372. Survival of the Brainiest: Using Evolutionary Thinking to Outsmart Your Competition

Welcome to episode 372 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy Today's episode is all about evolutionary ideas with Sam Tatum. Ready? Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is a refresh of my interview with Sam Tatum From May of 2022 where we discussed his wonderful book Evolutionary Ideas. You'll hear all about it in the conversation, but I absolutely love this book and all the little insights woven throughout its pages because it is about evolutionary ideas. Not revolutionary, which may be the more common phrasing you might have expected. He shows how we can gain insights from nature, plants and animals to solve problems in life and business. He gives fascinating examples of how many business innovations have been influenced by plants and animals over the years and takes the reader on a journey of learning about nature and business. It's like Planet Earth meets applied behavioral science and it is so good. I learned wonderful things all throughout the pages and this conversation with Sam, and I'm pretty sure you will as well.

And in case you're wondering why I'm.

Refreshing this one today, it's because of this upcoming Friday's episode with Sam's colleague at Ogilvy, the Amazing Rory Sutherland. I am so excited to share that episode with you and felt this was the perfect way to tee up that conversation and they really do have an amazing team there at Ogilvy. Don't forget that there are links for everything, including past episodes, books like Sam's Evolutionary Ideas and Rory's Alchemy, as well as articles and a full time stamped summary of the conversation all waiting for you in the show notes for this episode, which are found within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com372 all right, let's talk about Evolutionary ideas. Sam Tatum, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.

Melinda, thanks so much for having me.

Yes, as you know, I'm very excited for you to be here. I always have a little chat at the beginning and definitely could have become victim to spending all of our time talking and not recording. So excited to have you here. For everyone who does not yet know you, can you tell a little bit about your background and how how you got into this amazing world of behavioral Science, of course.

Thanks so much. So in my background, I'm an organizational psychologist in my training and I've moved into advertising and more broadly advertising strategy. And now I lead Ogilvy's behavioral science capability. So we have a behavioral science team that's growing across the globe and I've been leading that for the last sort of four or five years.

I love it. And you've been for the UK team. You spent some time in Australia, I believe. Have you worked in any other areas for Ogilvy?

I have. So in Ogilvy. So I came from Ogilvy Sydney originally. So I was what's known as a planner in advertising. It's one of these amazing jobs that you never learn about in school. So get into it. Realize why did I waste all this time trying to sort of learn to be a planner? So if anyone's listening and needs to learn more about advertising and the role of a planner is a spectacular one. So I was a planner in Australia and then sort of was asked to bring the world of behavioral science more explicitly into our business. Being a psychologist myself then had a chance to spend some time with the team in the uk. So Rory Sutherland and Jez Groome founded the business in the UK in 2012 and had some time sort of with the team and came over sort of by the time this is aired, maybe six years, six years ago, and have loved being sort of what might be considered sort of a more sort of headquartered element of behavioral science within Ogilvy out of the London team.

That's awesome. And of course, Ogilvy, especially now very well known for its work in behavioral science. Of course, because of Rory, Jez has been on the show as well, but with Nudge stock, which. And I. I dedicated some space to nudge stock in my book, which I was writing when like just in the beginning days of Pandemic and watching Nudge stock go from this. I forget now the. But where it became the live aid of. Oh, so yeah, so from Woodstock of behavioral science. Like, how could we be the live aid of behavioral science? And that, like I was saying in there is. Just because something has changed doesn't mean it has to be worse. You know, virtual doesn't have to mean worse is this little piece I put in my book about it and how watching so many other people putting on conferences, a lot of things I was supposed to speak at. I'm sure you had the Same experience in 2020 like many people did where conferences would say, well, you know, this year's a write off Nobody's going to want to pay for this. We'll just do this kind of crappy version online this year, limp along and then hope we'll get something like we really want next year. And Nudge Stock took a different approach. Right. Saying how looking at what we have available to us, how could we make this the best it could possibly be? Are you able to share a little bit about kind of internal conversations about how you all thought about Nudge Stock differently and made that transition in 2020?

