Faking it
"Fake it till you make it" is one of the most repeated pieces of career advice, but does it actually work? In this episode, the team explores the origin of the idea, when it genuinely helps people succeed, and where it crosses the line into deception or outright fraud. From Arnold Schwarzenegger, Richard Branson and Steven Spielberg to Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried, they examine the fine line between confidence, ambition and dishonesty.
Along the way they discuss why some professions are surprisingly easy to "fake" while others expose incompetence almost immediately, the psychology behind behavioural activation and imposter syndrome, and why genuine expertise still matters. The conversation concludes with a practical framework for deciding when projecting confidence is useful, and and when you're better off simply doing the work.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast brought to you by Aleph Insights and produced by me, Fraser McGruer. I'm here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. On this podcast, we look at a wide range of topics from an analytical viewpoint.
And today we're discussing. Faking it till you. Making it, Nick. Faking it until you make it. Tell us about that. What's on your mind?
Speaker B:Well, obviously, and I think you of all people must be familiar with the adage that you should make fake it till you make it.
Speaker A:I'm familiar with the adage, yes.
Speaker B:Yeah.
So, you know, and I think a lot of, particularly in the realm of business, there's a lot of inspiring stories, aren't there, about people who have sort of gone in there, pretended to be either bigger or more competent or, you know, the kind of, you tell all of the potential investors that, you know, you've got interest from a lot of other investors and, you know, and eventually that drives its own success. The, that's what we're meant to believe. And that kind of is what faking it till you're making it is supposed to look like.
So I think we want to ask the question of, well, when, when does that work? When does it not work? And, you know, how, how and what's the, what are some good strategies for doing it? And maybe you think about it.
Speaker A:Yeah. And also perhaps even delving into it. Like, what does it even mean?
Speaker B:Well, yeah, well, what is, what exactly is faking it and what is making it?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, we go like, everything brilliant. Okay, cool.
Speaker B:So, I mean, start with a few examples, some of which might be familiar to you.
Young man with a good bod by the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who came to America from Austria, from rural Austria with only the shirt on his back and, you know, what a back, what a back. What incredible lats that guy had. And he was, you know, projecting all this confidence.
Basically went in there with a lot of confidence, you know, about his, his future bodybuilding career, his, his acting ability, his, you know, political career, as low it came to pass. Now, admittedly, he obviously was a very good bodybuilder. Yeah, he was already pretty good at that. Yeah. But the other stuff, you know, I mean, let's.
With the best will in the world, he's no Laurence Olivier, and yet somehow he's managed to create this incredible brand for himself. And I think, and I, I, it would have to be a churl who didn't like Arnold Schwarzenegger on some level.
Love that guy, Richard Branson, another famous example of someone who, you know, just basically woke up one morning and said, you know what? I'm going to be a music magnate. And hey, presto, he was, because he decided to be.
He said, right, we're now Virgin Records, we're going to sign up some weirdos, we're going to tell people we're a record company, loads of interest, you know, suddenly massive record company. And then the other stuff followed, you know, learning on the job, well, let's be an airline company, let's be a train company, you name it.
Richard Branson has just decided that he's going to do it and it tends to work.
Steven Spielberg, very famous story, used to hang around as a young film guy, hang around the Universal Studios lot, found an empty office, put his name on it and basically pretended he worked there. And that's how he got his start. It's been slightly exaggerated in the telling, I think, but it is, the essence of it is true.
Speaker A:Yeah. Okay.
Speaker B:So that's the kind of thing I think we want to talk about. Who we don't want to talk about is people who just did the faking it bit.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:So all the people I've mentioned, they made it, actually did make it, and for good reasons, because they actually turned out to be good or they became good. So we're not talking about people like Elizabeth Holmes or Sam Bankman Fried, who just did the faking it.
Speaker A:I don't know who these people are, but maybe I do.
Speaker B:Elizabeth Holmes was that woman who ran, who set up that. I mean, she was a complete fraudster. Set up that company, which was. We did a podcast thing. We did a podcast about her. Yeah.
No, it was supposed to be a kind of medical detector which you could put one drop of blood in and it would tell you, you know, all of the diseases that you had. And ftx.
Speaker C:Yeah, the failed crypto exchange, it was.
Speaker B:A classic Ponzi scheme, basically. And, and so he, I mean, actually, I mean, interestingly, he did actually make some very good investments as well.
But it's just actually at the heart of it was this, was this ponce. Yeah, yeah. There's some really good versions of people who faked it nearly and then, and then failed. Ali Deer. Does that name mean anything to you?
So in November: Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:He then played one match, coming on as a substitute in a league game and was played, played for 53 minutes before it became painfully obvious that he was not in any way a professional footballer. And 14 days into his contract, he was let go.
Speaker A:It was interesting because I was gonna say, think of these examples that we've given us from the fields where they are sport, one would imagine. And sure enough, it feels right.
Speaker B:Quite hard to fake it.
Speaker A:Quite hard to fake it and make.
Speaker B:It exactly, you know, and then I've got, I think, the hero of all fake it till you make it people. Guy Gomer does. So this was a guy, I think it was about 10, 15 years ago, who turned up at the BBC for a job interview as an IT support assistant.
And then in a comedy of errors, which you would find in something like.
