
CM 275: Mithu Storoni on Working Smarter
Curious Minds at Work
Navigating Uncertainty in Innovation
This chapter explores the importance of ongoing innovation and learning in a fast-paced technological environment. It discusses a strategic learning approach using the 80% heuristic and examines the impact of uncertainty on performance, offering insights and strategies for adapting to rapid change.
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Speaker 1
And two great questions. It's something that I think really we got a lot of attention and a lot of people calling it and asking us to kind of walk through it and whatever. And I think it's sort of funny because I would ask the question, why on earth are gas prices in the United States 90% less than they are everywhere else in the world today? It's unusual that you get massive dislocations like that. I don't know what, and that's not subsidized. It's not like the US government is subsidizing domestic gas prices. If you go to Saudi Arabia, I don't know. I know their gasoline prices are very low there, but I think that's because the kingdom subsidizes that. Normally, most commodity prices are betraging out and are fairly consistent around the world. And so I would ask your listeners, instead of saying, well, that's so outlandish, can US gas prices really go up 10 fold? Start by saying, well, wait a second. Is it really sustainable that you have an order of magnitude difference and a 90% less lower price in the United States than in the rest of the world? The answer, of course, is that if you're a US gas producer, you can't achieve that world price. You can't say, oh, fantastic. I'm producing in the Marcellus, and I can see that in Europe, they're willing to pay me $70 an MCF. So that's great. I'm going to sign a contract with the European utility and sell my gas for 70. You can't get it there. It's not there. It's in the United States. And so, of course, it needs to pass through pipelines to a liquefied natural gas facility, get liquefied, and then eventually make its voyage across. And to the extent that there's a bottleneck there, again, for the traders on your top traders unplugged podcast, you have what develops as known as basis. And so that means you divorce the arbitrage opportunities no longer possible. And so you actually have a dislocation between the two, and you have a basis risk. So the basis right now between world gas prices and US gas prices is huge. How big? We've had a big rally here in gas prices, but you're still talking about gas that's in the $8 to $9 range on the highest that we've seen. And we've seen gas prices spike as high as 200 in parts of the world and been sustainably at the $50, $60, $70 range in Europe and in Asia. And quite frankly, would be even higher, but for the fact that you're now talking about furloughing industrial activity across Europe because you just can't afford it. So fine. Why would they converge? And I think our thinking there is more to come at it from the question of an asymmetric outcome potential. If you do converge prices, you could see gas prices in the US go up two, three, four, fivefold really, really, really quickly. If you look at the volumes, probably not enough to fix the world's gas supply issue. So you would see it rise substantially and then stay there. When I look at the risk return of any investment, that's probably the highest upside potential. But it's not a foregone conclusion. So why would it? Why would we remove this bottleneck? Well, obviously we could do it in a couple of different ways. We could first have lots more LNG export infrastructure so that remove the bottleneck at the export terminal. There we sort of have fairly good line of sight. We know what's coming online. Although I would say, quite frankly, people could be surprised as far as how fast you could sanction new projects because people think about the lead time of three to five years to build some of these trains. That's not done, that's been in a world where capital has been fairly tight and permitting has been difficult and the Army Corps of Engineers takes its time. But if all of a sudden we all get behind getting gas to Europe, I think we could be surprised at how fast stuff comes on. But it's not going to come on in the next six months, even if we all get behind it. It has some lead time there. The second, of course, could be if domestic demand increases. That would be we develop more industry in the United States to take advantage of this huge energy price gap in the rest of the world. Again, I think there's some lead time there, but probably on the margin that could happen a little bit. I think the biggest one that no one talks about is, well, what happens if gas supply in the United States peters out? I don't mean collapses, I just mean stops growing because we basically are in a balanced market today and we are bringing on some new LNG infrastructure in the next year. If we can't fill that, then we could have spare capacity. You don't have a bottleneck anymore and prices could converge almost overnight.
As a knowledge worker, you face two challenges. First, you need to take in staggering amounts of information to stay current. Next, you're expected to convert that information into innovative solutions that benefit your team and your company.
While expectations for consuming and processing information have changed, most of our mental habits harken back to factory model days. Yet we’re ignoring the tremendous power of our human biology, namely, our brains.
What if we designed an optimal work style built around key features of the human brain? That’s the question Mithu Storoni works to answer in her book, Hyperefficient: Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work. She likens brain function to a car engine with multiple gears. Then she shares how to best put those gears to work for us, and how best to shift them as circumstances change.
It’s just the right book – with just the right information – for the age we’re living in.
Episode Links
Uncertainty is Uncomfortable, and Technology Makes It Worse. That Doesn’t Have to Be a Bad Thing
Help! It Turns out Breaks Make You More Productive
Interview with Ayelet Fishbach on the Science of Motivation
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