Special episode: Think Fast, Talk Smart

0:00Russ:Hey everyone, it's Russ Altman, your host for the Future of Everything. As the summer winds down and people get ready to head to the next season, we wanted to share something a little bit different. I was recently on a different podcast called Think Fast, Talk Smart, hosted by Matt Abrahams, a colleague at Stanford on the faculty at the Graduate School of Business. We traded seats and I became the guest, and we talked about the future of communication in the age of AI. It was a super fun experience being on the show, and we thought we would rerun this as part of our Future of Everything feed because you might find it useful.

0:34Russ:We hope you enjoy it. In communication, the ability to connect and to explain where you are and where you need to go is critical. My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast.

1:02Today, I'm excited to speak with Russ Altman. Russ is a professor of bioengineering at Stanford University. His primary research interests are in the application of AI and data science to problems relevant to medicine. Russ is also the host of Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything podcast. Welcome, Russ. I'm a big fan of your podcast and really enjoyed the opportunity we had earlier today where I was a guest on your show.

1:27Russ:Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. I share enthusiasm for this podcast, and it's kind of a thrill. I think it might be my first podcast as a guest, and it couldn't be a better one. Oh, well, thank you. And I'm excited for what we're about to do. You ready to get started? Yes. Excellent. Each of your podcast episode titles starts with The Future Of. So let me start by asking you for your thoughts on the future of communication, especially how AI plays out in it. So first of all, I'm glad you mentioned that I had you on my podcast this morning because the answer is you just told me the future of communication.

2:01Russ:But I actually thought about it before we chatted. I'm an AI enthusiast. I use AI in my research. I'm part of the Human-Centered AI Institute at Stanford. AI in general has exposed lots of things that were hidden in our society. So a lot of people hear about bias and unfairness, and that is a problem with AI. On the other hand, it was a problem before. And in some ways, we need to give AI credit for exposing the unfairness and giving us something that we can work on to try to improve. And the reason I mention this is I think for communication, in some ways, it's the same answer. If you're worried that a chat GPT-type tool can replace you, I think you need to think about why am I communicating?

2:42Russ:What am I trying to say? Am I being authentic? Do I have a message? Because really, if those things are true, it shouldn't be a problem. It should actually just help you amplify and improve your message. So I think that we're at a time now where people have to ask hard questions about why they're communicating and how they communicate. And I think that the AI is bringing these issues to the fore that were kind of insidiously in the background. So you can see I'm an AI optimist, and I think this will help. I also think AI can bring a lot of value to communication. And I really like your response that the thing to worry about is not AI taking over communication.

3:16The thing to worry about is, do I have a clear goal? Do I know what is important to say? And how can I craft it in a way to be helpful? And I think AI can be an assistant in it. For example, I have many non-native speaking students. AI is a wonderful tool to help them learn some of the vernacular and learn other options for ways of saying things. So I appreciate that perspective.

3:36Russ:You know, it is interesting how good it is when you say, please explain this at the level of an eighth grader or at the level of a high school student. And I think that's something we all can get better at because listening, understanding who your audience is and then making sure you're delivering at the right level is always a challenge. And that seems to be one thing that it's kind of good at. Absolutely. And you can actually use it to flag jargon in terms that others might not understand. You mentioned that you happen to use it in your communication. Do you mind sharing some of the ways you use it?

4:04My favorite story, if I may.

4:06Russ:was I had written a grant proposal. And I ran the one-page summary of the grant through the large language model. And I said, please summarize the strengths and weaknesses of this summary of my research that I'm about to submit to the National Institutes of Health for research dollars. And it came back and it had a few pretty good positives and negatives. But my favorite negative is it said, you seem to be leaning on prior accomplishments too heavily. And it was absolutely right. So I've used it as a pre-human screen. Before I go to my colleagues even, even my trusted colleagues, let's just see what the LLM has to say.

