unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

New social movements, beliefs, behaviors, and technologies often struggle to gain traction. Some diseases, such as Covid-19, spread quickly and created a world-changing pandemic. Could the idea of viral diseases be applied in spreading innovations and beneficial behaviors? Damon Centola talks about his best-selling books How Behavior Spreads and Change: How to Make Big Things Happen.In this episode, he shares the findings of over a decade's worth of original research on social networks and societal behaviors. Damon talks about what drives change— influence, propagation of new ideas, and transmitting beliefs and behaviors from person to person. Listen as he and Greg talk about factors that led to the success of the Black Lives Matter movement, the fall of Google+, and the rise of political polarization. Episode Quotes:How influencers may not have much influence when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine So, the people who are maybe feeling like, “Oh, it's inconvenient, I get the idea.” But then they see an influencer, and like alright, that gets them over the hump. But the people who are feeling distrustful of the message itself about vaccination, seeing an influencer only makes them suspicious of that influence. It doesn’t change their fundamental receptiveness. Why should influencers be cautious about sharing messages?An influencer can't just do whatever they want. They have to be sensitive to the audience they're speaking to. And this is where the bias in a community plays such an important role. The emphasis on influencers is misguided because it overlooks the fact that influencers are really only influential when they're reinforcing our existing biases, which is another way of saying they're spreading simple contagions.How did World War one recruitment initiatives succeed in leveraging local ties to get more people to join the effort?By mobilizing campaigns that basically said, “You can fight with your buddies, the people that you know in your hometown”. Then hometowns actually got behind the war effort, and people mobilized together and generated the largest volunteer army that Britain had seen to date.Show Links:Guest ProfileDamon Centola’s Bio from His Official WebsiteFaculty Profile at University of PennsylvaniaDamon Centola’s Bio on CourseraDamon Centola on TwitterDamon Centola on InstagramHis WorkDamon Centola on Google ScholarChange: How to Make Big Things HappenHow Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The same technology that lets your daughter call up her favorite songs in Alexa is also used for government surveillance, racial profiling, and the creation of deep fake YouTube videos from troll farms. While neural networks make our lives easier, they also create ethical tangles and questions. New York Times Silicon Valley reporter, Cade Metz tackles these moral disparities through hundreds of exclusive interviews in his book, Genius Makers.In this episode, Cade talks about factors that shaped the A.I. technology fueling the biggest tech companies: Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and OpenAI, a new lab founded by Elon Musk. Listen as Greg and Cade discuss the fierce conflict between national interests, shareholder value, the pursuit of scientific knowledge, and the very human concerns about privacy, security, and prejudice. Episode Quotes:Why are open-source companies like Geoffrey Hinton's DNN research considered valuable when people already have access to their information?It's an idea that dated back to the fifties, but by 2012, when Geoff is essentially auctioning himself off, there are few people on Earth who know how that idea works. Because most of the world thought it would never work. And that's the dynamic there. To this day, it's the talent that is valuable. We needed a lot of stuff for this to work. You need the data, and you need the computer processing power needed to analyze that data. But you need the people to make that work. Getting a neural network to work, some people described it as a dark art or black magic. It's about sort of coaxing something out of this data. These systems literally learn by analyzing the data, and it's more data than you and I could ever wrap our heads around. So, it's about coaxing those machines to learn on their own. They do take off in ways that are beyond us, but you need these people to guide them. And that's really what happenedThoughts on institutional frictions that shaped game-changing ideas and progress on neural networksYou have these battles between academics and people like Marvin Minsky ended up having the upper hand, right? Sometimes, it's about who has the loudest voice and who can convince the Department of Defense to give them the money for their particular project.And you see the whole industry shift to what you call good old-fashioned AI, that symbolic AI. Where you're basically putting engineers in a room, and they define how the technology's going to work— rule by rule, line of code by line of code. That became what people had the most hope for. That would be the future and not these systems that could learn on their own from data.Thoughts on pursuing ideas and harnessing curiosity to overcome dead endsI love that you mentioned this theme of his own lab at the University of Toronto. It was old ideas are new. What that meant was, it didn't matter how old the idea was, what mattered was, had you proven that it