Etusivu

One company that I really look up to is BrewDog, the (some would say) outrageous Scottich brewery that has gone from starting in the founder's garage to now being in over 30 markets globally and with a 100 million pounds valuation. All achieved in less than a decade. They have proven that the power of strong identity and original ideas can slingshot a company into global markets without any conventional marketing. But they really have had to be fearless in their business to do that; to sacrifice ridicule and criticism, and to do what they truly believe in. I had the chance to interview James Watt for my book 'Why We Fear', here is how the conversation went down... HH: How important was "End Of History" in BrewDogs success? (It seems that after that business really took of) JW: The End of History was an adventure in elevating the status of beer. To show people that beer is art. We pushed the boundaries of brewing by making this a 55% beer, and the packaging had to reflect that groundbreaking step. Taxidermy seemed the most logical and least sane way to go about this, which ticked all the boxes for me! It brought our beer under the spotlight, for sure, and it showed our goal; to make other people as passionate about great beer as we are. HH: You decided to package the beer in squirrels and stoats, how did you came up with that idea? JW: Drinkers in the UK are constrained by lack of choice; seduced by the monolithic corporate brewers huge advertising budgets and brainwashed by vindictive lies perpetrated with the veracity of propaganda. We needed to rise high above the noise of the mega-breweries without compromising on our belief in creating a great product that pushes the boundaries of what beer is. This was beer as art. HH: If this was the idea that got executed, what were the rejected ideas? JW: A shark. But not many people have shelves big enough for a taxidermy shark. HH: How did you cope with the reaction from animal rights activists and the Portman Group? I know how you coped with it publicly, but inside the company and as persons, did you feel any pressure or worry and how did you cope with that? JW: It was great! Sure, it was pretty intense but seeing the reaction was incredible. Shock was what we set out to do. And shock we did. HH: Can you give an advice about authenticity in business world? You've certainly found your way, but what are the basic ideas behind your thinking? JW: Passion. It’s sounds like such a simple idea, but passion for whatever it is you are creating is often the difference between success and failure. HH: Some of the stories written about BrewDog mention that BrewDog does not use any money to traditional marketing, is that still the case? (Mr Watt said in one interview that'I would rather take my money and set fire to it" rather than put it in traditional media. JW: That sentiment still stands. Yes HH: Do you have any numbers or estimates about the social media impact of "The End Of History"? (reach, retweets, did you see that in your web site and sales?) JW: Over 10,000 mentions on Twitter. The story was the most shared article on the BBC home page for two days - generating over 600,000 unique page views in its first few hours. It also topped the 'most viewed' league table on the CNN and Fox News websites. HH: What was the estimated value of earned media (news clippings, stories written about the product) JW: The AEV in its first week was £650,000. The story appeared in all but one of Britain’s national newspapers. HH: I think that doing these kinds of things in business is as close as it gets to making art and being an artist in business world. Do you have any thoughts on that? JW: I’d have to agree. I think my exact quote at the time was “The impact of The End of History is a perfect conceptual marriage between taxidermy, art and craft brewing. The bottles are at once beautiful and disturbing – they disrupt conventions and break taboos, just like the beer they hold within them.”

