GLEB TSIPURSKY: MASTER OF RISK MANAGEMENT
/"Tsipursky is a rare hybrid: An internationally-renowned behavioral scientist with a unique talent for finding and fixing real-world problems.” —Tim Ward
Interview by Tim Ward
The business book, Never Go with your Gut, seems a counterintuitive mantra for a business guru these days. But the best-selling author, Dr. Gleb Tsipurksky, has extensively researched the kinds of dangerous cognitive biases and decision-making errors leaders make when following their “gut.” From an immigrant childhood (he and his family came to New York from Moldova), when he first experienced cognitive biases as a kid with an Eastern European accent, Gleb has built a global reputation as a thought leader and advisor for corporations and organizations—helping them identify the threats posed by their blind spots, and pinpointing missed opportunities.
In fact, Tsipursky is a rare hybrid: An internationally-renowned behavioral scientist with a unique talent for finding and fixing real-world problems. He is the CEO of the “future-proofing” consultancy, Disaster Avoidance Experts, and the author of the aforementioned book, Never go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters.
Tsipurky’s expertise comes from more than 20 years of consulting, coaching, and speaking and training for mid-size and large companies ranging from Aflac to Xerox and non-profits ranging from the Columbus Foundation to the World Wildlife Fund. His research background as a behavioral scientist spans 15 years in academia, including seven as a professor at Ohio State University. His dozens of peer-reviewed publications have appeared in well-respected scholarly journals such asBehavior and Social Issues, Journal of Social and Political Psychology, and International Journal of Existential Psychology and Psychotherapy.
Gleb lives in Columbus, Ohio (Go Bucks!), and in his free time, he makes sure to spend abundant quality time with his wife to avoid his personal life turning into a disaster.
—Tim Ward
Tim Ward: What do you see as being the biggest problem in how leaders approach the post-COVID return to the office and permanent post-pandemic work arrangements?
Gleb Tsipurksy: From my interviews with 61 leaders at 12 organizations whom I helped return to the office after the first year of the COVID pandemic, I learned the biggest problem comes from leaders prioritizing their personal comfort over what’s best for the organization. Most leaders are not comfortable working from home. Most are extroverted and gregarious; they succeeded in their careers by being around other people. They enjoy and feel in control when they walk the floors, surrounded by the buzz and energy of their staff working. They advance their leadership goals through meeting other leaders. Is it any wonder, given their experience, that they want to bring back the atmosphere that surrounded them their whole career?
“Don’t assume that what works for in-person will work well in hybrid or remote workplaces. You’ll need to revise your systems and processes in major ways to succeed in the workplace of the future.”
Most leaders don’t do high-quality, in-depth surveys of their staff before deciding on how to return to the office and their permanent post-pandemic work arrangements. They want everyone back at the office full time. Yet over a dozen major, independent surveys overwhelmingly show that only a small minority of employees—under 20 %—prefer the full-time in-office workweek. Most want either fully remote work or a hybrid schedule, and over 40% would leave their jobs if not given their preferred schedule. Forcing employees to return to the office will devastate employee retention, morale, engagement, and productivity. The efforts by many leaders to force their employees to return to the office full-time represents an egregious and self-defeating example of executives choosing to do what’s comfortable for them over what’s best for their people and their bottom line.
TW: What makes you passionate about helping leaders and their teams avoid dangerous judgment errors?
GT: I felt a calling for this work that began when I was a child. My dad told me with utmost conviction and absolutely no reservation, to “go with your gut.” I ended up making some really bad decisions—for instance wasting several years of my life pursuing a medical career. I also watched my father make some terrible choices that gravely harmed my family as he followed his gut.
“They must have known they would inevitably be caught, have their reputations ruined and, in many cases, go to jail. Why this seemingly irrational behavior? They were willing to follow their gut, letting their short-term fear of losing social status and being seen as failures drive terrible long-term choices.”
Then I came of age during the dotcom boom and bust and the fraudulent accounting scandals around the turn of the millennium. Seeing prominent business leaders blow through hundreds of millions of dollars in online-based businesses without effective revenue streams—Webvan, Boo.com, Pets.com—was sobering. Even worse, I saw how the top executives of Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom used illegal accounting practices to scam investors. They must have known they would inevitably be caught, have their reputations ruined and, in many cases, go to jail. Why this seemingly irrational behavior? They were willing to follow their gut, letting their short-term fear of losing social status and being seen as failures drive terrible long-term choices.
So I pursued a doctorate focusing on decision-making in historical settings at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and later taught in Ohio State University’s Decision Sciences Collaborative and History Department. I also started to present these topics outside of academia through writing, speaking, training, consulting, and coaching. Eventually, I shifted away from academia to devote my full-time efforts to advising and educating leaders as the CEO of the consulting and training firm, Disaster Avoidance Experts. I did so because I realized that empowering leaders to make the wisest and most profitable decisions, manage risks, and future-proof their organizations was the best way for me to reduce suffering and ensure that the greatest number of people flourish.
TW: What do you believe will be the best practices in setting up successful post-pandemic workplaces of the future?
