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Gorick Ng is a HBS Alum and the Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author of The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Start Your Career Off Right,. The Unspoken Rules is now offered at multinationals, professional services firms, startups, and non-profits around the world for onboarding, training, and diversity and inclusion. In 2021, Harvard Business School offered The Unspoken Rules to every MBA student. Gorick has been thinking about careers and jobs since he started helping his mother prepare her resume and apply to jobs when he was only a teenager. Since then, he’s gone on to help countless numbers of students and young professionals navigate their careers, and built his own career first as a management consultant and now as a career development expert.
During our conversation, Gorick spoke about his learnings about careers over the years, some of the challenging events in his career that led to the ideas for his book “The Unspoken Rules’ ‘ and a wide-ranging conversation around career development advice for MBA students and Alum. Listen today on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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Transcript:
Al Dea: (00:01)
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the MBA insider podcast. I am your host Al Dea and the author of MBA insider. This podcast is for career driven professionals, looking for advice on how to grow their careers by leveraging the skills, experiences, and knowledge gain from an MBA degree. In each episode, I’ll give you a look into the business school experience, along with practical tips, career advice, and real life stories to help professionals grow their careers.
Al Dea: (00:34)
Welcome to the MBA insider podcast. My name is Al Dea I’m the host of the MBA insider podcast and a founder of MBA school.com. And today I’m excited because I have with me Gorick kingNg who is the author of unspoken rules, secrets to starting your career off, which if I remember correctly was a wall street journal journal bestseller. So congratulations. Correct. But we’re going to talk all things career today would go record to talk a little bit about his book, but also some of his own career journey to Gorick cause also an alum of Harvard business school. So we’ll definitely dive into that, but I always love bringing on people to the show who have point of views on career development, because I do think it is really important. And so that’s what we’re going to talk a little bit about today. So first and foremost, congratulations on the launch of your book. I’ve been seeing all of your interviews and all the articles about it. You certainly been busy. So thank you for making time to jump on here. And I guess maybe just to start off, I always love just starting off with a warm up question. Since you are an author, I would maybe love to hear from you what is a book that has had an influence on your life?
Gorick Ng: (01:32)
Yeah, that’s a good kickoff question. And before I dive in, just wanted to thank you for the opportunity of colo MBAs as listeners and participants in, in this conversation, it feels like coming home to, for lack of a better description, maybe just a living room conversation here as if we’re back in business school. So I appreciate the opportunity in terms of that memorable book. I’d say it’s a book by clay Christiansen business school professor at Harvard business school called how will you measure your life? We’re seeing each other on video here. So I’m seeing some nods, it’s a popular one among business school students and graduates because I think it really hits upon something that doesn’t get talked about formerly in business school, but informally, which is this question of what do I do when I grow up? What really matters to me this the, I guess the Stanford admissions committee does this well in their question of what matters to you and why this is a book that actually provides some useful mental models for thinking about what matters and why.
Al Dea: (02:34)
I think it’s a great book. I’ll make sure I put it in the show notes. I don’t want to give away all my secrets here, but it is one of my favorite graduation presents for my friends who graduated from business school. So I love that you said it. And to your point, you go to business school, you are making this huge investment that you’re doing this thing to accelerate you forward in your career, but to what end. And that’s why I love the book because we all want to be successful and we all make this investment to get to that next stage in our career. But I love how the book really challenges us to think deeper about why are we here and what are we here to do? And I think it was, it’s a phenomenal book. So I will, I definitely love that.
Al Dea: (03:09)
You said that once, so thank you for sharing that. Awesome. Great. So let’s just dive in and before we get to talking about your book, let’s talk about you. So I guess the best way to ask this question and ironically, I’m stealing this question from Whitney Johnson, who is a protege, I believe of Clay Christiansen and has done a lot of work with clay over the years, but she always asks this question when she kicks off a lot of her interviews, but could you maybe talk about a memorable experience or two from your childhood that has had a deep impact on your life?
Gorick Ng: (03:40)
Yeah, I’ll maybe take up your offer to do two. There’s one that there was one that was on the first page of my book, which is the experience of my mom getting laid off from her sewing machine factory job. And I, as the person in the house who knew how to speak English, who knew how to get onto the internet, became the person to grow up all of a sudden overnight and to help her get back on her feet. So this experience of spending recesses learning to write cover letters and resumes afternoons at the public library, looking for jobs and evenings coaching, my mom coaching is a generous term. It was the blind leading the blind. If I were to be honest about it. And I think the blind leading the blind was really, really true because we didn’t end up getting any interviews. We applied to hundreds of jobs and didn’t end up getting any callbacks.
Gorick Ng: (04:34)
And that for the first time helped me appreciate and learn that it’s not just about clicking the submit button on a website. That there’s a certain way in which we’re taught about how to do well in school, which is in the form of coloring within the lines, bubbling the right bubbles and filling in the blanks. And when you’re approaching something, that’s in the real world, something like the job search, it’s much more ambiguous than that, even though the process itself comes across as if it’s methodical. So that experience just completely blew my mind and little did I know that so many years later, I would look back to that as really the Genesis of why I’m so passionate about helping people navigate their careers and close the gap between where they are and where they want to go. That’s the first experience, the second experience, which I don’t recall actually, ever really telling many people is when I was in elementary school, I saw David Blaine and David Copperfield on television and thought it was so cool and actually decided, but then later retracted this career goal of mine to become a magician.
