Janina Bak: Why Smart Organizations Make Stupid Decisions? Business lessons

This talk explores the concept of boredom and its effects on human behavior, drawing on a research study by Timothy Wilson that examines how people would rather administer electric shocks to themselves than experience boredom. The speaker connects this to the importance of making work environments pleasurable and engaging, emphasizing the psychological state known as 'flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, where individuals feel fully immersed in their tasks. The discussion then shifts to essential skills for the future workplace, highlighting creativity, confidence, and teamwork. The speaker provides evidence from various studies to illustrate how promoting a culture of acceptance for mistakes and encouraging collaboration can foster innovation. Ultimately, the talk promotes the idea that the ability to cooperate and support one another is critical for thriving in modern work environments, while also advocating for an inclusive culture that values diverse perspectives.

Thank you. Um, I'm very glad I'm here. I have to say I'm a bit stressed because I'm also an academic teacher. So, I'm used to speaking to big groups of people. But because I'm an academic teacher, I'm not used to anyone listening. And this will be something new. But I'm actually super glad that you came, that you will be listening because we start with a very important

question. You all probably at some point decided to ask it yourself being when is it okay to give other people electric shock. There was actually a researcher who decided to know it. His name was Timothy Wilson. He was a psychologist from University of Virginia and he designed a very interesting experiment. He gathered a group of volunteers and then he electrified them because why not? He constructed a

button like that. So each person approached this button, pushed it and then was given an electric shock and he actually got some grant for it. So if you are wondering where your taxes go for such research, right? So he electrified all those people and then they he asked them how was it and they said oh it was not too good and he asked them then whether they

want to do it again but for money this time but they said no it was so unpleasant that they don't want to have anything to do with this button and then Timotis said okay so now the second part of the experiment you will sit in a room. In this room, you will have only black and white walls. You will have no Wi-Fi, music, phone, computer, and your

only task is to sit in this room for a given time and to do nothing. There was a twist, probably you all see it right now, next to each person, he put this button. Why? because he wanted so strongly to check whether we as human beings hate being bought so much that we would actually prefer to electrify ourselves rather than sit and do nothing. Do you think

they electrified themselves? Yes. On average twice before seven minutes passed. Yes. There were also some gender difference. So 25% of females electrified themselves, 75% of males. And of course there was this one guy electrified himself 196 times and they had to stop the experiment. But you see those were the people who said they never want to do have anything to be done with this button. However, boredom

was such a difficult emotion for them that they still decided to get themselves a painful shock rather than sit and do nothing. And I told you that they knew how long they will sit in this room. How long was it? What do you think? 10 minutes. Not as bad, but not too good to 15 minutes. And even this 15 minutes was too long. So when I read

this article, I was still teaching at a university. It still changed my mind. Okay. So we hate being bored so much. So now imagine that you are being bored for 34 years. Because on average that's how long we spend at work. I will give you a minute to calculate how much is left. Uh so if we spend so much time at work, I think it would be

important to spend some time to make it pleasurable, creative, fun in the exact same ways as panda bears do. I don't know if you know, but panda bears constantly roll down the hill. So I once started watching panda bears and they were rolling down the hill and I was like, okay, I want to know why they are doing it. So, I read plenty of scientific papers and

it turned out that panda bears roll down the hill because they want to, because it's fun, because it's pleasurable, but also it availables them to test new skills, new ideas into safe settings. There actually is a scientific equivalent for that and it's called the flow. So the concept of the flow by Mihali Tukan Mihali that actually explains why is it so difficult to become a famous Hungarian

but he did it with this concept and you probably know it. It's the concept that you feel fully immersed in whatever you are doing. However, it's not only about doing artistic things like painting, dancing. It can and should be applied and found in every task and in every job. It's the state where we perform the best, where we actually are fully focused, where we are less distracted,

more creative. The good news is that we can actually plan it. It happens between two variables. First, the skills. So whether we are capable of doing a certain task and the second the challenge. So whether the task is difficult enough, intellectual exciting and the balance needs to be exact because if we lack skills and we lack the challenge, we get apathy. I actually name it the pigeon

zone because I don't know if you've ever seen how pigeons build the nests like that. So zero effort, very poor performance review. That's exactly what's h what's happening here, right? Too little skills, too little challenge. If we have more skills but we still lack the challenge, we will get bored. If we are have the challenge but we lack the skills, anxiety, we all know it, right? And

here happens the magic. So it's right in the middle when your skills max match the level of challenge and that's exactly what we should be aiming at in our jobs also in not only in our professional life. The the problem now is that it's year 2026. So the question was okay which skills are actually the most important because you know I checked which skills were crucial in

