unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

It's a bold claim. And people outside of financial history might wonder how this could possibly be true.Will Goetzmann will elaborate on this claim in today’s episode. He is the Edwin J. Beinecke Professor of Finance and Management Studies and Faculty Director of the International Center for Finance at the Yale School of Management. Will’s current research focuses on alternative investing, factor investing, behavioral finance and the art market.Will has written and co-authored a number of books, including “Modern Portfolio Theory and Investment Analysis,” “The Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations that Created Modern Capital Markets,” and most recently, “Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible.”Will and Greg talk in this episode about jurors in Athens, slave ownership and early banks, outsourcing public administration in ancient Rome and modern times and making career a switch from art history to operations research to finance.Episode Quotes:Why is financial history important to know and study?For me, I'm always interested in where do things come from and why they matter. And I try to focus on the sort of bigger picture of the implications of having these tools. And I think that that's an important thing. You can only get it through history, because it takes time for things to play out. On having an unconventional career pathI've always had an omnivorous curiosity. Perhaps un-controlled. And so in some sense, I followed opportunities, as opposed to having a one goal in life. So there's a whole spectrum of different kinds of people. I'm one that has done lots of different kinds of things.Preservation of the stateOne way you could break down different kinds of governments along the fault line of finance would be to look at some of the city states they emerged in Europe as a merchant driven, merchant owned, merchant controlled.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Carl Menger - WikipediaUlrike Malmendier's HomepageThe River LekK. Geert Rouwenhorst | Yale School of ManagementJohn IngersollGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Yale School of ManagementProfessional Profile at National Bureau of Economic ResearchWill Goetzmann on LinkedInWill Goetzmann on TwitterHis Work:Will Goetzmann on Google ScholarMoney Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization PossibleThe Origins of Corporations: The Mills of Toulouse in the Middle Ages The Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations That Created Modern Capital MarketsThe Great Mirror of Folly: Finance, Culture, and the Crash of 1720Modern Portfolio Theory and Investment AnalysisThe Equity Risk Premium: Essays and Explorations Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

At the core of his latest book, Christian Madsbjerg argues that business people focus too much on what we might call the “thin data” and ignore the “thick data.” That we are emphasizing too much the analytical, and ignoring the insights that can come from what some people might call the intuitive.Christian Madsbjerg is a Professor of Applied Humanities at The New School and Co-Founder of the pioneering consultancy Red Associates, a consultancy with offices in Copenhagen and New York City. For two decades he has worked as a management consultant, mostly dealing with companies in trouble. Greg and Christian dive into his latest book, Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm, touching on the Silicon Valley mindset, the art of framework selection and dating apps.Episode Quotes:What is human observationSo that's what I mean by human observation that, you know, just shut up, you know, and, try to leave your political opinions, your preconceived notions behind for a little while. And see what's going on, you know? And that is for me phenomenology, when it's practical and applicable.A problem with how we teach studentsAnd I think we often take very smart, creative students and we educate them out of the possibility of using what they learn and they end up not using what they learned. On corporations & the humanitiesWhat I found was that when big decisions are made in large corporations about things that touch our lives, there is an empty seat.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Anthro-Vision: A New Way to See in Business and Life by Gillian TettThe Peregrine by J. A. BakerHubert DreyfusClifford GeertzAbductionGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at The New SchoolProfessional Profile at ReD AssociatesChristian Madsbjerg’s WebsiteChristian Madsbjerg on LinkedInHis Work:Christian Madsbjerg in Harvard Business ReviewSensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the AlgorithmThe Moment of Clarity: Using the Human Sciences to Solve Your Toughest Business Problems Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Scott Anthony says that you say that the most powerful untapped source of energy in the world right now is the innovative energy within large companies that is currently going to waste.Scott is a Senior Partner at Innosight and a visiting professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business.. Based