This Podcast Will Help You Flourish At Work

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

Alise Cortez
Thanks, Pete. Thanks for having me. It’s great to be on the other end of the mic.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to be chatting with you and to hear about your wisdom when it comes to purpose and inspiration and fighting burnout. But, first, I want to hear, you had an aspiration as a youth, tell us about this.

Alise Cortez
Yeah, let’s just be thankful that things change and evolve over time and, hopefully, very quickly. So, Pete, when I was in my elementary school years, and I asked a lot of people this when I’m doing my interviews with them, what do they want to be when they were young, like in elementary school, and I had a very, very strong singular aspiration in the second grade to become a horse.

And that was because my mother was married five times by the time she was 28. She finally found Mr. Right with her fifth marriage when I was in the second grade, and he moved us to this farm and I had my own horse, he was my best friend, and I thought, “Wow, if a being can be that magnificent, I want to be one of those.”

So, I, literally, Pete, would go around, I had two young siblings at the time, I would literally go around practicing being a horse. And so, I’d get on all fours and I’d give them rides on my back, and I practiced my whinny, and I was ready to be a horse. And my parents were, of course, horrified. I don’t know how long it took me to outgrow that, but that was my first aspiration.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s interesting, they say, which is that’s a great question, “What do you want to do?” when you were little in terms of upon growing up, and there are often clues in that about your interests and passions and things. Tell me, were there some things about horses that connected to what you’re doing now?

Alise Cortez
What a thoughtful, beautiful question. As you ask me the question, I can connect the dots. No one has ever asked me that before, but, yeah, there’s something about, for me, horses are magnificent. They are elegant. They are elevated. They are graceful. And so, the work that I do today is so much is about stewarding consciousness. That’s so much of the work that I do.

And, yeah, so we’re on stewarding individual lives, organizations upward and toward magnificence, toward elegance, towards something bigger and beautiful, more beautiful. So, yeah, I think I can connect it, my fascination with horses to what I do now.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. All right. Well, so now let’s chat a little bit about some purpose. You’ve got a new book, Purpose Ignited. What’s the big idea here?

Alise Cortez
Yeah, the big idea here is that each and every single one of us have the capacity and, frankly, the responsibility to be able to ignite that which is already within us in terms of our energy, our passion, our vitality. It’s always there and available to us but we lose it along the way in life as we go out and get burnt out and we get overwhelmed, etc. but it’s always there. And so, the book really teaches us how to remain vigilant and develop it and exercise it on a daily basis, first, as individuals and then as inspirational leaders.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, tell us, when it comes to, I’m thinking a little bit about if someone is listening and you’re an individual and you are not yet having direct reports but you are feeling your inspiration, motivation sagging and maybe burnout on the rise, what would you recommend are some of the top things they should do?

Alise Cortez
Oh, yeah, I got this, Pete. I got this. Okay. So, I haven’t introduced myself as a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose and an organizational logotherapist but now is the time to do so. So, when it comes to logotherapy, what that really speaks to is healing and vitality through meaning. And I don’t think you can go a day without hearing about purpose and meaning, but what the heck are they, right? And how do we actually get to them?

So, as a logotherapist, a lot of the work that I’m doing is about helping people to access meaning in their lives and their work because when they do so, that is their ultimate turn-on mechanism, their ultimate energy source, essentially. That’s what logotherapy teaches and that’s what I embrace.

So, what I would say is I’ll share with you there are three principal sources of meaning according to logotherapy and when we can each access those and learn to presence them in the moment to moments of our lives, the more energy that we have and the more irresistible we’d become to other people. So, I’ll share those really quick, but before I do, do you want me to speak just to the individual piece or do you want me to speak to this model first?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, let’s hear about the individual and then the model.

Alise Cortez
Okay. So, let’s go back to from an individualistic vantage point. We each and every one of us have access to this notion of meaning in the everyday moments of our life and across our lives, and yet it’s up to us to be able to find that. And the more meaning we can find in our lives, the more lifted we are, the more energetic we are, and, frankly, the more irresistible we are to other people.

So, what does that speak to? How do we translate that to the world of work? As individuals, one, when we really understand what it is that lights us up, what do we love, we can opt-in to those opportunities and let anything else go that doesn’t actually fit that path or that pattern, if you will. And then, two, when are leading other people, or we want to lead other people, even if we’ve never done that before, when we’re so up to something that turns us on and lights us up and we’re passionate about, that is what is irresistible to others.

In fact, what we’ve learned in the leadership space, Pete, is that there’s all different kinds of ways that leadership has been taught about, categorized, and tried to develop over the years, but where we have come to with a lot of common ground with thought leaders in the same space is the one thing that we really need is inspiration.

We need inspirational leaders who actually show us the possibilities, something much bigger than ourselves, that makes us feel like we’re part of something much bigger than ourselves and that we belong to that, and helps us grow into the best version of ourselves. So, individually, what we really need is that path to meaning to steward us toward that higher being in ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. All right. Well, so then, I’m curious, if we’re doing our own introspection and we want to tap into that ultimate energy source and get some more of that, how do we come to get a great understanding of what really lights us up?

Alise Cortez
Yeah, okay. So, then I want to get into the model then. So, according to logotherapy, there’s three principal sources of meaning. And so, the first one is creative, and that is what we give of ourselves to the world, that we can uniquely give of ourselves to the world. And I translate that word to passion. So, what is it that you can’t not do in the world? If nobody was looking and nobody paid you, what would you do? That’s the stuff and it’s always the thing that you put yourself into.

So, for me, as an example, one of the things for me is I have to go find someone on a daily basis that I can uplift. So, even if it’s in the grocery store, even if it’s walking down the sidewalk, I look for someone that I can say something kind about, not because I want something, Pete, but because when I do that, the act of giving that unique message from me to them lifts me, and that’s the energy source back that I’m talking about.