“After two defeats in a week, Wigan returned to winning ways and the top of the table in emphatic style with their most comprehensive victory of the season. Their attacking play was nothing short of scintillating, but to say Crystal Palace were disappointing would be something of an understatement.” ED JONES, THE OBSERVER 1. The Crystal Palace Eagles, football (soccer for Americans) team playing in England’s First Division, had the dream start for their 2003-2004 season. The team won their three first matches, leading the League. Then the team stumbled. Out of the next thirteen matches, the Eagles only won one. They lost eight, and four matches ended in a tie. In other words, out of 39 points, Crystal Palace only managed to get eight. The team’s standing in the League at that time was by itself a catastrophe. The way they played those thirteen games was another. The team was in a state of utter confusion. The players walked onto the field to win, but trying too hard, stupid mistakes and the resulting goals by the other side would quickly take the spirit out of them. Their eighth match to end in a loss was particularly humiliating. Wigan Athletic slammed five goals behind the Eagles’ goalkeeper, while the Eagles scored nothing. Crystal Palace coach Steve Kember defended himself in the post-match interview, blaming the players for the bad result: “The talk has been about the pressure on me, but I am disappointed personally because in situations like this you expect the players to go out and do it for you.”1 Midfielder Aki Riihilahti was one of those who had had a bad match against Wigan. He had little to show for the game: a small injury and an early substitution. The players were disappointed as well, both in themselves and in their coach. According to Aki, the team expected and even hoped that their coach would be changed. They wanted a new beginning. Both team performance and mood were at their lowest point. “People were irritated, accusing each other, going it alone, not caring about common goals. A lot of people did not feel like they were part of the team,” Riihilahti recently said, about a decade after these events. “I think many of us requested transfers to other clubs.” Practicing did nothing to bring up the team’s spirits. Mostly they dwelled on mistakes made in earlier games. The coaches seemed to believe that the team could win if they removed all mistakes from their game. After losing to Wigan, Riihilahti joked with teammate Kit Symons that Kember would probably get the sack, and Kit would be made the coach, being the oldest and worst player on the team. Riihilahti’s prediction turned out to be true. Kember was fired and Symons got a call.[2] It was from the owner of the club, appointing Symons the team’s temporary coach. The Eagles were 20th in the league. It might be an overstatement to say that the team was in a panic. However, they were definitely worried, anxious and in a crisis. 2. A game of football lasts 90 minutes.[3] During that time, one player has the ball for an average of 56 seconds. The rest, 89 minutes and 4 seconds, he spends preparing for his next contact with the ball. By taking the ball, a player can become a hero – or a public laughingstock. Just like that. Football is serious business in the UK. Players are the objects of criticism off the pitch as well as on it, and there is nothing they can do about that. As it is a very public sport, the public criticism is unavoidable. Your successes and failures follow you to the shops, newsagents and pubs. The press scores players, and sports journalists turn the day’s high scorers into stars, while presenting clinically precise – or at times wildly, maliciously inaccurate – analyses of the failures. Players getting good reviews may, for example, refer to an assessment by The Sun[4] when asking for more pay, as if stars given by journalists were scientific proof of how good their game was. What players may not always think of is that when the reviews (which are usually the general impressions of sports journalists) turn against them, the pressure starts to mount.[5] For some players, the most difficult thing is winning the game inside their own heads. One player who has publically spoken about this is Tony Cascarino, known for his long stretch playing for the Irish national team, who frankly discussed in his book Full Time how his inner voice ruined his career. Cascarino’s inner voice was uncontrollable, frequently coming to haunt him in situations where he needed to focus on the game rather than on thoughts of failure. Cascarino’s brutally honest book contains many examples of how his inner voice emphasised every weakness of his team and destroyed his confidence. After three bad passes, the voice would pile on the pressure: “One more pass like that, and that’s it.” Cascarino’s inner dialogue was negative and out of control. He struggled to play a steady game. He could be in excellent shape early in the week, scoring a goal or two, and then play his worst game in the next match. Cascarino was prone to negative thinking, and as the tide of poisonous thoughts would grow strong, his game would collapse. Cascarino may have laughed at criticism by the press or his fans, pretending that he did not care, but in reality he was sensitive to criticism, and bad reviews stayed with him for a long time. Then there are the fans, who are merciless – in particular the fans of the enemy team. The jeers of those sitting closest to the field are fully audible to the players – and they are mean. If a player has made mistakes on the pitch or outside it, he will hear about it. It is part of the nature of the game that you are not allowed to forget a class A blunder, and the social media certainly does not help. Thanks to fast internet connections and YouTube, your mistake can turn into a viral hit in minutes. You can make such a mistake in many different ways. You can miss an empty goal by miles, kick the ball right at the goalie on a penalty shot, or selfishly hang on to the ball when you should have passed. You can pass to the opponent, look like a fool because the opponent dribbled past you, fumble with an easy ball or make an own goal at the eleventh minute. “Fear spreads. It’s contagious,” says Aki Riihilahti. You can see it in the players’ body language and hear it in the coach’s voice. Some might speak too much, while others fall silent. Many players show their anxiety already during warm-up. The body’s fine motor skills and sense of timing weaken, so a player moves early or too late. He can no longer perform a pass that he has done flawlessly hundreds of times during practice. Fear takes its toll. Most players have gotten into the sport because they like playing. But no one likes playing when the losses stack up. Talking to Aki about what happened to Crystal Palace in 2004 suddenly brought back a conversation I had with a professional ice hockey team that had been on a losing streak of 11 games in a row. At some point of the conversation, I asked them whether they remembered why they originally started to play hockey. There was a long silence. Finally, one of the players sitting slouched behind the table raised his eyes and said: “Because it’s fun.” Some of the others burst into laughter. Losing time after time is hard. It wears down your self-esteem. 3. It took a while for the owners of the Crystal Palace Eagles to find a new coach. Meanwhile, substitute coach Kit Symons created a foundation on which a new coach could build. In December 2003, former football professional Iain Dowie was chosen as the Eagles’ new coach. Symons turned over to him a team that had managed to score a few wins but that was still at the bottom of the league, ranked 19th. At the time, Dowie looked more like a boxer or rugby player than a former top footballer. The big and burly Dowie first met the team at the end of December 2003, holding a speech for the Eagles. He announced that everything about the way the team practiced and played would change from that day on, and that someday the Eagles would play in the Premier League, England’s highest football division. Dowie ended his speech by telling the players that “for the next two weeks, we are going to play football that looks like me. Ugly.” They immediately set about raising their level of physical and mental performance. The players were handed a weekly schedule of a kind that they had never had before. The coaching team indicated how committed they were to the players by their attention to details. When the team arrived for practice, the coaches would already be there, and the equipment needed for the first exercise would be set out on the field. These small but important acts built trust between the coaches and the players. Dowie brought with him John Harbin, an experienced fitness coach and sports psychologist. The team practiced harder, smarter and more diversely than before. Besides football practice, the players also beat punching bags, danced and swam. They started holding voluntary “self development Wednesdays.” The daily schedule usually included a film or a story. The coaches would go over the stories of people or teams who had struggled from being the underdogs to victory. The coaches were laying out a new story for the team. This time it was not about avoiding mistakes but about rising from the bottom. Dowie’s first match was not particularly promising. It was a local game against Millwall at the Eagles’ home pitch at Selhurst Park. Almost 20,000 spectators came to watch the new coach’s first game. However, to the disappointment of the fans, the match ended in a 0-1 loss for the Eagles. However, the way they played had completely changed. The team no longer looked like the group who had lost so shamefully to Wigan almost two months ago. The Eagles were now playing good football. Things looked promising. In addition to developing their physique and football skills, the team’s mental state was also improving. After this first loss “our game opened up,” in Aki Riihilahti’s words. First they beat Ipswich Town, then fought Burnley to a tie, and then crushed their opponent 1-5 in an away game at Watford. The Eagles won seven matches in a row. The team climbed up in the league table toward a playoff spot. The Eagles won no less than 14 of the 22 games they played under Dowie. Out of 66 possible points, the Eagles took 44. By the time the whistle blew on the last match of the series, a miracle had happened. The team had risen to number 6 in the league table. The Crystal Palace Eagles were in the playoffs. In the playoffs, the Eagles were up against Sunderland, number three in the league.