wouldn't work? If you had not proven that, then you should keep working on it. No matter how much time went by. If you got to that point where you proved it was wrong, then you could put it aside. But until then, you keep working.How did persistence help Geoffrey succeed in finding the missing piece in the neural network?Most of the world at that point had discarded the idea of a neural network. Even his own thesis adviser had abandoned this idea and had recently moved on to that symbolic method you talked about. Yet, Geoff still grabbed hold of that idea and did not let go for decades. So, he had this fundamental belief and that is what drove him.Show Links:Guest ProfileCade Metz Author ProfileCade Metz on TwitterCade Metz on LinkedInHis WorkNew York Times ArticlesArticles on WiredMuck Rack ArticlesGenius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A determined leader is often motivated by the desire to take risks and move forward. Michael D. Watkins, the transition guru and author stresses the importance of succeeding in your next career change. Success during the adjustment phase will propel you to more challenging roles. Failure will irreparably harm your career and organization. These are the main points of his best-selling books The First 90 Days and Master Your Next Move. Michael emphasizes the factors that affect an executive’s transition to a new organization— identifying the different kinds of changes that will be crucial to a leader’s career, from promotion to making an international move, or even to turning around a business in crisis. Join us and get to hear why companies prefer to hire external talents, the psychological barriers that hold back CEOs, and overcoming the “corporate immune system” for effective cultural changes. Episode Quotes:Why do most companies look for talents outside instead of promoting internally?Companies now have a big incentive to get people up to speed quickly, right? No question. Which is wonderful for me and the work I do. It's terrific. They have a pretty big incentive to provide those people with the tools they need to do that job. They have virtually no incentive in developing those people for future roles. Because the odds are very good, you've been eloquent about it, that they're not going to stay in that company. Why would you do that?Thoughts about undervaluing internal talentI do think that it's easy to undervalue your internal talent. It’s almost a version of familiarity breeds contempt or under appreciation, right? The shiny object on the outside can look a lot more attractive, even if you're paying more for it, and even if you have to bring that person up to speed. I'm not saying, there aren’t real cases sometimes for bringing in talent externally, but I don't think there's sufficient appreciation often of the internal talent. That feeds that cycle you're describing. People say, “Okay, I'm not going to be appreciated. I better go someplace else”.Relating the eight kinds transitions to Marshall Goldsmith’s What Got You Here Won’t Get You There and Peter Principle Marshall Goldsmith's What Got You Here Won't Get You There —that's just so accurate because as you move up through an organization, it is indeed absolutely true, right? The skills that got you to a certain level are not necessarily the ones that are going to get you further. That's the root of the Peter Principle. You got promoted to your level of incompetence because you don't adapt. You continued doing what you've done in the past. And at some point, that's not just not good enough anymore.Does today’s pace of change require accelerated leadership development?By the nature of the speed of what's going on, the generational shift, the complexity of the issues people are facing—we need people to get up to that level of capabilities much sooner than they did before. And that presents some real risks. People just don't have the decades to season themselves as leaders, to do what they need to do today.Culture and transformation in the workplace You're not prepared to change your culture, you're not going to succeed in all the other kinds of transformations that you want to be pursuing. Whether it's digital transformation, new business models or new ways of working.Show Links:Guest ProfileIMD Faculty ProfileMichael Watkins on LinkedInMichael Watkins on TwitterHis WorkOfficial Website of Genesis AdvisersMaster Your Next Move, with a New Introduction: The Essential Companion to “The First 90 Days”Your Next Move: The Leader's Guide to Navigating Major Career TransitionsShaping the Game: The New Leader's Guide to Effective NegotiatingThe First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Entrepreneurs are drawn to stories of successful start-ups, but in reality, creating a business from scratch is more grueling than they anticipate. Today, Rand Fishkin tackles the mythology surrounding tech start-ups, exposing the ups and downs of start-up life and shares his hard-won lessons. Rand is the co-founder and CEO of audience research software start-up, SparkToro. His book Lost & Founder openly discusses frustrations and low points as an entrepreneur, ultimately leading to a transparent and thorough celebration of his lessons and accomplishments. Gain a fresh perspective on the most crucial role of a business leader and what a start-up founder would like to see improve in the venture capital ecosystem.Episode Quotes:Criticisms on the Venture Capital world.There are three outcomes that I