unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

Some philosophers of science would say that, if you can't fail, you can't learn. If you've got a theory of how the world's going to work, and the world works that way, you haven't learned anything new. And this idea of emphasizing and embracing failure is important in the business world as well. Tom Eisenmann is the Howard H. Stevenson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School.Here, Tom heads up many entrepreneurial initiatives, teaches the MBA elective Entrepreneurial Failure, and the MS/MBA core courses Technology Venture Immersion and Launch Lab. In recent years, he has also served as Chair of Harvard's MBA Elective Curriculum, and as course head of The Entrepreneurial Manager. His latest book is “Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success.”This episode covers entrepreneurship and startups and what failure can teach us about success.Greg and Tom discuss false starts, Dropbox, scaling too fast and balancing confidence with humility.Episode Quotes:What happens after failureSo you want to find that middle where you can actually, understand the failure, your role in it, and that just takes some emotional distance. It usually takes a matter of weeks or months of - when you're alternating between rumination and distraction. If it's a hundred percent rumination, you're going to make yourself crazy, perhaps clinically depressed.And no one wants that. If it's a hundred percent distraction, so to go side projects or do yoga, whatever it is, you never going to make sense of what happened. So you have to alternate between the two and let the emotions subside, find your role in the failure, and crucially be able to explain it to people.Helping students find jobsPick the one that most lights you up at this point, because basically this is a long game. And if you're going to succeed as an entrepreneur, you need to master management challenges at every step. And they're very different at every step and in no single job where you're going to learn everything you need to know.Entrepreneurship & management[Entrepreneurship] It's a way of managing when resources are constrained and when you're doing something fundamentally new. And that's a pretty good description of a challenge that almost any manager in any kind of organization is going to face at some stage, whether it be a government agency, a not-for-profit, a big corporation.Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at Harvard Business SchoolProfessional Profile at Harvard Innovation LabsTom Eisenmann on LinkedInTom Eisenmann on TwitterHis Work:Tom Eisenmann on Google ScholarWhy Startups Fail WebsiteWhy Startups Fail Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It was not too long ago when the first recommendation engines were created, originally to help researchers keep track of articles and information. Now, you probably consult one every single day.Michael Schrage is a Visiting Fellow in the Imperial College Department of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at MIT, where he examines the various roles of models, prototypes, and simulations as collaborative media for innovation risk management.He has served as an advisor on innovation issues and investments to major firms, including Mars, Procter & Gamble, Google, Intel, BT, Siemens, NASDAQ, IBM, and Alcoa. In addition, Michael has advised segments of the national security community on cyberconflict and cybersecurity issues, and has written a number of books, the most recent being “Recommendation Engines.”Michael joins Greg to talk about continuity and patterns, the “search” for advice, trust & exploitation and cat videos.Episode Quotes:Where are you getting your best advice from these days?Who should I trust giving me advice, my best friend, my wife, or these algorithms? That used to be a joke question. Who would you trust advice for a movie or a Netflix series from, your friends or the algorithm? I've literally been at dinners where people say you really got to see so-and-so and said, yeah, Netflix just recommended that two days ago. So you're getting your best advice on restaurants, on travel, on books, on videos from an algorithm, not your friends. What happens to human relationships when your best advice comes from your devices? Not your people.How did Michael get into this workWhat sucked me in to recommender systems, to recommendation engines and the way that they were designed, the way they were architected, the way they were experienced was instead of getting the best answer, I'm getting the best choices. And to me, the real shock is if you're just getting the best answer, then the issue is you need to comply with the best answer. What are recommendation engines? Recommendation engines are just, they're about the past, present and future of advice. They're the past, present and future of self discovery. I find that fascinating. Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at Imperial College Department of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at MITMichael Schrage on Big ThinkMichael Schrage on LinkedInHis Work:Articles on Harvard Business ReviewRecommendation EnginesThe Innovator's Hypothesis: How Cheap Experiments Are Worth More than Good IdeasWho Do You Want Your Customers to Become?Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to InnovateNo More Teams!: Mastering the Dynamics of Creative CollaborationShared Minds: The New Technologies of Collaboration Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Our obsession with metrics is causing damage across the board, from education and medicine, to the police, military, and foreign aid. But our guest says we can at least begin to fix the problem.Jerry Muller is professor of history at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, where he is a professor of history. He is the author of five books, including “Capitalism and the Jews”, “The Tyranny of Metrics,” and “The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in European Thought.” His current work focuses on the border between history, social science, philosophy, and public policy. He chats with Greg in this episode about measurability bias, metric fixation, how metrics have made baseball more boring, and surgical report cards.Episode Quotes:On metric fixationSo one of the problems with what I call metric fixation is the belief that since you are measuring in a standardized way, you are engaged in an objective scientific activity. And therefore it tends to militate against humility. That is to say, it gives you too much confidence in the metrics. Because after all you're doing science, and the other guy or gal, she's just working on her, gut or on her intuition around her so-called judgment. But I've got hard numbers and hard numbers are, that's what sent people into space. So they're going to help me figure out if this product that I have is going to work in the marketplace.Standardized metrics: Again, I can't say it often enough, standardized metrics do have a positive role. They mitigate against various kinds of prejudice and against some kinds of biases. But when you put those metrics together with reward and punishment and transparency, you often get all kinds of dysfunctions.Multifactor metrics & judgment:The more metrics you have, the more employee and management time is being put into measuring as opposed to doing. And especially since good metrics require input from the practitioners themselves, because they're actually more likely to know what's important and what's not. So it's good to have their input, but again that takes some of their time. So there's a real tension between doing and measuring and coming up with the metrics and then producing the metrics and then analyzing the metrics. Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at the Catholic University of AmericaProfessional Profile at The American Academy in BerlinJerry Muller on TwitterHis Work: Courses on The Great CoursesThe Tyranny of MetricsCapitalism and the JewsConservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present (Annotated Edition)Adam Smith in His Time and OursThe Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western ThoughtProfessor of Apocalypse: The Many Lives of Jacob TaubesThe Other God that Failed: Hans Freyer and the Deradicalization of German Conservatism Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gluten free or dairy free may just seem like menu options to some, But in fact, food allergies have become a major epidemic. They aren’t restricted by socioeconomics, age, or gender and are increasingly becoming globally pervasive.Dr. Kari Nadeau is one of the nation’s foremost experts in adult and pediatric allergy and asthma. She is the Director of the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research at Stanford University and is an endowed professor under the Naddisy Family Foundation. She also co-authored the book “The End of Food Allergy: The First Program To Prevent and Reverse a 21st Century Epidemic.”In this conversation we talk about the difference between food allergies & intolerances, the trends in longitudinal data of food allergies, and educating our immune systems. Episode Quotes:Changing public view on how disruptive food allergies can be:I think the world is changing. I think after having people see what people went through with COVID. I think, my food allergy patients had been living that kind of life for a long time - not going out on airplanes, not going out to restaurants, being fearful of anything that you touch that could be contaminated with a food that could hurt you in the same analogy, not perfectly analogous, but that's what happened three years ago. Well, actually two years ago with COVID, right? That we were so worried. And so people could hopefully live the life of someone with food allergies a little bit more easily. Educating our immune systems with eating more diverse foodsIt's probably better for a non food allergic child and adult to eat those diverse foods in your diet, all those beautiful proteins…let's not see them as foreign. And how do we do that? Well, we have to educate. Our immune system needs education. So does your brain, it needs to be educated. So that diversity of diet early and often with complementary feeding, with breastfeeding, it all works.Modern living & eatingWe can't all live on farms. We have urban living. We have modern living now that has helped a lot of people, but we do need to find a balance of the environment and making sure that we help our health. Because our health is an active state. It's not just a passive state. Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at Stanford UniversityProfessional Profile at Stanford HealthcareDr. Kari Nadeau on TEDxPaloAltoHer Work:Dr. Kari Nadeau on Google ScholarThe End of Food Allergy WebsiteThe End of Food Allergy: The First Program To Prevent and Reverse a 21st Century Epidemic Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As collaboration tools and apps become more commonplace in the digital workplace, how can we balance their pros (team mindset, connection) with their cons (burnout, inefficiency)? Our guest tackles this issue in his latest book “Beyond Collaboration Overload: How to Work Smarter, Get Ahead, and Restore Your Well-Being.”For more than 20 years, Rob Cross has studied the underlying networks of effective organizations and the collaborative practices of high performers. Through research and writing, speaking and consulting, and courses and tools, Rob’s network strategies are transforming the way people lead, work and live in a hyper-connected world.Rob is currently the Edward A. Madden Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts and the co-founder and director of the Connected Commons, a consortium of over 150 leading organizations accelerating network research and practice.This episode covers communication analytics, cultivating managerial talent, burnout and changing the norms of workplace communications & interactions.Episode Quotes:Creating office guidelines to communicationSo I found an incredibly easy thing to do that yields far more time. People are surprised by this all the time - is you get a blank piece of paper, you draw three columns down it. Or put it up on a virtual space, so you can get your team together if that's how you're doing things today.And you list in the first column, here are all the ways we're collaborating. So it's, email, it's instant messaging, it's the teamspace, its zoom calls, whatever it may be. Then the second column is identify as a group, writefour or five things we want to do, like positive norms we want to follow against each of these things.And then the third column is four or five things you don't want to do, the things you want to stop, it takes no more than an hour to do. You have consensus in it, and you get efficiencies back really quickly.How the pandemic has shifted time & work schedulesPart of the problems with the pandemic right now, we're going through is, pre-pandemic we had, let's say eight one hour meetings, and then somebody through the pandemic got a great idea, let's just do them 30 minutes. That sounded great for a minute until we suddenly have 16, 30 minute meetings in that same day, and it's exhausting, right? You're more intense in that moment. The switching costs are harder for us mentally, and we end the day with a to-do list based, not on eight meetings but 16, and it doesn't work.The real culprit of overwhelmProbably the one that surprised me the most that I didn't see coming was the degree to which we're our own worst enemy is way more than I thought in this game. So when I started all these interviews, I was absolutely convinced that overload, the enemy was out there. It was emails, time-zones nasty bosses, demanding clients.And I came out the other end, completely convinced that we create our own problems and it's actually not what we think sometimes.Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at Babson CollegeRob Cross’ WebsiteRob Cross on LinkedinRob Cross on TwitterRob Cross on YoutubeHis Work:Rob Cross on Google ScholarBeyond Collaboration Overload: How to Work Smarter, Get Ahead, and Restore Your Well-BeingDriving Results Through Social Networks: How Top Organizations Leverage Networks for Performance and Growth Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A lot of the smart and successful people in the business world are very good at achieving extrinsic goals of success, fame, money and power. But those types of people are not necessarily very good at the intrinsic goals of happiness, building great relationships, having a sense of ease about life and pursuing meaning.Raj Raghunathan is a Zale Centennial Professor of Business at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. He is interested in exploring the impact that people’s judgments and decisions have on their happiness and fulfillment, and writes about his views on happiness, creativity, and leadership on his popular Psychology Today blog Sapient Nature. His six-week long Coursera course on happiness called A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment currently has over 350,000 registered students from 196 countries. He has also written a book called “If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Happy?”In this episode, hear Greg and Raj talk about the substitution of intermediate metrics for final metrics, the abundance mindset, and whether or not givers are more likely to succeed.Episode Quotes:Can you be happy if you don't reach your goals / find a sense of belonging? I do think that you can. And I think a lot of it involves gaining this, what I call the Abundance Mindset at the end of the book. And basically it is to focus on the part of the glass that's half full basically.So everyone's life has problems. Everyone's life has also good things going on. And which of these two things do we predominantly focus on? Are we constantly focusing on the problems and trying to tackle them and address them? Or are we also taking some time to be thankful for all the things that are going positively in our lives? And the argument here is that the more you are focusing on the things that are going well in your life, or at least taking some time every day to appreciate the good things in your life, the less desperate you're going to be for many things.Happiness can help you achieve your goalsThere is a relationship between being happy and those conventional yardsticks of fame, money, power, et cetera in that happier people are more likely to achieve those goals anyway. And so it's a win-win strategy to prioritize happiness because not only do you get to increase the goal that everyone is ultimately after, but it also ends up enhancing your chances of achieving those goals that you thought would lead to happiness.What makes people happy?That level of authentic seeking of the truth to what really is the determinant of happiness, as opposed to the fake determinants of happiness I think is a very important starting point. And in a way I think that in this grand dance, we have come to a situation in which a lot of the things that we assumed would make us happier - namely, more comfort, more ability to travel and living in richer homes and et cetera - I think a higher number of people than was ever the case in the past are discovering it as a personally experienced truth that more of those things don't make me happier. And so we have more of the authentic seekers I feel now than used to be the case.Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at The University of Texas at AustinRaj Raghunathan on LinkedinRaj Raghunathan on TwitterRaj Raghunathan on TEDxDelhiRaj Raghunathan on CourseraHappy Smarts WebsiteHappy Smarts on YoutubeHis Work:Raj Raghunathan on Google ScholarBlogs on Psychology TodayIf You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Happy? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dario Maestripieri is a Professor in Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago, and is also affiliated with the Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge. His books include “Games Primates Play,” “Macachiavellian Intelligence: How Rhesus Macaques and Humans Have Conquered the World” and “Animal Personalities: Behavior, Physiology and Evolution.”His work currently focuses on the evolution of human behavior and 20th century European literature.In this episode he and Greg discuss the idea of dominance, nepotism & hierarchies in academia and the wild, and the nature of power and advancement within organizations.Episode Quotes:The relationship between dominance and fightingFighting has costs. There is risk of injury, death and damage to valuable relationships. So dominance is a mechanism that has evolved in species that are highly competitive, very social, potentially aggressive, to reduce the costs of fighting.Evolution of human loveSo one theory about the evolution of love is that this feeling has evolved. And in my opinion, is unique to humans. In my opinion, other animals don't have any type of feeling that closely resembles human love. This emotion has evolved to motivate people to stay together. So people who like each other, who are mutually sexually attracted, who have many interests in common, who even from a rational point of view they see the benefits of forming a joint partnership. What makes a good leaderA good leader has to be a good observer of behavior, but also a good psychologist. So you really need to understand what drives a person's behavior, their emotions, their motivation, their moral principles, their rational calculations. A lot has to do with our personality. I recommend to any leader of any organization to study personality and try to understand the personalities of the individuals on your team, because that's a predictor of the motives that people use to engage in particular behaviors.Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at the University of ChicagoProfessional Profile on Psychology TodayDario Maestripieri on LinkedinDario Maestripieri at Talks at GoogleHis Work:Dario Maestripieri on Google Scholar Macachiavellian Intelligence: How Rhesus Macaques and Humans Have Conquered the WorldScience Meets Literature: What Elias Canettis Auto-da-Fé Tells Us about the Human Mind and Human BehaviorGames Primates Play, International Edition: An Undercover Investigation of the Evolution and Economics of Human RelationshipPrimate Psychology  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Good jokes, bad jokes, clever jokes, dad jokes — the desire to laugh is universal. But why do we find some gags hilarious, whilst others fall flat? Jonathan Silvertown attempts to answer this question and more in his most recent work “The Comedy of Error: Why Evolution Made Us Laugh.” Jonathan is a Professor of Evolutionary Ecology and Chair in Technology-Enhanced Science Education in Biological Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. He has also written a number of other books including The Long and the Short of It: The Science of Life Span and Aging, and Dinner with Darwin: Food, Drink, and Evolution.He talks about his jump from writing about the evolution of plants to the evolution of humor, the essence of humor, why laughter is infectious and the 3 types of smiles.Episode Quotes:Why play is importantPlay is about learning to socialize. Play is fun, but you might say, why is it fun? Why do we enjoy it? Well, it's actually a reward for learning and a really important thing that affects your future survival and reproductive opportunities. In a social species like our own, if you can't get along with others, you aren't going to find a mate and you aren't going to survive.The essence of humorWhile there are jokes that put people down, it's not the essence of a joke. The jokes that put people down are an instance of humor, but they're not the essence of humor. To give you the punchline, the essence of humor is incongruity. It's the difference between what you're expecting and what you get.Evolutionary advantage to humor There is an evolutionary advantage to humor and expressing humor. And it's basically like the peacock’s train. It's an advertisement for what matters in human mating, which is intelligence. Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of EdinburghProfessional Profile at The University of Chicago PressJonathan Silvertown’s WebsiteJonathan Silvertown on TwitterHis Work:Jonathan Silvertown on Google ScholarThe Comedy of Error: Why Evolution Made Us LaughThe Long and the Short of It: The Science of Life Span and AgingDemons in Eden: The Paradox of Plant Diversity Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Data literacy is now a baseline benchmark for being an intelligent manager.