in Singapore since 2010, he has led Innosight’s expansion into the Asia-Pacific region as well as its venture capital activities (Innosight Ventures).In his more than a decade with Innosight, Scott has advised senior corporate leaders on the topics of growth and innovation. He has extensive experience in emerging markets, particularly in India, China, and the Philippines.Scott is also the author of numerous publications, most recently he is the co-author of the book “Eat, Sleep, Innovate: How to Make Creativity an Everyday Habit Inside Your Organization.”Listen as Scott & Greg discuss “the BEANS,” stimulating curiosity, Eastman Kodak, and the hallmarks of successful internal behavior change initiatives within an organization.Episode Quotes:Writing a failure resumeSo just go and write all the things that you did that didn't work and most critically what you learned from them. And the lesson that you inevitably take when you write a failure resumé is that failure isn't fatal. That you learn something from it. And life goes on.The characteristics of innovationI believe everybody has an intrinsic innovator inside of them because the characteristics of innovation are characteristics of human beings as a species. InertiaWhen you go into a living breathing organization, you have to fight a pretty insidious enemy. And that enemy is inertia. It's the way that things are currently being done.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Paul Cobban - Industry Fellow at MIT Center for Information Technology Research - MIT CISR | LinkedInSteve BlankClark Gilbert | InnosightCarol Dweck & Growth MindsetGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Tuck School of BusinessProfessional Profile at InnosightProfessional Profile at Thinkers50Scott Anthony on LinkedInScott Anthony on TwitterHis Work:Eat, Sleep, Innovate: How to Make Creativity an Everyday Habit Inside Your OrganizationDual Transformation: How to Reposition Today's Business While Creating the FutureThe Little Black Book of Innovation, With a New Preface: How It Works, How to DoThe First Mile: A Launch Manual for Getting Great Ideas into the MarketBuilding a Growth FactorySilver Lining: Your Guide to Innovating in a DownturnThe Innovator's Guide to Growth: Putting Disruptive Innovation to WorkSeeing What's Next: Using the Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, we discuss how exposure to disagreement changes how we think. Our guest’s research highlights the perils of consensus and the value of dissent for the quality of decision making and the creativity of solutions.Charlan Nemeth is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at UC Berkeley. She has taught in the areas of persuasion, team decision making, scientific creativity, corporate culture and innovation. Her most recent book on decision-making, “In Defense of Troublemakers,” pulls together decades of research on influence processes with particular attention to raising the quality of individual and team decisions. Listen as Charlan and Greg talk about listening to the other side of a position, 12 Angry Men, groupthink, and diversity.Episode Quotes:Mission behind her work & bookI think the most important message of our work and the book is that when you hear opposing views that come from a majority, this consensus thing we're talking about, it isn't just whether or not you follow it, which is persuasion. It's how are you thinking as a result? On the diversity of demographic and viewpointThe only way that diversity of demographic works is if there’s some kind of a correlation between the diversity of the demographic and diversity of viewpoint.What does diversity really mean So if you just look at the demographics, they're very diverse. But that doesn't get you the stimulation that you're after, because what you really want is diversity of views. The only way that that diversity of demographic works is if there's some kind of a correlation between the diversity of the demographic and diversity of viewpoint. Namely, is it the case that if I bring, say different races that I'm going to hear a different viewpoint? Not if they're all on the same page and have the same motivations and the same ideology and whatever.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Asch conformity experiments - WikipediaCarl Wagner - Strathmore University Business School12 Angry MenAlex F. Osborn & BrainstormingGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of California, BerkeleyProfessional Profile at Social Psychology NetworkCharlan Nemeth’s WebsiteCharlan Nemeth LinkedInCharlan Nemeth on TwitterCharlan Nemeth on FacebookHer Work:Charlan Nemeth on Google ScholarIn Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cognitive science is kind of like the new philosophy. These days, the cognitive scientists are the ones that we look to figure out what the heck is going on.And people like Art Markman are not just simply academically studying things, but they are actually offering up a lot of tools, advice and wisdom too. Art Markman is the Vice Provost for Continuing and Professional Education and New Education Ventures at the University of Texas at Austin. Before this role, he was a professor of