really dislike from the venture-backed world. This is in no order particularly, but the first one is biasing entrepreneurs and founders and people who want to join startups and participate in that ecosystem, just as employees or as customers even, that there's one correct way to build a company. Right? And that way is to raise a seed round, and a series A and a series B and a series C and a series D and go public, or get acquired for something north of $500 million or a billion dollars. And become a unicorn or to make that attempt and die trying. And I don't mean die personally, but to sacrifice much of your time, energy, attention, the rest of your life in pursuit of trying to become one of those, because that is the only worthwhile goal. I disagree fundamentally with both sides of that equation.The second outcome I really dislike is the massive way in which it furthers income inequality. Right? I mean that a little bit less in the way that it's often brought up in politics where it's sort of individual income inequality, and a little bit more in the way that macro economists might look at it in business outcomes. Right? So essentially, Google and Facebook and Amazon exist because they were able to, yes, create a lot of value, but also suck a ton of the wind and oxygen out of the room in terms of small and medium businesses that previously existed. And even multiple large companies that existed were competitive in a market.And then the third one of course is who gets funding and it is Gregory. You notice almost exclusively people who look like you and I. And it is brutal. I mean, we are talking about more funding going to men named John over the last 20 years than all women combined. We are talking about less than 1% of all venture funding going to any founding team with a black team member.Thoughts on productivity.There's this mythology that is driven by, again, that same element of Silicon Valley culture that I despise, which is that your whole life must be consumed by your work and your business. That is not only untrue, it's also counterproductive. The emerging research on this is that in fact, putting 30 or 40 hours of very thoughtful, high quality work a week into a project, into a company, is both more sustainable and more likely to be successful than 80 hour weeks.What is the main role of a start-up leader?To me, that is to make great decisions. It's not about, did I write the best blog post, or was this email perfectly composed? Or did I reply to all my emails within five minutes or less? Or, I don't know, send a bunch of tweets or write the most code? No. It's did I make the best decisions on who to hire and let go of? Where to contract things? What direction to take the strategy of the product? What to do in marketing and not?— that's the really crucial part of a leader's job.What have you learned from switching roles with your customer?The big takeaway that I talk about in Lost and Founder is empathy for your customer. I got to sit with Sears’ team for a full week, build a bunch of relationships with people who lived and breathed the work that they were doing with our product, and seeing a lot of gaps between what we should be doing and what we were not doing and seeing why their consultants were at the time already switching to different products in the market. And that was a very eye-opening experience.Show Links:Guest ProfileRand Fishkin BioRand Fishkin on LinkedInRand Fishkin on TwitterRand Fishkin on InstagramSparkToro Official WebsiteMoz Official WebsiteHis WorkLost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup WorldThe Art of SEOInbound Marketing & SEO Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Can a company with no profits be valued at a multibillion-dollar level? Why do some start-ups receive large investments while others do not? Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor, and experienced investor, argues that corporate value comes from the power of stories, enticing even cautious investors to take risks. He emphasizes the importance of integrating compelling narratives with strong data-driven models and accounts to deliver and sustain value. Aswath talks about case studies like Uber, Lyft, and Amazon, describing how storytellers can better incorporate and share the stories behind the numbers. Listen as he reveals the benefits, challenges, and pitfalls of weaving narratives around the numbers and how one can best test a story's plausibility.Episode Quotes:How did you realize that you had these other latent capabilities, which you had to consciously cultivate?Now we think of valuations as numbers in a spreadsheet, but ultimately valuations tell a story. And I discovered that without being able to tell the story, all I had were a collection of numbers in a spreadsheet. The other half forced me to think about how can I become a better storyteller, was the need to be able to tell stories that backed up my valuations. So on both fronts, both the teaching front and when I was teaching valuation, I was kind of forced to deal with the fact that storytelling was my weaker link. The nice thing is, you can learn to tell stories, and that's what I've discovered over my lifetime. Even if you start off, not as a very good storyteller, you can end up as a pretty decent storyteller.Do stories as something that get in the way of data? So, I respect data. I work with data all the time. But I also realize how easy it is to bend data, to reflect your biases. And