Of course, first, I'm pleased. The analogy from Woodstock to Live Aid is. I mean, I've presented those very slides to our CEO as we sort of spoke about the shift. So I'm pleased that that sort of came through. And it was really, I think it's about. It was about a 10 week decision coming up to June in 2020, where we were planning on. Normally, for those that have not come across Mudsdock, it's a festival that will be in our 10th year in 2022 and we typically hold it sort of in person by the seaside. Good excuse to get people out of the city of London to think differently. And we've hosted sort of several in Folkestone, so 450 people being sort of a packed audience and it's been wonderful. And obviously with the pandemic, that wasn't hard and we were sort of in a fork in the road to, as you say, delay or to pivot. And I think at the time I was actually in Australia. So I moved back to Australia in March 2020 just because of some difficulties with childcare, working sort of full time and could do with some grandparental support. But being in Australia and living sort of digitally, we thought, well, if we're going to do it, let's do it big and let's use this year as the year to expose the rest of the planet to something that we've sort of celebrated locally in the UK for so long, given I'm in Australia, Rory and team are in the UK and Chris Praves, who's the founder of the Overview center for Behavioral Science out of the us and we can literally follow the sun. So we started in Sydney and we ended up, I think with BJ Fogg in Hawaii for a bit of a sort of a long term festival. And it was wonderful. It was, I mean, wonderful, I say wonderful in the sense that we were just gobsmacked by the generosity of our speakers, the willingness of attendees to come and build ideas. And it's sort of really changed, obviously the proposition for Nut stock. And again, we did it in 2020, this time with a bit more than 10 weeks to plan. I was sort of joked that I was on a camping table in the basement of my partner's sort of family home for 2020 and I was in a live studio in London for 2021. So it has shifted, but it's been one of those instances where catastrophe can open up a space that we otherwise wouldn't have considered. It's like sort of the story of the London Underground. Every time a line goes down, a large proportion of people find a better way to get to work. And I think we found that, right.

You kind of get out of our habits in the way that we've always done something and find a new option. And from that first year where I know that in the 30,000 people that pre registered to attend, but as far as views was over 128,000 I think.

Is that in the first year. So we went through LinkedIn Live. So LinkedIn Live. And this was a way in which also if you're going to let's go big and Ogilvy has about a million subscribers on LinkedIn, so we were able to push live throughout the LinkedIn channels and we've got a lot of sort of organic traction, but we did, we got I think 35,000 registrations and obviously lots of organic views on the day. And what's also interesting for us, because there's a lot of content that we develop over this, over this day. So the long tail of interaction is also really interesting. So there's for listeners who've not come across the Navstock proposition, have, have a YouTube, you'll see sort of several years worth of Nunstuck Folkestone all the way through to sort of the more digital universe of Nunstuck. So there's great content available. So that's sort of a key learning for us this long term.

Well, and I know I was watching in that first year and all the Twitter shout outs and then there was this kind of like web of top connectors that I believe you had tweeted, which I was one of many people that was on that list, but it was exciting to see that. And then, you know, the behavioral Science Club on LinkedIn growing out of that, of which Louise has been a guest on the show before talking about how great that was. So just to show and for everyone when things are open again, when there is if, if you ever go back to doing this small, you know, 400 people option, I can't even imagine what Sort of lottery world you'll have to enter for people to be able to go, because everybody will. I know I would want to go. It's showing what an amazing event it could be. And Ogilvy has risen in a way that everybody else just sort of like by, you know, twiddling thumbs and hanging out, waiting for the next opportunity, you know, you. You made your own space, which is such a cool thing to see and something all sor of businesses can do if you just look at those challenges, like opportunities.

Yes, Wonderful. That's thrilled to sort of hear you say that. And obviously a big. A big effort every year. It's sort of a team of psychologists that create a TV program for a day. It's certainly a team effort, but we are immensely proud of it. So I appreciate it that it's landing for people outside our walls.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, a TV show created by psychologists sounds like my kind of. My kind of show. So we'll tune in again. All right, well, let's at least talk a little bit about your book. You know, I guess that's why you're here, which. So we're talking far in advance. But this episode is going to be coming out right when the book comes out, and it's called Evolutionary Ideas. And one of the things I love. And so I was kind of gushing at you when we first started chatting, so. But I love that I'm learning so much about other things. It's kind of like Planet Earth meets behavioral science, or I guess you guys have David Attenborough. I don't know if you do the Planet Earth thing around the other places, if they have that as common, but this approach where I'm learning about different things about animals, I didn't necessarily know and how that ties in. And I'm curious, as an. So an organizational psychologist who works in advertising, how did you even decide that this was what the book was going to be? Did it kind of happen along the way or you've had this kind of side interest in animals that turned into kind of what happened?