2006. Oh god then using the internet using the Microsoft word and typing. So probably now we have different skills but we also have some hints. We have the job of uh future of jobs report. So a study that analyzes what skills, jobs, job market will look like and in this report there is actually one graphic which says that 9 39% of workers will actually skills will change

by 2030. Today we don't have time to talk about all of them but I want to talk about three core ones which I actually think are super important especially in marketing. So the first one will be explained to us by the study on browser users that was actually a study by Adam Grant. He is an or organizational psychologist and he once analyzed data from the call centers

and he found out that there's a key difference between people using Chrome and Firefox and people using Safari and Internet Explorer. To be exact, the first group are performed 15% better at the job than the second group. So the question was why? It was not about technology. It was not about you know using the computer. The question was very different. The two these two browsers are the

default option and the users of this browsers they needed to decide that the default option is not enough. They needed to say okay this option is cool but maybe I will search for a better one. They were simply curious and those people Adam Granted named the originals. So people who have new ideas, people who are not afraid of speaking about it, who are not afraid to give,

you know, nonobvious um solutions to quite obvious problems like here, right? Solved and those are the exactly the people we need in marketing and digital marketing. So the first skill or group of skills is creativity and curiosity because you know in today's world playing itself is the biggest risk that we can actually take and we im when you see this you immediately think of probably the same

companies right who failed to do that. Nokia with a very famous statement of the CEO saying no one will want to buy a smartphone. Somebody actually bought it. And then we have Kodak with another innovation would will disrupt the film sales. Actually yeah it did. So we tend to think that creativity is reserved you know only for some departments right those crazy Tik Tok people right or

social media people. But you know it's not about creating one innovation department in the basement just to separate the crazies. It's actually that everyone can and shall be creative because if you think about it, every problem is a lack of idea problem. Whether you want to buy a gift, name a child, increase the revenue, solve an interpersonal conflict in your team, design a new campaign, a product.

First what you need to do is to generate as many ideas as possible and then choose the best ones because your ideas are resources and if you have a lot of ideas the probability that there will be one gem among them is much higher. So the question is how to generate them in such big quantities. So we need to actually use a favorite word AC but in

a way I use it in my company so as slowly as possible and I have a study on that I actually want to paint it on the wall of my company so it will happen at some point so I have a research on that so so that you can actually you know go to your boss and say that's how we want to work now and it's again

a research by Adam Grant. What he did, he gathered a group of people and he asked them to generate new innovative business ideas and those ideas were then um evaluated by external experts, how new they are, how creative and so on. He uh created three groups. The first group was said that they want to need to start to work immediately. the second two that they need to

procrastinate for five and 10 minutes and it tend it it when when he looked at the result he saw they were actually playing mind sweeper so you know this game maybe you remember and he found that actually the group that was procrastinating for five minutes got 16% of creativity boost and however there are two important points you need to remember here. Firstly, we cannot procrastinate forever, right?

We all had products like that. So, at some point, we really have to start working. And the second thing is that creativity boost happens only when we are first told what we will be working at and then start procrastinating. why does it you first we need to draft the innovation intent. Why? Because then the incubation effect kicks in. It's you know it's the effect when you take

a break take a break from a problem then you know mind is still processing unconsciously and then you are get you you get more creative ideas when you come back I actually test it in my workshops when I have workshops on creativity and innovation. There is one task I'm giving to all participants and it's so-called the nine dots puzzle. It looks like that. So you have nine

dots and you need to connect them using four straight lines or fewer without lifting the pen. And now some groups are asked to do it as fast as possible. Some groups are given the task and then have the coffee break and then get back. So actually the people that have time constraints, they usually solve this puzzle in the most popular way. So this one and it's a

correct explanation. Great. It's just the most popular one. However, the groups that had a coffee break and then went back. Oh, they get more creative. So they will connect the dots, for example, like that. Still connected, right? Or my favorite person who connected the dots like that. And that's what we aim for because you know creativity the best creativity means disruption. So we need to give it

some time. So creativity needs time but it also needs a the second thing which is actually close to the second skill and the second requirement will be explained to us by a cup of coffee. Richard Nisbet was a psychologist and of course he designed an experiment. So he opened two coffee stands. So there was they were self-service. So there were no there was no one in the

coffee stand. You approached the coffee stand, you picked up a coffee and then you had a box and in the box you were about to put the money, but nobody was watching, right? There was a twist. Two coffee stands. Next to one coffee stand, he put a coconut. Next to the second coffee stand, he put a coconut. Fun fact was that in front of one coconut, people

behaved better. They put more money in the box. Less often, they actually left without paying. When they didn't have the exact money, they even put more than required. And you know why? Because this coconut looked like that. It had a face. And it turned out that when we feel watched even subconsciously, even by a coconut, we behave better than in a situation when no one is watching.