I actually think stories are a great way to make sure you're not bending the data. That's why you need both.At a time when we're drowning in data, why is it critical to tell stories that allow you to search for information with focus?Data does not become information until it goes through a processing. We're drowning in data. We're actually not getting information from that data. And one of the reasons I tell stories is it allows me to look for the data that I want at that point in time.Thoughts on having to experience value business to fully understand how to value businessBut I think, sometimes, we think that listening to CEOs of large companies is how we understand business. I learned more about business from my Uber driver and my hot dog stand vendor than I do from CEOs of companies. Because it forces you to think about basics, which is, you know, if you want to sell more, what do you have to do? You’ve got to cut prices, or you've got to somehow create this special extra that allows you that pricing power. How can other disciplines like humanities and social sciences help build critical thinking?I think we need to be multidisciplinary in every one of our classes. So, when I teach my valuation class, I have a lot of psychology in there. I have a lot of storytelling. A lot of strategy. I have a lot of statistics because they're all part of what I'm trying to convey when I do a valuation. And I hope and pray it sticks better because it's always in context.Show Links:Guest ProfileAswath Damodran’s Professional Profile on PwCAcademic Profile at Stern NYU Aswath Damodran on TwitterAswath Damodran on LinkedInHis WorkAswath’s Official BlogAswath Damodran on Google ScholarNarrative and Numbers: The Value of Stories in BusinessThe Little Book of Valuation: How to Value a Company, Pick a Stock and ProfitDark Side of Valuation, The: Valuing Young, Distressed, and Complex BusinessesStrategic Risk Taking: A Framework for Risk ManagementInvestment Fables: Exposing the Myths of “Can’t-Miss” Investments StrategiesInvestment Philosophies: Successful Strategies and the Investors Who Made Them WorkApplied Corporate Finance, Trade: A User's ManualCorporate Finance: Theory and PracticeInvestment Valuation: Tools and Techniques for Determining the Value of any Asset Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Certain smells can repel or attract, bring to mind emotionally charged memories or guide our behavior unconsciously. While some find the smell of some cheeses revolting, others will appreciate its creamy and delicious taste. So just how does the olfactory system work, and can the loss of sense of smell assist in diagnosing diseases?In this episode, cognitive scientist and empirical philosopher Ann Barwich shares what she has learned from experts in neuroscience, psychology, chemistry, and perfumery when it comes to smells. Ann says that scents, unlike visual images, can be unpredictable and limitless. Learn how our olfactory system works not only as a map but also as a measuring device, detecting and analyzing both simple and complex odors.Episode Quotes:Do you think that the boundaries between the sciences and the humanities are ripe for disruption?Absolutely. In fact, I really think these silos need to be torn down. I'm not the first one saying that, of course. My hero is Patricia Churchland who is a philosopher and actually is one of the most neuroscientifically informed philosophers there is. I took a lot of my inspiration from her because what she's been doing is absolutely radical. So, she said, instead of treating philosophy as timeless, thinking about the mind just through the mind itself, we have a revolution in neuroscience. The 20th century has revealed things about the brain and how the brain creates mind that should prompt us to rethink our initial categories for psychology.What are the differences between the visual and scent palette ranges? And this is why smell is so fascinating. With colors, you've got a visible range of electromagnetic wavelengths, but you don't have any new colors. So, there's a biological timeline of what we can see. With smells, we can actually synthesize new molecules with novel odors. Molecules that have never existed on Earth, which we still can smell. We don't have to evolve new receptors. Plus, they might have qualities that are not known in nature, that might not smell like anything known in nature. So, this is why perfumers play almost with an unlimited pallet. The question is, how does the mind know what these chemical features mean? Well, that's the prize question at the moment. Do people experience odor blindness, the same way we experience color blindness?