GT: Don’t assume that what works for in-person will work well in hybrid or remote workplaces. You’ll need to revise your systems and processes in major ways to succeed in the workplace of the future.
First, survey your staff, and see what they desire.
Informed by that survey, create broad parameters for post-pandemic work arrangements. The large majority organizations that I work with decided on a mostly hybrid schedule of one-to-two days a week in the office. They also allowed a minority of employees (10-30%) to work remotely full-time, which was successful.
Then, have your team leaders use these broad parameters to determine the ideal schedule for their teams. That schedule should depend on how much individual work team members do, which is best done at home, versus collaborative work—which is usually best done in office.
Next, revise your office space. Downsize it to account for much lower occupancy. Then, reorganize it to be mostly collaborative—with conference rooms and lounge spaces—since teams will be focusing on collaboration in the office.
After that, revise your performance evaluations. Abandon the typical assessment of time spent working, and focus instead on accomplishments and deliverables as the measure of success.
You’ll need to revise your culture. Building a culture with hybrid and remote-working employees is more challenging if you’re used to in-person interactions. It requires cultivating a culture of trust and autonomy, instead of monitoring and control.
To cultivate a culture of teamwork in hybrid and remote teams, you need to set up native-virtual activities, such as digital co-working, which involves all employees getting on a videoconference call for an hour or two a day and sharing work plans. Then, they turn their microphones off but leave speakers on, and only turn their microphones on to ask questions. This co-working model is an excellent way of bonding in virtual spaces!
Finally, train your staff how to divide their work effectively between the office and home. Your staff never worked a hybrid schedule before, so you’ll need to teach them. Training in effective virtual communication and collaboration is also important. These are vital skills in the workplace of tomorrow.
“The biggest risk stems from the desire of many leaders to go back to the world before the pandemic.”
TW: While many are just emerging from a period of great risk in terms of personal health, there is an entirely new set of risks we now face in regard to business. What are the risks that business leaders are missing as they adapt to the post-COVID world?
GT: When leaders miss risks, the cause often stems from cognitive biases—dangerous judgment errors that stem from how our minds are wired and our evolutionary background.
Best-selling author and disaster avoidance expert Gleb Tsipurksy signs one of his many books that delve into disaster avoidance, managing remote and hybrid teams, and his thought leadership on fighting fake news and post-truth politics.
The biggest risk stems from the desire of many leaders to go back to the world before the pandemic. They fall for the status quo bias, a drive to maintain or get back what they see as the appropriate way of doing things. Their minds flinch at accepting major disruptions stemming from the pandemic. That ranges from adapting to the workplace of the future, to shifts in the external environment—such as changes in the needs of their clients.
Another problem comes from the anchoring bias. This mental blindspot causes people to feel anchored to their initial experiences and information. For example, given that their whole career focused on in-person interactions, leaders feel anchored to that mode of collaboration. The same applies to other things learned by leaders prior to the pandemic.
The false consensus effect is another dangerous mental blindspot. It leads us to envision other people in our in-group—our employees or our clients—as being much more like ourselves in their beliefs and values than is actually the case. Thus, leaders are reluctant to accept the major shifts occurring in the attitudes, behaviors, and values of their employees, clients, and other stakeholders.
A final challenge relates to a cognitive bias called functional fixedness. When we have a certain perception of how systems should function, how an object should be used, or how people should behave, we ignore other possible functions and behaviors.
“Critical for our ancestors to survive the life-or-death threats in the savanna, fight-or-flight causes leaders to make quick snap decisions without gathering sufficient data or consulting appropriate stakeholders, often leading to disasters.”
TW: And what opportunities do you believe business leaders may be missing in adapting to the post-COVID world?
GT: The opportunities are the inverse of the risks. Forward-looking, savvy leaders aware of such cognitive biases can take advantage of the mental blindspots plaguing the backward-looking leaders to outcompete them.
For example, all 12 organizations I helped develop post-pandemic workplaces for the future, allowed workers who could do so successfully to work full-time remotely. They have done so knowing that this step will not only help retain many of their most valued employees, but also to provide them with an excellent recruitment tool to poach great talent away from hidebound competitors. Indeed, the recruitment leaders at these organizations specifically targeted the employees whose leaders forced them back to the office with pitches on the flexibility and work-life balance they can enjoy if they make the switch.
TW: You have been working with business leaders for many years, and have written extensively on the reasons behind both their successes and their failures. Why is it that many leaders make bad decisions?
GT: Bad decisions stem from leaders following the terrible advice of going with their gut. Our gut reactions evolved from the ancient savanna environment, when we lived as hunter-gatherers in small tribes of 15 to 150 people. In the modern world, a major cause of poor decisions is the fight-or-flight response. Critical for our ancestors to survive the life-or-death threats in the savanna, fight-or-flight causes leaders to make quick snap decisions without gathering sufficient data or consulting appropriate stakeholders, often leading to disasters. Bad decisions about people in particular often come from tribalism, our gut reaction’s evolution-based drive to favor people whom we perceive to be a part of our tribal in-group, and to discriminate against those from opposing groups. The term “cognitive biases” refers to the specific ways our minds tend to go wrong in the modern world because we’re operating with a brain evolved for the ancient savanna.