So it is actually good news for you because you know you can go you can buy a coconut with a face, put it on your desk, go on holidays and everything will be fine. However, of course, it's good when we behave better because we are so afraid that we are being looked and judged. However, it's not good news when you know the fear of being judged holds

us back from taking any action at all. So, the second skill is confidence. And actually in business 85% of ideas remain untold because of shame because of fear of looking stupid. Not too good statistics and maybe actually those people have some point because there was a survey by Eron Stand uh and they asked people in your organization is it okay to make mistakes? So they asked the

sealevel executives and the seale executives said 79 of% of them said yes of course our organization is tolerant of failure but then they asked the entry-level people and 25% of them said yeah it is actually okay to make mistake and we need to create a team culture which says it is okay to fail because if you think about it or Maybe maybe you don't think about it

in this way but I think about it but failure is not the opposite of the success. It's a part of it and we have plenty of examples of that. So for example the pharmaceutical company Fizer they spent plenty of money on a drug to develop a drug that was about to treat high blood pressure. It didn't work at all, but it actually had a strange side effect.

And that's how they got Viagra 3M. They were actually working on a super strong strong adhessive, super strong glue. They developed one that was super weak. It barely sticks to anything. So, they got postits. And there was also a MMO game called Glitch. probably you have no idea what the game is because no one was playing it. But while they were working on the game, they developed

an internal communicator and that's how we got slack. So maybe it's okay to I know it's difficult to think about it this way, but maybe it's okay to cut ourselves some slack because you know sometimes [ __ ] is just a plot twist, but we need to allow it. It's actually a good tattoo idea, right? Yeah, I think I will do it. But you need to allow it and

you need to make sure that people feel safe to say, "Yeah, I [ __ ] up." But maybe, yeah, we will see for any other resolutions. So, and actually it's we have plenty of very successful companies who know it and use it. For example, there's a website called killed by Google. So the Google graveyard and there you will find all the Google products and services that failed. At this

point we have 299 of them. So quite a lot. But we still think that Google is a successful company, right? Simply not everything always works. Also there is an ice cream company Ben and Jerry's my favorite one. And they also have in the DNA DNA to test as many new ideas every year as possible. So they introduce plenty of new flavors to the market every year and

some of them are not successful. So what they did is they build the flavor grave graveyard. So we did for we discontinued ice cream flavors and each ice cream flavor had a tombstone uh epitapi and also a time span and I think it's super important to see that sometimes they were on the market fewer than a year and it is okay because in the DNA they have

let's try it and let's see what happens. So innovators fail more often but simply because they try more often pure statistics. So on a more individual level but also a team level we need to build a culture that says we fail forward right because actually failing is better when we make it a teaching moment. So when we switch from the question who's to blame to the question

okay but what did we actually learn? What can we do to be better in the future? And on an individual level, if you [ __ ] up, I think you should think about yourself in the same way that Carol Dwick, psychologist and a teacher thinks about her students. She actually introduced a very interesting grading system. ABC, we all know these grades, but also the grade not yet. NY not

yet. So the student doesn't yet possess the skills, doesn't yet have the knowledge, needs to learn more, read more, test more, but you know this is the grade not yet and not never. So yeah, maybe we failed with this project. Maybe it was not a moment, but again, let's try again. So failure is not the end point. I would say it's a very important learning step, but

we just need to allow it. So, so far we talked about two stupid mistakes that a company can do. The first one is to play safe. Easy as that. The second one being failing to fail. And the third one will mammoths. Five million years back. We need to go. Vanessa Wood, Brian her, a pair of anthrop anthropologists. They actually po pointed out that at some point of

history we shared the earth not only with mammoths but with four different homminins. They all had big brains. They all had language skills and they all went extinct. Homo sapiens survived. So there was this question what kept us in the game? Why actually we survived? Why what is so special about it? So the usually some cool ideas that it was about strength. There is always this idea

that it's about bravery and of course there are some people saying intelligence and I am saying no I don't think so. We have to look further. So Brian her says that it's a real photo I have to say but I don't know whether they are still alive. Brian her says that we survived because of our ability to cooperate, to care for each other, because of our empathy.