4:47Russ:Maybe I'll fix it up and then give it to my buddy down the hall to take a look. That's fantastic that it was helpful to you. And I like this idea of it's actually a pre-editor. Yes. Did it recommend you need to see some therapy about some narcissism? No, no, no. It didn't. That goes without statement. But if I had asked, I'm sure it would have added to the chorus. I want to pull this thread a little farther about grants. You have been incredibly successful at raising money for the projects that you do through the grants that you apply for. Many of our listeners have to write proposals asking for funding from their bosses or from external organizations.

5:20What guidance do you have when it comes to drafting proposals and grants?

5:24Russ:I am passionate about this. In general, the first thing you have to do is understand the mission of the person or institution to whom you are making a request. Because if you don't hit that mission directly, it's end of the game. Given that, you need to have a big problem that you want to be part of the solution of and then a focused problem that you are actually going to provide the solution to. You have to show that that sub-problem is not solved. Then you have to make the case that there's an opportunity that you and maybe others but certainly you have. And then you have to boil it down to three to five action items followed by a summary of the state of the world when you're done.

6:05Russ:And I believe that that formula can be used from everything from a grant to a federal funding agency to a marriage proposal. And I've tried it in all different settings, and it really is the fundamental structure of any proposal. When we turn off the microphones, I want to hear the future state that you use to propose to your wife. Happiness. No, it's an easy one. Honey, you will be happier then than you are now. Excellent. So the key takeaway from what you just said, I think, is not only do you have to know your audience and what's important for them, and that's critical, regardless if it's a proposal or a pitch or a presentation.

6:41But this notion of where we are to where we're going to from to to is so important in pitches and presentations and it sounds like in types of proposals. Absolutely. And I like this notion of saying, hey, there's this larger problem and I'm going to focus on this subset and my unique value or my team's unique value is what's going to help us solve it. Here's the specific things and then here's what the world's going to look like.

7:04Russ:Thank you for listening, Matt. What you did just there is something I'd also like to ask you about. Your work in the academic world is incredibly complex, is incredibly detailed. And yet you're so good at explaining and making that complex information accessible. What are your thoughts on how to do that? I know you do it strategically. I know from the conversation you and I had earlier, you like using the whiteboard. What are the things you think about when you take complex information to make it more accessible to people who just don't know as much without dumbing it down? You know this very well, that stories are what people remember, stories are what people like.

7:40Russ:It's actually frustrating because part of my work is statistics, and statistics is really much more robust than a story. We always say you might have one good anecdote and that doesn't replace lots of actual data. But I'm afraid that sometimes, a lot of times, a good story does stand in for a lot of data because it's so compelling to the human mind. So we're always looking for stories. Analogy is a key part of both stopping the conversation and letting people catch up, but also saying, OK, wait a minute. Let me rephrase what you just said, but let me not use the words you just said. let me map it onto an everyday situation like going shopping.

8:18Russ:So you're telling me that the internet and the way it works is like a very complicated email system or whatever. And so can you listen to what the expert is saying and see an analogy to an everyday life thing? And you're checking your understanding, but on the chance that you're right, you're also helping the entire listenership or readership understand what was just said. So that's important. And related to that, and you already said it earlier, you always have an antenna up for jargon. And I'm sure you do this too. You have to be willing to stop the conversation cold and say, oh, you just said NIH.

8:56Russ:That's the National Institutes of Health. They fund research in America. And so part of what I'm doing always is a little antenna listening for words that need to be defined or abbreviations that might not be commonly understood. So I think analogy, stories, and then adjusting, adjusting the level. So sometimes when you're talking with someone, you just have to send them signals in real time that we are talking at a level that requires a PhD and I'm going for high school, college students here or whatever. And then it's practice. And one of the great things I love both about this podcast and about your book is you don't say that you either got it or you don't got it.

9:38Russ:All of this can be practiced and learned. Absolutely. That's a big point I like to try to make and encourage people. And you are helping all of us learn this. Something that I think can also be helpful, and I'd love to get your input on this, is there's work you can do in advance. So you can actually stockpile some stories or think about some potential analogies that might work. So it doesn't all have to happen in the moment. You can pull them in. And at the same time, some pre-work you can do is you can prepare the audience. So in a meeting invite, for example, you could say, and we're going to be talking about concepts like this.