[6] The Eagles won the game 3-2 without going into overtime. The next match at the Sunderland home pitch ended in a tie, 1-1, followed by a nerve-wracking shootout, which the Eagles won. A second miracle had occurred. The Eagles had fought their way to the First Division final. The Division final was played at the massive Cardiff arena in front of 75,000 spectators. The match was even, with the only goal scored by Neil Shipperley. When referee Graham Poll blew three times on his whistle to signal the end of the game, a third miracle had happened. The Eagles had won the final and a place in the Premier League. Heaps of people, celebrations, raised fists, U2’s Elevation, pyrotechnics, fireworks, confetti and the championship cup in the upraised arms of scorer Neil Shipperley: “C’mon, beautiful isn’t it?”[7] 4. The press were as surprised as everyone else, and ended up coining a new word for the team: “bouncebackability.” Dowie and John Harbin had done something incredible. A team mired in a deeply defensive way of acting and thinking had been turned around, and brought right to the top. How? According to Aki Riihilahti, one of the key factors was that the new management built new, professional routines for the team. Physical and mental exercise was greatly increased. Everything was done systematically. During practice, players concentrated on honing their own skills and expertise, and no time was spent poring over the mistakes of past games. In addition to carrying out radical changes, the new coach spent a great deal of time with the players, talking about their wishes and goals and about their lives outside the pitch, such as their families. One key factor in building mental fitness was feedback. Dowie gave detailed feedback and encouraged the players. He built up their self-esteem by focusing on the things that they were good at and helped them to notice the simple things in which they could improve. The players did not have to play a guessing game of what the coach had seen on the pitch and whether he valued his players. From his feedback, the players could tell how much the coach cared, and how much time and energy he had spent on them. Before every match, the players would receive a sheet of A4 paper from the coach. On the top row would be the names of the two teams playing against each other. Below that would be the name and position of the player, as well as playing time.[8] The next three rows would be numbered, and there the player would write his own aims for the next game. At the bottom of the page would be a different quote for each game. Most were familiar to the players from “self development Wednesdays,” such as the Adrianne Rich quote: “Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall. It is defined by those who fought, fell, and rose again.” After each game, the players would dig out their sheets of paper and grab their pencils again. Each sheet had two more boxes, labelled “personal evaluation” and “team evaluation.” The players would write their own analyses of the events of the game. In the evaluation fields they would write a score from 0 to 10 for both themselves and their team as a whole. Finally, the papers would be returned to the coach, who would write personal feedback for every player for that game. The one thing that is striking about Dowie’s feedback is how precise – but on the other hand safe — it is. When he compliments a player, he states precisely what he did well. When he gives constructive criticism, he also explains what needs to be improved. Dowie’s feedback centres on two important areas: the player’s performance on the pitch and his attitude. “You looked hungry and strong,” “Brilliant morale and much better focus on defence” and “Once again you did the dirty work of the team on the pitch very well, but you looked a little anxious and did not ask for the ball. You intercepted a lot of key passes. That did not go unnoticed.” Dowie also often had a Yoda-like attitude to the actual end result of a given match.[9] The team and the players could not fail. Things were what they were, no matter who did what, and the result was the result, however a game ended. Overanalysing or overreacting was pointless. To an outsider, it looks like Dowie used every means available to try and lower the stakes. This is one of the key ways of trying to make a fear-struck team, company, group or individual work at the extreme limits of their abilities. Think of it like this. Few people have a problem walking along a half metre wide line through a parking lot. However, if you raise the line twenty metres in the air, the stakes become so high that many will grow unsteady. Mental stakes have the same effect. For example, if a player feels that a game must be won or that he must show his new club how good he is, avoid shame, try not to make mistakes, or keep from showing his anxiety to the fans, all of this can trigger a fear-based defence mechanism.[10] Usually a group of players, a team at the workplace or an individual whose defence mechanisms have already taken over will not benefit from additional pressure. The Eagles’ coaching team very wisely saw this, and decided to cut off the poisonous thinking.[11] Dismantling these defence mechanisms also had other effects. Once the crisis had passed, people had enough energy for doing things together. Someone brought new gym gear, the dining hall was done up with the team colours[12] and the team decided to fix the club house showers together. Before, only two out of ten showerheads had worked. While they did not turn their showers into a luxury spa, at least the showers worked. Team morale was booming on all levels. “I remember how Tommy Black brought a bloody big bouncy castle and kids’ party hats, so we could celebrate the birthdays of two players for five minutes before practice,” Riihilahti says, recalling the change that took place in the mood of the team. The players took up the slogan “Sometimes beaten, never conquered”[13] for the team, and had a print made of it, hanging it on the wall of the club house. Some players would cut individual quotes from the speeches of Muhammad Ali and fix them to various places around the stadium.[14] Perhaps at this point it would be a good idea to recall pianist Maria João Pires and conductor Riccardo Chailly. Chailly calmed Pires with his manner, and managed to get her to stop her defensive reaction. Even in a hall full of listeners, Pires felt safe with Chailly. As we will see later, there is a reason why we behave differently when we are safe than when we feel threatened. These reasons are also not purely mental or emotional, but derive from the nervous system. When our defence system is not involved, messing things up, the required higher functions such as fine motor skills, sense of rhythm, the ability to make observations, creativity and other cognitive functions are wholly at our disposal. Blood flows to those areas that are most important for that performance, the mind focuses on the task at hand, the fear systems become less active and our emotions fade into the background. Iain Dowey and his co-coaches worked hard, carefully creating an environment without fear. They chained the monster and set their team free. 5. Usually a company operating at a loss does not act like Iain Dowie’s Crystal Palace when it tries to rise back up. Kember’s term is more indicative of what often happens in companies and teams that are in a downward spiral. Once the company is doing badly, people easily focus on mistakes – which is what Kember did. During practice, they focused on correcting mistakes, which is to say going over the failures of the previous games and wondering how to correct them. Dowie’s model was different. During practice, the team would prepare for the next game, and players would know how to change their performance based on very detailed feedback. This was crucial. If a person’s self-esteem is already in ruins, then focusing on mistakes only confirms the player’s low opinion of himself and his abilities. Self-esteem can be bolstered through success. Dowie arranged things so that players got to experience small successes during practice. You can create exactly the same environment in companies. This requires forgetting the bottom line for a moment and emphasising small, concrete actions that everyone can do. Dowie was not interested in the end