Speaker A:This guy who ended up on tv. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:In like Fawlty Towers or something.
The BBC news people thought he was Guy Cuny, a different guy who was actually a tech journalist being who was going to be interviewed about something. He was then basically made up and put on stage and introduced as a technology expert.
And I think he made the assumption this was all part of the interview process, and he bluffed his way through the interview. Not very well, but not so badly that you might have just thought, well, this guy doesn't really know what he's talking about. But it wasn't.
It certainly wasn't a. It wasn't like it all went disastrously wrong. And he said, what the hell are you doing? I shouldn't be here or anything like that.
He really did give it a go. So, you know, there we are. So we're talking.
But what we're talking about is the Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Richard Branson, the Steven Spielberg, not the other comedy players. And really it's like, well, what differentiates them from these guys?
It about them, or is it actually more about, like the industry and the type of thing they're trying to do?
Speaker A:And also, I mean, what does it actually mean? Because how I interpret fake it until you make it, how I interpret that doesn't necessarily mean just lie to everyone and it will.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:It will work out. How I interpret it is a kind of a positive message, a positive attitude.
And have the confidence, fake the confidence, fool yourself that you can do it. And lo and behold, within that you will do it sort of thing. A kind of almost manifestation.
Speaker C:I think there's an important distinction to draw there. There's faking it. I think what we mean here is like cheap to reproduce, signaling. So it's the dressing up in posh clothes.
Speaker B:Dressing for the job you want.
Speaker C:Yeah, dressing for the job you want. So easily reproducible things versus just wondering.
Speaker A:What job you're looking for anyway.
Speaker B:Versus the reel it hobo under a bridge.
Speaker A:Got it.
Speaker C:Versus the costly signal equivalent, which is reel it till you feel it where you actually do it. You were actually modifying your behavior in a costly, complicated or difficult way to let.
To hopefully that the quality of the stuff that you produce will shine through and actually get noticed.
Speaker B:Yeah. Like basically instead of investing in the signal, you're investing in the. In the content.
You're trying to make yourself into an actually competent person. Yeah, well, I do actually. I've got. Yeah, yeah. Give that a portion if you can. So I do have a levels of faking it, which I think.
And I think they go from not faking it all the way through to out and out imprisonable fraud. So. So just to introduce, there's actually nine levels, but don't worry. Right. It's all quite explicable. Yep.
And they're really to do with what you're faking. So. So level level one, if you like not faking it at all. That's, that's going in and saying, well, I've got no idea what I'm doing. Give us a hand.
Which has, you know, may have virtues of its own. Then I think there's self deception. This is where you convince yourself that you know what you're doing even if you don't.
And that's, that's the sort of Dunning Kruger effect, which we, I think we've talked about lots and is quite well covered on the Internet, which is, you know, when you're new at something, you, you know, it's quite easy to think that you're better at it than you are. So three is projecting confidence that you don't have.
So this is, you know, if you're a nervous public speaker or whatever, but you stand up on stage and you pretend to be confident and. Which isn't really the same as feeling confident. So it is. It is a kind of pretense. So I think projecting confidence, that's.
That's definitely part of, I think what people think.
Speaker A:It's kind of how I've lived my whole life. Well, exactly.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah. No, but I always get the feeling with you that you actually genuinely. Erroneous believe it. Which is.
Speaker A:Which is just shows that it's working.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly. And then. And then we have sort of your identity in some sense. Right. But this is Dressing like the job you want.
This is trying to look like a different kind of person than the one you are.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Capability. This is now getting into the slightly socially unacceptable phase.
This is saying that you can do something and just hoping that you'll be able to learn on the job or wing it.
Speaker A:It's like actors always sort of tick, like. Yeah, they can. Horse riding is in this.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:We'll figure that out when we get there.
Speaker B:So French. Yeah, I can do French. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:And we've got a whole sort of swathes of different methods of qualifying, whether people actually can do things, qualifications and things to test and prove.
Speaker B:Well, that gets on to the next bit, really, which is their sort of experience. So falsifying your experience, not quite yet in a way that's genuinely fraudulent.
But this is the sort of inflating your CV where you say, oh, I led Team X and we did this and in fact you were just the photocopying guy or something, you know, where it's.
It's not quite fraud as such, but, you know, and I think this is something that I consider to be a bit beyond the pale, but I know a lot of people just think it's part of the game to slightly big yourself up on a cv and we probably all have to some extent. I mean, you're not. You're probably not going to, you know, be absolutely honest on a cv.
Speaker A:There's a difference. Like putting things in the best possible light versus kind of basically lying.
Speaker B:Yeah. Now we get onto the bit where you're going to be committing a criminal offense. So this is the fun bit.
Credentials, this, lying about your qualifications. Right.
So saying you've got a degree that you haven't got, saying you're certified to do something which you're not, then there's lying about actual results. So this, and this can be fraud.
If you are, for example, pretending, falsifying your business outcomes, making yourself look more profitable than you are, hiding losses, Enron type stuff, you know, pretending you've got income or customers or research findings that you don't have, and then finally authority. This is impersonating a policeman or similar or a doctor or an airline pilot or something. So those are the nine levels of faking it.