psychology and marketing at the university. Beyond the UT Austin campus, he is probably best known as the co-host of KUT’s “Two Guys on Your Head” radio show and podcast, where he and Butler School of Music professor Bob Duke explore the human mind with a unique mix of research, humor and everyday relevance. Art & Greg talk in this episode about explore vs exploit tradeoffs, consciously choosing our habits, motivation and reward systems.Episode Quotes:The value of trying new things, like learning a new instrument:No matter what age you start, you sound terrible at first. But realizing you can sound terrible to make those mistakes and the world doesn't end is also valuable, right? Because you realize actually you can make mistakes in all sorts of environments and the world doesn't end, you just do better the next time. And so practicing that even after you become really proficient at one thing is helpful because it reminds you: I can actually take on a new thing and yes, I'll screw it up, but it's okay.Structuring work environmentsAs we begin to transition back to hybrid work environments and other things, this is a chance to think about how do I want to structure both my home and my work environments to be better able to achieve some set of goals. On failure:One of the things I do is when people think about changing behavior, one of the first things you have to do is to ask yourself, where are my sources of failure? And in particular, where are the sources of failure that are a signal that something has to change? Because there are really three kinds of failures and only one of them is bad.Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of Texas AustinProfessional Profile at Psychology TodayPodcast: Two Guys on Your Head | KUT Radio, Austin's NPR StationArt Markman on LinkedInArt Markman on TwitterArt Markman on FacebookTwo Guys on Your Head PodcastGuest Work:Art Markman on Google ScholarSmart Thinking Book WebsiteBring Your Brain to Work: Using Cognitive Science to Get a Job, Do it Well, and Advance Your CareerBrain Briefs: Answers to the Most (and Least) Pressing Questions about Your MindSmart Change: Five Tools to Create New and Sustainable Habits in Yourself and OthersThe Habits of Effective Leadership: Discover the essential tools to become an outstanding, successful manager Smart Thinking: Three Essential Keys to Solve Problems, Innovate, and Get Things DoneOther Resources:Human Dimensions of OrganizationsYerkes–Dodson lawKFC Will Start Offering Beyond 'Chicken' – But Not for Vegetarians Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Which is smarter -- your head or your gut? It's a familiar refrain: you're getting too emotional. Try and think rationally. But is it always good advice?Eyal Winter is the Silverzweig Professor of Economics at the Hebrew University and the Andrews & Elizabeth Brunner Professor at Lancaster University, specializing in Behavioral Economics, Decision Making, Game Theory and Finance. A member of the Center for the Study of Rationality, Eyal Winter was awarded the Humboldt Prize for excellence in research by the German government in 2011. He is also the author of “Feeling Smart: Why Our Emotions Are More Rational Than We Think.”Listen to Eyal and Greg talk on recognizing deception, where emotions fit in negotiation, and using your emotional inventory. Episode Quotes:Remembering emotional experiencesFortunately, evolution endowed us with a better memory for emotional experiences than for cognitive experiences. We don't remember facts well, but we remember emotional experiences very, very well. And this is a blessing for us. Choosing between emotional and rational decision-makingI wouldn't choose between either emotional decision-making or rational decision-making. Each of them alone is not going to operate well.On RegretIf we do a mistake, if we made a bad decision, even at the individual level, without any interaction with anybody, we're going to feel regret. The feeling of regret will remain for much longer than the ability to remember the circumstances under which this regret has been generated. Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at Lancaster UniversityProfessional Profile at Psychology TodayEyal Winter on LinkedInEyal Winter on TwitterHis Work:Eyal Winter on Google ScholarFeeling Smart: Why Our Emotions Are More Rational Than We Think Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The pursuit of happiness is a foundational principle of the American democratic experiment, and yet true happiness seems elusive for many Americans. Where does our notion of happiness come from and how did we become a nation of busybodies? Benjamin Storey is the Jane Gage Hipp Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Furman University. He is also the Director of Furman's Tocqueville Program, an intellectual community dedicated to investigating the moral and philosophic questions at the heart of political life. With Jenna Silber Storey, he is author of "Why We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment."Greg and Benjamin take a deep dive into the thought of four foundational thinkers, touching on humanism, contentment, diversion, transcendence, religion and