results of the matches, which also took some of the pressure off the players. The stakes were no longer being raised. People were focusing only on what they were doing, rather than factors partly or completely out of their control. The public to-and-fro accusations, which had torn the team apart, also ended with the change of coaches. The mutual trust inside a team will immediately suffer if it becomes apparent that management does not want to take responsibility. Mutual trust can also be endangered for other reasons, for example if people communicate in a hostile way due to frustration. This will lead to a collapse in the amount of communication between group members. In the business world, a decrease in communication and the creation of cliques can be even more dangerous than in team sports. In team sports, poor morale or a negative atmosphere evidently leads to poor results. Meanwhile in companies, the importance of an open atmosphere and sense of trust and worthiness may often go unnoticed – but it is crucial for doing things smartly. Creative problem solving, performance speed and getting the information necessary to overcome a challenge all become difficult when people are no longer meeting each other or are afraid to give information to each other that might weaken their own position in the work community. When problems in the work community eventually arise, a poor atmosphere or weak sense of community means that the best people generally start looking for a new job in another company. This is what happened in Crystal Palace before Dowie set in, and this is what all too often happens in companies. Once the external pressure mounts up and the company is in crises, management often shifts the pressure onto the staff. Spreading awareness of the crisis does not help, however, if people are already anxious or afraid. Even though it is important to give an accurate picture of the situation, it is one of management’s most important tasks to make individual employees feel safe enough that they will continue to carry out their work creatively and at a high intensity. Iain Dowie accomplished this by spending a lot of time with his players. A manager often cannot promise what the future will bring, particularly in the age of unpredictability that started with the Subprime crisis.[15] However, a manager can be there for the employees, showing them how much he or she values and supports them, and spending time with them as a person, rather than just as a manager. What is most important is that Dowie offered the team a new story. During Kember’s term, the team concentrated on fixing mistakes. In terms of classical stories, Kember would have been, through his actions, telling the story of a beast and how to conquer it. This is also what many CEOs do. The beast can be a recession, structural change, digitalisation or the transfer of labour to cheap countries. Conquering the beast can be a rousing story, if the situation is short term. However, let us stop and think about what this story is about. Jaws is a typical example of a story about defeating a monster.[16] Once the shark has been killed, the mission is accomplished and the end credits roll down. However, we never get to see the heroes return home to the town. Furthermore, that town will never be the same. Friends, children and tourists have been killed. When someone looks at the beach, their first thought will not be a seaside vacation but the tragedy that occurred there. The environment is full of triggers for fear-related memories. A story about defeating a monster is not always optimistic, and we recognise this on an instinctive level. However, Dowie told his team a very different kind of story. In practice, he told and retold the players the story of Cinderella, i.e., the classic rags-to-riches story. Through his anecdotes, Dowie showed the team how you could overcome difficult circumstances. Even though your company or team might not struggle through a difficult period only to end with victory celebrations and champagne, a rags to riches story seems to communicate that even small improvements are victories and setbacks are only temporary. It is an important story about learning. 6. Conductor Riccardo Chailly and football coach Iain Dowie have a functional model that leads to great results: restoring people’s sense of security, reducing excess pressure, restoring self-esteem, building a constructive interpretation of the facts, inspiring people and focusing on simple, concrete things. In addition, this is a very human model, but it is not about being soft or encouraging positive thinking while ignoring the facts. Even though Chailly and Dowie faced different circumstances, both started from the facts. Pires was in the middle of a live performance before an audience, and she had rehearsed the wrong concerto, which was not something she could change or affect. Instead, Chailly and Pires concentrated fully on what was actionable and turned the focus away from the negative emotions, especially fear, that were preventing Pires from accessing the information and skills needed to perform the unrehearsed concerto. Chailly encouraged Maria João Pires, telling her that the right notes were there in her memory, and it would in the end not be such a big deal if she failed. It was the best thing Chailly could have done to help Pires during the extremely limited time available. Dowie also spent time reducing the stakes and restoring his players’ sense of safety. In addition, he came up with a demanding physical programme and routines for his team, which by themselves created continuity and a sense of safety. A management style that emphasises this kind of safety and improvement by small steps is something that we ought to see much more often in today’s working life, where dwelling in a negative spiral of losses and in an atmosphere of fear have become the norm. It is quite understandable that even the management get frustrated in a difficult situation. It is also understandable that aggressively addressing mistakes seems intuitively like the right way to respond. If there is a problem, it can be rectified. However, even if this may intuitively seem correct, it does not appear to produce much in the way of results. It is in any case not the only way out of a negative spiral. 1 Ed Jones in The Observer, 2 November 2003. [2] Even though team observer Simon Jordan had promised Kember that he had a job for life with the Crystal Palace Eagles, the Wigan game was Kember’s last. [3] Plus of course injury time, which accrues due to various stoppages, most commonly injuries. Based on the players’ reactions, it might look like most injuries require urgent orthopaedic care. However, players generally seem to undergo a miracle cure after having lain on the turf for a few moments. [4] The Sun is a major British tabloid, writing about celebrities, politics and sports. [5] According to some thinkers (from Nietzsche to sacred Buddhist scripture), a spiritually mature person ignores both compliments and scorn. They have the same root. If compliments touch your ego, then it means you are also vulnerable to insults. The door has been left open. [6] The first two, Norwich City and Wes Bromwich Albion, rose directly to the Premier League. [7] While Neil Shipperley and Simon Jordan could not have been happier, their opponent West Ham was full of disappointment. Hayden Mullins was particularly disappointed, as he had requested and gotten a transfer from the Eagles while the team was at the bottom of the league. [8] The last of these was naturally filled out only after the game. [9] Yoda-like is similar to Zen-like. Those who are not overly sensitive to Zen can substitute for example Dalai Lama-like or Suzukiroshi-like for Yoda-like. [10] However, some people seem to be immune to pressure, or actually get a kick out of it. [11] Some players had their own ways of breaking free from their own and others’ excessive expectations. Aki Riihilahti is one example. When he was very young, he understood that he was not an exceptionally talented player. However, he was a hard worker and could be top class in a certain narrow area, while delivering a good performance at what he was paid for. Aki also has a strategy for when things do not go as planned. Through practice and conditioning, he has created a safety net to which he can return, a playing foundation that never wavers, and on which he can build and improvise. [12] We watched some videos from that season with Aki Riihilahti. On spotting the team canteen, Aki burst out laughing. It was only now that he realised that table cloths had been brought to the canteen in red and blue, the team colours. What was important was that the canteen was decorated by team members. Wonderful things were happening in the team. [13] Sometimes beaten, never conquered is the name of Australian star runner Raelene Boyle’s biography. [14] The mood and the slogans also caught on with the fans. The words chanted by the crowd of the Ali vs George Foreman match, “Ali, Bumbayee!” (“Ali, kill him!”) were shouted at Selhurst in modified form: “Aki, Bumbayee!” [15] The financial crisis that started with the US sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2007-2009. [16] The theory of story types is from Christopher Booker, according to whom there are only seven basic plots: overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy and rebirth. Booker’s theory is explored at length in his mammoth volume Seven Basic Plots (2004).