So, the more that we, one, know what our passions are and, two, exercise them, the more energy we get. So, when I’m out speaking with audiences, Pete, and I ask people that question, I ask an audience of a hundred people, five hundred people, a thousand people, “What are you passionate about?” Guess, Pete, what the number one response is?

Pete Mockaitis
Helping people?

Alise Cortez
Yeah, I’ll get that as a little response here and there. Some people will say families, some will say travel, but the universal response more in common is, “I don’t know.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That was so funny. I was about to say I don’t know because I didn’t know. But I thought, “I want to give her a good guess. Let’s see.” I was like, “Wine, coffee, travel. Let’s go with helping people.”

Alise Cortez
Right. But those, again, are not really passion because those are just things you enjoy. You’re not putting yourself into them unless you’re like savoring the moment and letting the juices run down your chin as you drink that coffee or drink that wine or whatever. So, passion is your first source of meaning. The second source is experiential, and this is what the world gives you in the way of encounters and experiences, and I translate that to inspiration.

So, those are the moments that literally breathe life into yourself as you experience them, and so they are interactions, encounters. People might then say things like, “Travel is an inspiration,” or, “Watching somebody do something really amazing or great.” So, for me, there’s lots of sources of inspiration, and hosting my radio show is one of them. Each week, I’m having an amazing conversation with somebody who teaches me something, so that breathes something into me.

And then the third source of meaning is attitudinal. So, one important thing to understand is all of these sources have to surround themselves around a value that you hold. So, whatever it is, I value empowerment so, therefore, lifting others is part of the reason that giving of those experiences to others is meaningful to me. I value learning and growth, so hosting a radio show is why that works for me as an inspiration.

So, the attitudinal is that becomes a source of meaning when, especially when you face an encounter or faith in life that you cannot control but you turn that into the ability to recognize it as an achievement, but for the way that you allow yourself to put an attitude toward it, or your mindset. So, the one thing that we always have control over, Pete, no matter what, is the attitude that we take against whatever circumstances life puts forth through us. And it is that which we have control, and that is our brand.

So, whether you’re an optimist, or whether you’re somebody that say, “Oh, woe is me. I’m a victim,” all that is true because your mind told you that. So, you have an opportunity to be able to architect that mindset. And, for me, it’s all about, “What will you do with your one precious life? You have just one of them, what are you going to do?”

I just watched, by the way, last night, “14 Peaks.” If that is not inspirational and doesn’t teach you the sheer power of mindset, I do not know what does. Have you seen it?

Pete Mockaitis
I have not.

Alise Cortez
Oh, it’s incredible. It’s about a Nepalese man who finds a team against all odds. He summits the 14 tallest mountains over 8,000 meters – is it meters? – in less than seven weeks. Yeah, it’s amazing. It’s truly amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
Less than a week’s rest between each.

Alise Cortez
It’s like phenomenal. But that, Pete, is the power of the human spirit. And when you convince yourself, and you have that kind of a mindset powering your sails, there’s nothing you really can’t do.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. So, okay, we got the three categories – the creative, the experiential, and the attitudinal. What discovery process or key introspection questions might you recommend we engage in to really zero in on a clear bullseye for these pieces for us individually?

Alise Cortez
Yeah, great question. And, by the way, you have a great voice, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.

Alise Cortez
You’re welcome. So, first, the creative, right? I can tell you that so many people have left their passions go over the years as they became “an adult.” So, there were things that you loved when you were a kid, in your earlier years, and you let them go because, oh, you didn’t have time anymore, you’re working, whatever, or there’s additional nuance that have come along that you just haven’t given time over to because you’re busy with other adult matters.

And so, really finding those things that literally light you up when you do them, and pay attention. Ask your friends, ask your family, “What do you think that I love?” They’ll tell you. They’ll know. You’re just the only one that forgot. So, first, giving space in your life for those things even if it’s only 15 minutes a day or some time per week because it’s the act of giving yourself over to those passions that gives you that vital energy back.

On the experiential front, I actually had somebody at my workshop last week asked me this very same question. She knew what her passion was, it was totally giving herself over into her children, but she didn’t know how to identify an inspiration. And I said, “Well, I think that’s a matter of paying attention to look around you.” For a lot of people, it’s nature, it’s beautiful music, it’s art, it’s being or hearing about phenomenal stories.

Like, for me, I think Nelson Mandela is one of the most inspirational human beings I’ve ever known about. That he can devote his whole life to this idea of exercising apartheid. It’s just amazing to me. So, if you look around, there’s so much to be inspired by. It’s just what do you value? Do you value eradicating world hunger? Do you care about climate change? Do you care about economic improvement in your backyard? When you go looking for the things that you value, and then you go see, “Who’s doing something about those things? Or, what’s doing something about those things?” I can guarantee you, you will find some kind of inspiration in that front.

On the attitudinal space, first and most importantly, examine what is governing you today. When you think about how you make decisions and what goes through your mind throughout the day, one thing that people do, Pete, is they’ll set like a timer every hour or every two hours, and in that moment just quickly record what was on their mind. And then you can start to see the pattern of what actually shows up in your mind throughout the day, “Oh, man, I’m constantly thinking about how bad my life is,” or, “I’m doing this wrong,” or whatever it is.

So, when you get a handle on what is that governing pattern of what guides your life and your thoughts, because most of the time we’re on autopilot for that. We don’t even know what is our mindset. You have to bring it to your awareness. And one way to do that is to record your thoughts for some period of time – every hour, a couple of hours – to bring that to light. And then just see how is that serving you, how is that working for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. All right. Well, could you maybe tie this together with a story of someone who was feeling low on the inspiration, and then they did some discovery around these points and had a transformation?

Alise Cortez
Yeah, I was thinking about that. I didn’t know if you were going to ask me about a story, but I thought, “Gosh, I want to bring this home.” So, my PhD is in human development, and I started meaning in work and identity when I was doing my research. And then, several years later, I decided to expand that postdoc research into something much bigger, and I interviewed 150 men and women across 20 different professions about their experience of work and how their person was related to it, and I found these 15 modes of engagement.

