Thank you everyone for coming.
Today I'm gonna be talking about force multipliers,
and why should one try to be one?
This is a big reason why I do what I do.
I'm deeply bought into the ideology that you
can really amplify the impact of some people
who are trying to do things that resonate
strongly with you, that you think are important
cause areas to be working towards.
Being a force multiplier to me personally
is a very motivating aspect of my job.
I'm gonna try and explain to you what I mean
by force multiplication, how can you be an
effective force multiplier, et cetera.
The concept of force multiplication comes
from military science.
The definition is it refers to a factor or
a combination of factors that dramatically
increase the effectiveness of a group, or
of a given number of troops, or the weapons
that they're using to accomplish things that
they actually would not have been able to
accomplish without this amplification, without
this intervention.
I think while the term comes from a military
science backdrop, the general principle is
applicable to pretty much anything.
Wherever there's a scope to achieve something
collectively with coordinated effort, wherever
a group of people is trying to achieve something
that is useful, that they think is important
to be done, a case can be made for optimizing
that initiative and effort in a way that it
leads to amplified impact.
It leads to better, more efficient functioning
of whatever you are trying to push towards.
I think to drive the clarity of concept, it's
important to maybe look at this thing with
respect to if you're trying to amplify the
impact, increase the impact or the influence
of a group or a collection of people, or of
a single individual or a thought leader.
And I think while doing one does not necessarily
mean that you're not gonna be using the same
practices and principles that are going to
be effective with the other, but I think it's
important to try and draw out the different
types of personalities, I almost want to say
that can be effective at doing these two things,
either amplifying the impact of a group or
amplifying the impact of an individual.
And then I think the question that one needs
to ask themselves is that how do you with
your boundedly-rational self, limited abilities,
capabilities, time, and resources drive that
intervention, drive effective interventions
that amplify the impact of the group or the
individual that you're trying to support or
enable.
Here I want to clarify the value chain of
an organization, because I think in order
to figure out where can you amplify impact,
it's important to understand what is core
to the promise that you bring to whoever you're
trying to reach out to, whether with a product
or a service or a piece of information that
you want to put out there.
And then how does your organization enable
that core promise to be fulfilled or to be
delivered?
I think there's core value functions, and
there's support value functions.
But I'm gonna try and take some examples and
clarify this distinction.
Anything that is the actual promise of your
organization, to whoever it's addressing or
trying to reach out to is what I'd like to
call the core value chain of your organization.
If you're a financial technology company or
you have a product that's finance related,
personal finance related or corporate finance
related, the actual product development, what
that product is, what are the services and
the perks that come bundled with it, and the
sale of that product, getting that to the
final end customer and the people who are
responsible for making that sale, driving
that P&L.
Those are the two sort of core value functions
of the organization.
And then these functions are supported by
a whole host of other important functions
that enable these core value functions to
actually accomplish what they are trying to
accomplish.
Depending on the size and the scale of your
organization, your requirements, there's legal,
there's marketing, there's things that feed
into the product development, there's things
that impact the sales like the channels you
use for marketing, et cetera.
There's human resource management.
There's financial management.
Bits of your work could be outsourced to partners,
so you could be working with a network of
stakeholders who are collectively trying to
do something managing that project.
All these support functions are invariably
consistent across organizations.
These skills are also extremely fungible.
They do come with overtones of specialization
that you develop once you're working in a
field, but a lot of this is general experience
that's very transferable across organizations,
especially organizations that are working
in a specific field the way all the effective
altruism organizations, they have a methodology,
they have a specific agenda they're trying
to accomplish, and very similar methods of
getting there, basically.
To take a different example, in a manufacturing
setup, the shop floor, the factory where the
manufacturing happens, the supply chain that
gets the product from the shop floor to the
end customer as well as, again, the function
that makes the sales, that handles the targets
month on month, quarter on quarter.
These are the core value functions.
And then in a research organization your research
is your core value output that you put out
there in the world.