[Ann] One of my favorite examples is the aroma of corked wine. And that's caused by a molecule called TCA. There are some people who are anosmic, so they can't perceive that particular molecule. They never have a bad bottle of wine in their life! [Greg] I should save the corked ones for when I have them over, right?How does the nasal pathway explain how we lose our sense of smell and taste when we contract Covid-19?First, when you sniff, you inhale. You've got this air stream coming up your nose. That's what we usually think smelling is. But we also have retro-nasal smell where you chew molecules, the aromas, hey travel basically through the back of your throat, up to your nose. That's retro-nasal smell, and it's not quite the same. There are some interesting differences. My favorite one is the fact that coffee smells great, tastes kind of disappointing. I mean, it's bitter and not as great. Nobody says, “Wake up to the taste of coffee”. How did the pandemic affect the way we smell? The more and more we go online and everything becomes a digital presence, we're losing that connection. I noticed how much I was missing during the pandemic. When I went finally out in the summer, everything hit me. Every smell. Like you suddenly have some roasted coffee, you have some trees. The world felt richer. It felt enriching compared to just sitting in your flat where everything your nose is habituating to your surroundings.Show Links:Guest ProfileAnn’s Profile on Smellosophy’s Official WebsitePersonal Profile on What It’s Like to be a PhilosopherAnn-Sophie Barwich on LinkedInHer WorkAnn-Sophie Barwich on Google ScholarSmellosophy: What the Nose Tells the Mind Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Innovation demands different skill sets, methods, and leadership approaches from business owners. The challenge for leaders is to find the balance between three innovation areas: preservation, destruction, and creation. These concepts are central to the innovation framework designed by business strategy coach Vijay Govindarajan.In his book The Three-Box Solution, Vijay teaches a framework for allocating energy, time, and resources for driving innovation while delivering current goals. We will also hear about the importance of embracing change to build the future.Episode Quotes:An overview of the Three-Box SolutionI always ask companies to put whatever they do into three boxes. How many of their activities are in Box 1? And Box 1 is about managing the present, which is about improving the efficiency of your current business model. Box 2 is about selectively forgetting the past, and Box 3 is about creating the future. Manage the person Box 1, selectively abandon the past Box 2, and create the future Box 3. And working with organizations, what I found is they all are focused on Box 1. While Box 1 is terribly important, strategy has to include all three boxes. Why is it difficult for companies to integrate the strategy of forgetting into their innovation plan?The challenge for companies in Box 3 is how are you going to create your future in the year 2030? If you want to create your future in the year 2030, then you have a job to do in Box 2. Mainly you have to selectively forget. And I find of my three boxes; Box 2 is the most challenging, and it is one that has not been recognized by academics and practitioners, to the extent they should.If you can't forget, you can't learn as simple as that. Think about how many books are written about learning organizations. We haven't written a single book on forgetting organizations. The reason why Box 2 is such a big problem is Box 2 is your current strength then lays your future weakness. That is why it is very difficult to forget because when you forget, you're forgetting your current strength.On Hindu beliefs that influenced the Three-Box Solution.As a circle, the beauty is that there is no beginning and no end to a circle. Everything that is born in this universe will be preserved. That is the job of Vishnu, that is Box 1, manage the person. Everything that is preserved, will be ultimately destroyed, that is the job of Shiva. That is Box 2; destroy the past. And everything that is destroyed will get regenerated. That is the job of Brahma, that is Box 3. This notion of preservation, destruction, and regeneration as a rhythmic, continuous cycle is how humanity has sustained. I have simply taken something that was written in Hindu spirituality 3000 years ago, packaged it, and presented it to companies, and said 'If General Motors wants to remain in business forever, you must also master these three processes.How can leaders effectively innovate for the future while implementing present processes?I think that is the art of the leader. The CEO should never say Box 1 is a dinosaur and Box 3 is the future. I think the CEO has to message creating the future requires a role for both the performance gap, which is what Box 1 is and the possibility gap, which is what Box 3 is. Without focus on both, we are never going to achieve our future. What is the biggest challenge faced by companies as they innovate?I say the biggest problem in companies is not lack of ideas; it is a lack of capacity to execute the ideas. Therefore, the biggest challenge is in the execution. That includes changing mindsets, changing structures, changing capabilities, changing processes, changing people. All of them are hard. And mindsets you can change by changing people. Because you can't change mindset directly.Show Links:Guest ProfileProfile from Dartmouth College, Tuck School of BusinessVijay Govindarajan on LinkedInVijay Govindarajan on TwitterHis WorkThe Three-Box Solution: A Strategy for Leading InnovationBeyond the Idea: How to Execute Innovation in Any OrganizationReverse InnovationThe Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution ChallengeHow Stella Saved the Farm: A Tale About Making Innovation HappenManagement Control SystemTen Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution Global Strategy and the OrganizationThe Many Facets of LeadershipThe Quest for Global Dominance: Transforming Global Presence into Global Competitive Advantage Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Colleges and universities used to be among the nation's most prestigious