He actually coined a phrase, the survival of the friendliest. So some of us still remember it in the AI era. I don't know if you know, but 12% of people are nice to AI just in case of robot uprising. So they actually say, you know, hello microwave Steve just in case when he decides to erase the humanity from the planet Earth, maybe I will be killed at

last. Do you do it? Do are you nice to? Of course. Yeah, I I I'm too. Yeah. So fingers crossed that microwave Steve will remember it. Uh but some of us actually forgot. We made success about being better than the others, about simply competition. And I don't know if you know, but competition is not a universal law for all human beings. Let me introduce you to the

Zani Zouri tribe. They live in the American Southwest. And once they were visited by American researchers, of course, American researchers and American researchers invited the kids to take place at part in the race. So they explained how the race looks like. So that there's a starting point, end point and that you have to rush till the end. But when the race started, kids actually didn't rush till

the finishing life line line. They held hands and they were dancing and they crossed the finishing line at the same time at the same moment. So then the researcher asked them why didn't they spring till till the finish in line and kids said something like that to survive we have to be faster than the wild animals but not faster than each other and maybe that's a hint

that maybe sometimes we can cooperate rather than compete. I would say that the third mistake that we can make is actually doing it all alone. So the skill being teamwork. But no worries, I have I think I have an interesting take on that because we will talk about it by finding an answer to a question. How to pick the perfect crew for a three-year M mission to

Mars. That was actually a question that NASA had. They needed to send people to space, four people crew. The problem is that there is a 20 minutes communication delay between people in space and people on Earth. So they needed to decide, you know, how to pick the best crew, the best and brightest who can actually solve quickly almost any problem without external help. The logic was that

they need the people with the highest IQ, right? Not just a bunch of geniuses. But it turned out it's not so easy. Anita Tawuli was the person who was picked up to find the answer to this question. So she studied 200 groups. They got plenty of tasks, group tasks, individual ones, very different ones, visual puzzles, mathematical ones, moral judgments and so on. And she discovered something called

the C factor. So the measurable collective IQ that predicts how well the group will perform across many different tasks. A very important measure to actually take a look at. So what she saw is that the performance was not strongly correlated with the average group IQ but also it was not correl correlated with the you know the most smartest person in the room. Actually it was about three

key factors and I think you will be quite surprised. The first factor is social sensitivity. So the higher emotional intelligence the higher collective intelligence. So empathy taking into account the feelings of all people in the group being sensitive to what is happening in communication in discussion was actually crucial for effective group solving group problem solving. The second thing and a lot of companies have problems with that

was the conversional turn taking. So in groups where some people dominated the discussion they actually performed worse. It is important that we have the equal distribution of speaking turns that actually can everyone can take a voice and it this person will be listened. It strongly predicts the higher collective intelligence and it is such an important finding you know for facilitating meeting and team management practices. But all

people have to have a turn. And the third one quite interesting gender composition. Gender composition. So the more females in the group the better. But it was not about the specific gender. It was that women usually score higher on social sensitivity. So that's how it goes. But you see this again improves t turn taking, reduces dominance effect and so on. And it's actually super important that you

know communication, empathy, diversity, they matter more than she brain power but only when collabor collaboration is true and not forced. That is the important distinction. And there is one more thing that matters and it was brought to us by Mark Granoveta. He was a sociologist and he researched social ties in the uh organizational context and he discovered that we all have strong ties in life and at

work. So those are people that we talk often and that we trust. We have frequent contact. We have plenty of co in common. We like each other. But then we have weak ties in life. So people that we don't really know. They probably have different opinions. They probably do different things that we if we got stuck in an elevator together, it would be awkward. However, Magraoveta discovered

that for our own uh professional development, the most important are weak ties. So that we actually get into contact with people who are not necessarily the same. Why? Because weak social ties act as bridges between very different networks and circles. The weaker the tie, the more likely it is to provide novel information. It's better for spreading ideas, learning something new. So we need the diversity in in

terms of knowledge that we have, thinking styles, opinions. However, remember that diversity doesn't work unless it's followed by inclusion. So the practice of ensuring for me inclusion means that everyone plays the game. And I actually mentioned the game for a reason because let me introduce you to the cyber ball experiment. So it was an experiment when participants played a virtual ball tossing game with two other players.

So there was a group of three people and they played the ball online and everyone was playing the ball. At some point one of the research subjects was excluded. So two others were playing go ball with each other and this one person was excluded. Stopped getting the ball. No idea why. And at the very same moment they used the fMRI machine. So scanning the brains just to

check what parts of the brain are being active while the activity is conducted. And it was actually super interesting because they found out that social exclusion activated the same areas in the brain that are activated when we feel physical pain. So social exclusion actually feels like physical pain. Look how crucial it is for us that we actually make sure that everyone feels safe and feels included that

everyone plays the game. There's no drawbacks to this idea, right? Benefits individuals, benefits teams. Actually, let me introduce you to the research of Amy Edmonson. Uh, she wanted to know why some medical teams make more errors than the others. And she decided to study the number of errors they are conducting making, but also the relationships. So she had teams with very close relationships. They knew each other.

