Tag Archives: Theranos

Why So Many Smart People Are Foolish

Why So Many Smart People Are Foolish

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

When I lived in Moscow, my gym was just a five-minute walk from my flat. So rather than use a locker, I would just run over in my shorts and a jacket no matter what the weather was. The locals thought I was crazy. Elderly Russians would sometimes scream at me to go home and get dressed properly.

I had always heard that Russians were impervious to the effects of weather, but the truth is that they get cold just like the rest of us. We tend to mythologize the unknown. Our brains work in strange ways, soaking up patterns from what we see. Often, however, those experiences are unreliable, such as the Hollywood images that helped shape my views about Russians and their impenetrability.

The problem is that myths often feel more real than facts. We have a tendency to seize on information that is most accessible, not the most accurate, and then interpret new evidence based on that prior perception. We need to accept that we can’t avoid our own cognitive biases. The unavoidable truth is that we’re easiest to fool when we think we’re being clever.

Inventing Myths

When Jessica Pressler first published her story about Anna Sorokin in New York Magazine, it could scarcely be believed. A Russian emigrant, with no assets to speak of, somehow managed to convince the cream of New York society that she was, in fact, a wealthy German heiress and swindled them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Her crimes pale in comparison to Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, who made fools of the elites on the opposite coast. Attracting a powerful board that included Henry Kissinger (but no one with expertise in life sciences), the 20-something entrepreneur convinced investors that she had invented a revolutionary blood testing technology and was able to attract $700 million.

In both cases, there was no shortage of opportunities to unmask the fraud. Anna Sorokin left unpaid bills all over town. Despite Holmes’s claims, she wasn’t able to produce a single peer-reviewed study that her technology worked even after 10 years in business. There were no shortage of whistle blowers from inside and outside the company.

Still, many bought the ruses and would interpret facts to support them. Sorokin’s unpaid bills were seen as proof of her wealth. After all, who but the fabulously rich could be so nonchalant with money? In Holmes’ case, her eccentricities were taken as evidence that she truly was a genius, in the mold of Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg.

The Halo Effect

People like Sorokin and Holmes intentionally prey on our weaknesses. Whenever anybody tried to uncover the facts, they threw elaborate defenses, making counter-accusations of any who dared to question them. Often, they used relationships with powerful people to protect them. At Theranos, there was very strict corporate security and an army of lawyers.

Still, it doesn’t have to be so diabolical. As Phil Rosenzweig explains in The Halo Effect, when a company is doing well, we tend to see every aspect of the organization in a positive light. We assume a profitable company has wise leadership, motivated employees and a sound strategy. At the same time, we see the traits of poorly performing firms in a negative light.

But what if it’s the same company? Rosenzweig points out that, when Cisco was at its peak before the dot-com bust, it was said to have an “extreme customer focus.” But a year later, when things turned south, Cisco was criticized for “a cavalier attitude toward potential customers” and “irksome” sales policies. Did its culture really change so much in a year?

Business pundits, in ways very similar to swindlers, prey on how our minds work. When they say that companies that employ risky strategies outperform others who don’t, they are leveraging survivorship bias and, of course, firms that took big risks and failed are never counted in the analysis. When consulting companies survey industry executives, they are relying more on social proof than uncovering expert opinion.

The Principle Of Reflexivity

In the early 70’s, a young MBA student named Michael Milken noticed that debt that was considered below investment grade could provide higher risk-adjusted returns than other investments. He decided to create a market for the so-called junk bonds and, by the 80’s, was making a ton of money.

Then everybody else piled on and the value of the bonds increased so much that they became a bad investment. Nevertheless, investors continued to rush in. Inevitably, the bubble popped and the market crashed as the crowds rushed for the exit. Many who were considered “smart money” lost billions.

That’s what George Soros calls reflexivity. Expectations aren’t formed in a vacuum, but in the context of other’s expectations. If many believe that the stock market will go up, we’re more likely to believe it too. That makes the stock market actually go up, which only adds fuel to the fire. Nobody wants to get left out of a good thing.

Very few ever seem to learn this lesson and that’s why people like Anna Sorokin and Elizabeth Holmes are able to play us for suckers. We are wired to conform and the effect extends widely throughout our social networks. The best indication of what we believe is not any discernible fact pattern, but what those around us happen to believe.

Don’t Believe Everything You Think

One of the things that I’ve learned over the years is that it’s best to assume people are smart, hardworking and well-intentioned. Of course, that’s not always true, but we don’t learn much from dismissing people as stupid, lazy and crooked. And if we don’t learn from others’ mistakes, then how can we avoid the same failures?

Often, smart people get taken in because they’re smart. They have a track record of seeing things others don’t, making good bets and winning big. People give them deference, come to them for advice and laugh at their jokes. They’re used to seeing things others don’t. For them, a lack of discernible evidence isn’t always a warning sign. It can be an opportunity.

We all need to check ourselves so that we don’t believe everything that we think. There are formal processes that can help, such as pre-mortems and red teams, but most of all we need to own up to the flaws in our own brains. We have a tendency to see patterns that aren’t really there and to double down on bad ideas once we’ve committed to them.

