WonderTour

Welcome to WonderTour This episode, we are in our game theory series and we are looking at
the TV show Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

So we're going to start off with a tough question about leadership here.

Now in the episode, season five, episode 14, The Box, we have a peculiar episode where we
have Jake Peralta and Holt doing this interrogation of this dentist who is suspected to be

a murderer.

Now, it's kind of a small episode with only three people in it.

In fact, that's the reason that they did the episode this way is because they only had
Andy Samberg and Andre Blahler available for the episode.

So they went with something a little bit out of the box here.

But it's pretty cool because we're able to apply game theory.

And honestly, it's kind of a weird episode in that it's not like a traditional
interrogation might go.

This is probably not how most interrogations go.

fact, I'm not a professional, but it's actually a little bit more like a lot of business
scenarios might go, which is going to make it a perfect application for WonderTour So

Brian, in this episode, there are multiple, multiple, multiple intents to try to get a
confession out of the suspect in the situation, the dentist.

The problem is we see both Holt and Peralta

just absolutely failing multiple times.

They try something and it just works so horribly that they're embarrassed.

They come back out and they're like, my gosh, okay, what are we going to do next?

Brian, why is failure though a prerequisite for us to ever see success?

this is a great question.

We all hate failure, right?

We cannot stand looking stupid.

We cannot stand having an idea that doesn't work out.

We cannot stand trying the same stupid thing over and over again and not having it work.

And we especially cannot stand that one annoying person that won't give you what you want,
even though you're obviously right.

And so, yeah, you can view the suspect here as a stand in for somebody that you're asking
for any sort of resources or trying to negotiate with that you're, that's being stopped.

But yeah, they're trying to corner him into saying that he did it the setup is, which I
love the setup is they have enough facts to have a pretty good idea that this person is

the actual is the actual murderer, right?

But they don't they don't have enough facts to prove it.

And so they kind of need him to give them some information, and he strongly is not
motivated to give them any information because he may have committed the perfect crime and

doesn't want to go to jail.

So like, it's a good setup.

I love the fact that they start this process with facts, but with no insight.

Like they understand the setup, but they don't understand the person that they're talking
to at all.

And their repeated failures are because they don't understand, you know, they have no idea
what would cause this person to actually give them any information.

they just try a bunch of different things and none of those things work.

and some of them are terrible ideas,

They're getting, you know, there's some frustration, but there's also incredible
persistence, And part of, part of what's good about this, the reason that failure is the

prerequisite for success is because they need to get more information to get where they
want to go.

and these two, despite their shenanigans are able to redefine failure as iteration, right?

They're able to redefine like that didn't work at not as like, well, this is never going
to work, but that didn't work.

What else can we try?

And they're remarkably persistent about that.

Like, okay, well, let's do this.

Let's do this other thing.

And the things that they try are increasingly dumb.

It's like, you'll be the dumb cop and I'll be the smart cop and I'll say some things and
then I'll leave them with you.

then, oh, now we're gonna, you know.

But when you start, you're entering a negotiation with somebody else, when you're entering
a conversation with somebody else where you don't know what they want, or when you know

that what you want and what they want are opposed, right?

There's very little chance for success.

There's very little chance to convince somebody to do something that is against what they
perceive as their interests.

And that's where they start this conversation.

Well, the temptation Brian is to try to outsmart in a negotiation.

It's to try to outsmart somebody into getting them to agree to your position or something
like that.

But the reality is that it's not really about that at all.

And in fact, what we learn in this, this is an example of repeated games.

So going back to our game theory model in game theory, you know, you can have like a
perspective or a model of a way to think about a scenario.

that is an individual game and that eventually the game is going to have a winner and a
loser or it's going to have a loser and a loser or whatever the situation is depending on

what the potential outcomes are.

But there's also examples where you're going to play these games over and over and over
again and with each game there is going to be posturing and different plays coming from

each player and as a result there's going to be iterations where you can learn and adjust
strategies and things like that.

So this is really an example of a repeated game.

And to be honest with you, what we want to find ourselves in in life and definitely in
business is a repeated game because I am hardly smart enough to make the right decision

the first time.

But I hope that I am smart enough to learn from each time that I make a decision and by
the third time make a pretty good decision.

Right.

Absolutely.

Right.

if you're trying to sell a product or a service out in the market, right?

You may not understand the first time, you know, you've got an idea what the thing is, but
you don't actually know how to convince somebody to buy it.

Right.

The first couple of times you try to sell it to a customer, they're going to say, no,
like, that's stupid.

I don't understand that.

What is that thing?

That explanation doesn't resonate with me.

That story doesn't resonate with me.

That price is too high.

That price is so low that I don't think it's going to work.

Right.