10:12So people come in primed, which I think makes your job easier. What are your thoughts on that kind of pre-work?

10:18Russ:I totally agree. I had one more point written down, and I just had decided that I had talked too long a second ago. But I said anticipate the tough spots and validate that they're tough. So say to the audience, this guy is talking about quantum physics. This is hard stuff. Here's how we're going to try to manage through it together. So I just want to say that you're absolutely right. I think the key idea of prep for an interview or for creating a document or any kind of communication is anticipating the tough moments, the tough concepts. And exactly as you say, saying, OK, I'm going to try to fly with this analogy.

10:52Russ:I think this will work. I think it will make it more accessible, more relatable. And that's part of doing your homework. And it's not that hard to just think. Like I spend – before I talk to you, before I talk to anybody, I spend the night before basically Google stalking you, looking at what have you said, what have you done. Part of it is so I can have emergency topics to talk about if it turns out that you're reticent to speak. That wasn't a problem. I've never been accused of that. Right. Exactly. Nor have I. However, the other thing was what might he say that might be surprising or troubling and how am I going to manage that?

11:27Russ:And then you go in with this confidence that kind of whatever comes down the pike, we're ready for it. And you may use them or you may not use them, but having them just has you this sense of preparedness. Right. And that helps you be confident and more present because you're not reaching ahead thinking what's coming. You do a good job of preparing to ask the questions you ask on your podcast. I saw that firsthand. I've listened to the show and see how you do that. That preparation in advance, although I know that I'm recommending everybody cyber stalk people, but I do think it's important to do your homework.

11:57What advice do you have for asking questions that can really help focus and guide communication and conversations?

12:05Russ:Specificity in the question is key. Specificity rules in the world, in my opinion. People want to hear stories that are specific, not general, and they want to hear questions that are specific. But then my second tip helps take up a little bit of pressure off because I think the follow-up question is arguably more important than the initial question. Because the initial question gets the listeners and the guests, if we're talking about a podcast, into a certain space. And there might be some hemming and hawing as they gather their thoughts. But then they say something. And now they're warmed up and their audience is warmed up.

12:39Russ:And now you can come up with a follow-up question that might be the meaty question. And I've heard people who are very good who do interviews, you know, David Letterman, Johnny Carson. If you watch, their follow-ups were always very good. In addition to being specific and being open to asking follow-up questions, the use of questions isn't just for people who do interviewing. You can be very effective in a meeting and giving feedback through asking focus-specific questions. And in some ways, I think people receive that in a more open way than if I give you some declarative statement. Yes, I think you're absolutely right.

13:15Russ:I notice that students, like my PhD students, the last thing that they get good at before they're ready to launch and graduate is answering questions after a seminar. Because they come to it thinking that questions are an attack. And so they get defensive. Their answers are almost off-putting. And so there's a mentorship that you do to say you need to consider every question as a little gift. I love it. It's a gift. It shows I listened to what you just said. I've processed it. And now I actually want to have a conversation with you. That, like, it doesn't get any better than that. So, yes, I'm a big fan that questions can be powerful.

13:55Russ:They can say thank you. They can say I heard you. And they can say, and I have a little bit of an opinion here without even saying it as I have a little bit of an opinion here. Right. Seeing questions and actually lots of spontaneous situations like giving feedback and even introducing somebody as opportunities rather than threats and challenges is a fundamental mindset shift. And I love that you spend time with your students helping them get there because it's instinctual. When somebody comes up with a question, we get defensive. But if we can see it as an opportunity to connect, to learn, to collaborate, I think is wonderful.

14:28Russ:My best friend is a sports writer, but really more importantly, he's a journalist. He's famous for making his points with these very understated, beautiful questions where he doesn't even have to follow up and tell you what he really thinks because it's obvious from his question. And I think to myself, what a great journalist he is and was because of this skill. We had a whole episode with Deborah Schifrin on how to ask good questions. She said to pause. So after you ask the question, pause. And after the person answers, pause even longer because more comes out. I'd love to move to another area where you are an expert.