And I think before we drill into what exactly faking it is, although I think Peter's covered it quite well with the sort of simple signaling definition, I think what we're talking about is somewhere between sort of three and six here we're looking at somewhere between projecting more confidence than you have and slightly inflating your experience to make it sound more impressive. I think that's. That's the. Anything more than that is fraud. No one's advocating that. Please don't do anything less than that.
Speaker A:What's the.
Speaker B:Less than that is just like, you know. Yeah, yeah. A bit of self belief. Not, not. Not really a conscious decision to fake it. So. Yeah, so there we are.
Speaker A:Okay, that makes sense. And like, like I said, I think that sort of 3 and 4. Why everyone wouldn't do that, I don't know.
But I mean, you know, that's so just how I feel about things. Peter.
Speaker C:Yeah. I'd like to lay out the. The case for the defence of faking.
Speaker A:It to make it.
Speaker C:Okay, get in there early. So, opening statements for defense. So it's an old term. It's older than you think.
It was sort of largely popularized in recent years by Amway and Self Help and Alcoholics Anonymous. Really? That's where it sort of. That's where it came from. And it's been adopted by popular culture to describe what a lot of influencers do.
But it's much, much, much older than that.
Speaker A:Well, the concept itself must surely be, you know, as old as humanity. But anyway. Sorry, go on.
Speaker C:But the actual. The closest to fake it to make it was Simon and Garfunkel song Faking it and that. And that's apparently where AA got there. Fake it till you make it.
And the line is, I know that I'm faking it. I'm not really making it.
Speaker A:They said this in their song.
Speaker B:So what was the context for AA using it?
Speaker A:What's aa? Oh, alcoholics.
Speaker C:Well, that's the interesting thing. So the idea that the AA have adopted. That's a slogan which really sums up what the psychologists call behavioral activation.
So this is basically if you want to be. If you want to be a better person, just start being a better person.
Just do all the things that are better do, actually physically do the things that better people do. And you sort of internalize that. You rewire your brain, which is distinct from its messy.
The psychology evidence is messy around this because there are things that don't reproduce. So like alcohol, it seems to work in sort of vice avoidance and just act like a sober person and you can become a person.
Speaker B:Yeah, I guess. But so the only, you know, the only thing stopping you not being an alcoholic is choosing to drink things.
And if you go, well, I tell you what, I won't. Well done. Yeah, not an alcoholic.
Speaker C:But the point is, the idea is it gets easier because you rewire your brain.
Speaker A:Yeah. And you're breaking that habit in the first instance.
Speaker C:And.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:And there are some interesting psychology things like certainly it's been shown that placing a pen between your teeth, which kind of forces your muscles in your mouth into a smile, actually increases the rate the. How funny you find things. So the control experiment is you show a sample cartoons, funny cartoons, and they're rated.
And the control condition, it has no pen. And the test condition has a pen. And the people with the pen mark cartoons. Funnier.
So the physical manipulation of your body, the faking, it artificially causes some interesting psychological things. Things that don't work though.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C: o do you Remember Amy Cuddy's: Speaker A:No.
Speaker C:Power posing. Oh, okay.
Speaker B:That was. And that was when George Osborne came on stage and did that absurd stance.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:And you get all these portraits of politicians standing outside their new department just astride it almost.
Speaker C:Yes. This was a big deal back at the time. Like standing up straight and pushing your chest down.
Power posing things supposed to cut cortisol, boost risk appetite, raise your testosterone and.
Speaker B:Make you look like a complete tool.
Speaker C:And make you look like a tool. Turns out most of that's bullshit except.
Speaker B:For the looking like a tool.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was. It didn't. It didn't survive the replication crisis. But standing up straight has been shown to link to a better mood.
So if you're hunched over and feeling. Looking like you're downtrodden, you'll feel more downtrodden than.
Speaker B:Isn't this sort of the basis of cognitive behavioural therapy?
Speaker C:Exactly. Brilliant, brilliant link there. Yes, it is.
Cognitive behaviour theory basically invites you to change the cognitive behaviors, the thoughts that you have in relation to your perception of the world, and practice healthy thoughts in place of pathological thoughts.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Okay.
So like a real world example, let's say that I'm feeling, I don't know, like insecure at work because I feel like everyone else knows what they're doing and I feel like I don't. What's the sort of CBT approach to that? And it's making me anxious.
Speaker C:I'm not a therapist, but what I suggest is you think about the things you know you are good at, Right. Those things that you don't have that sense of anxiety about and then sort of expand out from there.
So things that you are okay at practice doing more of those.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:Yeah. I'm just a bit worried. I hope you're asking for a friend. Is Peter being horrible to you at work?
Speaker C:But in addition to that, reframe your negativity about those things that you're worried about that give you anxiety and see them as an opportunity to get better at something new. That reframing thing, I'm a bit worried.
Speaker A:You have more stuff there, Peter.
Speaker C:Yeah, so it's linked also to self perception theory. This is the idea that we infer our own attitudes and emotions by watching our own behavior.
So this is like you perceive yourself as well as you perceive the world. You are sort of a passenger inside your own mind and body.
And so if you see yourself, if certain behaviors, certain physical behaviors or mental behaviors become habit and routine, you kind of. That becomes you.
Speaker A:Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker B:Yeah.
