June 18, 2019

Gabriel Weinberg: Using Mental Models To Make Better Decisions – The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk

Check out The Learning Leader Show Podcast Page

Great leaders share these 3 traits:
- They’re open to growing and learning
- They help everyone around them succeed in their role
- They make sure their team is working on great ideas/projects
Advice for the workplace:
- When beginning a new project, first answer the following questions:
  - What is the objective of the project?
  - What is the success criteria?
  - What are we trying to solve?
- Create a post-mortem report for every project (ones that fail AND ones that succeed) – ask your team:
  - What went well?
  - What didn’t go well?
  - Given those things, what can we do better next time?
Be careful about trusting your intuition – very often you have have a few biases you’re not immediately aware of
Career advice:
- Either go really deep into a single discipline that’s in demand or combine two different disciplines (i.e., become someone who’s really knowledgeable about finance and also really good at public speaking)
- If you have a particular set of skills that the market really desires, you can demand a better salary or more benefits

Gabriel Weinberg (@yegg) is the CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo, an internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs
- Check out the Podcast Notes from Gabriel’s appearance on The Knowledge Project

Great leaders share these 3 traits:
- They’re open to growing and learning
- They help everyone around them succeed in their role
- They make sure their team is working on great ideas/projects
Gabriel follows “The North Star” model
- It’s a metaphor for the DuckDuckGo’s mission statement
  - Everything you do in your company should be moving you towards your North Star

Gabriel is the CEO of DuckDuckGo – an internet privacy company that provides traffic blockers, encryption, and private search
- Gabriel started the company in 2008 as private search engine
  - Search engines are one of the most personal services on the internet – people frequently type in their financial, medical, and life problems

Mental models are concepts used for general decision making
- They’re essentially shortcuts for higher-level thinking
Mid to higher tier managers need to be good decision makers, so Gabriel created a list of mental models and shared them internally with DuckDuckGo employees
- This list eventually turned into the book
Gabriel co-wrote the book with his wife
- It took about 2 years of intense writing to get done
One popular mental model – thinking in first principles
- Break things down to the most basic assumptions and then build up a train of thought from the fundamentals
  - Elon Musk is a big proponent of this one

On Projects:
- When working on a project, Gabriel has his team write down/answer:
  - What is the objective of the project?
  - What is the success criteria?
  - What are we trying to solve?
- Everyone should agree with the above before moving forward
Instead of making a pro/con list, make a cost/benefit list
- Write down all the costs and benefits for the activity – this allows you to easily see the profit or loss over time
Create a post-mortem report for every project (ones that fail AND ones that succeed)
- This creates a feedback loop of critical thinking – ask your team:
  - What went well?
  - What didn’t go well?
  - Given those things, what can we do better next time?
- Why is it rare to do a “success autopsy?”
  - No one wants extra meetings, especially after things went well – you have to build the autopsy process into the culture

Since DuckDuckGo is very distributed and gives its workers lots of autonomy, the company looks for people who are self-starters
- Employees must also:
  - Question assumptions
  - Communicate well
  - Give people the benefit of the doubt
    - As an example, some text messages may be interpreted in a negative tone – assume it’s a neutral or positive tone
  - Have an experimental mindset and validate direction
    - Run experiments if you have a hunch and then analyze your findings
  - Build trust
    - DuckDuckGo is very transparent and widespread, trust is a must when working remotely
- To test if applicants have these traits, Gabriel gives them a paid project to complete, allowing him to get a feel for how they work and the way they think through problems

You can’t always trust your gut intuition
- Why? – People have biases that they might not be aware of. This includes:
  - The availability bias (you may not remember all the options you have)
  - The confirmation bias (If you’ve already made a decision in a certain direction, you’re much more likely to make decisions that push you towards that same direction)
Instead – use your intuition as a hypothesis generator (don’t fully commit to any decision)
- Gabriel calls this “thinking gray” – Delay decisions until they absolutely must be made
- Jeff Bezos thinks of decisions as doors
  - Go through the door you think is right, but if it turns out to be wrong – just reverse course, head back, and go through another door

Flex your market power muscles
- If you have a particular set of skills that the market really desires, you can demand a better salary or more benefits
Either go really deep into a single discipline that’s in demand or combine two different disciplines (i.e., become someone who’s really knowledgeable about finance and also really good at public speaking)
The fastest way to build trust is through vulnerability
- Being vulnerable and honest speeds up the process of building a trusting environment
To get better at a skill, you need deliberate practice. Here’s how to accelerate your learning:
- Work at the edge of your comfort zone
- Hire a coach who can give you feedback
- Create a board of advisors
- Check your thinking and explain it (by talking or through writing)
Writing is the best form of thinking critically
- You can easily see if your argument is logical or full of holes
Find the highest leverage points in life – where the least amount of work is doing the most positive impact