As Richard Feynman famously put it, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.” Smart people get taken in so easily because they forget that basic principle. They mythologize themselves and become the heroes of their own stories. That’s why there will always be more stories like “Inventing Anna” and Theranos.

Suckers are born every minute and, invariably, they think they’re playing it smart.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credits: Unsplash

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

What Innovators Can Learn From the Spectacular Rise and Crash of Theranos

Including its CEO Elizabeth Holmes

What Innovators Can Learn From the Spectacular Rise and Crash of Theranos

Last week in a Silicon Valley courtroom, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was convicted on four counts of fraud in connection with the failed blood-testing company she founded in 2003. The Stanford dropout will soon be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison. She joins a long list of convicted fakers that includes Bernie Madoff, Jeff Skilling, John DeLorean, and many others.

For most observers, the question now is how Holmes got so far, so fast. But for innovators everywhere, I want to focus on a different question: what can we learn from this case study of innovation gone bad?

As an innovation author and trainer to corporate America, I see this as a tragedy for future startups, and the field of innovation.

From the beginning, I followed the amazing rise and spectacular fall of Theranos. At its zenith, the firm soared to a $9 billion valuation. When articles appeared on Elizabeth’s achievements, I was dazzled. Here was a young woman who’d had the gall to drop out of college and start a company that promised to change the game in healthcare.

Theranos invented the nanotainer, which collected blood through a simple, painless finger prick. Several drops of blood could then be tested by another Theranos invention, the Edison. Capable, according to company literature, of performing “hundreds” of separate tests, from standard cholesterol checks to AIDs and leukemia. “The results are faster, more accurate, and far cheaper than conventional methods,” crowed Wired Magazine in a 2014 cover story.

If only it were so. As the 18-week trial revealed, it was all smoke and mirrors.

The Edison was never able to perform any blood tests reliably. But instead of coming clean, Holmes chose to double down and lawyer up. In the book Bad Blood, Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou detailed how Holmes went extreme. She harassed, threatened, and tried to silence internal whistleblowers. Carreyrou was pilloried before the Theranos staff and threatened by Holmes’ attorney and company stakeholder David Boies. Yet his damaging reporting led to Theranos’ unraveling. He carefully documented how Holmes and COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani resorted to using conventional test equipment behind the scenes, while pretending to patients and investors that Edison had performed the work.

As the story of Theranos now fades into history, what can be learned from this rare, behind-the-scenes insight into the amazing rise and fall of a startup that might guide the innovation efforts of others? What did Holmes get right, and where did she go wrong?

Innovators need to believe in themselves and think big, and they need self-discipline. Holmes had these attributes in spades. As a journal she kept revealed during the trial, Holmes kept up a grueling personal development regimen: “4 a.m. rise. Thank God, exercise, meditation, prayer. Eat breakfast Eat breakfast of whey and banana. Get to office by 6:45.”

Young and inexperienced in business, she apparently disciplined herself to speak in a deep and unemotional voice to make her seem older and more credible. She wore turtleneck sweaters to subliminally get people to think she might just be the second coming of Steve Jobs, her hero.

She made mentors of people like Larry Ellison and big-name investors like Tim Draper, who in turn helped convince big-name investors like the DeVoss family, the Cox family of Atlanta, and Rupert Murdock, who lost $125 million in the collapse.

Holmes’ was ultra-tough on herself to keep upping her game: “I am never a minute late,” she wrote in one entry. “I show no excitement. [I am] ALL ABOUT BUSINESS. I am not impulsive. I know the outcome of every encounter. I do not hesitate. I constantly make decisions and change them as needed. I speak rarely. I call bullshit immediately.”

Yet the one person she failed to call it on was herself.

And once she edged down that path with little lies, little deceptions, she got trapped into telling bigger and bigger lies. “Our equipment is already in use by the U.S. military on battlefields,” she promised would-be investors. It wasn’t. She was particularly good at establishing credibility, and somehow managed to charm such luminaries as Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, and James Mattis to serve on her board of directors, along with not a single scientist nor medical doctor who might have red-flagged problems with the Edison. (It is amazing that General Mattis apparently didn’t bother to check out the false claim that the military was already piloting the product on battlefields).

Holmes knew how to deflect when her offering proved vulnerable. Every good sales professional knows to “overcome objections.” But whenever visitors started asking her questions that were too close to the Big Lie (the product had major flaws), she aggressively pushed back with, “don’t ask us to reveal trade secrets.” While this shut them up, it did not solve her problem.

Another tool of innovators trying to build the buy-in for their ideas is to use the “fear of losing out” technique. There’s nothing unethical about it, unless you misrepresent facts. This strategy worked well for Holmes – at least for awhile. She used it successfully to secure big contracts, and big investments.

But the lie that did her in was a false attempt to demonstrate credibility. Before the jury, she admitted adding the logos of drug companies Pfizer and Schering-Plough to a marketing pitch to Walgreen Drugstores, at the time considering partnering with Theranos to install instant blood-testing centers in its 9,000 retail locations.

Final lesson to innovators: use creativity to make your case, but don’t fudge even on the smallest details. What Elizabeth did with the logos became a charge of wire fraud and was said to be the smoking gun that all jurors agreed on should send her to prison.

This article originally appeared in Forbes
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.