I mean, that's got that even though that's the opposite way around to the sort of standard Cartesian approach of saying, well, you're essentially the person inside yourself, you're the soul, you. And your body is just a vessel which expresses your soul. There's no doubt in our everyday experience. So that's true. And I.
So I experienced that only yesterday. I was feeling really tired and there was a kind of professional networking drinks thing I was meant to be going to and I just couldn't face it.
Speaker A:It sounds awful, but yeah, keep going.
Speaker B:It would have been really nice. It was, you know, some nice drinks in the garden of Bush House with a bunch of.
But, but I thought, I can't really face going and interacting with a bunch of people. I don't know. I've been doing that a lot the last couple of weeks. I'm a bit, you know, socialized out and you know, to be honest, it made me.
Started making me feel like a bit of a shut in. I thought, well, I wish I'd. I wish I'd plucked up the courage and gone. And I'm sure if I had done, I'd have had a nice time.
So, you know, I think that, and I think the, the whole thing of like going out for a walk, which is something I really have to force myself to do because there's always that temptation of, well, there's really something I should finish, you know, at my desk. But actually, you go out for a walk, you see yourself a different kind of person by the time you come back.
Speaker C:What you need to do, top tip, is wire it into your identity. So rather than saying, I wish I was a walker, sorry, rather than saying, I wish I walked more, think of yourself.
Speaker B:Describe walking guys, talk to yourself.
Speaker C:Yeah, describe yourself as a walking guy and then it'll be easier. Yeah, as a walking guy, you've got to walk. Right, so you've got to do that. You prioritize it better.
Speaker A:Yeah, quiet look. So all this totally makes sense.
I'm a little bit worried because I'm not saying we've done this but I'm just worried that we're veering into kind of some sort of banal well being podcast which I don't think we are.
Speaker B:Not to write off the well being podcast. No, we're not interested in that. The well being of our listeners is very much at the bottom of our. It's quite low on our.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry listeners. But we, you know, call it like it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think something we need to think about is what drives fakeability at all. Right.
So I mean Peter talked about some actual strategies you can use to sort. Start faking it in various contexts but obviously there are some things where it's actually quite hard to fake it.
So for example I think I would struggle to fake it until I made it as a, as a catwalk model. I might be being pessimistic.
Speaker A:I don't know Nick. I mean. But anyway, keep going.
Speaker C:Acting for certain, for a certain sector of the, of the.
Speaker B:You're right. Maybe, maybe I need to think of myself as a niche sort of a bit more.
But acting is one of those jobs where you sort of think, well if you're good enough to fake it then you're actually. That is acting kind of built in. That actually is what stand up comedy. I defy anyone to.
You can't just go up on stage and I mean if you, if you fake being funny, well congratulations, you are actually funny. That's not faking it. Concert pianist. Very, very tricky to sort of get. Acquire the self belief without doing a few scales. Olympic sprinter.
I mean so there's, there's quite a few things where it's quite hard to face.
Speaker A:You'd get found out pretty.
Speaker B:I think you would. I think you put good old Ali Deer gave it a go as a professional footballer and he laug lasted 50 minutes. So fakeable jobs.
Well, venture capitalist, fund manager, film producer, politician, researchers, artists, dare I say, you know things where for some reason it's quite, it's, it's, it's quite easy to sustain a semblance of competence where there isn't one. And I think I.
So just thinking about what drives professions to being at one of these extremes or the other so that some of the, the key things are first of all the link between competence and results really like measurability.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Measurably very important. And the more solo a profession is, like a sprinter is a good example that's going to make it very easy for people to tie results to your performance.
Whereas if you're working in office, if you're in any kind of office job where you're pooling your effort and you know, you're, perhaps the results of the team are able to reflect on you to some extent, you know, then, then it's going to be easier to fake it. You can in a sense hide in the crowd.
Speaker C:You're proximate to the outcome.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's, it's sort of, there's, it's very noisy. What the observable outcome and your effort are only linked in a kind of messy way then.
Then also if you have a highly sort of, if the, if your success is based on a small number of kind of wins or losses, that's another classic example. So these might be things like a fund manager who invests in 100 things. One of them happens to bring a 500 times return or whatever.
Suddenly they look very, very successful. But actually that, you know, they might, could have just been lucky then the time lag.
I think this is particularly, this is something that, you know, the sort of high profile managers and CEOs and things will, often politicians will make decisions that won't, whose effects won't really be felt for a long time till perhaps possibly till they've moved on and are no longer in the firing line to get blamed for whatever happens after them. And then there's also basically if the errors aren't particularly catastrophic.
So you know, if making a mistake doesn't lead to a spotlight being cast on, well, who did this.
Obviously if you're a surgeon or airline pilot, faking it is likely to lead to a catastrophic mistake and someone's going to come and say, well what happened here then? Why did you remove his heart when it was supposed to be a liver transplant? You know, so, so I think, I think that that naturally gives us a sort of.
I think those things drive the fakeability side of this, of this equation.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And of course, what's the other side of the equation? Makeability. Yeah, makeability.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Now that's not straightforward, I think.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:Oh, because we're going to. So we might move on to that. Yeah, yeah, we definitely do.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:But also it makes me think of a couple of things. First of all, I remember I've had different sales jobs over the years, been some time now.
Speaker B:I think you'd be good at it.