Gorick Ng: (05:47)
And I look back at that experience, both for what it taught me as well as what I guess, both are lessons as I think back to it. But one is more positive than the other where the positive one was. I spent days upon days sitting in a magic shop, practicing magic tricks with people who are decades older than me. And I was, I can’t even remember how old I was. I was definitely an elementary school. And I feel like that experience helped me also grow up in a way, because I was interacting with people who are so much older than I was that’s the first piece. But then the second piece was I actually consider it not exactly a success story because I remember bringing home decks of cards and coins and things like that and wanting to be exactly like David Blaine, approaching people on the street and I’ve lost count in terms of the number of times I would approach people on the street and then freeze and not have the courage to pull out my magic trick to show it to them. And so there were all these moments where I would walk up to someone say hello, and then dial it back and say, oh, actually nevermind. And then walk away. And it’s still a bit of a regret in my mind that man, there was that opportunity. I didn’t take advantage of it though. In retrospect, I think it may be taught me a bit about speaking to strangers. The fact that I’m regretful of not having taken that opportunity is now maybe letting some fire under me to do it now as an adult.
Al Dea: (07:22)
Thank you for sharing both of those stories. I’m glad you talked about the first one, because it was definitely something that jumped out to me when I read your book, as well as when I’ve read a lot of the articles that you’ve done, but the second one is also really great. And so what I took from what you just said, and what I love about that is particularly when you’re earlier in your career or your life, the ability to explore and the ability to learn just through doing and being surrounded by other people, particularly those who are much more experienced or have lived longer than you, I think is particularly valuable. Even if it ends up not being something that you ended up pursuing. I think about particularly I’m sure to the, particularly with the populations of individuals that you work with, there’s a lot of value and insight into doing that.
Al Dea: (08:01)
And I, you know, think about it and not through the lens of myself where my first job was, I worked at a golf course and I worked in terms of cleaning carts and cleaning golf clubs and 12 or 13 or 14 at the time. But I was interfacing with very similar to you. People who are much older, much more mature, who had careers in their life. And I’m certainly not cleaning golf carts anymore or cleaning golf clubs besides my own. But I learned so much, even from those experiences, just interacting with the world around me and seeing things that were bigger than myself and that I hadn’t really seen previous. And I’m glad you now have a chance to go up to strangers on the street or speak in front of crowds because now you’re getting your chance to do all the things that maybe you didn’t do when you were playing or learning how to do magic tricks and things like that. So it comes full circle in the, yet
Gorick Ng: (08:48)
It does. And it reminds me of what is possibly my favorite quote of all time, which is the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is today. Yes. So I, I missed a lot of trees back then, but I’m trying to plant them now that
Al Dea: (09:04)
It’s never too late to start. So you were the, if I remember correctly, you were the first in your family to go to college, but in addition to that, you also decided to get an MBA and you graduated from Harvard business school, arguably the best MBA program out there. I would love to know from you. How and why did you decide to pursue an MBA in the first place?
Gorick Ng: (09:26)
Yeah, it’s a good question. And I would say that my answer would have changed depending on when you had spoken to me. I know a number of your other guests have talked about this as well. Where when I was in college, I feel like it very much speaks to what you just said around your worldview, your goals being highly influenced by the people that you’re around. And as an undergrad at Harvard two plus two had, was still relatively new back then, but it existed for enough years where there were alumns who had gotten in and who were returning to go to this two plus two program. And when the first time I heard about it, it was just in the casual setting. But I thought to myself, Ooh, HBS, I’d heard about that school before it’s across the river. I had heard about this two plus two, now thing, multiple occasions in a row, I better start Googling.
Gorick Ng: (10:22)
And as I think about how this happened, it was exactly how I heard about Harvard, Yale and the whole college admissions process to the U S I was born and raised in Toronto where hearing, hearing the words two plus two and HBS dropped in casual conversations planted just the seed that I needed to start Googling. And when I started Googling my ears, start getting sensitive and I start hearing other people start talking about this to the point where I was like, wow, all the cool kids are doing this. Maybe I should be considering this too. So frankly, if I were to think back to when I was in college, I don’t know that I had all that great of a reason for going to business school. It was just the next rung in the ladder that people that I looked up to did. And I was thinking at the time between business school and MPA or MPP, it’s a master’s in public administration or public policy, I was, and still am really interested in social issues and the public sector.
Gorick Ng: (11:17)
I was also thinking of law school as well. So out of all of those options, I decided on business school applied to two plus two, didn’t actually get in the first time and then try it again when I was out in the real world. And at that point I was once again around people who looked to business school as the logical next step, I was at Boston consulting group where people will often work a certain number of years and then go back and get their MBAs. That was also the Rite of passage for me at the time, actually, I was starting to think about startups. I was starting to think about not necessarily startups, but I was thinking about the privilege that I accumulated over time and what responsibility I had to pave a smoother path for people coming after me. And I was thinking about social entrepreneurship.