​​Bill Franks is the Director of the Center for Statistics and Analytical Research within the School of Data Science and Analytics at Kennesaw State University. In this role, he helps companies and governmental agencies pair with faculty and student resources to further research in the area of analytics and data science. He is also Chief Analytics Officer for ​The International Institute For Analytics (IIA) and serves on the advisory board of ActiveGraf, Aspirent, DataPrime, DataSeers, and Kavi Global.​Franks is also the author of the books: Winning The Room, 97 Things About Ethics Everyone In Data Science Should Know, Taming The Big Data Tidal Wave, and The Analytics Revolution. Greg and Bill explore in this episode data literacy, AI tools in the data space, and why you might want to hire a Chief Data Officer. Episode Quotes: What “bias” really meansPeople think of bias always being about, it has to be race or economic. It can just be bias towards factors that are important from a business perspective that no one else would care about. But if it's biased towards, I'm going to have more errors in my large size than my small size, that could be a problem if my large size has a cost model that's much higher than my small size. I either want no bias or, or I want a bias that biases towards more errors on the small side.Data officers are important nowI think the cool thing today in many companies, we actually have analytics, data science oriented people at that table now. And that's what I think this whole trend of the Chief Analytics, Chief Data Officer represents. It’s recognizing that it deserves a seat at the table.Data ethics & biasesThat's where the ethics has to become proactive where you're not only thinking of it on the frontend, but you're also doing diagnostics on the backend to make sure is there a bias inherent in this on the backend that we could not have predicted? Or is it working in a way that appears correct and is wrong?Show Links:Guest Profile:Professional Profile at O’Reilly PublicationsBill Frank’s WebsiteBill Franks on LinkedinBill Franks in TwitterBill Franks on YoutubeHis Work:Blog Posts on International Institute for AnalyticsWinning The Room: Creating and Delivering an Effective Data-Driven Presentation97 Things About Ethics Everyone in Data Science Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the ExpertsTaming The Big Data Tidal Wave: Finding Opportunities in Huge Data Streams with Advanced AnalyticsThe Analytics Revolution: How to Improve Your Business By Making Analytics Operational In The Big Data EraI Need to Tell You Something: Life lessons from a father for his teenage children Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How do you develop products differently in the future? How do you organize your companies differently? What are the skill sets required of the leaders who will be taking organizations forward? According to Robert Siegel, digitization is like breathing, every company is going to have to increasingly integrate it in everything they do. Robert Siegel is a lecturer at Stanford GSB also a venture capitalist with Piva and Xseed Ventures, and also the author of “The Brains and Brawn Company: How Leading Organizations Blend the Best of Digital and Physical.”This episode covers physical v digital companies, information flows, Tesla, Warby Parker, and training the next great systems leaders. Episode Quotes:Consumer trust & data usage:I remember talking to Walt Bettinger, he's the CEO of Schwab. In the 90 minutes I interviewed him the first time, he must've used the word “trust” 180 times in those 90 minutes, and talking about the importance of that. And one example that they give, is that if a Schwab customer logs into their Schwab account and clicks on “life events'' and then clicks on “divorce.” Schwab may know at a moment in time what's happening with that customer and might even know before the spouse does. And one of the things that Schwab asked themselves, or the first thing they ask themselves is through the client's eyes, what would our customers want us to do with this data? So it's not just that you have data and that you gather data and collect data, but do you use it intelligently and in a way that your customers are pleased and that they will say, I trust this company, I want to continue to engage with them and continue to work with them.Great systems leaders:You have to be able to operate both globally and locally. You have to know how to build platforms that can scale and operate globally, but how your platforms can be customized for local markets.Training future leaders:I hope that we at the business schools are doing a better job of training them not just in finance and marketing and digitization and strategy and all the things that you and I teach them, product management. But also to be thinking more broadly about issues around - what are the implications of these new services and products that we create? What does that mean to communities? What does it mean to their countries? What does it mean to international global conflict? And being aware of these kinds of issues.Show Links:Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at Stanford Graduate School of BusinessProfessional Profile at XSeed CapitalRobert Siegel on LinkedinRobert Siegel on TwitterHis Work:Robert Siegel on MediumThe Brains and Brawn Company: How Leading Organizations Blend the Best of Digital and Physical  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.