The only way that you learn, like the only way you become a good salesperson is by failing
a lot at sales, right?

Is by trying a lot of different explanations and a lot of different pitches and maybe a
lot of different price points or a lot of different deals until you understand how to

explain the thing that you do in context of something that they want.

And this is the tie back to our last series that we did on trust the process.

The process is the iteration.

It's that you just keep going back at it.

You reflect each time you come up with a new approach and the combination of trust the
process and game theory is a play here, right?

Where trust the process is a mindset that we bring to our lives, where we believe that we
can get better through iteration and through hard work.

And game theory is a way to adjust after each iteration, you know, how we view each
player.

what we think each player might do in each situation.

It's even an opportunity for us to influence the decision that the player is going to make
in the next iteration of the game.

And that is exactly what we're going to talk about when we come back after the intro.

Hi, I'm Brian Nutwell.

And we are on a journey to lead wisely, to become better leaders by touring fantastic
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All right.

So we are iterating.

are in this repeated game, in the context of this interrogation, which you might also
think is like a pitch meeting, right?

Right.

Our protagonists, Jake and Holt control the control of schedule, right?

They control like you're here for this long.

I can keep calling meetings.

I can keep coming, talking to you.

sort of control the rules of the engagement, but their opponent, the suspect.

controls the information, does not need to tell them anything at all, just needs to make
it through without revealing anything.

And so really the information that they need at the end of the day is a confession.

They need them to say what he did or how he did it, or reveal, you know, kind of what
actually went down.

But that's not actually the unlock.

Like just asking for that, they try that.

Just asking him, did you do it?

And of course that doesn't work.

Like it's dumb.

That's actually not the important information that they really need.

What is the most important information that they need out of this repeated game in order
to have a chance of success?

Yeah, so that leads us to our mountaintop moment here, Brian, and we will answer that
question over the course of the scene.

So the scene in question here is when Peralta, who has been insisting through this entire
episode that he has an approach, he's got a tactic that he really wants to try and Holt

has been holding him back.

He's like, no, we're not going to lie to the suspect and tell him

that we have the neighbor as a witness and he's gonna hold him accountable.

So in this situation though, Peralta tries it himself.

He goes at it in one of the iterations, goes back in and he's like, so here's the thing,
we already have your neighbor and he said that he saw you there recently even though

you're telling us that you haven't been there for months at your uncle's house and you're
stuck.

And the dentist is like, well, that's interesting because that neighbor has been dead for
three years.

Crash and

yeah right he tries to bluff and he gets humiliated and i've definitely

Now the dentists, they played the one card that they had and now the suspect is like, you
guys are completely full of crap.

And you can't bluff anymore now because the lawyer is going to start to step into the room
and be like, look, listen, you've already tried this.

whatever you're trying to convince us you have, don't have.

We already were able to prove that you didn't have it.

So you've played your one bluff.

It's like in the business meeting, like you said, the example that we're giving of a pitch
meeting, it's like, if you try to like gloss over the data a little bit and make it look

nicer than it does.

But if that executive or that person from the other stakeholder group or customer,
whatever is like, wait a second.

No, like I think that data is telling a different story.

well, the whole thing's going to fall apart.

yeah, if they poke at it once and they find a soft spot, they find a weakness, then the
whole thing is like, well, I don't trust anything that you've said now.

Like, I don't believe that you have anything to-

Exactly.

And so how does this actually work out in Peralta's favor, Brian?

So Peralta comes back in the room and he's really discouraged.

He's like, that didn't work and now we're in a worse situation.

And the boss hold is like, well, you know, why'd you try that?

He's like, well, I really wanted to win.

Like I wanted to be the one that figured it out.

I wanted to be the smart one.

I wanted to be the hero.

And then there's this pregnant pause and he's like, my God, I got it.

Like, you know, and then he runs back into the room and he elicits a confession from the
suspect.

So how does he do this?

Yeah, because he realizes that what he saw in himself, that he wanted to be the smartest
person in the room, was in fact the motivation of all three of him, Holt, and the dentist.

They were all just trying to outsmart each other.

And what he probably also realized is that the dentist actually was the traditionally
smartest of all of them, but it isn't about being the smartest in the situation.

It's about learning how to play the game and iterating based on the information that you
get.

So instead of Jake's motivation in the next iteration, the going in so that Jake can win,
so that Jake can have all the glory and wad it over Holt and the dentist who he's gonna

put away, he's like, what if I just give that glory to the dentist and allow him to have
what he wants?

And by the way, like me, he might even think that he wants that more than he wants to win
the game.