Good question. So the beginnings of the book, I think, actually started in about 2014 when I was asked to do a keynote in Sydney. Adam Ferry runs a conference called Marketing Science Ideas Exchange. And I've always been fascinated in how these organic examples of behavioral science are all around us. What I get most excited by is how we can be more creative as a result of. Of the field of behavioral science. And actually, for me, the secret weapon are these sort of these nudges in the Wild. These examples of manifestations of applied behavioral science we otherwise wouldn't consider in a textbook. I also think that's a bit of my responsibility being sort of a little bit different as a practitioner, but as a practitioner in an advertising agency that I sort of constructed as far as I possibly can. And hopefully this isn't too long a story out. But when I was asked to sort of speak, they asked me, sam, what music would you like played? You got on stage on the conference and actually asked for Jimi Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock. And the reason that song so important is that it was sort of, obviously a tried and tested pattern of notes and chords and a song that was very well known, but it was. What made it famous was that he infused it from inspiration of the world around us. The drums bopping, dropping in Vietnam War and the. The sounds of helicopters overhead. And. And that's what made it sort of truly special. So that the story for this keynote was about sort of learning the. Learning the chords, being inspired by nature and. And then sort of jamming to make something completely sort of unique. That's where I think sort of the central idea actually. Actually came from. And then probably six years later, I shared a video about biomimicry. And. And biomimicry, I speak about it in the book, is a. Is a field that seeks to borrow from the natural world to solve distinctively human challenges. So it's the assumption that if it's around Today, it survives 3.8 billion years of research and development. So there's got to be something good about it. So rather than just being sort of inspired by nature and being like, well, there's natural stuff all around us. Let's bring it into the hot pot. It's actually thinking about these aren't just sort of natural. These are adapted solutions. And just as you can borrow from what I write in the book, from a. From a kingfisher's build to the nose of a speed train, you can also borrow from adapted psychological solutions to solve distinctive human challenges. And that was the piece where I thought that's. That's. There's. This. There's something in here about using this analogy to help us to explore the realm of possibility in applied behavioral science.

Right. And it's such an interesting read, you know, where you're talking about vampire bats in another part of the book, and that if they. If they miss two meals, they will die. And so the others in the group, you know, the herd, for lack of a better or for the behavioral term. Right. Will then give some of their food in a really gross way, but they help sustain those who missed a meal to make sure that everyone can survive. Sort of a, you have to give back this reciprocity piece. And essentially, if you ever were going to be a hoarder of your food and be thinking just about yourself, you get shunned and then, you know, too bad for you, you're kind of off on your own. So the comparisons, I think are really valuable in understanding that we're not alone in the way that we've adapted. But why else, why talk about vampire bats when you're talking about reciprocity and how that applies for people?

For me, I think, I mean, you're right in the sense that we're not distinct. And so I think appreciating this behavior on a continuum and there are leaps in logic and as you sort of try to explore, this is a chapter about trust that you mentioned with the vampire. That's a key sort of area of contradiction that I can explore a little bit later. But I think it sort of helps us to bring a new lens on theory that some of us might be familiar with and to view it on a continuum as to what. What's the positive role that this behavior has played in our survival? Therefore, why would there be solutions around us that have adapted to make that easier? Because that's really sort of, I think the line is sort of regurgitate first, ask questions later, the payoff there. And just as that behavior is common for the vampire bat, there are many sort of signals and cues and actions that are important for us to maintain social well being, to look at a lot of much of financial trade, everything sort of built off of trust. So if we can start with something that is as concrete and tangible as a vampire, Then we can help us to go to sort of maybe less concrete psychological solutions in the future. Because actually that's sort of one of the areas where we look at biological solutions. We tend to be able to see them and increasingly see them with technology and microscopes, but you can see them more easily, psychological solutions that have been harder to see. So being able to sort of liken the dorsal fin to an asymmetric decoy is kind of an interesting challenge because you could as soon as I say dorsal fin, you know exactly what I'm talking about. But an asymmetric decoy is a little bit more obscure. So be able to sort of actually tread this line between how it's evolved in nature or in technologies. Well, we talk a lot about evolution and technical solutions helps us to sort of be more open and see psychological solutions in a slightly different way, I think.