And everything that supports it is the enabling
function.
I think it's important to look at an organization
not just as valuable, as important, or as
iconic as its core value functions, but also
as a bundle of these functions that stand
on top of solid foundations of these support
or enabling functions, that run the show,
that make things happen.
I want to talk a little bit about what do
you need to be effective.
This is not a laundry list or an exhaustive
list of what I think can be useful orientations
to have, or a useful environment to have to
be effective in a force multiplier role of
sorts, where you can give yourself this task
and come out feeling that you've achieved
something meaningful.
If you're trying to do this for an organization
or a collection of individuals you need to,
I think, have the systems mindset.
You need to believe in the fact that developing
scalable, robust, efficient systems creates
systemic efficiencies, leading to a lot of
mental bandwidth freed up, a lot of interesting
work opportunities for everyone.
People don't necessarily need to be caught
up doing a job which doesn't excite them,
it's repetitive.
They're caught up in a rut.
That doesn't need to happen if you build very
scalable, robust systems and try and automate
the tasks, which are not cognitively very
stimulating for anyone.
Having said that, at times your predicament
is such that you're nested within... like
for FHI we're nested within Oxford University,
so we use their systems and processes, and
we have to tie in whatever we develop to those
pre-existing systems.
At times you might be dealing with policy
offices, a lot of government interaction,
and they have a certain way, a methodology,
unsaid norms that you have to follow.
You could be dealing within a microcosm or
a macrocosm, which could be restrictive, or
you could have all the bandwidth and the elbow
room to do whatever you think is most efficient.
But basically having a mindset that anything
that's not cognitively interesting should
be somewhat automated, somewhat made free
of the dependence on any one individual.
You need to have the mindset of problem solving.
You are going to be bombarded with a bunch
of problems that are new, that you haven't
anticipated before, challenges that come because
the environment in which you operate changes,
the policy guidelines that impact your organization
and your output change.
Within this very dynamic landscape you need
to be prepared for failure.
You need to be able to anticipate future problems
and attack them.
That's not to say that you're always going
to be prepared for anything that might be
thrown your way.
You're definitely going to get caught off
guard many number of times.
But it's just that mindset of knowing that,
yes, things are going to break.
It's going to be challenging.
I haven't thought through this, but I'm ready
to probably respond to this.
We're agile enough as an organization having
our systems in place, but still having the
ability to, with agility, respond to problems
that you haven't sort of anticipated before.
I think when you're trying to be a force multiplier
for a group of people, an organization, there
needs to be a buy-in from the organization.
Between a team that's providing an enablement
service and the team that's trying to achieve
the core objective within an organization,
there needs to be an implicit understanding
of what is the service level agreement that
you're willing to sign on for.
How much work will the operations team totally
commit to doing?
How much mind space are they committing to
sort of free up for other people?
How much are they going to share the load
in terms of doing some bits and meeting the
ops team midway?
Every organization, because of the environment
in which it operates in, the legacy systems
it has, the place it wants to get to, has
an implicit, tacit understanding of how all
this will be handled.
So getting buy-in there, having the authority
to implement that and reinforce uptake of
these processes that you set in place, I think
that's an important thing to focus on and
drive clarity on when you're working in a
set-up like this.
And then of course all of this happens with
teamwork.
Whenever you're trying to support a group
of individuals, if it's 12 to 15 people then
a couple of people can do an effective job
at taking care of all of their needs.
It's a really challenging situation, a huge
learning opportunity for those two people,
but they'll be able to sort of provide the
services, the enablement that's needed.
But when your organization scales up to 50,
100, 150, plus 500 becomes a different game
altogether.
So developing solutions that scale up, that
break with grace, that don't sort of crumble
under pressure of scale up and change.
Those are sort of important things that you
need to keep focusing on, and I think that'll
make one an effective force multiplier for
a group.
What do you do for an individual?