15:06You work on highly complex topics, but you also work in highly complex teams with people spread out all over the place with different areas of expertise in different disciplines. What best practices do you use to foster creativity and collaboration while trying to avoid destructive conflict and repetitive actions and wastes of time?

15:25Russ:It has become clear that team science is the most effective and is the most exciting in many ways, you must understand and acknowledge the rewards and motivations of your collaborators because they're unlikely to be identical to your own. And if you leave that unstated or worse, not understood, it's just a recipe for a lot of wasted energy and wasted words. So understand that leads to number two, which is you have to build the relationship, the human relationship separate from the scientific or business collaboration. and those two go together, understanding and building a relationship. But that time, which is kind of a pain in the neck because it means you have to have lunch with them and maybe you don't want to have lunch.

16:08Russ:Maybe you want to just take five minutes to shove food down your throat because you're busy. But the time to build that relationship pays off in spades. So those two things come first. Then you have to, I think diversity and teamwork has become, there's now literal evidence that if everybody looks and sounds like you and has the same training and the same perspective and the same goals and motivations, as I talked about a moment ago, that is not the recipe for the best team. So you have to take a hard look at who you've invited to the room. And if you're really brave and courageous, you will say, this is a good group, but this is not the right group for this project.

16:44Russ:And we either need to add to it or even more difficult, I need to make some substitutions, which can be a whole set of issues. And then it's about roles and responsibilities. And with the relationship in place and with an understanding of the reward systems and with a diversity, now you can say, finally, okay, here's what we're trying to do. How are we going to break this down? And how are we going to do roles and responsibilities so that people feel like they're part of a team, that it's functioning? And then obviously, and I could not be on this podcast without saying, having mechanisms for both formal and informal communication in place and understood.

17:23A lot of richness in that answer. No, no, no. No, it's all good. The fact that you first have to get alignment on goals and expectations is critical, forming those relationships, which then allow much of what you've said. And I will just put an exclamation point on this notion of diversity. Diversity of opinions and experience and goals is what brings around the richness, but also requires that you have to define the roles, responsibilities, and ways of communicating. Because if people have those differences, they bring that different way of communicating too. I want to drill down on one aspect that I was very specific in the question I asked.

17:59I said avoiding destructive conflict. I know in the work you do that encouraging some disagreement and conflict is actually helpful to achieving the goals. How do you thread that needle?

18:11Russ:Where it comes up in my life literally every week is that all the students and postdocs in the lab take turns every week giving what we call a group meeting. It's a research in progress talk about how they're going. And this is with their colleagues who they sit next to all week. So what's supposed to happen? What's supposed to happen is we're supposed to be supportive. We wanted them to feel comfortable. But they're supposed to be practicing for an audience that may be hostile, like scientific colleagues can be hostile. And so I, as the leader of the group, have to figure out how do I set this up so that they are getting the hardest questions, the hardest, most uncomfortable, scientific, technical questions from these people that they sit with every day.

18:53Russ:But it doesn't lead to a toxic environment, lack of trust, and people saying, I don't want to give my group meeting. I don't trust this group. I have to set it up so that they can present. I can ask hard questions. But then we have a culture of thanking them for the talk, acknowledging the hard things that they've uncovered as hard, thanking them for the solutions that they've produced. And if I see problems, I have other communication methods in the lab to try to identify those and deal with them outside of that forum. But you're absolutely right. This is like the number one thing for a team leader to be aware of because the rigor slash support tension is there all the time.

19:37You know, Russ, one of the things I love about hosting this podcast is the ability to just talk with amazing people, yourself included. I always learn something. What is something that you've learned from your many years of hosting the future of everything that you think might help the listeners of Think Fast, Talk Smart? The people who I interview, what they do is the thing that they think is the most important thing they could possibly do.

20:02Russ:So you talk to a civil engineer. It's not that this is one little interesting problem in civil engineering. This is the most interesting problem in civil engineering to this person. And indeed, it's the most important thing they can think of doing. And so the passion that scientists and engineers, because that's what we focus on, although we have other guests as well. But the passion of scientists and engineers in approaching their work and the magnitude of that passion probably shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. And I learned that you need to get to people's passion to really understand what makes them tick.