“How are you feeling?” Lisa asks Alex.

“Terrified” Alex replies.

“I feel like you’ve been out gathering information about questions you can ask me. To make me feel uncomfortable.”

This dialogue between Lisa Chow and Alex Blumberg on StartUp, a podcast about building up a start up, was most likely hard for both of them. It started out in an light manner, but there was an anxious undercurrent to the conversation. They were about to discuss things that were not functioning well at the company where they both work, podcast powerhouse Gimlet Media .

To be precise, Alex Blumberg is not only working for the company—he is also the co-founder of Gimlet. So the podcast we hear is in many ways the brainchild of this accomplished producer. Aside from being a superstar editor, Alex is also the host of StartUp. Lisa Chow, as you most likely figured out, is the other host—and they are both living up to the promise to tell the start-up story that you never hear. In the last two episodes of their podcast, they went at it, and in doing so may have taught us an invaluable lesson: How people behave in companies when they are not afraid.

StartUp is as honest as a podcast can be. It’s as close as one gets to a thorough autopsy of a company. Of course, there is the lure of “good material,” which I am familiar with from my personal experience working in radio. If something real happens when the microphone is on, there is a high chance that it is A-quality material. A “good material lure” lowers the barrier to publishing even the most embarrassing conversations, but even if it does, it is still rare to witness the nakedness and often brutal honesty that you hear in the StartUp podcast.

On the last two episodes of the StartUp mini-season, Alex and Lisa took their brutal honesty to new heights. First, when it was time to talk about diversity at Gimlet Media, Alex conducted some uncomfortable conversations. Although Gimlet is likely to be one of the more liberal workplaces, some surprises surfaced. I can’t say what Alex was going through on an emotional level, but it sounded like it was unnerving for him to hear about things he hadn’t even thought about (such as a religious colleague who’d rather keep his convictions to himself).

After that episode, “Diversity Report,” Lisa started walking around the company digging up problems—especially the disorganization of the whole company. Unfortunately, that is generally one of Alex’s responsibilities, so as a result people couldn’t tell who their boss was—causing ongoing confusion about who would make the last call on editorial questions. This was the case with the Reply All team (another hit podcast from Gimlet). They got into a big fight—and for good reason: Alex Blumberg and co-host PJ Vogt had changed the final edit of the show after everyone else had gone home. Co-host Alex Goldman only found out when he heard the show that was already aired. Members of the team were ready to quit.

The hardest part was still to come. Lisa turned to co-founder Matt Lieber to find out how the co-founders saw the current state of the company. Lisa asked both Matt and Alex a set of questions whose aim was to find out if there was any discrepancy in their assessments. Lisa asked them to rate on a scale of 1 to 3 (1 being low, 3 high) how Gimlet Media was doing in comparison to expectations.

Alex gave Gimlet the following grades: Quality of the shows 3 Listener numbers 3 Team dynamics 2

But then it was Matt’s turn, and he saw most areas in a different light. They both agreed on listener numbers, but Matt gave a 2 for the quality of the shows and only 1 for team dynamics.

This was difficult for Alex to swallow. “It’s really hard for me to hear numbers like that and not take them personally.” It seemed to imply to Alex that he should be doing something that he was not doing. “It's really hard, shockingly hard.”

As the show progressed a common theme would surface for Alex: He was getting different information from people when he was talking to them in person than what he was getting now. “I feel like I’m in a bubble now,” he says. And such a feeling is always horrifying. It steals the confidence from your ability to sense what is going on and nags away at one’s trust in people’s willingness to speak their minds. That can be somewhat scary. For a while you lose your reference points as a boss.

“It’s so frightening. I will go and have the same fucking lunch with the same fucking person. And I come away thinking something totally different.” Alex felt frustrated and at the moment didn’t know what to do about it. But instead of accusing anyone else (maybe he did so in private), he went on to self-reflection. “I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong. Or if I’m somehow creating the expectation that I only wanna hear good things. Or if people are afraid to tell me bad things. Or if I’m just hearing it in a warped way that I’m not acknowledging what they are saying.” Then Alex turns to Lisa and asks, “What do you think?” Lisa tells Alex about how optimistic he is. But then there is another turning point. Lisa explains how she replayed her comment for her husband, who told Lisa she was sucking up to the boss. Lisa explains that she wasn’t saying anything that she didn’t believe. But she held something back: She didn’t say that Alex’s optimism wasn’t always a good thing.