I was getting towards the end of the data collection, Pete. I might get 110 people, I want 115, and I needed another chef as one of my categories. And I found somebody who had been referred to me, I called him up, I say, “Hey, I’m doing this research. It’s about meaning in work,” and he goes, “Oh, Alise, you don’t want to interview me. I hate my job.” And I’m like, “I definitely want to talk to you because I’m trying to understand the full spectrum of experience. Please, can we talk?”

So, we scheduled the in-person 90-minute interview at his restaurant, and I came one evening at like 6:00 o’clock and we had dinner together at his restaurant, and I interviewed him. And during the course of that 90-minute conversation, Pete, he fell into a pile of tears no less than five times. He was so miserable. He hated the fact that his family was at home while he was a chef working Friday, Saturday nights, all the weekends, and they were living while he was working.

He felt like he was trapped in his job. He made a lot of money, and he said, “I’m beholden to this because I have to pay my ex-wife all this alimony. My boss is a jerk. He yells at me every day. I walk on egg shells. I don’t get to serve the menu I want. I got to do what they do.” He just was so miserable. So, I finished collecting all this data, it was 2800 pages. I go and analyze all this data, and I come up with these 15 modes of engagement, all the way from transcendental connection, which is the highest, most fulfilled, to living your purpose, and all the way down to number 15, which is existential crisis, which is where I found him to be.

So, part of my research design involved sharing with each of my participants, “Here’s what I came up with. Here’s what I came up with the results. Here are the 15 modes of engagement. Here’s the one that I think you were exhibiting when we interviewed you. Do you agree? And since I’ve interviewed you, do you think you’ve changed modes, and to which one?” So, Pete, the day I go to, I scheduled the conversation with this guy, his pseudonym is McKinney, I am not looking forward to this conversation. Who wants to tell somebody they’re in existential crisis?

Pete Mockaitis
“It looks like you’re the worst. You’re in a weird tight spot.”

Alise Cortez
Who wants to give that message? So, the phone rings and I’m hoping he doesn’t pick up. So, he picks up, and he goes, “Alise, guess what? I’m all the way up to conflicted fit,” which is like six modes up from existential crisis, and I let a deep breath go. And I’m like, “Well, what happened? What’s going on?” He goes, “Well, Alise, after you interviewed me, remember when you sent me the transcript about our interview,” which is part of my design, “I shared that with my wife and my mother-in law, and when they read it, they wept. They had no idea I was so miserable.”

“And so, immediately, what that did was it opened them, and they just began to support me in a whole different way that I’ve just never had with them before. And so, suddenly, I just felt understood and appreciated in a way that I just never had.” And he said, “Today, I have the same boss. I still work, he still screams, I still walk on eggshells, I have the same crappy hours.” But he said, “You know what I’ve come to understand is I make good money. I can send both my kids to college. My kids are proud of where I work.”

And so, the only thing that has changed, Pete, is his attitude, about how he’s come to understand his work. So, conflicted fit, that particular mode, what that speaks to is you’re in the right kind of work but you’re in the wrong place or the wrong environment. That’s what that particular mode describes. Existential crisis speaks to having a negative view of yourself because of the work that you’re doing, and you’re literally on such an existential level that it’s literally chopping away your soul. So, it was quite a change for him.

But, again, all that speaks to is getting conscious, getting aware of, “Where are you today? What can you do to start to turn and other people and where you want to be in life? And how can you change, literally, what happens and how you decide what that means?” and that’s your attitudinal change. So, he’s a great example of, literally, in a matter of some weeks, he could change his whole life and his health and his relationships, but for the way that he was relating to his work.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, that’s cool. Six rungs without actually changing the work itself. That’s pretty potent. Now, I want to hear a little bit about, when it comes to if we are trying to inspire others, what should we think about?

Alise Cortez
Yeah, I love that question. That’s a killer question. Well, if we want to inspire others, first we need to get turned on ourselves. That is job number one. You got to be turned on in your own life. People do not want to follow somebody who is a dill pickle, who wants to hear about all the negative stuff that’s going on in the world. That’s not who they want to follow.

They want to follow somebody who’s excited about their own lives and feels great about where they’re going and what’s happening around them, and in the process, they’re looking to see what’s amazing and great about you, “Wow, I’ve never seen anybody problem-solve like you do in such a creative way.” And, usually, people are like, “What? Really?”

And so, when you, as a leader, can see what’s amazing and great about your people, and you help them then lift to a higher version of that by giving them opportunities, and challenging them in a loving way to get them to be able to become higher versions of themselves, to realize more of their potential, that is an inspirational leader that people want to follow. People want to be able to realize their best, and they can’t do it alone.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that’s the starting point. And then what?

Alise Cortez
And then from there, you got to hold them to that. So, if you do it right, you’re going to bring them to places where they’re scared to death, “What do you mean, Pete, you want me to go and do that project? I can’t do that project. I’ve never done that before.” “Mm-hmm, I know. So, here’s how we’re going to help you get through that.” And if they aren’t literally, if their knees aren’t knocking on occasion, you’re not doing enough.

Now, some people don’t want to be challenged to that quite so you got to understand a little bit of their appetite before you go pushing them over the edge. So, that means you got to really become a fantastic listener. And so, the best leaders, literally, do transform lives, and you know you’ve done this well when you give them appreciation and feedback, and the appreciation that you give them, literally, can move them to tears and when they want to stay in touch with you for years over time. They don’t want to let you go, then you know you’ve done this well.

But it’s really about transforming their lives, helping them to be able to see a greater possibility given the resources, to be able to create that within and for themselves, and introduce them to possibilities and opportunities that they couldn’t have by themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
And, likewise, could you share a story of this coming to life?