I think the ability to model someone's preferences
effectively to see what do they need, what
are the bits of information that they are
usually looking for when they're trying to
assess whether to commit to a situation or
not, what are the kinds of questions that
they're invariably going to ask you, what
is the information that you need to pre collect
or assess, how do you best distill that information?
All these things help you develop a model
of the person that you're working with, working
for, whose impact you're trying to amplify.
You get feedback on the model, in a sense.
You see whether your predictions are accurate,
inaccurate, how can you refine them, fine
tune them a little more.
I think that's where you start.
It's interesting because I was talking to
Nick about my presentation, and he said, "Well,
there's a level zero, which is basic support
and general competence and how he said that
was not making a mess of things" so not going
up and mucking everything up is also extremely
important.
It starts there, and then you develop a bit
of a rapport.
You develop a model for the preferences of
the person you're trying to work with.
And you feed that information back to them.
I think that's where the importance of preference
modeling lies.
You give them the confidence that you're doing
a decent job at accurately representing their
beliefs, accurately representing their requests
and requirements, so that they start delegating
more things to you.
Getting that authority, taking that cognitive
load off their plate, giving them more time
to engage in things that ostensibly they should
be doing, that they're much better at doing.
I think that's where real value is uncovered
in, when you're trying to support an effective
altruist leader of sorts, or a thought leader
who you really want to amplify the impact
of.
I think at the third level you start developing
complementary skills, things that are needed.
So if you're supporting someone who's writing
a book, you would be able to add a lot of
value by understanding what are the best ways
of digitally marketing a product in today's
world.
You don't necessarily have to build all the
skills yourself, but you need to have enough
subject matter knowledge in order to work
with experts, in order to collaborate with
people you hire on retainer or people you
hire for a one time project to do any of these
things.
If the person that you're aligned to is not
a great networker but could benefit a lot
from meeting certain individuals, being part
of some conversations, then how do you in
your capacity enable and facilitate those
meetings, those connections?
If you are not good at it, how do you leverage
the network around you in order to achieve
that end outcome, I think becomes the level
three of operating while being the force multiplier
for an individual.
And then I think there are some things that
get unlocked.
There are levels that get unlocked only after
long-term association, after a lot of trust
has been built, after a lot of challenges,
situations have been conquered, observed together,
the problems that you face together.
And then after that, not only the person you're
aligned to and yourself but other people start
seeing you as a credible proxy who can stand
in for that person's judgment, for that person's
viewpoint on something.
And I think that's where you truly free up
a lot of mind space, a lot of long-term impact
opportunities, that are unlocked when you
reach that stage.
I'm a little conscious that I'm rambling on
and running out of time, so I'm gonna try
and rush through the last three slides a little
bit.
I want to call focus on some critical, I think
I want to call them traits, critical features
that a person who's trying to do this, who's
trying to be an effective force multiplier,
I think if they have these things, they're
poised for more success than I would think
that if some of these things are lacking.
Again, this is not exhaustive.
80,000 Hours, their ops post has a whole section
on the mindset, the skills that you'll want
to be calling out for, focused on, holding,
et cetera.
I'd recommend everyone read that.
I think value alignment or mission focus to
me is something that's extremely important
for an operations person, or for a person
who's trying to amplify the impact of an ideology
in the world.
This is not to say that value aligned people
have it easy.
It's all fun and games and excitement.
Your job can get really hard at times, and
it can get really challenging.
But if you're value aligned, you're deeply
bought into the mindset, the ideology, then
the challenges and the failures and the setbacks
won't lead you to question your life choices,
in the sense they'll still hurt, and they'll
feel bad, and you'll be driven to improve
all the good things that will come out of
it.
But you will not feel, "Should I be doing
this?
Should I be doing something else?"
I think that whole element goes away, and
it leads to lasting satisfaction.
So I cannot stress the importance of this
more.
The drive to upscale and learn.
There needs to be some people in the organization
or any movement, a community that are ready
to chew on glass.