Gorick Ng: (12:00)
I was thinking about all these different vehicles. What I knew was that I wanted to help those who are coming from humble beginnings. What I didn’t know is how to do that. And coming back to the idea of vocabulary and just how powerful that can be in terms of someone dropping a term into your lexicon, the startup thing was just starting to kick off then. And it was in the early days of people starting to say that Y Combinator is the next HBS or the next GSB. And so I’d actually thought about maybe applying to YC and treating that as business school. However, as I started doing some more self-reflection I started realizing a startup is, but a means to an end. It’s not the end itself. There’s so much more that I feel like I needed to accomplish the goals that I’d set. And frankly, I still was, I wasn’t quite sure of what those goals were. I felt like business school would be a better platform off of which to do more than just create a startup, which I wasn’t actually even convinced of.
Al Dea: (13:07)
Sure. So the thing that sticks out to me about what you just said, and I think it probably also, if I understand correctly plays a role into why you wrote the book to begin with is that you said the word there, that, and the word was lexicon, right? And so Y Combinator two plus two HBS. These are all things that entered your lexicon. And there is a, that is a huge opportunity. That is a game changer in a lot of ways, right? Because, because it entered your lexicon and entered your orbit, it entered your world view, which gave you the chance to explore it and then end up in it. But as I’m sure from the work you did with your mother in terms of trying to help her land a job, and I think what ultimately probably played a role in helping you, what, giving you the desire to write a book like this for a lot of people, these things never enter their lexicon. That’s the reason why an unspoken rules, unspoken rules exist. And so maybe, I guess this is a good segue. Let’s talk about that. So you go to HBS, it sounds like it was a transformative experience and you certainly have worked since then, but how did this idea for the book come to the, particularly through the lens of all of these experiences that you’ve had, these things that have entered your orbit and then wanting to go and create something?
Gorick Ng: (14:20)
Yeah, it was never my goal to write a book and frankly, I’m still questioning my decision in a way of wondering, is this the right first step? I’m more convinced now than I was even just six months ago, but I think it really speaks to how confused I was about the means because I had this broader mission. I just didn’t know what noun to use. Was this going to be a podcast, a blog, an online course, a marketplace, an app, a service, a product with it’s the, would this be digital? And so I was confused. And if you talk to any of my business, school, classmates and friends, I was the guy who kept pitching new idea after new idea week after week. And it would just be a flavor of the week from Zurich, but there was a common thread to all of these things, which was this broader goal of helping people achieve their full potential sort of in this cliche sort of abstract way. What I realized was regardless of what means I would pursue the lowest common denominator seemed to be the same, which was research and good content.
Gorick Ng: (15:28)
Part of this was my observation that there’s so much, that’s intangible, that’s tacit. That’s not passed down, or it is passed down, but it’s a function of who, whether it’s a mentor, passing it down to a mentee and or a parent passing it down to their children of how do you navigate these spaces? How do you show up? How do you navigate your way to a promotion? Even if there isn’t a set career path for you? All of those things that I was coaching my mom through, through trial and error, someone else’s passing down to someone else, a neighborhood over. And so I thought to myself, what if I could write down some of these, what I call now, unspoken rules, certain ways of doing things that in the workplace managers expect you to know, but never explained to you. And that top performers do subconsciously and almost treat as if they’re common sense.
Gorick Ng: (16:19)
So the point where they think this is not even worth talking about, if you don’t have it, you just don’t use don’t get it. Or this is so common sensical that you must be competent. If you don’t know, until I started realizing that actually a lot of this stuff, isn’t a matter of common sense. It’s a matter of your upbringing. And there are a lot of outsiders to these places, whether it’s international students working in the U S women and male dominated work environments, non native English speakers, first-generation college students, low-income college students, folks who are switching careers and jobs and professions and jobs and geographies who are going to be navigating a very different environment with a different set of expectations. What if I could write down some of these unspoken rules and to use some startups speak here? I was thinking well, given, I’m still confused about the means. Maybe I could just build an MVP. This minimal viable product is small little test case little did I know that this MVP wouldn’t actually end up being all that minimal? It would take it. It would take a total of five years to do in the form of this book.
Al Dea: (17:24)
That’s great. Thank you for sharing that. And so one of the things that you, the word you just mentioned that I caught on to there, which makes sense to me, but I’m hoping you can share a little bit more about it is this idea of tacit knowledge in particular, bringing some, until it’s bringing to light some of this Tasha tacit knowledge that some people just know inherently, just because like you said, they just treat it as common knowledge, but others just don’t have access to, or are not aware of. And I like you, I worked in a, in a professional services organization. So there was lots of tacit knowledge that was there. But for folks who may not understand this concept, could you maybe talk a little about what is tacit knowledge and maybe how it impacts individuals in the workplace?
Gorick Ng: (18:05)
Sure thing. I think of tacit knowledge as common sense. That’s only common sense looking back. Yeah. An example would be looking both ways before crossing the street where I would assume that any adult would find a common sensical visit a daycare, have children. And you’ll quickly realize that looking both ways before crossing the street really isn’t common sense. And, and I think about this in the case of crossing the street. But when I think about it in the context of the job search and where my focus is, which is, which is on the job well in the job search, some people just find it intuitive that you would, of course, reach out to someone. Of course you would build relationships with people behind the scenes. Of course you would send a thank you email. Of course you would talk about how your past fits into your present fits into your future, fits in with the goals of the company and how the company’s goals are aligned with your goals.