institutions. Recently, parents, as well as the public, have become more concerned about whether or not college is even worth the expense. Are universities still the true bastions of open inquiry? Have liberal arts become obsolete in the 21st century? According to conservative political theorist and professor Jonathan Marks, liberal education is the antidote to this crisis. In this episode, he explains that the true purpose of college is to encourage people to be reasonable. Ultimately, he says the liberally educated person should consider reason more than just a tool for scoring political points.Jonathan and Greg discuss his book Let's Be Reasonable, the future of liberal arts education, free speech, and the role of higher education in advocating for democracy.Episode Quotes:Is the best defense of liberal education based on its practical utility?[00:05:23] It seems to me that the language I used to attempt to justify liberal education was practical. You need comprehensive enlargement of mind. Not to be well-rounded, not to be refined, but to avoid doing stupid things. So, our narrowness prevents us from being good judges in our chosen field of work.Are universities marketing themselves to prospective students fairly?[00:12:32] I think that there's a real problem there. That is to say that colleges and universities do often market themselves as producing great changes. So, you might go out into the world and say, “Well, I'm offering a transformational experience”. But without talking too much about what the costs of that might be, what the difficulties might be.How can universities encourage the collective pursuit of knowledge and reasonableness?[00:18:28] We've taught some of it in C.I.E., the common intellectual experience, which is our first-year seminar here at Ursinus College. It focuses mainly on spotting fallacies. About the avoidance of error, which, I think, is important. It talks much less about what good judgment is, in a more positive way. I do think that's important probably for psychologists working in decision-making and also for universities. What provisional standards do we have for trying to distinguish good judgments from bad judgments? Maybe a little clearer in the natural sciences and the humanities. But what provisional standards do we have available to us? And then, what qualities of character and mind might be conducive to making good judgments? What are the intellectual virtues? Time Code Guide:00:00:39 Why it's hard to find people who are standing up for liberal education in a world where everyone wants to know what it's for?00:07:45 Are we underemphasizing the idea that we need to learn how to pick apart our own argument00:22:10 Do cancel culture and safe spaces mean students promote coddling and protecting them from ideas that are different from theirs?00:27:51 Repeating history and mistakes of the past by worrying unnecessarily about the youth of today?00:32:35 Thoughts on sensationalism and a cognitive bias towards an opposing belief00:40:12 Why do people who consider themselves as conservatives lean towards the preservation of liberal education?00:47:50 If the universities are not for the promotion of justice, then what are they here for?00:53:27 Is the most significant danger to our production of reasonable people the gradual marginalization of the humanities as a field of studyShow Links:Guest Profile:Author Profile at Princeton University PressJonathan Marks on TwitterJonathan Marks on LinkedInHis Work:Jonathan Marks on Google ScholarCommentaries by Jonathan MarksLet's Be Reasonable: A Conservative Case for Liberal Education Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Researchers and academics tend to focus on what people have in common, instead of looking at individual differences and nuances, which often drive decisions and judgements. In his latest book, Olivier Sibony, professor of strategy and award-winning author, showed the detrimental effects of noise in many fields, like judicial systems, hospitals, recruitment, human resource departments, and machine learning. Olivier emphasizes that wherever there is judgement, there is noise. Yet, individuals and organizations are generally unaware of it. In this episode, learn how we can reduce both noise and bias, so we can make better decisions.Episode Quotes:How do noise and biases affect errors in decision-making?Having no bias is better than having a bias, but noise and bias are completely separate, independent sources of error, and you actually need to reduce both.How difficult is it to detect and eliminate noise when making decisions?It is very hard to see noise. But in a system — in anything that makes repeated decisions— in—say the judicial system or the insurance company that prices a lot of insurance policies. Or in a hiring organization that makes a lot of hiring decisions. It is actually difficult to establish the presence of bias because you need to know where the truth is, as you pointed out. But it's actually quite easy to do a test of noise, what we call a noise audit. Which means to give the same case to a number of different judges, a number of different people, and to check how different their judgements are. Whenever you do that, in our experience, you find that, of course, there is a difference.What if idiosyncratic biases and extraneous factors are applied in decision-making?Our minds are instruments of judgements. Those instruments are not completely stable. They are not completely consistent. We're