Welcome to The Fishbowl, a community for curious people to learn how organizational science can help us live and work better together. And have a little fun along the way.
In The Fishbowl, you’ll get twice-monthly newsletters that help you understand and shape the moments of creativity and collaboration in your life. You’ll also learn more about how to become a discerning user of social science research, the writing process, and the non-stop action of academic careers.
[EDIT: I was traveling today and thought I was so smart in scheduling this post to send. But I messed up something with the paywall. Should be fixed now - enjoy!]
The Fishbowl is also a podcast now? Or maybe it’s an immersive experience? Or a bi-monthly curated box of snacks?
Here at The Fishbowl, we’re all about tiny experiments. And, so, we are pleased to present our inaugural newsletter/podcast/video interview/snack box with…[drumrolllllll]…
!Abby's 2+ decade social impact career included 9 years at Gap Inc., where she served as President of Gap Foundation and co-founded the company's employee resource group for parents. She has since magically reinvented herself as an author, speaker, and advisor, writing MONEY AND LOVE: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life’s Biggest Decisions. It’s an entertaining, practical guide to making life’s most important decisions - and talking about them with others.
I first reached out to Abby with a few questions over email. That turned into a Zoom call. I recorded it. And, well… how could I not release it? And when you embed said video into a newsletter, Substack prompts you to set up a podcast! I love podcasts! So, suddenly, The Fishbowl is also a YouTube channel and podcast.
So, if you prefer reading, here are a few highlights from our conversation on money and love — and how my favorite topic of group dynamics fit in. Abby also has some sage advice for writers. (Stay tuned until the end of the newsletter (NOT THE VIDEO) for this week’s thoughts on PhD livin’.)
Q: Why did you write a book about making better decisions about money and love?
Abby: The book was inspired by a course that my co-author [Stanford Professor Emerita Myra Strober] taught for more than 40 years.
I was fortunate enough to be her student in that class with my then-boyfriend (now, husband). We took the class as second-year MBA students trying to make lots of big life decisions. Do we accept jobs in the same city? Do we move in together? Her class really encouraged us to have these scary conversations about money and love that we were a little bit intimidated to have after only a year of dating. But because the class gave us this kind of radical permission.
When my co-author retired in 2018, she told me that she was going to write a book about the class, and I said, “You have to. It was amazing. It changed our lives. More people should know about this.”
But then we had lunch about a year later, and she I asked her how the book was going, and she said, “You know, I haven't written a word.”
So I said, “Maybe you need an accountability, partner.”
She looked at me and she said, “That's a great idea. But I need something more. I need a co-author, and you have been putting all these lessons into practice over the last several decades. Would you be willing to write this book with me?”
I jumped at the chance, thereby violating our framework, which didn't exist at the time — our advice not to make big decisions in an instant — and we decided to collaborate with each other. And it's been a really fruitful partnership.
Q: Money and love are usually such personal things. One thing I love in your book is that you advise people to “check in” and get other people involved. Why do you think it's so important to bring other people into these personal decisions?
Abby: It is important—at the right time. Our framework starts with clarifying what's important to you. For that part, you should not bring anyone else in.
But once you've gotten clear on what you want, then you start to communicate with the other people who are going to be most affected by it.
And then, based on the research that Daniel Kahneman and others have done around this, you need to get outside your own perspective.
Other people broaden the set of options, and that helps us get that crucial outside view that we're missing. They might have a creative solution that you might not have considered. They might have approached a decision very differently.
You're not asking them what you should do. You're not approaching your friends and family and saying, “What would you do if you were me?” You're asking them: “How did you make a similar decision? Are there any options that you might see that I'm missing, as I consider what to do?”
You're not approaching your friends and family and saying, “What would you do if you were me?” You're asking them: “How did you make a similar decision? Are there any options that you might see that I'm missing, as I consider what to do?”
Q: How do group dynamics and social identities affect decisions about money and love?
Abby: As part of the research for this book, we learned the term “memetic desire”— the notion that we want what other people want. So even if we aren't conscious of it, we start to see our peers matriculating to certain universities, or taking certain career paths, or finding certain types of romantic partners. And we then start to absorb all of those things that we see others wanting.
One of the most daring things you can do is realize that your values are not sending you on the path that your peers are taking. Instead, you find an alternative path that fits your particular values better.
Q: Could your 5 C’s framework (Clarify, Communicate, Choices, Check-in, Consequences) be used for work teams too?
Yeah, absolutely. We do talks and workshops for workplaces all the time and they've been really gratifying. I've been really surprised how candid people are willing to be in a room with their colleagues.
I think that my time working at the intersection of the corporate, nonprofit, and public sectors really helped me develop the framework because it's about solving for multiple bottom lines.
You're using this framework to try to dimensionalize your thinking to make sure you're getting a holistic picture of any complex decision: If I should marry this person, or if I should accept this promotion and move to a new city.
But it can also be true for workplaces. For example, in the function that I led at Gap, we tried to have a positive social impact in the world while, at the same time, increasing the company's profitability. So those two things are not at odds. But you need to carefully consider how efforts in one area might impact the other and vice versa. But [I also think the framework is relevant] to any complex decision in a workplace where there are multiple bottom lines that you're managing.
Q: You also talk about changing the “work-family system.” What do you mean by that?
Abby: Yeah, thank you for the question, because I love this chapter, and I don't ordinarily get asked about it. But it was so important to us because it's just not enough for everyone to solve their individual money and love problems at the individual or even the family unit level.
One of the reasons that we face a lot of the trade-offs is because the systems, policies, and culture that we're operating in are not necessarily set up to support everyone, maximizing their money and love.
When my co-author started working at Stanford in 1972, women could not own a bank account. Women could not open a credit card in the United States. We've come some distance from there.