Alise Cortez
I’m going to share my own. And this is a great example of an inspirational leader. I grew up in a small town north east of Oregon, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. My ticket out was Roland Harvel, who owned a small pumping company that I got to do a co-op job for, and he said the magic words, “If you ever find yourself in Portland, you’ve got a job with me.” I’m like, “I got to go. I’ll see you later.” I graduate high school, get to Portland, do a little bit of business college, go to work for him for 18 months in his commercial real estate development company as his administrative assistant.

Pete, great job, time of my life. I’m in downtown Portland, I’m working for a commercial real estate developer, and just thinking, “He teaches me so much. He’s funny. He’s bigger than life. He pulls me forward. He believes in me,” all this sort of things. Eighteen months on the job, one day out to lunch, he passes by my front desk, opens the door, walks out, over his shoulder he says, “You got to get out here. You got to go see the world. Get an education. Do something with yourself. But before you go, hire your replacement,” and the door shuts.

So, I’m wondering the whole time he’s gone, just the singular question, “Did he just fire me?” So, he comes through that same door a little over an hour, just merrily walks through and goes back to his desk, and I stopped him, I’m like, “Hold on just a second, Roland. Did you just fire me?” And he said, “Absolutely. It’ll be a crime to keep you here.”

So, here’s the magical thing about this, Pete. Before he said what he said to me, I did not know I could go to college. My parents were farmers and restaurateurs. They were very successful entrepreneurs. We didn’t talk about college. So, a bachelor’s, three masters, and a PhD later, I think I can check the education box. He told me to go see the world.

I lived in Spain and Brazil. I learned those languages. I speak five different languages. I’ve done work in many parts of the world and travel all the time. Still working on that “What do you do with your life?” That will be a forever thing. But this guy, we’re still involved. He’s 84 years old now, and he came to my wedding. He called me every weekend when I got my divorce in 2016. Today, my job is to cheer for him as he brings together his new invention – the interlude chair. So, we’re still connected after all this time, so a really great leader.

He totally saved my life, Pete. God, I don’t know how long, I’d probably still be there if he hadn’t…he saw something in me that I couldn’t see in myself. He showed me that vision and he led me to it, and it required, in his case, to kick me out of the nest. But what a saving grace and what a gift, and I’ll never be able to thank him enough for that.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious, when you say he saw something in you, you did not see in yourself, I mean that sounds…in some ways, it just sounds like, “Oh, he has a gift. How lovely.” Can we learn to do that? And how?

Alise Cortez
Yeah, I love that question, Pete. You’re so good at this. Yeah, we sure can. And I use this phrase “Go looking for your people. Go looking for them.” Pete, he saw things my parents couldn’t see in me. They couldn’t see with their eyes. I do think he’s unique because he’s a Czechoslovakian-American, he survived getting out of the war, he was headed toward the camps, so I do think there was something special about him, and we can all learn from him.

So, if we will literally stop looking at “What’s wrong with people? What are they not doing right?” which usually translates to “What aren’t they doing like I do because my way is right?” and we start looking for, “What’s right about these people? What’s different? What’s unique? Why is it that Sally always asks these razor-sharp questions in meetings that some people find to be kind of put-off but they’re so incisive? What can we do with that?”

Like, go looking for the gem in every one that we have in our group, in our team, and talk with them about, “Where is your life going? What do you want to do? Do you know that you have this amazing gift to be able to really understand and make explicit that which others can’t see? Do you know that? Most of the type of people don’t know that.”

So, when leaders can go looking for what’s really right and different and special about their people, and help them, one, become aware of that, and then, two, if they’re interested, steward that, develop that, learn to apply it, that’s an amazing gift. That’s an amazing gift to people.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Well, tell me, Alise, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Alise Cortez
I guess I will always emphasize the point of we really do just have one precious life as far as we know. And, really, it’s an opportunity, it’s your responsibility to do what you want in that, and it takes energy to do that, and it’s right there. Logotherapy teaches us that being able to find the meaning in the moments is the easiest cheapest thing that you can do to be able to steward that journey in an energizing, invigorating, vitalizing way. And it’s right there for you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite

Pete Mockaitis
book?

Alise Cortez
It’s not a book but it’s a story. It’s called The Beast in the Jungle. Do you know it?

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hmm.

Alise Cortez
I forget who the author is. I’m sure one of our listeners will remind us. I read it when I was in my late teens, and it was so powerful for me. This is the power of writing and the power of stories. But the essence of it, Pete, is that the author, the narrator is talking about this awful thing that’s going to happen to him in his life, and it he knows it and so he avoids all these relationships. And, also, that there’s something really, really special that’s waiting for him, too. There’s something awful and something special, and he spends his whole life protecting himself.

But he makes this friendship with this woman, and she totally buys into his vision of himself, and they become lifelong friends. At the end of this thing, we discover that their relationship was really, it’s hinted anyway, that their relationship is really was the beast in the jungle the whole time. It was the thing that he was afraid of and it was also his best gift. It just reminded me so much of how much we can lose in life when we’re not open to the experience of life unfolding, and that we don’t trust the magic of the moments that are right here in front of us all the time. So, it was such a profound book for me and it’s something I’ve never been able to forget.

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

Alise Cortez
What people generally say about me is I’m energy and I’m inspiring. People remember the “What will you do with your one precious life?” People remember that “You have it within you to do what you want.” Those are some of the major takeaways that people get from what I speak.

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

Alise Cortez
My principal website is the easiest – AliseCortez.com. That’s the easiest.

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

Alise Cortez
Yeah, get really flipping clear about what you’re passionate about, and do that. Do that like to the hilt. That is your one opportunity to distinguish yourself, and, in so doing, you will totally energize and light yourself up.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Alise, this has been a treat. I wish you much purpose and inspiration.

Alise Cortez
Thanks, Pete. I got more books to write, so thanks for the opportunity to be on the show with you. I appreciate getting to share my message.