Gorick Ng: (18:59)
People would find that common sense goal. And I can assure folks that as a career advisor now at Harvard, it’s not even among Harvard undergraduates, that someone needs to have told you that it’s just a matter of when they slipped it into your water. When it comes to on the job, I start thinking about all the hidden expectations that managers have or a different way of putting this as I went to managers and I asked them, tell me the characteristics that separate top performers from mediocre performers. Tell me about the most common mistakes that new grads early career professionals make at work that you off and to my surprise, but now maybe in a common sensical way, maybe not to my surprise, given that it’s obvious to me now is that it’s the same stuff. Managers want people who are proactive, who take ownership, who can manage up, who can communicate precisely and clearly, and in a structured way, they know how to be organizationally aware. So they know how to navigate systems and ambiguity. They know how to manage stakeholders. All of these things are things that I learned through observation or by getting yelled at. So then I thought, what if we could bottle that up, turn it into a toolkit. Could we help people stumble less, reach their full potential faster? And on the company side, what if we could ramp up people more quickly? What if you could elevate the performance of your team?
Gorick Ng: (20:34)
So much of what’s tacit in my mind is what is really holding teams back from being as effective as they could be as well as individuals.
Al Dea: (20:43)
Sure. No, I think that, I think that makes a lot of sense. And as you talk about some of these tests, it, some of these tests, it knowledge and some of these examples, one of the things that I think about her and lessons that I truly learned the hard way was that I think a lot of us just assume that if we just work hard, if we just really give our all and work really hard, that’s going to help be the thing that helps us stand out and that’s going to help us get to being seen as a top performer or being successful, et cetera. And certainly I think hard work is absolutely a component of it. But one of the things that I think about, and I know that I’ve talked about on the podcast with Laura Hong, who I think you probably know from your time at Harvard who wrote edge, is this idea that well, hard work is not, there’s this other tacit knowledge that that’s there, there’s these other things that you need to do in the workplace to be successful. That isn’t always something that is widely known and made available to everyone to understand at least right away. I’m just curious, is this something that you’ve seen either from your own experience in the workplace or from just all of your conversations with your students or even managers that you’ve talked to?
Gorick Ng: (21:51)
Absolutely. The ideas that get implemented aren’t necessarily the best ideas, right? Yeah. The people who get promoted aren’t necessarily the highest performers or the most competent, and that, especially in white collar work environments, where there’s this rift between your inputs and your outputs. Yes. Yep. Your outputs are the quality of your work, but can you really assess quality? It’s not surprising to me in a way that software engineers have coding tests, maybe in their profession, it’s a little bit more easy to evaluate how elegant your solution is and how quickly you can code this thing together. But for, and I’ve talked to enough engineers, who’ve convinced me that even in engineering, it’s the quality of your code can only get you so far. But if you’re talking about marketing, if you’re talking like human resources, actually I’ve talked to people in sales who argue that sales is, these are their words, not mine.
Gorick Ng: (22:52)
They said sales is the last meritocratic profession. And I’m still thinking through that. I have some pushback to that, but I’ve, I have heard that’s a phrase. People toss around in the white collar work environment where you’re working on long duration projects, where there’s not a mathematical proof for which there’s a right method and a right answer. It’s a matter of subjectivity. It’s going to be about your inputs. It’s going to be about what I call your competence, your commitment and your compatibility. Where, how confidently are you speaking up in meetings? Because people often conflate your competence for your comp your confidence. See, I’m mixing the two up here right now. There’s a difference between competence and confidence and the people as I just did now often mix the two up and then there’s commitment, which is how much it looks like you care about this project, this position, this company.
Gorick Ng: (23:53)
And that’s a function of how responsive you are in the, in the pre COVID days where you could walk by a coworker’s desk. I heard this from a manager who said, if I walk by your desk and I see a blue bar at the top of your monitor, and that’s to say, you’re on Facebook. If I see it once I’m going to think, okay, cool. The second time I see it on my way to the bathroom, I’m going to start thinking, I’m starting to see a pattern here. The third time, I’m going to start wondering, okay, if I’m seeing this, when I’m walking by, what does it say about what’s happening when I’m not walking by? And so that ends up either reinforcing or in this case, not reinforcing people’s perceptions of your commitment. And then finally on compatibility, it’s all a question of, do we get along?
Gorick Ng: (24:37)
And here we get into the realm of diversity inclusion, equity, belonging around. Do you look like talk or have the same backgrounds or interests as the people around you? It’s going to be easier if you can say, oh, like you, I went to this prep school, played this sport, had these vacations and this vacation home, and this fancy lifestyle. If you come from a very different background, you may not have those opportunities to build that compatibility. And it’s these three CS that permeate the workplace, whether we recognize it or not. And it’s what ends up determining who gets ahead and who stumbles. And in my view, if we started talking about it, hopefully we can build a more level playing field for everyone. Yeah.
Al Dea: (25:21)
I, I, I love how you just confused competence and confidence. And actually it would love for you to talk about that a little bit more because I do think it is something that I see all the time. And particularly, I think it’s particularly true for students sometimes who are very much used to being in a world where, and sometimes your competence speaks for yourself in terms of what is the, what is the grade on the test, right? Or what is the grade on the project? So could you maybe talk a little bit more about that one and how that works?