But there is a lot of distance still to go. Part of the goal of that chapter is to help people understand that they can play a role as a change-maker. They can be what we call a “tempered radical,” based on Deborah Meyerson's term for making change from the inside of a system to benefit, not just themselves, but others and the generations that will come after them.
Q: One of the things I like to ask people about is whether there were “hidden groups” behind their books. What “hidden groups” are there in or behind Money and Love?
[One of the groups I want to acknowledge] are the students who took my coauthor Myra Strober’s class. She started teaching it in the 1970’s, and she was the first female professor to get hired at Stanford Business School. The class at that point was called “Women and Work.” Stanford Business School was practically all men at that time.
Over time there were more women admitted and taking the class. And then at one point, there was an intrepid man who approached her and said, “You know, if you change the name of this course from ‘Women and Work’ to something that would have broader appeal, I will personally recruit more men to take it. And so she changed it to “Work and Family,” and by the time I took the class in 2008, 40% of the students were men. So I think the groups of students through the years were crucial.
Another group was our survey respondents. We did a large research survey as part of the book, and a lot of those former students as well as other voices took part. But Stanford is a very privileged institution, so we wanted to get more voices and more perspectives in the book. So we had [a group of] readers from different backgrounds poke holes in it and tell us where we might have biases. And some great improvements came out of that.
Q: Towards the end of the book was, you mention the personal challenges that you and Myra faced during the writing of this book. How did you manage those? What lessons did you take away?
Abby: I think we were very clear that this book was a priority, and I had conversations with my husband that it meant that I wouldn't be able to do my fair share of the parenting while I was working full-time and writing—and he agreed. He took [Myra’s] class. He knew that it was important to me and also to get the book out into the world. Then, there was this strange element of COVID where I had zero FOMO, like I wasn’t missing anything. So that part was beneficial.
But you mentioned personal challenges. My mom was having a lot of health challenges. She ended up going into hospice and passing away. The book became a an anchor for me. When I would write, I would get in flow and it would just be this constant that kept me tethered me to something that wasn't work and something that wasn't the painful personal things that were happening—something that felt like it had a broader purpose and meaning.
I think this idea of finding our purpose and finding something that has meaning is so important. I've made a lot of big changes since the time of writing the book. I left the corporate job I was working in. I started my own company. We switched our kids’ schools. We've clarified our values and are able to live them in a way that is more intentional than before.
Q: What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
Abby Davisson: I was a first-time author, so having a collaborator was crucial. It was so helpful to create accountability and to co-create something together.
I started a newsletter
after the book was out, because I really missed writing. To everyone who says, “That's amazing! How did you become a writer?”, I say: “Well, you just start writing!”The barriers are so low that anyone can start a newsletter. You just have to figure out something you want to say. Have someone in mind, like a younger version of yourself. It's important to think about who the audience is.
But the most important part is finding consistency. I'm coaching someone right now who is working full-time and writing a book, and she writes in her car when her daughter is at class or at her Girl Scout Troop meeting. They're like these found hours—not in ideal conditions.
You can't wait for the cabin in the woods to materialize and have that idyllic experience. It's like scribbling on the back of a napkin in an airport lounge as you're waiting for your plane to board. [Consistency is] the accumulation of those moments. To know that you're doing this enough and you're building the muscles. Suddenly, those little napkins turn into something more substantial.
About Abby
Abby Davisson is an author, speaker, and expert on holistic decision-making (where every choice is made with multiple bottom lines in mind). The book she co-wrote with Stanford Professor Myra Strober, Money and Love: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life's Biggest Decisions, was named a top business book and is required reading at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. After two decades of making change from within organizations, she launched her own focused on helping high performers make smart choices for lasting success and well-being. You can learn more at www.abbydavisson.com
The Fish(Ph)Dish
Many Fishbowl subscribers came here for insights on writing and academic life. For bite-sized insights, follow me on LinkedIn. I’m not sold on the name of this section, so please make suggestions in the comments! You can find a compendium of earlier advice here:
Over the last two weeks, here are the Ph-ighlights:
Research on what makes TED Talks most appealing - and to whom
A jokey post about reviewers using my own work as evidence to reject my paper
Tongue-in-cheek complaints about writing “individuals” vs. “people”
But my closest brush with virality was a post on my observations of running PhD admissions this year. A couple of things I should have clarified in this post:
You don’t need pre-doctoral publications. I didn’t have any and neither do most applicants. But high-quality publications/under-review manuscripts are becoming more common in applications. That’s not a value judgment. It’s just reality.
With publications, journal quality matters - a lot. The lesson is not to submit to any journal with a scholarly-sounding name. Many “academic” journals are garbage - predatory organizations that seek money from the desperate or ill-informed (see partial lists here and here, but more spring up all the time).
I wish we lived in a world where we assessed each paper on its merits, rather than the name of the journal it was published in. Alas, we do not live in this world. For neophytes, journal lists are a rough way to gauge the reputation of journals. In my field, you can find narrow lists like FT50, UTDallas or TAMUGA. You can also find broader journal ratings like JABS or ABDC.
At UCL School of Management, we don’t use official lists or ratings. My personal take is that we’re closer to the narrow lists, but don’t follow them exactly. (DISCLAIMER: NOT AN OFFICIAL POSITION OF THE INSTITUTION). For pre-docs, anything that is an ABS 3 or above is outstanding. For faculty, we’re looking for 4* (again, many exceptions!).
Publications take years. You can’t get a good one in a few months. If you don’t have one, don’t panic. Focus on learning the field by reading and writing. Reflect on the problems that you want to solve in your career. Develop your ideas. Ask smart people to read what you’ve written and give you feedback.
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! She is retired, but out-hustling all y’all!
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