Yeah, I had made a note. One of the things I thought was really interesting. So. And you talk about, you know, having a word for banana so you don't have to go through this long terminology of it's yellow and angled and slippery and whatever, but then tying that into different languages that have multiple words for shades of blue, like a light blue and a dark blue, where in English, blue is just blue. And to me, and this gets into. Perhaps it's because I'm doing so much in a change management sort of space right now, but just because you don't have a word for something, just because you don't see something doesn't mean it's not there and that it wouldn't resonate for someone else. And like, the first thing that you see, see or missing something, you know, doesn't mean it's not there. So taking the time to, like, dig a little bit deeper, you know, someone next to you might be seeing these, you know, a big transition, some huge shift that happened that you completely missed. And it's just because you weren't programmed with the same words early on. Do you want to expand on any of that?

Of course. And I think in that instance, it can be labeling the change in ways that help people see that they're categorically different. So the chapter of the book, I talk a lot about language. And as you're right, and having a concept, the word banana opens up a rich array of associated links, whether it's touch, smell, all these other sort of attributes that could be housed really efficiently through the word banana. So language is sort of immensely, immensely powerful, not just in sort of processing, but it helps us to actually see different things in the world. It helps us to categorically differentiate between concepts. And that's why looking at color is really interesting, because in color we sort of. We use sort of universally shared physiology, but we have different language. So in Greek and Russian, as you say, they've got two different words, categorical sort of categories for light blue and dark blue. In English, it's both blue. And you put people in a brain scanner and. And you find that actually if you. It's not just this tricky spectrum, people who have different terms can react faster, they can see a categorical difference. And the reason I sort of go a little bit of a deep dive on language is that it helps to justify what can be criticism to behavioral science in some fields, but it's just A complicated way of describing these sort of assumed truths. We sort of know this. What does it add? It's like we sort of get it in retrospect. But the reason I think it's really important is that once you have a language for something, then you see it more frequently, more easily. And if you can start to see these things more frequently and easily, then you can apply them more systematically. We don't just sort of stumble across these solutions. We create this diagnostic framework. And Kahneman talks about this a lot. I mean, that the richer vernacular diagnosis, the richer our solutions can be. But it helps us to more easily spot these specimens. So now we know that again, now we know this concept of asymmetric decoy. We can see it actually in spaces that you wouldn't expect. We don't have to look at a paper. We don't have to go back to the Economist example. There are actually multiple different variants of an asymmetric decoy. Once you know what you're looking for, but without the language, that becomes much, much, much tougher. So I think language is a real unlocker here, right?

And the language that we've used for an asymmetric decoy here is there's an episode on relativity, because that's an easier one. And which is also where I. I don't like to say hyperbolic time discounting, because that's not something that's easy for people to remember. Typically, I talk about the I'll start Monday effect.

Yes, perfect, Perfect. And sometimes, if you will walk into rooms like, here we go, they're going to throw out a couple of sort of complex, complex terms. And. And sometimes that's the case. But also these help us to connect worlds. That's the thing. If, because of this language, you can view out of category, right? You can say, actually, this is a. This is a universe. What might be considered a more universal concept we're going to talk a lot about. Nothing's universal, right? And certainly in the close, we all know that context and individual differences still play a critical role. But if we, if we can understand the concept of asymmetric decoy, that can help us to stretch across categories. We can see examples of that across different species or industries, which is why I bring up this concept. And so the analogy of evolutionary processes suit this as well. In the animal kingdom, the dolphin and the shark are both convergently evolved to feature a dorsal fin. Even though the shark is a fish and a dolphin is a mammal, they're both converged on the same solution. Once you know, the dorsal fin then you can navigate many other species the same way as we can do that with our language.

Right. And the reason that we do these things has been adapted, evolved over generations in most all cases of reciprocity and herding and all the being loss averse and whatever is there's some reason that this has stuck around because the people who went another way kind of became a fossil as you said.

Right.

Like the birds that didn't have the right shape of a beak didn't survive. And so they, they phased out versus so what we see today really has had, you know, millions, billions, whatever years of testing to get to this point. And knowing that we can then embrace that it's not just the dolphin because in sharks have it too. So there must be a reason. And then what can we be learning from that in whatever we are doing now? Which I think is a really great transition to both the innovation myths that are in the book and then you have these kind of five segments of the areas which I know we don't have time to get into all of them. And that's what the book is for. People will buy the book to get all of this. But your innovation myths that big problems need big solutions. Not true. And also that we feel like new problems need new solutions. So we've talked quite a bit already on the new problems, new solutions. I always like to kind of choose your own adventure with guests here to where I'm, I'm kind of teeing this up for you and you may go however you choose to talk about this at this point. But I love the innovation myths. I love how you know, you talk about that in the five categories throughout the book. I have now said things and you may say things.