Gorick Ng: (25:47)
Sure thing. I’ll actually pull an example from college admissions where there’s this economic concept called undermatching and it’s this phenomenon where poor, but bright kids don’t end up applying to top schools. So someone may get a really high GPA, may have a high set of standardized test scores, but they say to themselves, this is out of my league. I’m never going to get in. And as a result, they end up applying to a school that in the U S context as a safety school, a school that they would have had no issues getting into. And this is actually a broader societal issue because it’s really showing that there’s a sticky floor of sorts to folks who may lack the social and cultural capital. This is I’m dropping a little bit of jargon here, but it speaks to a lot of what you said earlier around, Hey, if you don’t have role models, who’ve been there and done that the horizon you see maybe much more limited than the horizon that someone else sees.
Gorick Ng: (26:53)
And here that’s a perfectly good example of, Hey, someone is competent enough to apply for. And maybe you can get into these top schools. They just don’t apply in the workplace. We see that as well, where you have an I’m just even speaking for myself. There were all these times when I was in the workplace and I had a comment and I had the self-talk around no way. This is a stupid question. Definitely don’t bring this up. Or this is an obvious comment. No, one’s going to want to listen to you here, or it’s not in your place to speak up at all. And then as I’m debating with myself with this angel and devil on my shoulder and looking back and forth, someone else chimes in and ends up saying the exact same thing and gets all the credit. And I now start realizing is I think about the difference between confidence and competence, that there’s really not much separating me from this other person. It’s just that this other person had maybe a lower set of standards than I did for what makes for a good comment. I need to recognize that. And if I see enough of a pattern where I’m self censoring and someone else isn’t, that’s me, undermatching quote unquote in the workplace. Sure.
Al Dea: (28:11)
And I also just think about it in the context of if you’re a man and or in the case of you, if I’m your manager, what w what is my role in terms of making it a place where you don’t have to do that calculus in your head where you can just feel like you can say that thing that you’re thinking, and that you have the confidence to do that.
Gorick Ng: (28:31)
Yeah, I’m, I’m super glad that you’re bringing this up because one of my self criticisms towards my book and, and others have critiqued it as well, is that I speak to the individual. Sure. Too much exclusively, really. It’s a guide on how to empower the individual. But so many of these are a function of whether the environment is one where you feel comfortable speaking up, or there’s the space to speak up. And it’s hard when you’re in the presence of louder talking longer, rambling people with this booming voice. It’s just hard to cut in. Like I, to this day, like I would load up the first syllable of what I want to say to the tip of my tongue. And then I would try and blurt it out. And then someone else would just jump in before me and get the airtime. So on the manager side, there are a number of ways of thinking about this in a selfish plug.
Gorick Ng: (29:28)
I wrote a fast company article on this awhile back, it’s called five inventive meeting formats to encourage more diverse conversations. One option is to just set a meeting and the meeting objectives such that people are coming prepared, and aren’t getting caught off guard where you’re maybe favoring people who are the fast thinkers versus the thoughtful thinkers. You’re encouraging independent brainstorming where instead of just saying, Hey, what do you all think? And then letting everyone brawl over each other for the airtime, you’re saying everyone, Hey, take a minute. And just take out a sticky note and write out what ideas you have. And let’s compare notes that way we’re reaching, hopefully a global maximum, not just a local maximum of everyone building on top of the first thing. The first person says the third is around round Robbins. Where can you give an opportunity for everyone in the room to speak and to not let just one person again, be that long rambler who takes up all the airtime.
Gorick Ng: (30:31)
One that, that I’ve would have loved to see a lot more as blind votes, especially for important decisions where I’ve been in the presence of many managers before, who will say, all right, what do you all think? And then you can clearly tell from around the room that people aren’t bought into the idea. So everyone has their hands down on their laps, and then everyone’s looking left looking right, waiting for someone else to vote. And then one person sticks their hand up. And then the second person raises their hand. And then the third person raises their hand. And then the last reluctant person, which is sometimes often me. So maybe I’m outing myself here on my meeting, etiquette and shyness, but then I’ll raise my hand too, because I think to myself, oh, we’ve reached the majority. There’s really no way to get around this. That’s I would think of as the loud minority really swaying the vote.
Al Dea: (31:20)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. I think a lot of what you’re also talking about are these, these inner team dynamics, or just the dynamics in the workplace. And so much of that comes back to what are the relationships like? And like business really is about people in relationships. And that’s fundamentally what it comes back to. And I know in the book, there’s a number of different rules that unspoken rules that align in some kind of way, or have a twinge about networking and building relationships. I’m just curious, could you maybe share a story example from the book where any of these rules in particular really focuses on and building those strong relationships so that either as an individual, but you can, which use some sort of specific outcome, or if you are a manager, and if you champion these rules, you can get people to build better relationships that can lead to a better work environment.
Gorick Ng: (32:08)
Absolutely. In the book, I have a story that got quite cut quite a bit because of length. That was, I think, 40,000 words over the word limit, but it spoke to a data scientist who was at a company started the same time as someone else put his head down while his coworkers ended up going to the team socials. What he didn’t realize was at those socials, this person was meeting this person following up, sending a thank you email, having a one-on-one getting introduced to someone else, learning about their work, volunteering, to work with them, getting introduced to someone else over the course of working with these people, ended up meeting more people, ended up volunteering for more work, and then fast forward just a few weeks. And this person ended up getting assignments that weren’t even advertised. And that were so much more interesting and impactful than their day job.