This is what I love about StartUp. Aside from being the ultimate peer support—and also entertaining as hell—it drills deep into core of what a company can be. They are tackling hard topics and emotions head-on. They don’t avoid nerve-wracking, angering, saddening and awkward conversations. And in doing so they are not surrendering to fear-based culture. It takes a lot of nerve for Alex and Lisa to do what they are doing in those episodes. It wasn’t easy, they didn’t have all the answers—hell, some of the time they didn’t even have the questions—but they still did it. They kept their emotions in check and talked about difficult things.

I would argue that most of these conversations never happen in ordinary workplaces. Who knows if Alex and Lisa would even have had this conversation if it wasn’t for the sake of the podcast. And the reason is simple: This kind of conversation is unpredictable. It’s not safe for anyone in the conversation. Shit just seems to surface in the most unexpected places, and then you find yourself in all kinds of trouble. This could be the reason why most managers just opt out. It’s easy. It's safe. And if the conversation surfaces anyway, you can always ignore or downplay it. And if it still persists, some managers choose to get angry and basically end the conversation there. These critical thoughts are not appreciated in the eyes of management.

After I wrote a book about fear, people stated to bombard me with the question “Isn’t a fearless culture a utopia?” and my answer is always that it is. Being fearless is unrealistic and undesirable, but being able to handle your fears in a constructive manner is an essential skill in the human jungle—and the modern workplace essentially is the new jungle. The point is to acknowledge that there will always be conversations that make you ache and conversations that push your defense mechanisms into full gear. The workplace is simply ground zero for facing one’s fears.

I’ve noticed, as a creative, that this is the thing: The ability to do scary stuff and socially risky stuff and still maintain trust-based social connections to others is the propellant for creativity. But we are prone to regress to evasive and defensive behaviour when faced with risky situations. When we go down the path of fear, it starts to derogate the superpowers of even the most potent teams. Ultimately, fear’s role in a company’s culture can be either that of rocket fuel or kryptonite. It seems that at Gimlet, they choose the former.

