then we go, “Oh, well, we can’t give him lunch because it’s dinner time.” And I know I’m making up a funny example, but that holds true for even the most complex situations.

And we can go, “Oh, what actually is he trying to solve for? What is it that we can then create together?” And we’ve just got to figure out how to show up and assume that most people don’t really know what they want. They only know what they can have right now. And so they state the thing they think they can have, like they think it’s lunchtime kind of thing.

And if you can go, “Let me learn more. Let me explore,“ then everyone’s in a learning mode, you know, using Carol Dweck’s beautiful framework of growth mindset, then we’re just going to learn together. And then as we learn together, we can actually find multiple ways to solve any problem.

And if we kind of assume that abundance mindset, the growth mindset, and kind of show up with sort of really deep curiosity, we can usually figure out that the presenting problem is not the actual problem. And no one is a villain and no one’s a victim, and so then we start getting creative together.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve taught my children, when someone says no, a great thing to say next is, “What are your concerns?” And it is so hilarious to see my sweet little seven-year-old girl, Mary, when she’s told no, and she’ll say, “What are your concerns?”

And it does, it gets right to the heart of that, in terms of we might assume that we’re getting a no because, I don’t know, they don’t like us or they’re obsessed with power and money and prestige or whatever. We just have any number of assumptions about what they’re after.

And then the no is really just like, “Oh, I’m not scheduled to have a meeting with that person for another three weeks.” It’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, how about we talk then?” It’s like, “Oh, that was way easier than I expected.” And your example about lunch, nutrition, it can be quite surprising what you learn in terms of, “Oh, they don’t even want food of any sort. They just wanted a break and some socializing.” “Well, we can do that. Let’s, yeah.”

Nilofer Merchant
Exactly. I love this. I love your example of your daughter because you can imagine her asking for ice cream after dinner, “What are your concerns?” “Well, I’m concerned you’ll get too much sugar before bed.” And I can imagine her turning to you saying, “Well, then after school tomorrow, right?” Like, she can negotiate really well. You’re teaching this kid to become a monster in the best possible way.

Because you can then go, “Oh, well, we can get that. We can solve your concerns and get what it is I want at the table.” And that’s exactly right. It’s that, “What are your concerns?” and what else is possible.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, certainly. Well, tell me, Nilofer, any other key things you want to make sure to share before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Nilofer Merchant
Well, I hope we’ve communicated that it’s not you or them. It’s us. I hope we’ve communicated that management norms aren’t so much persuasive as they are persistent. I hope that we’ve communicated that politics is simply the way we decide what we’re going to decide. And I hope people understand that it’s a way for them to join together and figure out how to fix work.

Like, none of us are happy, really, very few. And even the bosses aren’t happy and I get a chance to talk to a lot of really top leaders, and I can categorically say people are miserable. And so this is, hopefully, a hopeful book and a hopeful set of ideas about how do we pay attention to the intangibles around us and make work better.

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

Nilofer Merchant
You know, there’s a beautiful quote somebody just reminded me of Nelson Mandela said, “Don’t measure me by my successes. Measure me by how many times I got up off the floor.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Nilofer Merchant
I love the one where a team, basically a group of people are asked to watch how often the ball is passed. And between, I think, it’s like some of the teams wearing black shirts and some of the teams wearing white shirts, and they’re asked to count the number of times the ball is passed between the team and who had the ball most in terms of like which shirt.

And a big hairy gorilla, like actually a person in a gorilla outfit walks through the scene. And then after the experiment is over, people are asked how many people notice the gorilla. And something like 50% of the people don’t notice the gorilla at all. And it’s huge. You can’t miss it.

But there’s something about how, when our attention is directed one way, we can get kind of lock scoped and not see the full range, the full aperture of what’s going on in the room. And it reminds me that if we can actually stop being so obsessed about the specific and start just really opening up our own apertures, we can see more of what’s going on and, more importantly, navigate that more of what’s going on.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Nilofer Merchant
I’m going to choose Mary Oliver’s Devotions, which is a beautiful book of poetry collected over her lifetime. So it was published towards the end of her life, so it’s really a beautiful body. And I find it one of those books that you can open up and have it speak to your day about how to be more present to yourself and to the world.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Nilofer Merchant
I’m pretty much loving all the tools right now that let you do coding online and just, like, create websites and stuff. I’m playing with quite a few of them, so I can’t say I love one particular one, but I love that I can now go back to coding using natural language and having it actually translate that to all the code because it gets you back to that place of being a creator again.

Pete Mockaitis
And, well, just a quick follow-up. In terms of the quick creation of a website with natural language, just like the chatbots, Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, or is there something special that seems kind of cool there?

Nilofer Merchant
Oh, there’s like 12 of them so far that I’ve tried so I can’t even tell you all their names.

Pete Mockaitis
Twelve.

Nilofer Merchant
But one of the things that you can now do is, like, go from, “I want to build a data tool set that tells me the answer to X.” And within, like, really short window of time, it can pull all this data that, literally, would have taken three researchers a couple of weeks to do, and organize it in a way that it would break Excel. And I think that gives us the opportunity to sort of prototype ideas.

We can always work with a bigger team later and kind of get it better, but to go, “Oh, what if I could do this? What if the business team could do X or Y?” And just play around with it to go, “This is what an early idea could be.” Because sometimes if we show up with an idea that doesn’t have proof of concept, it’s hard to imagine.

But if you can show up with a nascent idea that also is associated with a thing, then people can go, “Oh, I can see how that would work,” and it would just help that imagination process go forward.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Nilofer Merchant
I think that habit that Duhigg said, which is “Choose the one thing you’re going to do the next day before you go to bed,” because if you can do that, your brain can actually start solving that problem as you sleep. And then you wake up just ready and charged up to go. So I love that habit.

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

Nilofer Merchant
The one quote that people always say back to me is they say, “Any good work is not created, it’s co-created.” And I wrote that in my very first book, which was called The New How, and it was about collaborative leadership. And I am so surprised at how many people have turned that into T-shirts and pins and just different ways of communicating all work isn’t created, it’s co-created.

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

Nilofer Merchant
Website is NiloferMerchant.com.

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

Nilofer Merchant
Showing up over and over again to yourself. It’s not about proving to other people how good you are or how worthy you are. It’s showing up to yourself and making progress against your own goals that helps you actually become the person you’re meant to be.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Nilofer, thank you.

Nilofer Merchant
Thank you for having me, Pete.