democracy in America and the mindfulness movement in this conversation. Episode Quotes:On commitmentIt's only by plunking down your chips, by settling on a way of life, that you actually start to become anything. That is, when you retain yourself in a position of pure potentiality, you're not really anything. You could be lots of stuff like a stem cell, but you're not anything in particular. And so to become something, it has to be something specific. On AmericansAmericans have a very hard time ranking the good. That is, figuring out what are the most important things that we should be pursuing.Americans are too busy to philosophizeIt's the case that everybody else around me is trying to get ahead. Which means that I don't just fail if I go backwards, I fail if I sit still. Because everybody else is advancing. And so we're constantly caught up in this dynamic of needing to advance simply in order to sit still. And that makes philosophizing incredibly hard.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Montaigne; or, the Skeptic - Ralph Waldo Emerson ArticleGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Furman UniversityProfessional Profile at American Enterprise InstituteBenjamin and Jenna Storey’s WebsiteBenjamin Storey on LinkedInHis Work:Articles by Benjamin StoreyWhy We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Humans have gotten healthier and healthier over the years due to modern medicine and the power of antibiotics.. But those same antibiotics, when overused, can lead to a whole new set of ailments, most notably obesity.Martin Blaser holds the Henry Rutgers Chair of the Human Microbiome at Rutgers University, where he also serves as Professor of Medicine and Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, and as Director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine. Previously, he served as Chair of the Department of Medicine at New York University. A physician and microbiologist, Dr. Blaser has been studying the relationships we have with our persistently colonizing bacteria. He also wrote Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues.He and Greg discuss the overuse of antibiotics, how the antibiotic marketplace is broken, the variability among prescribers and the role of antibiotics in livestock.Episode Quotes:The overuse of antibioticsRecently, the CDC estimated that about a third of the antibiotics used in the United States in people are unnecessary. My own estimate is that it's about 60%. That it's more than half of all the antibiotics used are unnecessary. And so now the question is when you use a lot of antibiotics, what happens?The crux of Martin’s workI have two crusades. One is to do the work, to understand exactly what antibiotics are doing and how we can counteract the bad part. So we can improve our use of antibiotics. And my other crusade is to tell people about this whole issue, because most people don't understand. They don't understand that just as we're damaging our macro ecology, which we call climate change, we're damaging our micro ecology. The ecology inside us.Misinformation about bacteriaThere are plenty of bad germs. But there's been a tremendous focus on the idea that microbes are bad.”Germ” is a negative term. Kids grow up learning about germs, companies sell products fighting those bad germs. But in fact, we live in a bacterial world.Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at Rutgers UniversityAuthor’s Profile at One World PublicationMartin Blaser on LinkedInHis Work:Works on Science FridayMartin Blaser on Google ScholarMissing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Geoff Tuff is a principal of Deloitte Consulting LLP and holds various leadership positions across its Sustainability, Innovation, and Strategy practices. In the past, he led Doblin, the firm’s innovation practice, and was a senior partner at Monitor Group, serving as a member of its global Board of Directors before the company was acquired by Deloitte. He has been with some form of Monitor for close to 30 years.Steve Goldbach is a principal at Deloitte as well, and serves as the firm’s chief strategy officer. Steve helps executives and their teams transform their organizations by making challenging and pragmatic strategy choices in the face of uncertainty. Over a 25+ year career, Steve has served clients across most industries, with an emphasis on industries in transition and consumer-driven sectors.Steve and Geoff co authored “Detonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices” and “Provoke: How Leaders Shape the Future by Overcoming Fatal Human Flaws.”They join Greg to discuss these books, their “provocative” work, questioning orthodoxies, balance, and shaking up the traditional career path.Episode Quotes:Steve Goldbach: How the traditional “career path” is changingThe problem is that if you believe that we're in a world that will require constant evolution, then that career path isn't worth the paper it's written on, because things are gonna change substantially over the next while. So I think the moral contract between organizations and their people needs to be rethought. Instead of saying it's about achieving a particular level the next