So the innovation myths I think are really, really important because one element that I hope that the book adds to society is this assumption that we don't always need to be revolutionary. That's sort of where the title Evolutionary Ideas comes from. We have this assumption that we need to sort of and this appetite and this fetish for big bold game changing ideas. And even more so when we're faced with a big problem or a novel problem. And I write a bit at the beginning of the book about sort of proportionality. We have this sort of, this intrinsic sense of big problems need big ideas, novel problems need novel ideas. Just as if you assume that a loud bang needed a loud force by which to create it. We have this sort of mechanical mindset and we bring that into innovation. And I think that's what I want to challenge. And a lot of there's been much written on small ideas with big impacts, particularly in our categories. So there's many great books that go deep into sort of butterfly effects and small changes that make big differences. So I don't go into more detail there, but the majority is around this sort of novel problems need novel solutions. And actually, if we can identify that, we have a series of shared problems that we face. And as a result of the shared nature of these problems, we've also evolved or adapted to have shared solutions. And my contention is that we just haven't been able to see them or organize those patterns of solutions in a useful way until sort of the progression of contemporary behavioral science. And there's a midway point, if I can sort of. So there's three sort of key tools in setting up the dork. And the first is the field of biomimicry that we've touched upon, which is sort of borrowing from evolved biological solutions. There's another framework that I referenced called triz, which is really fascinating. And this is sort of an area that I've learned writing the book. It's essentially sort of an engineering solution looking at patterns of evolved technical solutions. So just as you can have the shared solution of the dorsal fin, there are many different patterns of engineering solutions that exist around us. Rather than millions of years of evolved biology, it's thousands of engineers looking to solve problems in new and novel ways and converging on the ones that work. There's a lovely quote. I think it's the sea herself who fashions the boats. And so because of this investment of time to help to solve problems with many different thinkers over many different years, we just find these patterns. And TRIZ is a really big unlocker for that. As triz, I think, identifies a suite of inventive principles to help to solve engineering problems. So if you're looking to increase the length of an item without increasing its volume, for example, you need a pattern of solutions called nesting doll. So there's a suite of inventive principles, just as in naval science we might have a suite of psychological or behavioral principles. So that's another sort of unlocker. And so the reason I bring up triz, though, because you mentioned some of the five chapters in the book that knock at trust and decision making and action, loyalty and experience. And unlocker for me on this, on this, the journey of writing a book, this book is, was the discovery of triz. And in triz, there's a sort of a belief that innovation is the resolution of a contradiction. So how can I make a Kevlar jacket strong enough to stop a bullet, yet light enough to wear? I mean, those sort of opposing forces require innovation to solve. How can I create an umbrella that's big enough to cover the human body, but small enough to fit in a handbag? That requires a degree of innovation by which to solve it. And to help solve that, TRIZ has a beautiful matrix that helps us. But in our world, we have a suite of psychological contradictions. So how can we sort of boost perceptions of trust without changing the truth? So we don't necessarily need to make things up to boost trustworthiness. Actually these cues and signals are there. We just need to understand them and elevate them. How can we aid decision making without limiting choice? And it's sort of a classic choice architecture conundrum. How can we trigger action without forcing response, increase loyalty without resulting to compensation as a first, and boost experience and improve experience without changing duration? So we find that these now sort of powerful psychological contradictions. And I think by repackaging these contradictions, then we more easily see the world faced with these shared problems in boosting trust, in aiding decision making, in triggering action, in reinforcing loyalty, in improving experiences. If that's part of your business that will be part of many of our day, then someone is likely faced with a similar problem to you. Although you might be selling pizzas and they're selling supercars. But if you understand what connects us again, these inventive principles or psychological principles, then you can borrow from each other and learn together.

Absolutely. And was a perfect segue as this is the brainy business and we have lots of people in business listening. And of course, with your work in Ogilvy, is that the, you know, on a business side. Well, so for someone that is in their job, that's listening and thinking about how they want to go applying some of this, what do you think is the best place for someone to start? In addition to like, so they bought your book and what's next?

Right.