And so he goes in and he goes to the dentist into explaining how smart he is.

and the dentist goes off on a tirade He reveals the convicting information that leads to
the end of the case.

yeah.

so, you know, Andy figures out, Jake figures out that.

so, you know, Andy figures out, Jake figures out that.

seeming smart, feeling like you're the smartest person, winning by being smart is more
important to this character than keeping his secret.

And so he sets him up so they're like, you got super lucky.

It's really lucky for you that all those things to game together to allowed you to get
away with this crime.

And as much as this guy wants to get away with the crime, he wants more not to seem like
he was just a dumb guy that wandered into getting lucky.

He's like, no, this is the perfect crime.

And this is the way that I did it because it was planned out every step of the way.

Like he has to prove that he's smart.

He's more motivated to prove that he's smart than he is to prove that he's innocent or to
get away with it.

and so, yeah, it's all the realization is motivation.

Like if you're iterating in the game, the iteration in the game is to gain information,
like to have more facts would be useful, but more facts aren't what unlock this.

What unlocks it is insight into the motivation of the person across the table.

And that's true in sales.

And that's true when you're, you know,

trying to get something out of your boss or somebody that holds a resource in your
company, right?

If you ask them for something the first time based on what you want and what you need and
the facts, you're probably going to get a no, right?

But if you're lucky, if you ask a couple of times and you get a couple of different
flavors of no, the flavors of no will tell you what that person actually wants.

They will say no, because you're not solving this other problem that I actually care
about.

No, because you didn't consider this factor that will be bad that I actually care about.

No, because you didn't consider this factor that will be bad that I actually care about.

Right.

And so then you have to bake that into your approach.

You have to bake that into your plan is like, okay.

So now I'm going to make a pitch, not about what I want, but I'm going to make a pitch
about what you.

Yes, you have to understand what motivates somebody, So practical application of this, we
probably have a million different examples, but even I, sometimes it's easy to forget on

the first pass, like it's about motivation, it's not about information, because you want
to present the best information to somebody.

You want to present the benefits, you want to present the cost, you want to present the
future vision of everything.

And this is all information.

But the only way that it lands is it has to align with something that they want.

to see in the world.

there's, Brian, you always talk about the fact that in any business, the failure modes of
people who don't understand how to operate in a business environment is that they take the

first note at face value and say, I guess we can't do this.

Right, right.

It's a...

Yeah, the challenge is to understand how to get things aligned.

Right.

There's all these competing motivations inside an organization.

There's people that represent different viewpoints because that's their job.

Like viewpoints are conflicting.

The people are in charge of purchasing, want to do a good job of buying things.

in charge of finance want to make sure all the numbers add up.

People are in charge of sales.

to, you know, like everybody has different goals.

Right.

And so when you're asking somebody else to do something, to collaborate with you.

If you ask them and you get a no, it's not necessarily like, this is the company rule that
it's always a no.

It's like, yeah, you didn't figure out how to either, either how to do it or how to
explain it in a way that everybody understands as a win-win.

Yeah, and it takes multiple times to figure that out because your motivation and their
motivation are often not the same, even if you're both aligned to the same mission.

So I'll just give an example that we had one time.

So we're trying to implement a new technology solution as we do.

And this is a pretty big technology solution where in the past had like very moderate
success of transforming this process.

we are.

We go at it multiple times, multiple different demos of what this solution could be for
the target user base.

We're like, look at how great this is going to be.

It's going to do all this stuff.

It's going to save you time.

It's going to increase the accuracy of your work.

This is transformational.

And each time, they're like, yeah, I guess I could see the value.

But you're not getting commitment.

You're getting at best understanding, but not commitment.

And it was only after we attempted this.

my goodness.

mean, this must've been three to five times before we realized, okay, no, the lead person
here, their motivation, this guy's motivation is he wants to achieve this specific

business outcome.

He actually just wanted to save enough time in the process that he was able to capture
these additional data inputs that he's not getting right now to run his simulations.

The other stuff is all gravy to him, basically.

But if you could just get him enough time so he could gather these additional data inputs
to make the better decision of what he thinks he can make, that would get his buy-in.

And as soon as you take the exact same proposal and just turn it a little bit and say,
look how this is going to give you enough time and we'll go ahead and automatically

process those data inputs that you want into the model.

He's like, okay, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Suddenly you go from understanding to commitment.

Right.

And, most of the people you interact with are not trying to trick you.

They're not trying to lock information away from you.

They're telling you very honestly, their, worldview.

You're like, I don't care about this because it doesn't address this other thing.

Or don't care about this because I'm busy doing this other thing.

Right.

They will tell you very explicitly.

And it's kind of on you to figure out how to explain like, yeah.

just like Jake and Holt and the dentist in this episode, everybody wants to be the hero.

Right.

Your job is to figure out how to walk in and say, Hey, I've got an idea about how you can
be the hero.

Right?