X years, it's gotta be achieving a particular set of skills, akin to the kind of skills that are going to be relevant in the marketplace. Geoff Tuff: How did we get to a place where change is not common in a workplace?We as human beings tend to place a higher prominence on data and information that is more readily available versus data and information that's more difficult to get. And because of that, we kind of assume that the information we have around us all the time is the right information that we need to be using to make decisions. And therefore opening up the information for challenge, we're opening up one's logic to challenge, it feels antithetical to making good efficient decisions. And that's just one example of both individual and organizational biases that we think work together as a system to prevent change.Geoff Tuff: Best practices & orthodoxiesWe are now living through, Steve and I believe, a time where we're shifting from a world that's governed primarily by linear change to one that's increasingly governed by exponential change. And with that comes a different set of operating rules, where the old playbooks just don't apply. The only way we can break the habits of operating by rote, using the playbooks, is to get people to recognize when they're being impacted by orthodoxy, meaning just the kind of conventional wisdom of the way the place operates.Show Links:Guest Profile:Geoff Tuff’s Professional Profile at Deloitte Consulting LLPGeoff Tuff on LinkedInGeoff Tuff on TwitterSteve Goldbach’s Professional Profile at Deloitte Consulting LLPSteve Goldbach on LinkedInSteve Goldbach on TwitterTheir Works:Provoke: How Leaders Shape the Future by Overcoming Fatal Human FlawsDetonate: Why - And How - Corporations Must Blow Up Best Practices (and bring a beginner's mind) To Survive Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Why are so many organizations run by ineffective or toxic leaders? Because it isn't the best leaders that succeed. Its the ones that best understand how to gain power and use power. According to Jeff Pfeffer, the leadership industry has led many prospective leaders astray, providing them with a normative framework that fails to provide an accurate account of how organizations work. Jeff Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University where he has taught since 1979. He is also the author or co-author of 15 books, the most recent of which is “The 7 Rules of Power’In this episode, we’ll hear Greg & Jeff discuss values based leadership, Jeff’s course “Paths to Power,” the nature of reciprocity in the workplace and self help books.Episode Quotes:Values based leadershipAt Stanford we talk about values based leadership and on the surface you would say, who could be opposed to values-based leadership? That you ought to lead with values, you want to lead with integrity, authenticity all of these things. But I think we have failed to ask the question: if you're going to have values-based leadership, the next thing you need to ask is how are you going to get the power and influence to actually implement those values? The complexities of work friendsIf you and I are friends and we work in different organizations and probably even in different industries, there is a pure friendship relationship. But as soon as we work for the same place, because organizations are hierarchical, we are both competing. So it's a very mixed motive situation.The calculated mindset of workplace thinkingIt makes complete sense that in interpersonal relationships, the norm of reciprocity is quite strong. But when you get into an organization, you adopt what we call a more “calculative mindset.” In which we're thinking not just, you know did Gregory do something for me, so I need to repay it? But is Gregory going to be part of my life in the future?What is Gregory going to be able to do for me in the future? And if he is not going to be in a position of power, or maybe he's not even going to be in the organization in the future, then as I calculate whether or not I need to repay and what I need to do for him, its much more calculative and less this automatic, normative basis.Show Links: Recommended Resources:Herminia Ibarra on TEDxLondonBusinessSchool talking about: What does it really mean for leaders to be authentic?The Authenticity Paradox by Herminia IbarraUnless You’re Oprah, ‘Be Yourself’ Is Terrible Advice by Adam GrantHow David Beat’s Goliath by Malcolm GladwellGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Stanford Graduate School of BusinessSpeaker’s Profile at Stern Speakers & AdvisorsJeff Pfeffer’s WebsiteJeff Pfeffer on LinkedInJeff Pfeffer on TwitterHis Work:Jeff Pfeffer on Google Scholar7 Rules of Power: Surprising--but True--Advice on How to Get Things Done and Advance Your CareerDying for a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performance―and What We Can Do About ItLeadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a TimePeople are the Name of the Game: How to be More Successful in Your Career--and LifePower: Why Some People Have It and Others Don'tWhat Were They Thinking?: Unconventional Wisdom About ManagementHard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.