TW: And then what are your recommendations as to how leaders can successfully future-proof themselves and their organizations?
Tsipurksy’s recent book, Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams, is a concise guide to managing a hybrid workforce, as well as fully remote teams of employees.
GT: First, leaders need to learn about these cognitive biases. Then, they need to assess where these mental blindspots might be harming their own decision-making about the future, and more broadly decision-making in their organization.
Doing so will provide the basis for using science-based future-proofing techniques. For example, “Defend Your Future” is an excellent method for strategic planning.
First, decide on the scope and goals of your plan. Then, make an initial plan based on what you would need to do if the future goes as you intuitively feel it will go, and how many resources you’ll need. Most traditional planning stops here, and that’s why so many plans fail in real life.
In “Defending Your Future,” you’re just getting started. You’ll now consider all the problems that might occur and their likelihood and impact, and decide on the steps and resources you need to solve them. Following that, consider what unexpected opportunities might arise, then decide what you can do to bring about or prepare for these opportunities, and what kind of resources it will take. Then, check for cognitive biases, informed by the assessment above, that might be impeding your effective decision-making, and adjust your planning accordingly. Finally, add all the steps and resources to address problems and opportunities, and integrate them into your initial plan. Similar techniques exist for daily decision-making, for making major decisions, for project planning, and many other areas. By taking advantage of such techniques, leaders can future-proof successfully by enabling themselves to see around the corners of our increasingly disrupted future to address dangerous threats and maximize golden opportunities.
TW: How can leaders most effectively improve decision-making, risk management, and future-proofing skills in their organizations?
GT: The most critical first step to integrating these skills is counterintuitive: It doesn’t fit the gut reactions and mental habits of how many leaders approach “upskilling.” Research on improving decision-making, risk management, and future-proofing skills shows that the first and most important step is to get your team members to care about these skills and become emotionally invested in learning them. That’s because the vast majority of professionals wrongly believe they excel in making decisions, managing risks, and predicting and preventing future problems.
Then, before training your team, start by showing them the kind of mistakes they and others tend to make in these areas, and the damaging consequences of excessive confidence.
Every time leaders I have trained use the tools I developed, they witness mind-opening results that build emotional investment by their teams to develop decision-making, risk management, and future-proofing skills. After succeeding with this kind of buy-in, leaders can introduce techniques for effective daily decision-making, as well as techniques for project planning, major decision-making and strategic planning.
“Fortunately, research also shows how we can use counterintuitive and surprisingly effective strategies to make the best decisions in addressing dangerous threats and maximizing golden opportunities to future-proof our organizations.”
TW: You are a psychologist focused on human behavior and organizational management. Tell me a bit about how your work with leaders and organizations is based upon scientific research?
GT: Having spent over 15 years in academia, including seven as a professor at the Decision Sciences Collaborative, researching and teaching on decision-making, risk management, and future-proofing, my training, consulting, and coaching is fundamentally grounded in behavioral science and cognitive neuroscience. Using this foundation, my writings cover the latest scientific studies on how our evolutionary heritage and our minds are wired—and that they undercut our ability to manage risks and make the best decisions for future success.
Fortunately, research also shows how we can use counterintuitive and surprisingly effective strategies to make the best decisions in addressing dangerous threats and maximizing golden opportunities to future-proof our organizations. My work combines the above-mentioned research with more than two decades of training, consulting, and coaching experience to provide practical, grounded advice, insights, and take-aways for attendees to apply in their workplace.
TW: Can you share a bit about how people have been transformed by attending your presentations?
I have received some quite powerful feedback from executives who attend my trainings:
One executive noted that the workshop I ran on adapting to COVID had a tremendous impact on her, her mental health, and her “ability to manage through the crisis.”
Another executive noted that she has changed her approach to decision-making, and she was extremely grateful for the insights provided in my training on cognitive biases.
Finally, a Senior Risk Manager commented that my session on risk caused him to look at the short as well as long term solutions in ways he had yet to consider. Despite the fact that some answers were hard for him to swallow and difficult to achieve, he noted, “realistic solutions rarely fall into the easy category.” He learned that being more realistic was going to make him more effective at managing risk.
Interested in booking Gleb Tsipurksy to present or run a workshop on Risk Management for your business or to present at an event? Please contact us.
Gleb Tsipurksky’s other best-selling books include: The Blindspots Between Us: How to Overcome Unconscious Cognitive Bias and Build Better Relationships, and Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage. Gleb’s cutting-edge thought leadership has been featured in hundreds of articles and interviews in publications such such as Fortune, USA Today, Inc. Magazine, CBS News, Time, Business Insider, and The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Interviewer Tim Ward is the co-owner of Intermedia Communications, a speaker coaching business, as well as an author of numerous books, and publisher of Changemakers Books.
If you would like to provide speaker training for members of your organization, contact us and we will connect you with Tim Ward at Intermedia Communications.