You know, like how my idea is going to make you successful in the way that you already
value.

Like that's the pitch that works.

Yeah, I mean, another example from not too long ago, we're trying to convince a leader
from a different part of the company to take on this entirely new strategy, which is going

to result in process changes for them.

And we're just trying to convince them to accept a trial.

We just wanted to run a trial to see how it would go in their area so that we could
capture data, which would tell us what resources that we needed to put into changes to

make this happen in the future full-time.

So we have like a bigger change that we want to implement.

We have to convince somebody in the company of this change.

So we went at it two times, two different presentations.

After the first presentation, we got this feedback, we're like, my goodness, okay.

So we thought that we needed to refine some of the details of the presentation and tune up
the information.

So I'm leading a guy on the team and he's doing this and he tunes up the information and
he presents it back and he answers all the questions that the evaluator had.

But once again, now we get new out of left field questions.

You know, why aren't you solving this other problem?

Isn't this more important over here?

How is this going to really impact the KPIs?

And after that, we had to take a step back and do a regroup and say, okay, really?

What is his motivation here?

And what we found out was that we weren't doing a good job of casting the bigger picture.

He was still seeing this as a, system is status quo.

You guys are just proposing a change.

We were seeing this whole new reality that we thought he already understood, hey, there's
this new world that we need to go into.

And as a result of this new world, you know, we need to change.

But he was not seeing the vision of the new world yet.

And if anything, that's on us.

You know, we assumed, so is the dumb thing to do, that he saw that reality.

And as soon as we come back and instead of trying to answer the detailed questions and
have better information, were like, yeah, so I just want to make sure that you agree that

this reality, this new, new world is where we're going.

And then suddenly all the other questions start to disappear because it's like, yeah,
you're right.

We just, probably should just run a trial to see if we could go in that direction.

Right.

Because I want to be a hero in the new world, right?

As the, as the evaluator, like, yeah, I want to be the person that leads us there.

And this is the thing that I can take credit for of like, yeah, well see, I authorized
this trial, which is clearly showing, you know, yeah, that's fabulous.

That's a really good trick.

Right.

So yeah.

So, you know, what we see in this ridiculous episode of this office sitcom, right?

What we see in this is the, like you said, you start with facts, but what you want is
insight.

Right.

And the insight that you want is to the motivations of the people that you're working
with, the motivations of your counterparties, the motivations of the people that you're

negotiating with.

Right.

The way you get the insight is by repeated trials, right.

Repeated iterations of the game.

And by listening, like people will tell you what their motivation is.

They will demonstrate, even if they don't say it out loud, they will demonstrate what
their motivation is by what they pay attention to and what they respond to and what they

don't respond to and which questions they ask.

And it's your job is to drill down to that and recast what you want in a way that is the
same thing as what they want.

Yep, yeah, you gotta appeal to the higher level.

may not have to, hopefully you don't have to lie to them in the process.

Hopefully you don't have to trick them and belittle them in the process.

Hopefully they aren't also actually murders.

So, you know, most of us have, most of us have relatively lower stakes negotiations than
this.

But.

be willing, like you said, Brian, to go at it multiple times, to reflect each time and to
come back.

you got to be willing to, like in the example that I just shared, evaluate if you're
actually understanding the person's motivation or not.

Because clearly we couldn't.

Right.

And the other thing, the other takeaway, which I think goes back to our last episodes and
a lot of these things we say, you know, is that the leadership role is recognizing that

you personally aren't all always the hero, right?

It might be the person across the table.

It might be somebody on your team.

but like everybody wants to be the hero.

Everybody wants to be the one that is taking credit for the success.

The leadership role is to understand that like, as long as the success happens, as long as
the organization does the thing that it needs to do, it doesn't really matter if everybody

points at you and says, you're the chosen one.

Right.

And so being, being able to, you know, if you're trying to win the meeting, you will never
get insight into somebody else's character and needs.

Right.

If you're just trying to win the meeting.

in this episode, we have 21 and a half minutes of three people trying to win the meeting.

And then at the last minute Jake's like, wait, I can let him win the meeting by pretending
that I'm winning a different way.

And then he's going to win by giving me what I want.

Right.

So that's a lesson that that a hundred percent works.

That's a real thing.

That's a real thing.

Great stuff, Brian, as always.

What are we doing next week?

All right.

Well, this is for this episode on our continuing journey to become better leaders and lead
wisely.

We are going to go to possibly the most canonical example of game theory in the Hollywood
literature.

We're of course talking about money ball and Brad Pitt revolutionizing the game of
baseball with statistics.

So we hope you'll join us for that one.

In the meantime, just remember as always character is destiny and character can be
cultivated.

In the meantime, just remember as always character is destiny and character can be
cultivated.