Speaker A:Well, here's the thing. I was until I got bored of it sometimes.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:So I wasn't terribly consistent. However, what I did like about it is if you. It's. It's one of those jobs where depending on the kind of sales it is.
But let's say you've got monthly targets.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:If you're smashing those, you can do what the fuck you want. I mean, I mean you're suddenly the king.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:It doesn't matter. Like don't turn up to meetings, stay in bed, whatever. Because there's.
Speaker B:Because you're a rock star, ninja salesman guy.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker B:Until next month when suddenly out of pure luck, falls off a cliff.
Speaker A:Yeah. So that, but that's. So that's one thing that's quite nice about it. But also, I mean we talked about sectors.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:And we're definitely going to get into the making it side of it. But also why you would do it. Right. And I think the obvious reason is. And sort of thinking about your, you know, the scale of things.
So we're talking about the middle of stuff. Right. But broadly it's like an easier way through and you know, it's a quicker way to whatever prestige or money or whatever it is. But also.
So I'm just thinking about who are the individuals and do certain sectors attract certain kind of individuals who are just going to be faking it?
Speaker B:Yeah, sales sounds like one of them.
Speaker A:Well, actually there's an element of sales which is definitely. You have to fool yourself.
Speaker B:You've got to believe in the thing you're.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker B:Well, and also marketing, I think to some extent. And I think people who are good at marketing have an authenticity that comes from a genuine belief in the thing they're trying to get you to buy.
You know, they're not. They really do think that this car is very cool.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I think it's not. They're not just reading from a script. You know, there's that feeling of. Well, that's, that's actually, I think there's.
Speaker A:Some truth in that.
Speaker B:Yeah. They say we're at the sort of self deception side. It may possibly. Unless the thing really is that good, which it might be.
But the thing is that there is no doubt, there's got to be an element at which being good at that requires you to sort of slightly buy into stuff you don't necessarily believe. But you.
Speaker A:Yeah, definitely. But anyway, making it. Is that what we're moving into?
Speaker B:Yeah, well, so I think this is the other side of the oft neglected ugly sister of faking it till you make it is. Well, what jobs actually do enable you to make it. Now. Okay, this, this I think I would say this is.
This is something where it is possible to become competent.
Speaker A:Keep going. I'm not quite sure where we're going with this, what we mean by it.
Speaker B:Yeah, but okay, assuming that competence is the ability to generate good results.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:I think the, the one of the implication. And I did. So I don't want to drill into what good means here, but let's say adding value like you could you.
That you can create a thing that someone wants to pay you to do. Right. Or whatever. So I think this, I think the implication for me of fake it till you make it is that. Fake it. Right.
To cover up the fact that there's a bit of a gap at the moment. Have the behavior of the good of the high performer.
But the making it bit means you have to kind of still have to work on getting that competence up to that level. At which point, well, you're no longer faking it. Isn't that the. I think that's the model we're meant to have in mind.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So, so, so we do need this. This can only really work in contexts where there is a meaningful measure of competence that you can actually develop over time. Right. Do you.
Picking up what I put down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not. If, if there is no way of changing your level of competence, then the advice is just going to be fake. Keep faking it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Like there's no making it because you can't actually get.
Speaker A:The implication is that there's a certain level of. Yeah, exactly. As you said, there's a certain level of competence and just fake that. And actually that will come.
Speaker B:And so.
And what we're looking for is really that I suppose the most makeable jobs are the ones where there is a big difference between the sort of best performers and the worst performers.
So your classic things will be crafts, your kind of surgeon or carpenter or plumber or engineer, where lots of, you know, you can have actually years of experience and every year you learn something. I mean I feel a bit like that myself. Like I always look back on myself from three years ago and think, God, I didn't know anything about this.
And now, of course I think I'm a right know it all, who knows everything. But in three years time, no doubt I'll look back on myself and think, God, you had a long way to go.
But the point is that there is definitely an upward curve of skill that I've been going up my entire life then, you know, and, and sort of jobs, I guess those kind of jobs which involve not necessarily the tacit knowledge like a carpenter, but, but judgment jobs where you accrue experience and, and you accrue knowledge.
So things like being a barrister or a therapist or an intelligence analyst or something where you know, you're just gradually laying down this kind of increasing substrate of understanding and knowledge and past, past examples where you, you know, it means that your judgment, it becomes more discriminating. Whereas low competence jobs are the jobs that are kind of relatively mechanistic so, you know, push a button when this light comes on type things.
I mean you can still do them badly but there isn't much space between baking it and. Yes, exactly. You know, and I. So I think things like bar for.
Speaker C:Mastery is quite low.
Speaker B:Right. Or you know, that there isn't. Yeah.
There's some point where you really, you know, I mean, no one talks about a ticket inspector faking it till they're making it. Right. Because you can only be so good as a ticket inspector.
And it's when you've inspected all the tickets, you know, once you've got to that, which is probably on day four, there's not much more you need to worry about growth. Yeah. I mean, no offense to all the ticket inspectors out there who probably do do the job with great aplomb.
But you know, things like being a, being a hotel receptionist or a call centre operator or a barista, I would suggest not that there is no skill involved, but that there isn't a great deal of skill such that after not very long you will be at the top of your game anyway. There probably isn't anywhere further to go.