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

Ralph Keeney
Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to chat with you, and you consulted on many decisions. Can you share with us one of the most, I don’t know, unique, or funny, or zany, or, in some ways, standout decisions that you consulted on? What’s the story?

Ralph Keeney
Well, in a sense, some of the biggest and maybe zany ones are usually for governments or large agencies.

Pete Mockaitis
Those zany governments.

Ralph Keeney
Did a lot of work on evaluating sites in the United States for a nuclear waste storage site, and that was quite a while ago. And once, I’m looking at long-term energy policy for Germany where we involved many, many stakeholders in Germany. And that included talking to leaders in both the Catholic and Protestant churches, and in many of the organizations that were big companies in Germany as representatives of them, and then to just normal citizens about what they wanted from the entire energy policy for all of Germany.

Pete Mockaitis
And were there any breakthrough moments that really were pivotal?

Ralph Keeney
I think there were some important ones because we had a lot of people evaluate some of the alternatives intuitively. And then we helped them systematically break their evaluation into parts and put them together. So, we had two kind of evaluations from many of the participants and we pointed out the distinctions between kind of their intuitive in the head judgment of the whole thing, what was the best thing to do, versus the more carefully thought out.

And then we said, “So, now that you know both of your responses, choose what you think is appropriate.” And most of them ended up about two-thirds of the way from their intuition to their more systematically thought-out judgments. And I think that spirit holds for a lot of personal decisions. We use intuition all the time, and we should. But if we think about it a little more carefully on decisions worthy of thought, we often come up with something different. And I think it’s often closer to when they put the parts together and decide what to do to follow their well-thought-out judgments and decisions.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s intriguing. And I’d love it if you could maybe share, is there a particularly surprising or fascinating consistent discovery you’ve encountered about decision-making that has come from your many years of working through them?

Ralph Keeney
Well, I can share a simple thing that came through some of that and it’s very basic. The only purposeful way you can influence anything in your life, at work, or your personal life, is through the decisions that you make. Now, a lot of people, when I say that, they say, “Well, I don’t think that’s true. If I decide to eat much more responsibly, that’s going to improve my life,” or, “If I exercise routinely, I’ll get in a little better shape, that will certainly improve my life.”

And I say, “All those are correct but none of that will happen unless you make the decisions to think about it, choose to do what is done, and then follow through on doing what you need to do to complete it.” So, it is the decisions, and that’s basically the thing that enables you to have some control over your life and offers you that control.

Pete Mockaitis
Yup, absolutely. That adds up to me. Well, cool. So, we’re going to talk a little bit about your process. And I’d love it if maybe we could start with a story in terms of someone who was struggling with a difficult decision and then they put a few of your particular suggestions or process or skills to the test, and came out with a cool outcome. Could you share such a story?

Ralph Keeney
I can but I’ll just start with one comment. How did we learn to make decisions? And the point is none of us learned how to make decisions. We just picked it up. We started very, very young. You’re hungry, so how do you communicate that? You holler. It’s maybe not such a conscious decision, and obviously the words are not known, but those were many of our actions when were very young. And decision-making is a skill but most of us have never learned it as a skill. In fact, we’ve never learned how to make decisions. It’s all picked up and it comes with some useful techniques that we all use. And it also comes with a large number of cognitive biases and shortcomings that we take that degrade the quality of our decisions.

So, to get to your point, let me give a rather simple decision but important that all of us probably have faced. It could be you have an opportunity to have a dinner with somebody very important in your company that might even help your job, or with somebody in another company where you might be interested in a job, and you’ve never met them,.

You’re excited. You think about, “What do I hope the dinner is?” And it’s, well, convenient restaurant to the hotel the guest is in, quality food and local cuisine, and you go to the hotel and ask the concierge, “Do you have a restaurant like this nearby?” Well, of course, they do, two blocks away, so you make a reservation. The important person comes, you’re excited, you meet them at the restaurant, you go in, the food is tremendous, but the evening is a disaster. It was way too noisy, you couldn’t have a good discussion, you didn’t learn much about them, and they hardly know who you are.

Now, that particular case could’ve been changed dramatically with a little bit of clear-thinking about the decision and, particularly, this example can illustrate the three fundamental components of every decision that are worthy of thought. And you might’ve not just chosen that restaurant, you might’ve asked for three or four restaurants nearby and just gone and looked at them the day before, or two days before, and you would’ve noticed that was way too noisy and you wouldn’t have chosen it, but maybe you still have though you didn’t do that, so you got the one alternative.

Before that then, you should think, “What are the objectives that I would have for the dinner?” Well, you certainly wanted to meet the person, that was stated. And so, maybe you should’ve recognized, “I want a good conversation and I need it to be quiet enough to do that.” Had you done that, you never would’ve chosen that restaurant.

And the third thing is it was perhaps the wrong decision problem. It wasn’t to find a place to eat. It really was to find a place where we can have a quality discussion that serves food. So, knowing the major objectives to get to know the person would’ve led you to a different alternative too. So, any of those three things – clarifying the decision you should address, better identifying what you hope to achieve, i.e., your objectives, or coming up with a few more alternatives to compare – would’ve led to a much better decision. Any one of those things.

And each of those is a piece of information relevant to your decision. It improves your insight about it and your ability to make a better choice. And I refer to that using the word that the behavioral economists use – a nudge. Each piece of information nudges you to make a better decision. In their work, and Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize for his work on that in 2017 for his book with Cass Sunstein, Nudge. But their nudges are when someone else nudges you in your decision. And these types of nudges that I just referred to are when you nudge yourself by giving a useful piece of information to make a better choice.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, that’s cool. So, we got three fundamentals there – clarifying, then identify the objectives, and having a few more options. The previewing or sampling the venues in advance, does that fit under of the three or is that under a fourth?

Ralph Keeney
Well, I think that’s kind of looking for alternatives. I think that’s one of the three.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you, part of the alternative-seeking process. Okay. Cool. Certainly. Well, yeah, that’s great in terms of what you didn’t anticipate. And I think about this, I think, my decisions a lot when it comes to just like purchasing stuff in, like, Amazon.com, “What am I ordering? And why am I choosing this thing over that thing?”

