The Diary of a CEO

Neuroscientist Tali Sharot scanned pairs of people valuing real estate. When they agreed, their brains lit up, receptive and open. When they disagreed, brains effectively froze, discounting the other's opinion entirely. Opening with disagreement slams the door before your logic, evidence, or eloquence can enter.

Bartlett learned this the hard way, replaying his parents' marathon arguments in his own relationship until he found himself locked in a wardrobe at 5am. The fix: lead with common ground, shared motives, and the parts of the other's view you understand, then introduce your rebuttal. This is why the people most able to change our minds are those we agree with on 98 percent of things. Being right is worthless if the other brain has already shut down.

Bartlett's thought experiment: a terrorist demands you genuinely believe he is Jesus Christ or your loved one dies. You could lie, but you could not force the belief. In his survey, 85.7 percent thought they choose their beliefs, yet 98 percent admitted they could not choose that one. Beliefs are built from evidence we subjectively trust, which is why arguing with a flat-earther or reciting affirmations rarely works.

The same logic governs your 'self-story,' the internal narrative of what you are capable of. Grit researcher Angela Duckworth found that at West Point, cadets one point higher on the grit scale were 60 percent more likely to survive brutal Beast Barracks, outweighing strength or intelligence. To change a belief, don't attack it; supply new first-party evidence, ideally framed as good news, and interrogate the details of limiting beliefs to weaken them.

A music-store CEO who scoffed that people would always want CDs went bankrupt; iTunes gave people what they actually wanted, which was music without the trip. A fashion brand's marketing director mocked social media as too dangerous in 2012 and filed for bankruptcy in 2019. Bartlett calls the failure mode 'leaning out': being so sure you are right that you stop listening.

The culprit is cognitive dissonance, the discomfort when new facts clash with our identity. Because admitting we are wrong is painful, we attack the disruptor instead. Bartlett flips this into a signal: passionate criticism of a new technology often marks its potential, which is why he leaned into crypto and social media early. The remedy is holding two conflicting ideas at once and asking honestly, am I dismissing this only because I don't understand it?

In 1980 Reagan trailed Carter by eight points. Rather than reciting economic statistics, he asked voters one question: are you better off than you were four years ago? Days later he won in a landslide. Questions, unlike statements, force an active mental response.

Bartlett calls this the question/behaviour effect. Reviewing 100-plus studies across 40 years, researchers found that asking 'Will you recycle?' beats a sign reading 'Please recycle,' and the influence can persist up to six months. It works best with yes/no questions starting with 'will,' aimed at behavior tied to who someone wants to become. A 'yes' creates positive cognitive dissonance between your aspiration and your action, and binary framing leaves no wiggle room for the elaborate excuses a vague intention permits.

Bartlett's father smoked for 40 years, only ever in his car. After accidentally reading a book on habit loops (cue, routine, reward), the father replaced the cigarettes in his car door with lollipops and never smoked again. The cue and routine stayed; only the reward changed. Fighting a habit backfires because the brain is wired for action, not inaction, and suppression triggers rebound: smokers told not to think about smoking think about it more.

Two supports make new habits stick. First, sleep and low stress, because willpower behaves like a depletable muscle (Muraven's radish-and-cookie study showed people who resisted cookies quit an impossible puzzle in half the time). Second, attempt only one habit at a time; piling on unrealistic resolutions guarantees rebound.

Bartlett's agency never had a sales team; it had a 13,000-pound blue slide and ball pool. Journalists photographed it obsessively, and that single absurd object generated more press than any campaign, screaming 'this company is different.' Tesla spends nothing on ads but names driving modes 'Ludicrous' and installs fart sounds. The most absurd thing about a brand ends up saying everything about it.

Underneath is habituation: the brain tunes out repetition, turning overused phrases into 'wallpaper.' Say a word enough and it loses meaning (semantic satiation). This is why 'please like and subscribe' failed for Bartlett until he opened with a jarring, specific stat, lifting his subscriber rate 430 percent. The rule extends to openings: like MrBeast, you must earn attention in the first five seconds with a bold promise, not a warm introduction.

Bartlett's hairdresser makes clients feel he is meticulous with a fake final snip that cuts no hair. Rory Sutherland's term for this is a 'psychological moonshot': a tiny, often free change that dramatically improves perception. It is usually cheaper to invest in perception than reality. Uber's in-house scientists exploited the peak-end rule, idleness aversion, and operational transparency (the moving-car map) to cut cancellations 11 percent.

Related levers all bend perceived value without changing the product:
1. Friction can add value: Betty Crocker cake mix flopped until customers had to add an egg, restoring a sense of contribution.
2. Framing beats substance: '90 percent lean' outsells '10 percent fat'; Tesla calls plastic seats 'vegan leather.'
3. Goldilocks anchoring: flank your target option with a cheaper and a pricier one so it looks like the safe middle.
4. The endowment effect: let people touch and hold a product (Apple's open stores) and they value it more.

Toyota's kaizen philosophy (continuous improvement) treats innovation as millions of tiny suggestions from every worker, not heroic leaps. When Toyota reopened a disastrous GM plant with the same workers and equipment, defects dropped from twelve per car to one within a year. Improve 1 percent daily and 100 pounds becomes over 3,700 in a year; decline 1 percent and it nearly vanishes. Tiger Woods rebuilt his swing from scratch, winning nothing for 18 months, then dominated.

The partner discipline is failing faster. IBM's Watson refused to fire a man whose mistake cost 600,000 dollars, saying he had just paid for the training. Amazon and Booking.com run tens of thousands of experiments; Bezos distinguishes reversible 'two-way door' decisions (make them fast) from irreversible ones. Bartlett watched a son out-fail his father tenfold and overtake a billion-dollar brand. Pre-empt disaster by asking 'why will this fail?' before you start.

Trapped in the Andes after a 1972 crash, Nando Parrado chose to climb toward almost certain death rather than eat his mother's and sister's bodies, surviving a ten-day trek because, as he put it, the only way forward was that he could not go back. Research backs the intuition: across studies of 500 students, those given no backup plan solved more puzzles and were more motivated. A Plan B quietly lowers your drive for Plan A by removing the fear of failure.

Pressure, meanwhile, is not the enemy. In a study of 30,000 adults, high stress raised death risk 43 percent only among those who believed stress was harmful; believers in beneficial stress had the lowest risk of all. Reframing anxiety as energizing kept blood vessels relaxed. Add a clear-eyed look at mortality (Bartlett counts his remaining days), and pressure becomes fuel rather than threat.

Dyslexic Richard Branson could not tell net from gross profit at 50, yet built a 24-billion-dollar empire by trusting brilliant people. The elite founder's question is not 'how do I do this?' but 'who is best placed to do it for me?' Every company is really a recruitment company. Your first ten hires each set 10 percent of the culture, so early teams should feel almost cult-like in devotion.

Protecting that culture means acting on the 'bad apple.' A Harvard study found misconduct spreads with a 1.59 social multiplier, and one toxic member outweighs several good ones. Sir Alex Ferguson sold star players at their peak to defend United's culture. Bartlett's 'three bars' test: would this person raise, maintain, or lower the average? Finally, David Brailsford's British Cycling proved that the feeling of progress, not size of win, drives motivation, so celebrate small wins loudly and treat each teammate as a different-shaped puzzle piece rather than applying one uniform leadership style.