Speaker A:Yeah. As an aside, there's lots of entertainment based or comedy sort of based that's based in that kind of stuff.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:What do you mean?
Speaker A:Well, I'm thinking about for example the Office, where you know the UK sitcom, if you want to call it that, mockumentary, where you have someone like Gareth who's doing a really sort of quite a banal job, really menial job, but he's really super into it.
Speaker B:Right. And.
Speaker A:Right, good going for it. But it's actually quite a low level thing really. So he's over serious about it? I would say so, yeah.
Speaker B:Maybe Gareth is a good example of someone who has sort of absorbed the fake it till you make it mindset. Right. It's like he's got them, he's got the mentality of someone who's kind of much more Important and senior than he is. Right.
And he's funny because he does it badly.
Speaker A:Yes. You're talking about the main guy. Yeah. Guy.
Speaker B:The guy played by Mackenzie Crow. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:No, but what's funny about him is that mismatch between the. He's. He's. He's acting like he's faking it till he makes it in a kind of high powered. Yeah. CEO job. But he's.
He's in a job where you can't fake it till you make it.
Speaker C:He's in.
Speaker B:He's more like the kind of equivalent of a ticket inspector. And the concept of a ticket inspector trying to fake it till they make it is intrinsically funny because it doesn't work.
The make it side of it doesn't. Doesn't work. You know?
Speaker A:Quite.
Speaker B:So. Yeah.
Speaker A:Peter, what do you got?
Speaker C:Well, I think it's interesting to talk about the flip of this. Nick came up with reel it till you feel it. So this is where.
Speaker A:Is that a Nick invention?
Speaker C:That phrase, Nick invention.
Speaker A:Hold on, Nick.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:Good stuff.
Speaker B:It could be. It's worthy of further refinement, I think. But, you know, I think you nailed it.
Speaker A:Nailed it.
Speaker C:No, I posited reel it till you deal it.
Speaker B:That's also good.
Speaker C:Or reel it till they steal it. Which is the kind of.
Speaker B:That's a bit of a pessimistic animal.
Speaker C:The cynical one. Yeah. You do something well and they. Yeah. Google does it better and cheaper. Doing it for real, properly. Inverted commas.
Not faking it, just being competent. Developing Corey Gold.
Speaker A:Kind of just do the work.
Speaker C:Yeah. Does it. Does it always work as an alternative strategy? And the answer is no, it doesn't.
Speaker B:So, I mean, disappointing.
Speaker C:Help me out. Pronunciation. George Akaloff.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Yeah. George Akaloff. Nobel. The lemons guy. The market for lemons. When buyers can't tell real from fake, then quality, the value of quality gets driven out.
Speaker B:Yeah. The good things disappear from the market.
Speaker C:And you do kind of see that in a real world example is kind of furniture. So the people who buy, people with disposable income are not necessarily very discerning on the kind of furniture they buy.
So you get tons and tons of flat pack IKEA crap and not very much artisanal stuff anymore.
Speaker B:I mean, that sounds like you in shittification.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker B:It's almost like the fact that you can pretend that a service is the same service as it was last year, but it's got worse and people still buy it.
Speaker A:But isn't that great if people Go, wow. I've got this amazing furniture. Because it's amazing enough furniture.
Speaker C:It's, it's functional, but it's, it's, it's.
Speaker B:Not going to ennoble them.
Speaker C:It's not going to enable them. Yeah.
Speaker B:Like a nice one of Peter's nice concrete brutalist coffee tables. Yeah.
Speaker C:So, yeah. So that it will break down in that kind of, in that kind of context.
So I think I haven't got a criteria, set a criteria for this, but you have to be picky about which is the optimal strategy. Faking it or reeling it.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, but I mean, okay, I guess they're not totally rivalrous, but it is possibly helpful to think in terms of, you know, of investing in what you look like and then investing in how good you are. So one is sort of engine building and the other is a bit more like. I mean, it's not a million miles away from explore, exploit.
But one is sort of dealing with the paintwork and one is dealing with the engine.
Speaker C:Engine building and engine dressing.
Speaker B:Well, exactly. And it sort of feels like. Well, actually, you know, maybe it is good to do a bit of both.
, any Hollywood film from the: Speaker C:Says, it's more virtuous. It's seen as more virtuous.
Speaker B:Well, and I guess there is a kind of, possibly an inner reward for that. But, but if your goal is to make bucks fast, then actually I think to some extent it is worth investing in the fakery side.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah. But the key, the key thing is that you could be good being, being.
To be successful, being good is probably necessary if you do that strategy, but it's not sufficient. You need an unfakeable. You need a costly signal. You need an unfakeable way to prove it. Yeah, that's right.
And that could be an external discerning consumer of your service or it could be some sort of credential.
Speaker A:But also, I mean, again, rather boringly, aren't all of us just for this aspect of our personalities, you know, a mixture of these things?
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:Of faking a bit and like doing the work?
Speaker B:Well, I think there's an argument that we.
It's utterly intrinsic to human nature and in our, you know, there's a kind of the self deception which is necessary for external deception is very deeply rooted. So we actually can't really tell. I mean that's the basis of the Dunning Kruger effect is like.