And I think of returns, I find returns kind of painful actually. It’s like, one, it’s just a little bit of a pain, but, literally, in terms of just spending the time. And, two, it just feels like, “This is an acknowledgement that I did not make the optimal decision I had hoped. This thing I got did not work out the way I was hoping for it to.” But it’s fine. It’s somewhat easy to return. You iterate and you try again.

But, yeah, I think that’s dead-on in terms of that previewing or sampling can tell you a whole lot in all kinds of things because sometimes you have no alternative but to try it on for size and do a little bit of a demo or a trial or a sample or an iteration to get you where you want to go a few steps away instead of in one giant leap.

Ralph Keeney
Right. That’s true. And the other thing is once you get your decision clear with those three steps, of course, you don’t know how well the various alternatives measure up in terms of each of your objectives. That’s the second part of decision-making. Often, some clear thought about it can help you a great deal, and that’s the case with buying products online.

You can’t actually see a lot of the detail, you don’t know how they might look from various positions, and the nice thing you want to look good, where it is in your kitchen or in your office, etc., and you want it to function in certain ways that might be mentioned but it doesn’t do what you want. And you can’t get that information unless you see it, so that you buy it knowing you can return it is fine.

Now, if you’ve signed up for a vacation that’s expensive and you can’t know everything that’s going to happen there, especially if it’s a group vacation, some kind of tour or something, you’re committed and there’s going to be, as with all important decisions, uncertainties about how well the chosen alternative will measure up, or any of the other alternatives that you didn’t choose. And we make those decisions with the uncertainties there, doing the best we can. And you can have, of course, a good decision but the outcome isn’t so great.

It happens all the time in the market, but in everything in life. If there’s three different products you could invest in, and you carefully think about it and get all the information available then, no one knows for sure how well each of those products will do in the next couple of years, and yet you make a decision on, dead-on, which one will do better. And if you’ve made the decision with the best information available, and it doesn’t turn out to be the best one after the fact, you made the right decision, it’s just that it wasn’t the one that turned out to be the best.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. We had Annie Duke on the show and we discussed that phenomenon as well, is you may have made an optimal decision, even though the outcome is not what you desired.

Ralph Keeney
Yeah, there are just different things, and it happens to everybody all the time in life. And if it didn’t, you wouldn’t do a single thing because, with anything, there’s the chance that it doesn’t work out great. And I should say, as well as not doing anything has a lot of negative consequences.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. Doing nothing is a decision in and of itself even though we don’t maybe think of it as such. Well, maybe now, could you maybe walk us through a demonstration of your decision-making process, step-by-step, with an example?

Ralph Keeney
Sure. Now, I should say one doesn’t have to do all these steps. That’s important. Because if you get one nudge, sometimes, like for that restaurant decision, you figure out, “I need a quiet place where I can have a great conversation,” and then you walk in two or three other restaurants, and one just really clearly meets that, that’s going to be the best place. You’re done. You don’t need to figure out more alternatives or even too many more objectives. The price, you maybe care about a little bit, but it’s just swamped compared to the importance of having a great discussion.

So, you don’t have to do all of the steps. But the first step, you want to make sure you’re addressing the decision that you want to address. In this aft, there’s a lot of shortcomings just in this one. And the reason is decisions come, like your car might be in an accident and you didn’t cause it but it’s damaged badly, and it’s an old car. Now, a lot of people will say, “Oh, now I got to get the car fixed,” and the first thing they would think of is, “Where can I get it fixed?” and they maybe have a routine place or an alternative if they take it there, and they’re done.

But in that situation, maybe they should’ve thought, “You know, that’s an old car and it’s going to cost almost as much as it’s worth just to fix it. Maybe I should get a different car, a better used car, or a new car, or maybe I should even go without a car for a while,” depending where you live, “and rent a car only when I need it.” So, it could change the decision that you should address by thinking more clearly and not rushing to kind of get it over with because it is a problem.

And then the second thing is you want to think, “What are the objectives that I have for that?” And it’s surprising perhaps, but most people often don’t identify a large number of their important objectives. An important example, it’s certainly relevant to all the people with jobs, is a study I did some years ago with a couple colleagues with the entire MBA class in their first year at a university in the east, and there were roughly 300 students in the first-year class.

And in between their first and second years, they have an internship at a company. About 30% to 40% actually get their job out of their MBA in those companies but they want to check out new areas in the country, new types of businesses, all kinds of things. And so, when I went to give the seminar on some of the topics we’re talking about here, I said, “I’ll be very happy to do it, but I want to have some questionnaires that they fill out.” And they were asked to fill them out, and they’ve done this homework assignments so people really thought about them somewhat.

And one of them was, “What are the objectives you had for your internship?” And the students wrote their objectives down, and it’s like, to learn a lot about a new field, see another part of the country, learn special things about how businesses work, meet some people in this field, all kinds of things. The average number of objectives, or values could be the word, things that they would care about in selecting it, turned out to be about 6.5.

Independently then, my colleagues that I’m working with, we thought about the objectives from knowing a lot of MBAs and things, and we created what we thought was a pretty full list because we put everybody’s objectives in that they had. We had 32 objectives once we cleaned them up.

So, later on in the survey of the students, showed them those 32 objectives, and said, “Check any of these that matter to you,” and they checked, on average, 20 objectives. So, they got six on their own, which were six of the 32, and they added 14 more. And you might think that the importance of the six they got were much more important than the 14 that they then identified on our list. So, we had a later question that showed them everything that they either got on their own or came from the list in a different order.

And so, we said, “Rate the importance of these on a scale from 1 to 9.” And the average importance of the ones they got on their own and the ones they missed and later picked up was almost identical, 6.21 compared to 6.28. That result happens all the time. It’s very hard to come up with all your objectives. If somebody asks somebody, “Write down your objectives,” they’ll be done writing in two minutes for a decision that they have.