Gorick Ng: (33:00)
Of course, they still had to do their day jobs, but that’s where I talk about the importance of being reliable and being competent in the language of the three CS, but in the context of the workplace. And I would say, this is the case, even for companies that have a staffing model, this was one of the rude awakenings that I had in consulting in a lot of people do, which is yes, you have a person who is the point of contact, who is supposed to divvy up all the assignments in ideally an equitable way, but the coolest assignments aren’t necessarily gonna be the ones that’ll get assigned. They’re the ones that are not on the spreadsheet that you have to really network your way around to learn about. So this person ended up looking to this coworker and saying, we start at the same time. How is it that I’m still doing the job that I was assigned on my first day? This person, meanwhile, is doing something totally different in a different department, having visibility, vice presidents, I’m still here at my cubicle staring down.
Al Dea: (33:52)
I think that’s a great example. And I think it highlights one of the things that I’ve also observed in my own experience is that to your point, so much of the interesting work or the cool opportunities don’t exist on paper, they happen. And it’s, I think for two reasons, and I’d be curious to your take on this one. They happen because someone raises their hand and says, oh, I can, this is the skill I have. Or this is the ability that I have. And someone else says, oh, okay, now that I know that here’s maybe something that can be spun up, right? Because they’re matching a skillset to an opportunity. So that’s one way that it happens. Or the other way that it happens is that individual just takes the ownership because they realize there is an opportunity because they understand the overarching objective of the team or the department or whatever it is and says, I think I can do this, but I think in both cases, it’s this part of it is I think this Tasha knowledge and understanding of just how things get done, that the fact is that sometimes the best objectives or the best projects spin up, not because they’re on paper, but because someone creates them or it just happens because of sheer, just understanding that when you raise your hand and you take initiative, that’s where some creativity and magic kind of
Gorick Ng: (35:03)
Happens a hundred percent align that I’ve used maybe one too many times in the book as this line of people can’t read your mind. Yes. Yeah. And people can’t read your mind. They don’t, people don’t know what you’re interested in, what you’re good at, unless you let them know about it. And even before then, people don’t know you exist until you let them know that you exist. And so it really is about turning. And I think your audience MBAs and aspiring MBAs, maybe tacitly know this, which is why, what is value proposition of business school we often hear about the networking thing? What does that really mean? As I think about how so many jobs get passed on it’s Hey, I sat beside Alan. I know that back in business school, he was super interested in this and that. And we were on a group project together and he did a really good job. I would trust that. He’d do a good job with this as well. Hey, Al, I know you’re busy these days, but would you be interested in this consulting project or I’ve got this opportunity, would you be interested in pitching? It has that. I suspect that happened to you. What’s been your
Al Dea: (36:08)
Yeah, no, it totally has. And I’m so glad that you said that because I have two concrete examples of literally how this just happened. So one example is I was talking with a recent MBA graduate who recently found a job and I was asking her, oh, how did you find this opportunity? And she said, the funny thing was is that the job that I’m taking was not the original job that I applied for. It’s with the same company, but it’s a different role. And it wasn’t even created when I initially had applied to the first role. But what happened was I interviewed with someone who was a cross-functional partner and we hit it off and he understood my skillset. He understood what I brought to the table and they ended up filling the original role. But I had reached back out to him just to say, thank you to own.
Al Dea: (36:56)
It was great meeting him. And when he found out that I was available, he said, would you still be interested in working here? If I found a role for you? And two weeks later, he had an offer for her and she went and joined the team. But to your point, the guy was able to do that only because she, he didn’t have to read her mind. He, she reached out to him and said, thank you for the opportunity to meet. I would love to stay in touch. So that’s one example. The other example that I have is that I have another friend who you may have seen on the circuit. I won’t say her name just out of protection, but she was trying to hire someone to help her and to basically scale her business. And she was having a hard time find the right person, but she reached out to me and said, Hey, I need some help hiring.
Al Dea: (37:45)
I think this actually could be a really great opportunity for a graduate student. Would you happen to know anyone? And the thing that she said about it was is like, I think someone who would be great for this role either was a consultant or has that kind of skill set or a mindset. And I said, I think I have an idea of who this might be a good fit for this, but let me just check to see, I pinged 10 people. One of those people said, I know the right person for you. That person is now working for my friend, but all of this happened and good on my friend for being like, I like I haven’t had any luck, but I think that you might be someone who might know someone and sure enough, I didn’t know someone, but I knew someone that knew someone and this person got a great opportunity to work with my friend, everybody wins.
Al Dea: (38:32)
But in all of these cases, to the point, like, you don’t know what other people don’t know what you need, but when you ask them or when you go to them and you frame things in their language, they can then say, aha, this might work. Or have you tried this? And so I think in, in addition to, yes, I’ve had people reach out to me being like, Hey, you could be a good fit for this, or Hey, you can be a good fit for that. And that’s, I wish there was an easier way that was 20, 21. We can put people focused on the moon. We can send folks to space, but we haven’t found an easier way to match people to jobs. But in the absence of finding that this is the way that it happens, or at least from my experience,
Gorick Ng: (39:07)
Yeah. That’s spot on. And I have a number of experiences with this personally and with friends of mine as well. It’s stuff like this that MBAs know about and see as common sense of, of course, but it’s not taught. And it’s very much a lesson that’s conveyed through lived experience and observation and who and what their behaviors are and what the norms are of that social circle. When you were sharing those two stories, I started thinking about to what extent does this sort of mirror sales and marketing in a way I know you’re the expert at this. So you’re going to be able to speak to this a lot more. But as I think about sales versus marketing, my very simplistic way of thinking about it as sales is outbound marketing is inbound. You’ll have to correct me if I’m wrong on this
Al Dea: (40:02)
At the, at a fundamental level, you’re, you’re more or less, but it’s absolutely the same way. And I definitely know a number of career coaches and career educators who love to use that idea in that mindset. You are basically when you’re a job seeker, you are the product, you are the product of yourself and your job is to sell nuts, sell yourself, but like really position yourself out there to a buyer, which is a employer or hiring manager who you can, you can go and work for. And so, yes, absolutely. And if you think about marketing in the traditional sense, just like a marketer might have a whole bunch of media and content and assets out there to attract potential buyers. That’s what your LinkedIn pages, your resume is your portfolio of work. Anything that you’ve ever done. And part of your job is thinking about how do I get these things to the right buyers so that I can get opportunities and things like that.