And I don't know how to more delicately put
this, but there are things that not everyone
wants to do.
But some people need to be committed to doing
those things in order to make sure that important
things happen.
The movement gets the wind it needs beneath
its wings because there are people who are
doing the not so glamorous but super important
things.
I thought a bit about how to position this
vicarious orientation that I want to point
out.
For a community that cares about aligned artificial
general intelligence, not everyone can be
an AI safety researcher.
It's not even effective if everyone is an
AI safety researcher.
So there need to be people who know that,
"Okay, my strength is networking or my strength
is project management or my strength is putting
together great events like this where people
can come together and actually talk."
So playing to your strengths, identifying
where you can contribute, where you can have
the maximal impact, and committing to do that
while knowing that you're freeing up time,
mind space, energy of people who are really
good at solving the kinds of problems that
you're worried about.
I think that sort of an orientation helps
when you're trying... looking at things like
that is useful when you're trying to be a
force multiplier.
And then whether you're a team player or you're
an individual contributor, however you see
your strengths, I think there's a place for
you if you are trying to support a team of
50, 60, 100, whatever, multiple people, 10s
of people, you're part of a tightly knit unit
that's committed to providing a certain level
of service across all the processes that people
have to engage in.
Your responsibilities are divided among three,
four people of a team.
It's a team effort, which they fail together,
they succeed together.
So I think if you're a bit of a team player,
which is a very useful important orientation
to have when you're trying to support an organization,
trying to be a force multiplier, trying to
commit to a cause, trying to commit to doing
things that are sort of non glamorous, then
there's a place for you there.
If you're an individual contributor you sort
of thrive a little more if you're given more
elbow room to flourish and explore things,
which is not to say that you don't have to
have the skill, the ability to manage relationships
and communicate effectively with a lot of
people.
Those are sort of hygiene skills that everyone
needs.
But if you need a bit more elbow room to flourish,
then trying to explore opportunities for being
a project manager, a personal assistant, an
executive assistant to some high impact individual
is, I think, something that you would find
very interesting.
Lastly, I want to talk a little bit about
what do you gain from this experience?
I think the biggest thing you'll gain by supporting
an organization, trying to amplify their impact,
is how to run an organization.
Like, how to run complex projects with multiple
stakeholders, how to fire fight things that
you haven't anticipated, that you're not prepared
to deal with, and that's a very useful skill
in movement building, organization building,
trying to accomplish something where a lot
of people with different levels of buy-in,
different levels of commitment to different
things that are important to the cause come
together.
Navigating those complex waters is a very
important skill that you get to hone and develop
wholly.
You develop a great understanding of the lay
of the land that you're dealing with.
You get connected to all the important people.
These are small communities, a few people
coming together to do all sorts of interesting
and important things.
They send leads, whether it's media engagement
leads or leads of other policy makers along
each other's ways, so you get to interact
with everyone who is important in the community,
build your network, see how you can facilitate
these interactions given your strengths and
your understanding of the field.
And then you get to develop your career capital
by focusing, if you're interested, either
in specialist skills figuring out how best
to give grants, how best to put up events
of this scale and nature, or double clicking
on marketing.
Whatever interests you, or you can keep developing
these broad generalist skills of people who
are effective at running organizations, complex
movements, helping facilitate communication
and growth of the whole community.
Analogously, when you're talking about doing
this for an individual, you get to model an
effective altruist leader, and you get to
be their sidekick.
And if the word sidekick is slightly offensive
to you then substitute it with whatever you're
excited by, but what I mean to say is that
without having the actual responsibility on
your head, you're living the life of someone
who has all these amazing opportunities knocking
at their doors all the time.
The kind of things that you get exposed to
are people wanting advice on what to do with
their company, what to do with their funds
and resources that they've unlocked.
A lot of policymakers, government people,
NGOs knock on your door trying to understand
how would you react to a particular recent
development in the field.