They knew the names. Sometimes they knew the families. You know the drill, right? Better teamwork and better relationships. But then she also had teams with formal relationships. Here are bureaucracies. Sometimes they didn't even know the names. So you know a very different pattern to this one. However, she asked them firstly. She conducted a survey about teamwork, but then she asked them to actually record the number of

mistakes that they were making over the study. And it turned out that actually the groups of with more formal relationships make fewer mistakes. So the more formal relationship the better. Or at least that's what data showed because the truth was very different. More formal teams do not make less mistakes. They they simply fail to report it. And that's something dangerous for an organization. We have some further

data on that. Let me introduce you to Project Aristo from Google. They wanted to know what drives team success and they had a huge data here. more than 180 teams studied over two years, plenty of statistical models, very different variables including how many introverts do you have, thinking styles, leading styles and so on. And then they wanted to know what's the you know number one factor that

drives team success. So let's take a look at top three. The third the third factor in high performing teams structure and clarity. So whether I act whether we everyone know what the goal is. What is the definition of success? What everyone roles mean. Simple as that. How decisions are made. Number three. Number two dependability. Meaning that you do not have to check on other people. You know

that everyone will do their jobs. you know that everyone will get to the deadline. You feel safe in this matter. However, number one in high performing teams is psychological safety. So how safe it is for you to be yourself, how welcomed you are in the group, but al also the belief that you will not be punished if you speak out something not along the line. state that

you made a mistake. Super important thing for any team and any diversity is a key here. However, remember that you know inclusion invites people in psychological safety let them speak. And I know that you may think now okay but we are inclusive. We had all those trainings. But exclusion sometimes means different things like gossiping or not g giving this pe people a voice during a meeting. Exclusion

in a very strange form also happened to me during one of my workshop. It was a Lego serious play workshop. So a workshop where people are given a task but they need to build the answer using Lego bricks. And it was a workshop on uh resilience and well-being. So the first question was participants were asked okay how do you feel today? What emotion do you bring to

the p table today? And they built plenty of fantastic models to answer this question. However, there was one person who asked who answered this question differently and build something like that. So when I saw something like that, I immediately know, okay, now we need a break. So I started a break and during the break, I was um approached by a supervisor. And he said something like that.

Don't worry, Anina, about this person. He probably was too lazy to get some bricks. I don't like explanations like that. When I hear explanations like that, I usually look like this fox. And I think, you know, I always think the same. I think okay well that's fantastic but maybe we have to go deeper. So I asked this person myself of course not in public uh but I

approached him and asked what the model was and this person told me that this model was grief. So too often we jump into conclusion. we say okay this person maybe was disengaged too lazy maybe we cannot relate to this however I think that nowadays the highest currency is the attention that we can do we can give to the other human being actually in English we say it

exactly like this we say oh what happened we say pay attention so maybe this attention is the highest currency at this point because I don't know if you know I'm a big fan of Lego bricks. So, I don't know if you know, but six Lego bricks can be combined with each other on 500 million ways. So, imagine how many amazing combinations you have in your groups of

six, 16, 60 people. You just need to make sure that they click. So I would say that the fourth key skill would be to be kind to ourselves to each other of course also to the robots just in case. So to finish so to sum up I introduce I invited some of people that are the best in creativity and innovation. So scientists just to sum up the

first thing I would like you to remember allow procrastination. Isaac Newton discovered the law of universal gravitation while lying under a tree. So, you know, give yourself a break, some space. The second thing, allow mistakes. Alexander Fleming also once forgot to throw away his lunch and that's how we got penisellin. So, good for him. And the third one, I know a difficult one but important. Create a

safe space which boosts self-confidence. It is difficult but remember that there are people that we can learn from children. So I will finish with an anecdote about a drawing class. It's an anecdote of Ken Robinson uh who said that there once was a drawing class and children were told to drew draw whatever they want. So they were drawing, you know, mom, dad, cats, trees, whatever they wanted.

And the teacher was going around the room and asking kids, "Hey, what are you drawing?" And they said they are drawing mom, dad, dog, tree, and so on. But one of the girls said something different. She said, "I am drawing the picture of God." And the teacher said, "Okay, but no one know how God looks like." And she said they will in a minute. And this is

the confidence I wish to all of you. And thank you very much.