Lunch Concerto (Excerpt from Why We Fear, the book about disarming fear) 1. “Like an electric shock.” This is how conductor Riccardo Chailly afterward described concert pianist Maria João Pires’ reaction upon hearing the first notes of Mozart’s piano concerto No. 20. Chailly had just swished his baton up and down, and the orchestra had started to play. Mozart’s piano concerto No. 20, d-flat KV 466, begins with the strings. Then the brass section plays for a while, followed by a brooding performance by the strings, alternating between frantic rhythms and pauses. Mozart and Chailly with his baton are setting the stage for the soloist. Both the public and the soloist are aware of this. They are also aware that, as this is a Mozart piano concerto, at Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and conducted by Chailly, there is no room for mistakes. But why did Pires flinch? Let us imagine for a moment that you are in Pires’ shoes, waiting on the orchestra stand for your turn. The concert hall is full, the orchestra is playing, and your solo, which the orchestra is leading up to, is set to begin in two minutes and twenty-eight seconds. When it is time for you to start, everyone else falls silent. It is so quiet in the hall that even the smallest sound carries to the seats at the back. Often the mere thought of such an experience is enough to make one’s hands go numb and one’s mouth dry up. However, what could be the worst that could happen, if you discount standing there nude and dying in front of the crowd? How about what it would feel like to sit up there if you had rehearsed a completely different concerto than the one the orchestra was playing? This is precisely what happened to concert pianist Maria João Pires at Concertgebouw in Amsterdam in 1998. Pires, sitting behind her grand piano, knew from the first notes that, in a little over two minutes, she would have to perform a small miracle. She had prepared for Mozart’s piano concerto No. 21, not piano concerto No. 20 in d-flat. She had made a mistake when writing down the name of the concerto. The recording of the lunch concerto shows how the crowd of a hundred or so listeners waits for the orchestra to get to Pires’ performance, leading up to it note-by-note. Pires smiles faintly, glances over her left shoulder at the violinist sitting there, then flashes her teeth in a half grimace. She presses her head down, raises it again and tries to smile, but she fails to maintain eye contact with the other musicians. Pires presses her lips together and squeezes her eyes shut. Finally she is frozen completely still. The problem is not that she would not know which concerto to play – she is quite familiar with it: Pires recorded the concerto in 1978 and played it in public several times since then. The problem is that in an instant she must dig up the concerto from memory and play it under extreme pressure. 2. Learning concertos by heart is part of the job for a soloist. That is not the difficult part, however. Rather, actually performing a piece from memory in concert, under pressure, is so difficult that some pianists have found their career coming to an early end. Others never quite manage to achieve their full potential in concert. Worse, a person’s memory plays tricks when nearly paralyzed with anxiety. Something lurks behind extreme anxiety and fear reactions, a system that at its core is intended to ensure our survival in threatening situations. All functions that are not at that precise moment crucial for survival are bumped down in priority or bypassed completely. The current version of this system, however, is so ancient that it is mainly intended to protect us from direct physical threats. Profound, inward examination has no value to survival in a sudden, threatening situation, so it is ruthlessly neglected. This was extremely unfortunate for Maria João Pires, as it prevented her brain from functioning at its normal level. At that point, the parts of her brain responsible for higher functions were probably inactive. Had Pires wanted to summon up these higher functions to find the right notes, she would have needed to stop the chain of events launched by her amygdala. This is because these processes were at that moment directing oxygen to where it was needed and preparing her body either for full-scale mobilisation or complete paralysis. Her head would have been either too empty or too full of thoughts.1 Luckily for Pires, she had practiced Mozart’s piano concerto No. 20 so many times that she did not need to remember her part, as it was stored in the lower sections of her brains, i.e., in what people might call muscle memory. However, the chain reaction caused by the unexpected situation and social pressure had by then gone to her muscles. Her adrenaline glands were pumping adrenaline and cortisol into her blood, her heart was beating faster, and her blood pressure was rising. In such a situation the system thinks that the large muscles need glucose and oxygen for fight or flight, rather than the fine motor skills needed to play Mozart. When the body is prepared for fight or flight, it needs to raise its metabolic output and increase pain tolerance, thereby numbing the sense of touch and decreasing surface blood flow. The muscles of the inner ear tense up as the vagal nerve activates, making it more difficult to detect mid-range sounds. At the same time Pires’ central nervous system and certain cells inside her brain release noradrenaline, and even though it might help memory retrieval and focus, noradrenaline also brings restlessness and anxiety. These are pretty much exactly the kind of bodily changes that a pianist playing a piano concerto from memory does not want to experience. Soon it is Pires’ turn. Her mouth is agape and the small muscles of her cheeks are tensing. The orchestra plays the last notes. She raises her left hand to her mouth, glances up from under her brow, and then turns to the keys. The orchestra falls silent, and it is Pires’ turn to play. She plays the first, delicate notes – correctly. Then the next few, again correctly. Then she launches into a part played at quick tempo, requiring great accuracy and manual dexterity. Again, she plays it correctly. Her part grows ever more complex, and the music seems to suck Pires into its flow. Now it is the orchestra’s turn. Pires raises her chin, looking anxious. When it is her turn to play once more, the miracle continues – Pires is one with the music once more. Soon enough she has played the entire fifteen-minute concerto flawlessly from start to finish. 3. The fact that Pires managed this is astounding or at least rare. It raises questions about how she was able to navigate back from the fog and into the light. How was she able to switch off her defense system and play so gorgeously despite the pressure? And what can we learn about this in terms of controlling fear-based reactions? Let us start with adrenaline and noradrenalin, which together formed one of Pires’ greatest problems at that moment. Due to these chemicals, Pires’ pulse quickened in order to provide more oxygen and glucose-rich blood to her large muscles. Due to her increased cortisol levels, Pires’ liver was able to provide large amounts of glucose for her body to turn into muscle power. This would be great if her instrument was the gong, but Pires is a pianist known for her delicate and gentle approach to playing. The “half life” of adrenaline is approximately two minutes. Even though its direct effects would be short term after her adrenaline glands had stopped producing it, Pires had no time to lose. Her solo would start two minutes and twenty-eight seconds after the first notes. It may be helpful to come up with a credible and constructive interpretation of one’s own excitement. For example, a simple thing like interpreting a pounding heartbeat as anticipation can change the situation to your advantage and help you overcome the fear monster. Fear can make things more difficult in other ways as well. Fear-related anxiety can set off a chain of negative thinking. Concern and fear reduce cognitive capacity. A person may be rendered completely immobile in one of two ways: by entering an oxygen-preserving state (which in plain English means freezing in place) or by thinking too much.[2] Even though the knowledge of how to play the concerto was deep in Pires’ memory and she had practiced it so thoroughly that she did not need to think about moving her fingers, anxiety and fear reactions could still obstruct her from accessing this knowledge and expertise. This kind of state is not too different from the stage fright that we all experience from time to time: one’s vocabulary shrinks, completely familiar things become hard to grasp, and one’s body moves in a stiff and unnatural way. Even though Pires dislikes being categorised and denies being a Buddhist in this sense, she has never hidden her interest in Eastern philosophy. Her grandfather, who raised her, was a Buddhist. According to Buddhist philosophy you can set aside worries and concerns by focusing on the present. As a concert pianist, Pires had countless times been in situations where it is normal to be anxious. In what was quite possibly the most demanding situation she had ever been in, she refused to run away, give up, or search for her notes, and instead she shut her eyes. Only Pires knows what she did or what was happening in her head when she was sitting still with her eyes closed on stage. She may have been examining the situation from far away, seeing herself from the perspective of an external observer. She may have been thinking that in the end it was not such a big deal if she were unable to remember the concerto. With nothing at stake, such as her reputation, money, income, or her future, there would be no need to be tense. Pires may also have been focusing on her body, on her breathing, or on the music. Focusing on steady breathing in particular affects the readiness state of the body; a panic reaction can be stopped by slowing the rate at which you exhale. These actions send a signal to your nervous system, metabolism, and various nuclei that nothing is wrong. What is in any case crucial is that Pires did something, stopped the reaction from taking over, and was able to take a risk. 4. However, there is another protagonist in this story, which is to say conductor Riccardo Chailly, who was standing right next to Pires on the stand. Chailly detected the soloist’s tenseness with the first swish of his baton. The people filming Frank Scheffes’ documentary Voyage to Cythera were not able to capture Pires’ first reaction on tape, but they did record everything that happened after that: Pires manages to recover from her first reaction, and after twenty-eight seconds have passed from the first notes, she looks at the conductor and tells him that she can try. Chailly raises his gaze from Pires to the orchestra and goes on conducting as if nothing had happened. Next he turns his gaze to Pires and says something that the tape does not catch. All of this takes place while he is conducting the orchestra. Pires explains something about her notes and how she left them in the wrong place. If one had to guess what emotion her body is conveying, it would be shame. It is an embarrassing situation. In one minute and six seconds, the orchestra will stop and Pires must begin. Even though she seems to be struggling between anxiety and despair, Chailly encourages her, saying with a smile: “You played it last season.” The concerto has reached a rhythmic stage where the orchestra plays forcefully. Chailly’s body language seems to be saying that there is no problem, that the situation is in fact fun and exciting. “Easy,” he says and makes a slow downward gesture that is basically the universal sign for “calm down”. “I’m sure you do that thing. You know it too well!” Chailly punctuates his words in time with the music. He turns back to the orchestra, leaving Pires alone. She has fifty-seven seconds to remember the piece. She closes her eyes and lowers her head. She raises her left hand in front of her mouth and nose while the right moves, almost of its own accord, toward the white keys. Pires opens her eyes and plays the first notes. She starts her part brilliantly and plays flawlessly to the end of the concerto. If this was a story about fear, then there were two protagonists in it. One was Maria João Pires, who overcame her own defence system, and one was Riccardo Chailly, who instinctively or consciously helped to deactivate Pires’ nervous defence mechanisms by creating an atmosphere of psychological safety. Pires was safe even though she was in a dangerous situation. That safe space made it less likely for her amygdalas to transfer control of her body to the central nervous system, and the early shut down of adrenaline flow prevented the loss of finer motor skills. Pires’ hands retained their sense of touch, she managed to fight off the rising panic, she was able to take a substantial interpersonal risk, and the public got the lunch concerto they had come for. Bravo! This was a prime example of how one emotionally intelligent person and another socially intelligent person were able to overcome fear together. Ancora! 5. One of the greatest fear-related misunderstandings is the notion that you can do nothing about fear. This is an understandable notion but completely inaccurate. If you strip fear into its components you can start to understand it. Fear has its history, its physiology, and its psychology. When you have even a basic grasp of these various components, the different bodily reactions and the feelings and thoughts connected to them have less and less power over your day-to-day life. This is particularly important if you want to keep fear from destroying something important, whether that happens to be your peace of mind or a moment that is professionally of critical importance for you. We could simply label the story of Maria João Pires and Riccardo Chailly a miracle. However, even though there were elements of the miraculous about the concerto, nothing that happened inside Pires’ head or between Pires and Riccardo is inexplicable. There is nothing here that any one of us could not learn. This same drama plays out in different settings in our lives, over and over again. We can all benefit from understanding the human and financial costs of losing to fear, and from knowing how to act in order to conquer fear – and to reap the rewards. 6. If you want to experience “the lunch concerto” in video, here’s the clip. As you watch it, consider a few things: if our cognitive and social abilities are compromised, risk-taking decreases, explorative behaviour diminishes, and we are less creative as teams when the defense mechanism kicks in (as I show in my book). In this light, should we create workplaces where people feel psychologically safe when faced with intimidating challenges, or should we keep on creating more anxiety and expect them to be more creative and intelligent through occasional suffering? 1 This is the reason why many of us can at a moment of extreme excitement feel like we are trying to explain a five-syllable word using a children’s playbook. The working memory does not function, as it is not essential for survival. [2] In Overachievement John Eliot writes about this possible reason. According to him, too much is happening in the brain – in other words, overuse of neurons messes up one’s performance, as too many brain cells are active at the same time. If this is the case, then it is quite different from an actual paralysis reaction, wherein the body goes into oxygen-saving mode and loses sensitivity as it prepares to undergo violence or a painless death.