And we, you know, and the fact that, the fact that we accept social proof as evidence of competence, you know, the fact that someone stands up and says, right guys, I'm in charge, follow me. And that people do it means that, you know, we have obviously evolved in an environment where to some extent faking it is intrinsically valuable.
You know, that we don't spend time trying to work out whether or not someone's competent. We're kind of happy to go. Okay, well yeah, whatever, if you say so.
And I mean obviously there are some jobs where, I mean, you think of sort of military commanders or something where actually it is important that they don't sit there expressing doubts even. No one really necessarily believes that their officer is a genius who's, you know, definitely got the best course of action.
But the key thing is there is a course of action and it's not terrible and we're going to go along with it and you know, they have to kind of, it's got to be.
Speaker C:And as long as it's executed with.
Speaker B:Confidence, then it with a posh enough access.
Speaker C:Better than no plan at all. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:For listeners.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:Don't worry if you feel like you're faking it till you make it. Apparently 70% of people do feel like frauds at some point in their professional life. Not me. It's.
Yeah, it's quite normal to feel like you're faking it at work not really knowing what you're doing. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:I mean I'm surprised there's 30% that don't, frankly.
Speaker B:I mean my own personal raging egomaniacs.
Speaker C:Well, they're the Dunning Kruger sufferers.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:Another nice way to think about it is it is the opposite end.
It's the little talked about end of the Dunning Kruger curve that people who are actually genuinely competent underestimate their own capabilities so they will feel like they're faking it.
Speaker B:So you're gonna, you're, you're at one of those two ends, you think you know what you're doing. I, yeah, I mean I think my, to characterize my own personal journey in the last 25 years of being.
Well, I, I'd say it started with I don't know what I'm doing and my level of responsibility is too high to realizing that nobody else knew what they were doing either. That that came first was like, oh, hang on, I thought, these guys must be some great economics geniuses that I'm working with.
And I'm like, no, when they get asked a question, they're kind of having to make it up a bit as well. You get a bit of confidence from that.
And then I think you get to a point where you look around, you go, well, actually, I do know what I'm doing more than the people I'm working with. And then you realize you've actually sort of made it when you do feel like you know what you're doing and.
And it turns out you actually do know what you're doing.
Speaker A:But I look forward to that day.
Speaker B:Yeah. But I think so. I think we've got the ingredients here to bring it all together.
Speaker A:So do you know what I feel in need of what I'm missing? I need a matrix.
Speaker B:Yeah, don't worry, we've got that.
Speaker C:Cool.
Speaker B:And I think our two axes, as suggested by the title of the podcast, are fakeability and makeability. Yeah.
And we've talked about the things the fakeability is to do with the kind of that messy link between your behavior and your actions and the results. So you want it to be fakeable. You've got to be in an industry like that.
But then we've got the makeability where there is a return to investment in skill so that you can meaningfully increase in capability and eventually catch up to where you're faking it. And that gives us these, these sort of four types of thing. So fake it to make is only going to work in one of these. Yeah, bottom left.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:So we've got low fakeability, low makeability. Now the, this is what I would call the natural talent jobs.
These are sprinters, voice actors, pop singers, models, TV presenters, where, you know, someone who's going to be a good, charismatic TV presenter is probably more or less like that from a young age. And it's going to be hard to train a unlikable doofus into a good TV presenter.
And at the same time, those jobs are very visible in terms of their outcomes. So I think, you know, those are really. Do not go and do that. They're neither fakeable nor makeable.
Speaker A:Well, don't do them.
Speaker B:Do them if you're good at them. But there's no, don't, don't decide that you're going to fake it till you make it as a, as a, as a model. It's not going to work.
Then we've got low makeability, but high fakeability.
These are, these are jobs I would Call this sort of what you see is what you get type jobs where there isn't really a meaningful concept of skill at all. But. But you basically do them. So this is things like reality TV contestants, social media influencer.
Speaker A:Is this. Sorry, is this the. So. So this was low.
Speaker B:In a sense, the fake ability is. Is the product. Yeah, yeah. So like being a celebrity. I mean, all you've got to do to be a celebrity is be well known. Well done. You're a celebrity.
You can't. You're not gonna work on being a particularly. There's no point in. Oh, well, I'm.
I'm gonna pretend to be a celebrity while I don't really know how to be a celebrity, but one day I'll know how to be a celebrity and I'll be good at it. It just does. Celebrity does not work like that, that.
Speaker A:You can't fake it.
Speaker C:You.
Speaker B:Well, it's. It's. No, it's.
Speaker A:It's getting mixed up.
Speaker B:I'm saying that fake ability is the job in a sense. Like there isn't really a skill that's being measured.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:The outcomes are the outcomes.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:You know, so then we've got the makeability as these are jobs which are. Which are highly skilled, but low fake ability. So I think these are your surgeons. Yeah, master craftsman.
This is where you go if you don't like the faking it. If you're not comfortable with faking it, go into become a surgeon or a pilot or a carpenter or something where everyone can see how good you are.
And it takes a long time to get good. Right. So. So. And I think that's a certain personality type.
Speaker A:Podcast host.
Speaker B:Yeah, I. I feel a little bit like that's probably where I've ended up. I am bad at faking it, and I feel like I have more or less been getting better at my actual profession for 25 years.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker B:Okay, but if you want to be a fake it till you make it guy, where do you go? Well, this is where experience does matter, but you can still get a long way by faking it.