And on decisions that are important, like that one certainly is, it’s worthwhile thinking about it a little bit over time and coming up with a better set because just recognizing one or two more objectives could eliminate an alternative that you might’ve chosen because it’s just not going to be good on something that you hadn’t thought of but is important, or it might suggest an alternative that you hadn’t thought of that would be great on that, and then, of course, it’s going to help you choose the best of the ones that are competitors.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is intriguing. So, we have smart MBA students and thinking about a decision that matters a lot to them, career-related – MBA students tend to be into that – and we can list, on average, 6.5, unprompted from our own, generating it from our own thoughts, versus when selecting from a list, we would select 20. So, it’s like a third. It’s like we only get, can generate about a third of what matters from our own heads. That’s kind of startling.

And so then, I’m thinking, “Boy, what’s the antidote to this? Is it just like we need to have directories of checklists for all sorts of various and sundry decisions we might need to make?” It’s like, “When you’re considering your career, think about this. When you’re considering a product, think about that,” because, in some ways, it’s hard to anticipate every objective or value in advance but, apparently, we need some help and some prompts to get a full list.

Ralph Keeney
You’re absolutely right. And there are a lot of those prompts and you certainly want to use them.

Pete Mockaitis
Where can I go to get them?

Ralph Keeney
Well, there are two places that I know. One is I wrote a book on a lot of details on these three things called Give Yourself a Nudge: Helping Smart People Make Smarter Personal and Business Decisions. And things in there, I mean, one chapter is on how to really do a better job getting all the objectives you want. And I should say I missed some of my objectives on decisions too even though I do this, but I do a better job than I would if I was not aware of what can stimulate ideas that will help a lot.

And things that can really help you include, think of what emotions and feelings that you have relevant to this decision. And then from those emotions, kind of pursue, “Well, why do I care about that?” Because a way to stimulate the thinking is not necessarily, I don’t use the term objective then. It sounds technical. I say, “What do you care about concerning this decision? And anything you care about matters. Write it down.”

And then there’s no definition that’s kind of narrow to care about so they don’t think, “Oh, I’m not sure if this thing is something I care about or not.” They know. Whereas, objective, they might say, “I’m not sure that’s really an objective.” You don’t want to worry about technicalities then. So, any feelings matter. And then you think of any alternatives, just a few, and think of a terrible alternative. And then, “Why is it terrible?” There’s got to be something you care about. Think of what would be a perfect alternative, hypothetically, if it just existed. People can describe, “Why is it perfect? What makes it so great?” Those are going to suggest things too.

And then you can think of what might be goals or constraints, either one. Ask, “Well, what constraints do you have here?” And somebody might say, “Well, I wouldn’t want to pay more than a thousand dollars for that.” Well, that suggests that one of their concerns is the cost of the product, which is true for many things if you’re purchasing. You don’t want to use the constraints to say, “No alternatives over a thousand dollars,” because if you got one that’s fantastic for $1,010, and the $970 one, which met that constraint, was really much inferior, likely you would pay the $40 more. So, it indicates what’s important but you don’t want to use them inappropriately.

And then you think of disappointment and regret, “What could really disappoint me here?” Well, why would that disappoint you? What’s the mechanism? And how does it get back to, again, characteristics of the product or whatever it is that you’re going to purchase?” So, all these things can stimulate your mind to think a bit more clearly about what’s there. You want to do your own thinking first.

And then, for certain decisions, like important work decisions, or if you were thinking of moving divisions in an organization or something, once you thought about what was important to you, makes a lot of sense to talk to some of your colleagues there about what they think might be important to you, and, separately, about what would be important to them if they were making this decision, because each of those comments kind of stimulates them to think a little differently and anything they come up might help you think of something that’s important to you that you had missed.

So, it’s a lot of things you could do, and people would develop their own techniques. And then, for certain decisions, if you have an important medical decision, you know the basis of what you want, “Well, I want to get well. I’d like to minimize time where I’m incapacitated in some sense,” and the cost might be important there. But there might be some aspects, or consequences in the future about aspects of your health or your functionality of your body that you wouldn’t have any idea to even think mattered.

So, you might need to talk on some problems that are more complex from a particular field to experts in that field, but you’re going to have to ask them what the objectives are. Just to show you how important, and one simple example is a medical one. On many important medical decisions, like if somebody has a cancer case or anything like that, I think, partly because of the responsibility and role of decisions, they would say the objectives is to increase the chance that you live or perhaps that you live longer. But what they don’t include is what affects many people, the quality of their life when they’re living longer.

If somebody were 70 years old, and it looked like you could go through all this treatment but it was so horrendous and you had to follow things, but you’d live an average of 12 years, or you could not go through the treatment and have a much better time and your average expected lifetime was 10 years, a lot of people, and I’ve asked this question, would prefer 10 years of a quality life, from a basis of 70, to 12 years of a really degraded life. That’s important.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Ralph, so much good stuff to chew on here. And I very much like your approach better than having an endless compendium of checklist that I need to reference, but rather generating your own ones emotionally, “What do I care about? Why? What would be a terrible alternative? Why is that a terrible alternative? What will be the perfect alternative? Why is that a perfect alternative? What are the goals?”

This reminds me of some of like the best coaching questions, really drive at these sorts of things, like, “What do you really want? And what else? Or, what does wild success look like? Or, imagine we’re looking back at the end of this, and it was a smashing victory or a smashing defeat, what happened and why?” That begins to surface it. And then I love it, once you get a nice list to start from, you can check in with somebody else and they can build up and develop it. And I like that question a lot, “What would be important to you if you were thinking through this?” and that very well could be something completely different.