Al Dea: (40:57)
Yes, I, a hundred percent agree. And I know plenty of other career educators out there right now who, who try to use that model to get people to think about, okay, like how do I, number one, like who, you know, what pro, and going back to Clayton Christiansen, click Clayton Christian here, what problem do I solve for whom or what job do I do that, uh, solves a specific problem for someone we’re really going full circle here. But, but that’s similarly how a lot of salespeople often think in terms of not necessarily trying to just sell a product, but really going out to a customer and being here’s the problem that I can solve for you. And I do know in particular, I have coached people in the past, even to, if you’re ever in an don’t always talk about you don’t necessarily have to talk just about your title of your thing, but you can frame it in the way of here’s the problem that I can solve for you. That’s gonna help you save money, help you reduce costs, help you drive growth, things like that. So the sales and marketing model is absolutely spot on, at least in my point of view of that.
Gorick Ng: (41:50)
I love it. And then I’m also frustrated that darn, I thought I’d just made it up, but it sounds like I need to cite my sources on that.
Al Dea: (41:56)
No, there’s, eh, you are in the business of ideas and coming up with creative ideas and trying to convey them to people. And innovation often comes from just combining a bunch of seemingly disparate ideas and bringing them together. And so it’s a good, it’s a good, it’s a good analogy. And I think it, and it’s more than anything. I do think it is something that people can relate to and Guam onto, which is probably the most important thing, because it helps them actually action on it. But I do want to get back to unspoken rules because I I’ve been thinking about this lately, particularly it was, we entered as hybrid workplace. So I know you’ve been working on this book for a while. It came out during COVID, but I would also just love to know, as you think about this new world of work, whether it’s in-person, whether it’s remote, whether it’s somewhere in between, whether we’re trying to figure it out, I would just be curious to know, how do you think the unspoken rules either stay the same or maybe have to change or even adapt or evolve knowing that the work environment that many of us are in is a little bit different than what it traditionally has been.
Gorick Ng: (43:00)
Yeah. You’re giving me flashbacks to when COVID was first kicking off, I thought I was done my first draft or rather like my 60th draft. I was actually, my deadline was in, in may of 2020. And it was then that the pandemic was in full swing regrettably and I ended up first control f-ing through my manuscript for the word handshake so that I could take it out that’s yeah. Yeah. And then it became this thread that I pulled on. And then let’s just the whole thing unraveled, where I ended up having to actually rewrite pretty much the entire thing over the course of that summer. So giving me a bit of a flashback there. I would say that in, in retrospect, I’m actually thrilled that the book came out in 2021 and not 2020 couldn’t have been worse timing if that had come out when I want it to come out, which was 2020.
Gorick Ng: (43:54)
But when I think about the, the hybrid work environment and, and what’s to come my point of view, at least sitting here today and in 2021 is that I feel like many of these unspoken rules are really human in nature and not necessarily a function of the specific tools you use, like maybe in a future edition, if I’m afforded the privilege of one, I’ll go through the manuscript and no longer talk about email. And it’ll be some sort of an instant messaging platform, or it’d be mind to mind telepathy. I don’t know, but given that so many of these unspoken rules, aren’t like Excel shortcuts. I’d like to think that they are enduring. And I at least tried to write a book that would be enduring and last, and really just require marginal changes as norms change. As a result though, I would say that many of these unspoken rules have grown in importance.
Gorick Ng: (44:58)
So if we think about being seen and heard, that was important in the workplace in a, in an in-person environment where I actually had a prior chapter that I removed around, where do you sit in a room in a conference room? You’ve got a long conference room table. Do you sit against the wall? Do you sit at the front of the table and maybe take someone’s seat? Do you see it at the back and potentially become invisible? Or do you try and get as close to the action as possible? So that was in the pre COVID in-person work environment. You have the exact same thing on zoom of, if you have too large of a meeting room, you’re going to get pushed to the second page. In which case you’re physically invisible. You’re off the screen at this point. Or if you don’t have your camera on people, can’t see you.