So this is startup founders, venture capitalists, politicians, CEOs, dare I say intelligence analysts, you know, diplomats. Confidence in a good suit.
Speaker A:Horrible quadrant, this one.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, I mean, exactly. But there's a personality type that loves that. That and I. And so, so basically, I think that's it.
I think to summarize, yes, faking it till you make it does work, but only if you're in that quadrant. And if you are in that quadrant, well, bad News, you are going to have to do a bit of faking it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:I think this could be the basis of some very useful career advice. Earlier. It's like, yeah, what kind of person are you?
Speaker B:How much concentrate on the top.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker B:I mean, I actually do think this would have been a really useful. It's a useful framing for. For. Because, I mean, some people are really good at that. Some people are great and will embrace.
Speaker C:It and there's value in it. There's no value judgment in any of this.
Speaker B:No, no, no, no, no. I mean, look, I think what we've said is that actually there is, you know, signaling is important, right. If you're. If you're able to.
There is, and it is. And some of these jobs, politician, for example, you know, actually pretending you know what you're talking about is important.
I mean, literally, that is part of the job. No one or you're very naive if you believe that when politicians stand up and talk about the economy that they know what they're talking about.
They don't. They've been told what to say by a staffer who's five minutes ago in.
Speaker C:A memo and they'll forget about five minutes later.
Speaker A:But actually that. So that point makes me think of something else, actually, which I think a lot of the careers in that.
What I've just described is not a great quadrant full of chances are quite exciting careers, actually. Whereas in the.
Where it's very measurable, they sound a bit stodgy and a bit unexciting, like, you know, I'm sure it's great being a surgeon and they're really important and I think I probably would kind of fight exciting.
Speaker B:Finally you get bored. Yeah. You've got to go through all. Whereas I.
The idea of being in a quiet study with sun beaming through the motes of dust and reading through some old books and working on some maths theorem. That is my dream job, I think.
Speaker A:Yeah. Okay. Well, we've all found ourselves where we should be, I think.
Actually, just really briefly, just on a scale of 1 to 10, how much have you faked it, do you think, to get to the point where you are now, as in one? Not at all. Ten loads only ever three.
Speaker B:Three or four, I think.
Speaker A:And this just to be clear, this is separate from that other one to nine.
Speaker B:No, I. I think the most I've done is project more confidence than I have. I haven't really ever.
Well, to be honest, haven't really ever needed a CV outside of when I applied for the civil service and there Wasn't anything on my cv, you know, from that point onwards, I think it's about. And certainly when I became a team leader, when I'm. I'm a bad manager, but you have to kind of pretend you know how to manage people. So there's a.
There's a bit of that and then you kind of get better at it on the job. So I'd say three or four. Certainly not into the kind of lying about things kind of level.
Speaker A:Yeah. I mean, that's kind of not really what I mean, but as in like assuming like that 3 or 4 bandwidth. Right.
Speaker B:I always made sure that when I was saying things, they were true.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Right. So I never. I never. I was. I was never. I've never been comfortable blagging something standing up and going, this is the case, guys.
And I've actually pulled it out of my arm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've always made sure that, you know, actually the things I say are kind of true.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So I think it really is just that sort of projection stuff. Yeah.
Speaker A:So I would answer it slightly differently, which is like this sort of 3, 4 level of. Somewhere between self belief and whatever the next bit was of level four, I would say that I've applied those, going to my new scale of 1 to 10.
Like 8, 9. Like all the time. Just all the time.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:But like I say clearly, but not in a dishonest way.
Speaker B:When are you gonna make it, though, Fraser?
Speaker A:I've made it.
Speaker B:Right, you made it.
Speaker A:Look at me, look at us.
Speaker C:Right, yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Peter.
Speaker C:Similar. I think I've never really misrepresented myself.
Speaker B:Similar to who, Fraser or you? Right.
Speaker C:And I don't think I. To Nick, that is, I've never. I've never felt confident saying things that I don't have a good strong reason to believe.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:It feels it's ill with me today.
Speaker B:Well, it's nice to be armed with the truth. Right. It's like in kind of impenetrable armor, really. Whereas I think I live in terror of being called out for bullshitting or something.
Speaker C:Yeah. I think I was worse when I was younger, but I. Yeah, I don't. I never lied on CVs or anything.
Speaker A:Yeah. And just to round it off, I think also it's personality site because definitely for me it's that kind of. Let's have a go. Let's go for it.
That looks fun. Let's give it a go.
Speaker B:Learn it. Learn it as we go. Richard Branson. I mean, I think you're in the Richard Branson it's like, not it doesn't feel malign.
It feels more like someone saying, I could do that. Let's give it a go and we'll work out. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
And, you know, not something I'm terribly happy about doing, but I recognize that there's definitely a role for people like that in the world.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So well done, Fraser.
Speaker A:Thank you very much. So we'll stop there. You've been listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast brought to you by Aleph Insights and produced by me, Fraser McGruer.
If you haven't already, please like and subscribe. We aim to release an episode every week or two.
If there are any topics you'd like us to cover, please email us at podcast@lephinsights.com thanks, as always, for listening. Until next time, goodbye.