I think, I mean, the nice thing about our work is that there are always opportunities to employ it. I think whether that's on whether you're looking at getting more people to attend a meeting and you send out an A B email with different strategies. I mean, there are always ways in which we can experiment. So I think the more we know that, the better we become. I think by working to hopefully convert what can be complex theory into more straightforward provocation, I think is helpful. So you don't need to, you don't need to necessarily know the ins and outs of prospect theory to understand how might we make it feel like someone is. You might miss out on this opportunity if you don't act now, for example. That's sort of a way in which we can deploy complex theory more in more pragmatic ways without sort of. I know that the team would like. You've got. You've spoken to many fantastic authors whose texts and books would be wonderful as a way of passage for others. But I think back to Jimi Hendrix. Understand that the notes and chords familiarize ourselves with these patterns of our psychology and they have patterns of observations. But by codifying these patterns of observations, we make it easier for us to navigate. As you say, it's different to sort of a long, bent, slippery morning staple. It's like a banana. And if we're making behavior changes, like making fruit salad, and it's easier to say add the banana than the other side. So learning the notes and chords, the frameworks handed down by the masters. If I go back to sort of where this started with Jimi Hendrix, then we can start to deploy them more easily. And once we sort of get more confident and Jimmy mastered the A's, B's, C's and D's and moved into. Okay, how do I splice this reverberator so it sounds like a helicopter? Then you can start to sort of mix it up and to mix it up. There's a rich and vast resource of inspiration in the world around us, not just in textbooks or studies, but it's happening all around us every day. And once you know what you're looking for, once you're armed with this vernacular, then I challenge you not to see it becomes a bit of an affliction. But. But if you can see it in novel ways, then you can apply it creatively. I think that was. That was a long answer to your question. Hopefully it sounds straightforward enough to start off. But. But I think know that the standard notes and chords and then you can. Then you can begin to riff and make it your own.

Right? Yeah. The. Just. I think that you likely. Like I was saying, we're. I could tell in reading your book, we are kindred and have good, you know, similar thought processes on things and that I end every episode of the show by saying, be thoughtful. And I close off my emails that way. And also in the book, I talk about being. Becoming a curious questioner and how that goes with being thoughtful. And I would assume that you maybe have a similar, you know, walking through an airport, let's say I'm one where I'm always stopping like, oh gosh, I just need to take a picture of this because I have a thought about how this ties into whatever. And sometimes it's the way that the holiday display is set up or what an interesting way they did this. Maybe it's an ad. It could be anything and totally unrelated and where, you know, with clients where they'll say, oh well, have you worked with people in X industry? And even if the answer is no, the brain makes decisions the same way. Regardless, you know, what we're looking at, it doesn't really matter. And like you're saying, even humans are much like other animals. We can look at inspiration all these other places, even if you don't have this specific background, if you have some common knowledge and like you said that the terminology of behavioral science, if that's what you're going to be building your business around and being able to implement some of this, not to say that you're in the behavioral science business, but you're looking at solving problems in this way, then having that common language is really important. So you can have a solid conversation and then can look about how you can do things a little bit differently using things that are known.

Completely agree. And that's. It can be reframing, just reframing the category that we're in. And that's where some of the sort of the advocates of biomimicry and why they found it to be such an unlocker in design and architecture just sort of forces a complete change of reference. So if we have a partner that's looking at, let's think about sort of a financial sector, for example, and there's a specific question, or actually we don't have any direct cases on that specific subcomponent of finance, but I suspect that trust has a lot to do with it. And actually if you look at trust with this specific widget, let's call it, then there's a lot of actually shared learning. If we look at it through the lens of trust, actually that's where we've got oodles of experience that can be deployed in this, in this how you would categorize the nature of your problem. So by recategorizing the problem rather than being it's just my problem in this part of this vertical that only we face because we've got this specific XYZ that's related to our industry, it's like, no, if you can reframe it in more human terms, then solutions are all around us to help us to solve that. And that's what I think. That's a big piece. So if we can help us to sort of step back and not assume that that's category specific. But I understand from a behavioral perspective what we're challenged with, then we'll find that actually you're probably not as unique in facing your challenges you might think you are. Goes back to the proportionality bias again.

Right. Which should be comforting that like you say in there, someone has solved this problem before. And so if you don't come to it thinking, oh man, this can never be done. I can't think of a specific example right now, but. Or even where people would say you can't run a mile in less than however, whatever time or this, this cannot be done. You can't do it. And then someone does it and then everyone does it. Right. Once you know it can be done, then you can do it too. And so having that this has been solved somewhere, whether it's by humans or elsewhere, I know that something has tackled this and I just have to find it and get that kind of adaptation on. Something that can inspire a solution I think should be hopefully an empowering message for everyone.