I guess I’m thinking a lot of times with career decisions, I think there’s some research, maybe you know better than I, Ralph, there is some research that suggest that we could sometimes be shortsighted in terms of thinking about this one opportunity as opposed to what pathway does it lead us down into the next job, or the next, next job, or the next, next, job, over five, ten years in progression and pathways. But that’s something someone else, who’s been in the game, may very well flag for you, and so that’s cool.

And, Ralph, is there a magic number? Like, let’s say if a decision really counts big time, I imagine we’re going to be getting some diminishing returns in terms of if we talk to, I don’t know, two people, five people, 20 people, to get their input. Is there a sweet spot or point of diminishing returns you recommend when it comes to advisors or counselors?

Ralph Keeney
Well, sure, but it might depend on what the decision was. There are two things related to that one. You don’t want to make perfect decisions, whatever that would be. It would take you way, way too long. Or, I should even say always try to make the best decision. If that just means, “I do my best given the time available and appropriate for the decision,” that’s fine. But if it means, “I’m going to search till I find the best alternative,” it’s usually nutty. It takes way, way too much of your time, and it’s the same issue I just mentioned.

You degrade the quality of your life because all you’re doing is procrastinating and worrying about this decision and trying to do better. Whereas, if you would’ve just made the decision earlier with what you knew, it might’ve been a pretty good decision, and then you have time to enjoy your life. It’s worthwhile breaking life, with this point, into two things. The time you spend making decisions and the time you spend enjoying life as a result of your decisions.

And enjoying life could be doing work on problems in your company too because that’s interesting and it’s stimulating, etc., but, per se, that’s just getting useful information. The decision per se, you don’t want to spend everything making decisions. You want to spend, the overall thing is to have a productive and enjoyable life that contributes to you, your family, friends, and country, and whatever your objectives are. And that should guide all the uses of your time.

Now, there’s one other really key thing a lot of people don’t think of or that have a lot of control, and you think, “Where do decisions come from?” Well, a lot of them come from problems. And the easiest place to put it is personally, “If I get sick, I have a decision problem. I have to do something about it. If my car is an accident, I got a decision problem. I need to do something. If I’m not doing very well at work, I got a decision problem. I need to deal with it.” And all these are basically a consequence of other’s decisions or circumstances, like you got sick or a car wreck or somebody assigns you something. And often they’re problems.

And when those happen, the quality of your life drops a little. No one wants to be sick or have your car wrecked or not doing well at work. And so, you try to make the decisions to improve them to get back to where you were before these problems occurred, but you typically don’t give above where you were. The only way to get a better life is through what I call decision opportunities, not decision problems. And these are the decisions you create for yourself rather than the decisions that are, in a sense, dumped upon you by others or happenstance.

And if you’re at work, you can think of, “How could I contribute more to the organization?” And you want to think of yourself because there are two objectives in any decision in the company, I think, or an organization, “How can I contribute more to the organization? And how can I contribute to my life?” And you, that’s your decision, you think of, “What could I do that would do both of these?”

And I’ve certainly been in a situation that works when I went to a consulting firm in San Francisco. I said to the boss, there are 700 people there, and I said, “I think my responsibilities are to contribute professionally and financially to the firm. And subject to that, there’s no other constraints on me. Is that a correct representation?” And my prospective boss, executive vice president in the organization kind of sat up straight and thought about it, he’s never heard that before, and he said, “Yeah, I guess that’s about right.”

Pete Mockaitis
And, in a way, the law, please.

Ralph Keeney
And I could do that because I could bring in work where I work on decisions so they’d make money, and I think I could do that work well, and publish it and contribute to the reputation and knowledge of the skills of the company. And I knew it and they knew it, and then I could do anything I wanted. Not stupid stuff. It’s not like I had hours where I couldn’t take a time off any time I wanted it, because I made sure that I was definitely contributing more than I was taking, which was the pay.

And so, these decision opportunities at work, you can go. And in this firm, sometimes I’d go. There are all kinds of tasks that need to be done in any firm, and some of them your boss might do or others, and you think, “Gee, I might like to learn how to do that.” You can propose to do a task that your boss maybe spends four hours on a week to do and it’s a little boring for him or her. So, you say, “I’m willing to do that,” and learn how to do it and do it well. They might be very happy and you can often get out of something that’s four or even six hours a week that’s less important to the firm and a lot more boring by making this proposal. It’s better for you and better for the firm.

And that’s what you want to do to figure out decision opportunities or something to be pursued that really help your life at work or personally.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s lovely. Well, now, I’d love to shift gears and hear a few of your favorite things. Could you tell us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Ralph Keeney
I think what really inspires me is people who think about what they really want and put in very good efforts to achieve those things. And some of the simplest cases is when what people want are kind of straightforward.

So, people who basically think about what they want, put in the effort, do their best, and achieve a lot of what they want inspire me a great deal.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how about a favorite book?

Ralph Keeney
Well, the ones that really influence me, a few books on decision-making by people really starting in the field. And I guess one was a while ago by Howard Raiffa called Decision Analysis but was really starting the movement away from intuitive thinking into prescriptive thinking. There was a lot of work done descriptively. And then descriptively, I think one of the best books is the one I mentioned called Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein.

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

Ralph Keeney
An easy way to find out more about me is, and there’s things on there not about me, is just my homepage, so to speak, it’s RalphKeeney.com, no point in between Ralph and Keeney. It describes a lot of things. It has an awful lot of references there. And there’s one other thing that soon will be coming out by Oji Life Lab. OJI is Oji Life Labs, and it’s separate words that you can find at searching. It’s a product in beta testing that has an awful lot of the fundamental ideas to help people make better decisions at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool.

Ralph Keeney
And it’s done in a unique way.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Thank you. Well, Ralph, this has been a treat. Thank you and I wish you all the best in all your decisions.

Ralph Keeney
Well, thank you. I’ll work on it and I hope that you and some of your listeners got some useful points here, and also make some great decisions, or better decisions as a result of it. We can all do better, and I’m certainly one of those. So, thank you very much, Pete.