Gorick Ng: (45:45)
People can only guess as to how committed you are to this meeting. And if you don’t, if there’s a pattern of you not speaking up enough, to what extent will you also become invisible in those settings? When I think about the hybrid work environment being seen and heard, I love to get your take on this. To what extent there will be a time in the future when it’s not important to be seen, and it’s not important to be heard, but as I think about this hybrid work environment, one of the things that I’ve been thinking about a lot, and I’m intrigued at how it’s unfolding in the public discourse is around people who work in person versus people who work remotely, where for good reason, companies are taking measures to ensure that folks who have, who are better set up to work from home aren’t necessarily penalized for working from home. However, the notion of commitment I’d like to think, or I would assume it’s still something that would be in the air and in the water. Will the future be one where there is in fact still this, this, I think the way I would maybe frame it is what is going to be the new way in which commitment is conveyed. If it’s not physical presence, is it going to be virtual presence is going to be virtual responsiveness being seen and heard, I think will remain a topic of concern, no matter if it’s a hybrid or an in-person or remote setting.
Al Dea: (47:24)
Yeah, no, I thank you for that. I think it’s a really good question. I think a of things that come to mind, and even as you were talking, I was thinking, even in my head of just reading about your three CS again, how do you demonstrate confidence when you know, people can’t, you can’t be in the room with someone and have the loudest voice, right? Or how do you Demond competence if you are trying to, if you are in person, but the other people are in a remote kind of environment or things like that, as I think about what you said about commitment. Some, I think, I don’t think this is the best use case, but I think that in the past one thing that has always been looked at is how often, how long you work or how long you stay in the office, or maybe in a virtual world is like how late you’re up online or how responsive you may be are two things.
Al Dea: (48:16)
Which again, I don’t think it’s always the best measure, but I do think that’s something that people look at, but we’ve had collaboration tools out there for a while. So one thing that I would maybe think about as like a commitment thing, you know, how willing are you to collaborate with others or engage with others or support either shared goals or opportunities where everyone does have the chance to chime in? I think that could be maybe a positive way to look at something as a way to demonstrate commitment. So I think what it really amounts to and what it always comes back to is what does the company value and what do they reward? Because ultimately it’s everything, that’s what everything maps back to. And so I think if companies can come up with or adapt or evolve the behaviors that they’re rewarding to maybe ones that are aligned and are able to be achieved by wherever you set, that could be a positive way to demonstrate commitment versus maybe relying on, in my opinion, at least some of these other ones that don’t always show the full picture so that it, I don’t think anyone really knows exactly.
Al Dea: (49:25)
I think we’re, I think rightfully so, some companies are trying things, which I think is great and what has to happen, but it’s hard to, it’s hard to really know for sure, but the thing that I do glom onto to what you said, so many of the rules, as you talked about, they are innately human and relate to humans. And as long as humans are here, we’re going to need them because we have the ability to be incredibly fallible people. So that’s that, that’s where I see it.
Gorick Ng: (49:52)
Yeah. I’m with you on that as well. One more jargony way of framing. This research project was it’s. It was all about at the start all about soft skills. And we hardly a day goes by when there isn’t a new news article talking about automation and its effect on people in their work and what humans are innately good at, and that machines can not replicate and how we need to shift from just simply teaching technical skills to teaching soft skills. There was a time in my hundred and one iterations that revolved around how do we teach people the soft skills? And it’s still very much a term that I throw around. It’s just taken a different form in these unspoken rules
Al Dea: (50:43)
For sure. Or getting towards the end here, GORUCK. But just to wrap up, I would, for someone who talks eat sleeps, advises about career, what are you thinking about for your own career?
Gorick Ng: (50:54)
Yeah, so I am taking, this is going to be really a podcast on being a clay Christiansen. Yeah. This is the clay Christiansen fan club here. I’m taking an emergent strategy. What I mean by that is I had strong feelings when I was first starting off in this research project around, oh, it must be an app or it must be an online course. What I’m starting to realize is that this book has opened the door to conversations that I wouldn’t have been able to have with companies. And so these days I’m doing a lot of consulting engagements and speaking engagements and workshops with large corporates that hire large cohorts of interns and early career professionals. And I’m hearing about how do we better support early career hires who come from underrepresented backgrounds? How do we support early career hires in general and how do we engage them and keep them.
Gorick Ng: (51:54)
And then there’s a flip side to this, which is how do we ensure that managers are creating the conditions where people can thrive to your point earlier? So I’m doing this on a human level in startup speak, I’m doing what doesn’t scale right now in hopes of creating something that does scale. So I’d say that I’m in that pivot point right now, and we’re very much still the same goal. It’s just, I’m doing what doesn’t scale. And for any of your listeners who are intrigued by this topic who are doing this work inside of their own companies, I’d encourage them to reach out. I love that.
Al Dea: (52:30)
And I think that’s super exciting and I’m excited to see where it takes you corking author of the unspoken rules, the secrets to starting your career off. Thank you so much for joining me today for talking shop. And if our listeners want to engage with you or buy your book, where can they find you? Where should they go?
Gorick Ng: (52:49)
Yeah, appreciate the question. They can go on to my website, which is gorick.com. That’s G O R I C k.com and actually where you and I met Al on LinkedIn. So feel free to search me up Gorick Ng. My last name is N G connect with me. Follow me, DME. I’d love to stay in touch.
Al Dea: (53:13)
Hi everyone, L D here. And thank you so much for listening to the MBA insider podcast. If you liked what you heard, make sure to head over to apple podcasts and to ride review. We’ll only take 15 seconds. I’d also love to hear what you’ve been listening to on the podcast and any suggestions you have for how we can improve. Find me on LinkedIn or head over to MBA school.com backslash podcast.