I hope so. And one of the elements that's been sort of important for my learning ongoing in my career is around how questions can be real unlockers. So part of the book is exploring sort of the concept of systematic creativity and how sort of questions can be really helpful for us to have a bit more of a checklist approach to creativity. Sometimes that might feel binary, opposed to creativity, but at least being armed with a bit of a safety blanket of some questions that you can ask, they won't always be relevant, but all you need is one or two. Just need one idea. So by having a couple of spaces to look into that you otherwise wouldn't, and the vernacular behavioral science and the sort of adapted psychological solutions around us create a really rich collection of different questions that we can ask. They won't all be relevant, but you just need. You just need one. So if you think of your sort of recategorize the nature of your problem, that's specific to me, specific to my category to actually shared by many with solutions likely existing, albeit applied in another category. Abstracting that through a question and redeploying it yourself. Hopefully there's a. Hopefully there's a good checklist for us to take away here.

Yeah, absolutely. The audience knows that I love me some good questions. I do a lot of training on question storming instead of brainstorming with businesses as it is my favorite thing to do and I do want to be thoughtful of your time. As I said could sit and chat forever. But as we have to close out the show, what is the best way for everyone who is excited to go get their copy of Evolutionary Ideas and to connect with you and or Ogilvy or whatever it is, what's the best next steps for them to take?

Thanks. I mean firstly, big thanks for having me on. Lovely to be able to have this conversation about the book and thank you for supporting it. So the book's available on Amazon. Evolutionary Ideas be available on Amazon. I'm available on LinkedIn or my email sam.tatum.com Any questions? Do shout but I hope you I've learned a lot through the process of writing this book. Malen, you described it when we're sort of speaking before around sort of learning lots in the process of uncovering something we're familiar with. And I think that's been a journey that's been familiar to me too. So I do hope this book add something to the world by which we can be more efficient in our problem solving and hopefully individually ask slightly different questions when faced with challenges that we feel that we're alone in and knowing that actually others have faced this and solved it and the answer's all around us.

Wonderful.

Well, we'll definitely have links for the book for your LinkedIn. I know that you're pretty active on Twitter, so we'll do that as well. I do do not put guest emails typed out in the show notes because I care about your inbox and not getting spammed. So for listeners here you can go, you know, go back 20 seconds, write it down and know that it won't be there for people that check out the show notes. So that's a little bonus for for listening. So thank you again, Sam, for joining me on the show for your amazing book. It's been a delight to chat with you today.

Thank you so much. Pleasure's mine.

So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about evolutionary ideas with Sam Tatum today? For me, I would have to say there are two main things that have stuck with me over the years since first reading Sam's book. First is the way he's been able to construct such an interesting story that showcases combinatorial thinking so well. That is an idea I first learned while reading a more beautiful question by Warren Berger. A link to that book and my interview with Warren are of course linked for you in the show notes. It may sound intimidating, but combinatorial Thinking simply means combining items together, and the more different they are, the better it can be. In the case of Sam's book, combining behavioral science with nature may seem strange, like it couldn't make sense sense. But when you put it together in the right way, it creates this beautiful new thing that seems like it was always meant to be. And I love that. Next are the myths he busts throughout the book. Most specifically, the one that really has resonated and stuck with me over the years is that myth that big problems need big solutions and learning that we don't always need to be revolutionary. It's so easy to think that we need to jump to something new that's that's never been seen before and feeling that pressure to revolutionize. I absolutely adore that. Sam shows us again and again that it's simply not true. It really is freeing to know that the thing you're working on, whatever has you stuck, that big problem, has been solved somewhere else before and all you need to do is find it.

What about you?

What resonated with you most from the episode? Do you have an example of a big problem that was was solved with something small? We would love to hear about it, come find us and share about it. On social media. Sam is s underscore Tatum Tatam and I'm the brainy biz pretty much everywhere and Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. And to make it easy, there are links in the show notes to connect with Sam and I, as well as to get links to related past episodes, books like Evolutionary Ideas, of course, a timestamped summary of the episode, and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@thebrainybusiness.com 372 and just like that, episode 372 on evolutionary ideas with Sam Tatum is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Rory Sutherland.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

You don't want to miss it. Until then then. Thanks again for listening and learning with me and remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.