I always get pumped up when someone states that something can't be done. Quite often it simply is not true. People just stopped trying altogether or they were not creative enough in their approach. There is a story in particular that emphasises this idea in more concrete terms. It is Kyle Maynards life story. Kyle was born with congenital amputation, without arms or legs. (Read about Kyle in my book Nautitaan Raakana) Most people who see Kyle in a wheelchair can’t see behind the device he is sitting in or the situation he faces. However fortunately Kyles parents, family, friends and Kyle himself saw past the obvious. They understood that what they see are merely perceived limitations, but not the true limit of Kyle´s abilities. Kyle ended up being a wrestling champion in his University and even managed to wrestle himself to a ranking of 16th in his own age group at the university wrestling level. Kyle has made records in bench press and in 2010 he took his first MMA match. I contacted Kyle for my book, and here is our previously unpublished correspondence. HH: You have practiced thousands of extra hours to get where you are now. How do you deal with frustration? KM: I deal with frustration just like everyone else. The important thing is to stay positive and not allow the frustration, doubt or fear get in the way of my goals. It's not always an easy thing to do, but I know in that never trying is far worse than the pain of failure. HH: How did you feel after you MMA fight? KM: Win or lose, I was fine with the result. Many people voiced doubt that I could overcome my obstacles and survive a single round in the sport. I know in my heart how hard I worked and 99% of the naysayers would never have the courage to step into a ring and fight another man. HH: What did you learned from that experience? KM: The fight was one of the most peaceful moments of my life. I pushed myself harder both physically and mentally and I believe it made me better as a person. HH: How do you feel about your opponent Mr Fry? KM: I respect Brian for taking the fight. Honestly, it's a lose- lose situation. If he wins, he beat up a guy without arms and legs. If he loses, he lost to a guy without arms or legs. HH: What kind on mental strategies you use if/when you encounter distracting thoughts? KM: I read the book Wrestle Your Perfect Match before my fight. I knew I would be nervous from hearing a big hit or having the crowd cheer. I also knew I would be anxious when I heard "Kyle, 5 minutes until you're on", or "Kyle you're up." I wrote down everything that I would experience. How I felt, what I saw, what it smelled like. I relived my fight over and over and when the pin was put in the cage and I knew there was no turning back, it was the most tranquil and peaceful moments of my life. HH: You say in your book that sometimes you get to excuses too, what do you do when that happens? KM: The excuses I give have nothing to do without having arms or legs. They are the excuses that everyone gives, but the important thing is to not let them interfere with what I want most. HH: 2010 it was MMA, what are you planning to do next? KM: I want to continue my speaking career to reach and help as many people as possible. Athletically, I want to get more involved in mountain climbing and in triathlons to be able to compete in an Iron Man. My goal this year is to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro by bear crawling. Kyle ended up being the first person to climb to Kilimanjaro by bear crawling. He is still preparing for triathlon. More about Kyle: kyle-maynard.com