Looking the wrong way
âHow are you doing, Mr. De Niro? My name is Bradley Cooper and my question is regarding AwakeningsâŚâ
Why is Bradley Cooper addressing Robert De Niro, his costar in movies such as Limitless (2011), Silver Lining Playbook (2012) and American Hustle (2013), with such reverence?
The context youâre missing here is that this interaction took place in 1999, 12 years before Cooper ever worked with De Niro. This Bradley Cooper was a 24 year-old acting student hoping that one day heâll get his Hollywood break.
Embedded in this interaction between Cooper and De Niro is a broader lesson that has changed what I pay attention to and what I value nowadays.
Think back to the last time you attended an event where some public figure, maybe a startup founder, author, or celebrity in your field comes to your town to give a talk or to be interviewed in a âfireside chatâ. You eagerly sign up and find your seat in the audience.
Most people think that making the most of an event like this looks like listening attentively to the speaker, as if theyâre about to reveal some secret to you thatâll change your life.
Forget about it.
The people who are giving talks or being interviewed generally have their ideas and perspective well-documented online, in their writing or other interview appearances. Itâs very unlikely that theyâll say anything revelatory live that they havenât already said before. If your goal is simply to download what they know into your brain, youâd be way better off staying home and listening to this personâs interview with Tyler Cowen or Russ Roberts.
Then why do I still go to these in-person events?
I realised that Iâve got it wrong all along. You go to these not for the person on the stage, but for the people who are sitting in the audience with you, and the questions they ask.
These days, the part I most pay attention to is the audience Q&A at the end. Iâm looking for the person asking the surprising, uncommon questions. Questions that make the speaker stop and think, rather than jump straight into a PR-approved, rehearsed, âwhat theyâre supposed to sayâ answer.
Back to the Bradley Cooper clipâYouâll noticed that he asked an exceedingly good question. It was observant, specific, and not one De Niro was expecting. Just by the question and how he asked it, Robert De Niro probably thought: âWow, this kid is switched on.â
Some people collect stamps, others collect vinyl records. As for me, I collect good questions. My favourites are examples just like the one of Cooper & De Niro, where the unknown-at-the-time question asker later goes on to forge a successful path for themselves.
Berkshire Hathaway hosts a famous Annual Shareholder Meeting, where investors and business people all around the world flock to Omaha, Nebraska to ask Buffett and Munger questions for hours on end. The Q&A is all recorded, going back decades.
Iâve often thought of doing this experiment: Could you predict the trajectory of someoneâs career based the quality of question they asked? How many people like Bill Ackman (1998 question) and Tim Ferriss (2008 question) will you find? Of course, both variables in this imaginary chart (i.e. career success & question quality) are fairly subjective, but if you could somehow quantify and plot these, my bet is that youâll find some correlation between them. Had they only paid more attention to the questions being asked, the attendees at these Berkshire meetings couldâve very well met a young Ackman or Ferriss.
The examples show how questions are high signal heuristics. In much the same way you can tell the level of a boxer by how they move their feet, you can tell how intellectually curious and alive someone is by the kinds of questions they ask.
This realisation that Iâd been looking the wrong way all along has led me to reprioritise my intentions going to these events. Rather than attending for the flashy speaker, Iâm much more interested in meeting and getting to know the people in the audience who ask good questions, for I know theyâre the rising stars, the next Bradley Cooper.