These are exciting times, and effective altruism
is full of people who are extremely well reasoned,
thought through thinkers who a lot of people
want to listen to and get advice from.
So there's a lot of opportunity to do very
interesting stuff, and you're only limited
by your own bandwidth, your capacity to commit
to different types of projects and deep dive
into them.
Obviously you get to pick what you like.
You get to identify niches for yourself where
you're like, "Maybe I want to develop this
skill more.
Maybe I already am good at it, and I can really
make a difference to this project."
So you get to pick the projects that you like.
Some people, Laura as an example, is doing
amazing work with Will MacAskill.
She's Will's project manager, and he gets
a lot of requests for, "Where should I invest
my money?"
Or where to distribute these funds that we
have in order to promote this sort of thinking
in academia, build a systems mindset that
we're thinking about for these cause areas?
I think those are extremely interesting opportunities
where she has to learn, she has to upskill,
she has to talk to a lot of people, put herself
out of her comfort zone quite periodically,
and upskill in order to understand what's
the best advice to feed to Will who has limited
time, limited energy.
I think I've spoken a bit about this.
You aid decision making.
You can develop credible models for effective
communication between these leaders, between
the people that they're trying to reach, and
the people who are trying to reach them.
And you can truly, I think, have a huge impact
in how you facilitate this whole process.
I think it's important, this message that
I'm leaving there, being with relevancy means
I'm trying to say that, would I like you to
take this in the spirit that it's intended.
Highly impactful people or organizations always
have a whole host of force multipliers behind
the scenes.
Any CEO has a group of people who make magic
happen, whether from writing amazing speech
to coordinating their traveling logistics
very efficiently, to figuring out how should
they spend their time, how should they bunch
up their preferences, all of these things.
Areas of maximal contribution and impact that
you can identify are, Kyle Scott has a list
that he shared in the operations forum of
people who do not have either executive assistants
or research assistants or project managers,
and who arguably should.
They absolutely should.
There are many people in the community who,
if you can support, it will be a hugely impactful
thing to be doing.
All the operations roles that are open and
that tend to stay open for a really long time
until the time that some academic commits
to doing them, until the time that we can
find an ops person, all those roles are extremely
important.
They need people who want to be doing these
things and are excited about doing these things
to be doing them.
There are lots of opportunities if you want
to try out, if you want to contribute.
It's not easy to do these things that should
magically happen.
It's also not non-rewarding.
At times I've said things like this or at
times I've heard in the heat of the moment
you feel that, "Is this rewarding?
Should I be doing everything that other people
arguably don't want to do or else they would've
done it themselves?"
I think it can be super rewarding as in that
feeling, because every day you're responsible
for things.
If you're the kind of person who likes knowing
that me being involved in a situation is actually
leading to some positive impact, positive
change, well, you will be in a lot of situations
where you're the last person responsible for
those things.
It makes you responsible.
It's hard because you're emotionally invested
in what you're trying to do.
You care deeply about the outcomes and the
objectives that you're trying to achieve.
And it's extremely challenging because you
know the opportunity cost of failure.
You know the trade-offs that you're trying
to make and the research time that you lose,
or the energy effort resources that you lose
if you muck things up.
Being all this, it's also extremely awesome
because you're in the eye of the storm.
You're in the vortex where everything is happening
and hopefully happening well.
I think that our preference biases that everyone
has for being on the forefront, being the
icon, and I think this field has a little
more of that.
Like I've observed a lot of this orientation
where everyone wants to be an icon in the
field rather than being okay with being the
sidekick.
I think the movement can be turbo charged,
it can be super charged if there are people
who understand that the forefront, or what
you consider maximally impactful is a bit
of an illusion.
The benefit of hindsight lends you that knowledge
that okay this was actually the most impactful
thing.
Be good, do good, find the people who are
doing the kinds of things that you think should
be done and try and contribute to it the best
that you can.
Thank you.