not completely consistent with ourselves all the time. We think we are, especially when we're making only one judgement. We can't imagine that at a different time, in a different mood, in a different temperature, or if our favorite football team had lost the game yesterday instead of winning it, we would make a different decision. Yet, all those things are true.Time Code Guide:00:02:44 Why does noise in data receive such little attention in most fields, except for data science?00:06:29 Do biases cancel each other out and ultimately cause you to make bad decisions?00:16:45 Different kinds of noise, an earlier version of auditing noise and sentencing guidelines00:24:16 How can individuals learn and improve how to avoid bias?00:30:34 Structuring decisions using a reflectively designed framework and how it applies to companies and individuals00:34:40 Thoughts on algorithmic decision-making, leaving human judgment out, and understanding essential characteristics of judgment00:44:56 Elimination of noise, equal protection, and consideration of individual idiosyncrasies in the judicial system00:51:02 Auditing noise and cleaning out processes that doesn't help eliminate noiseShow Links:Guest ProfileAcademic Profile at HEC ParisFaculty Profile at the University of OxfordProfessional Profile from His Official WebsiteOlivier Sibony on TwitterHis WorkOlivier Sibony on Google ScholarNoise: A Flaw in Human JudgmentYou're About to Make a Terrible Mistake: How Biases Distort Decision-Making and What You Can Do to Fight ThemCracked it!: How to solve big problems and sell solutions like top strategy consultants Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Although knowledge is valuable, it is limited. In contrast, our imagination is limitless, allowing us to rethink problems and create solutions. Our imagination plays a critical role in finding new opportunities, rethinking our businesses, and finding growth pathways. However, many companies are losing the ability to imagine. How can organizations harness this skill and keep it alive? Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, draws on the experience and insights of CEOs from different industries. In this episode, he talks about the process of sparking ideas and bringing them to life. He summarizes the imagination machine process to these six steps:The Seduction: opening yourself to surprisesThe Idea: how to generate oneThe Collision: rethinking your idea based on real-world feedbackThe Epidemic: spreading an evolving idea to othersThe New Ordinary: turning your novel idea into an accepted realityThe Encore: repeating the process—over, and over againListen as he defines the difference between an incremental change and pivots essential to transformation—especially during a crisis.Episode Quotes:Is the book Imagination Machine an exercise designed to help readers identify opportunities systematically, and then exploit those opportunities according to a formula?So this new book, the Imagination Machine, double clicks on visionary strategy, the creative element of strategy. Which is also the remarkable property of companies to imagine something that doesn't exist, which all founders of companies did. And then to cause that to become a new everyday reality.How can you be intentional with your imaginative process and strategy for acquiring information?Imagination is triggered by the contact with otherness, things that don't fit our current mental models, our current ways of doing things. And some organizations explicitly seek out that otherness.How can you achieve the Renaissance perspective as a team?Hire the diversity of skills that you're going to need, not just to run a business, but to reinvent a business. They can make sure that they have ambidextrous top teams. They may not be able to be always able to give good prescriptions in fast-changing businesses, but they can have very good questions.Time Code Guide00:01:29 Understanding the paradox of the book’s title00:03:14 Explaining general ideas about the book: Your Strategy Needs a Strategy00:05:21 Ambidextrous organizations, allocation of resources for innovation, and classic mix of portfolio00:08:40 Defining imaginative and counterfactual thinking00:11:03 Mental models for exploitation and exploration00:13:10 Incremental and Transformative Innovation00:15:24 The first step to imaginative thinking: surprise00:18:48 Being selective in acquiring data to guide your decision-making00:24:13 Controlled hallucination as a mental model00:29:14 Putting aside time for reflection and counterfactual thinking00:31:01 How can stress get in the way of creative thinking00:34:38 How to conduct interviews to help you hire people that'll fit your team's imaginative process00:36:33 How can legacy organizations encourage and incentivize people on the team that maybe resistant to learning?00:43:36 How do you cascade cognitive diversity to the human resources department when recruiting?00:45:17 Designing a corporate script that embodies counterfactual and ambidextrous thinkingShow LinksGuest ProfileSpeaker Profile at TEDProfessional File at the World Economic ForumMartin Reeves on LinkedInMartin Reeves on TwitterHis WorkOfficial Website of the Book Imagination MachineThe Resilient Enterprise: Thriving Amid Uncertainty (Inspiring the Next Game)The Imagination Machine: How to Spark New Ideas and Create Your Company's FutureWinning the '20s: A Leadership Agenda for the Next Decade (Inspiring the Next Game)Global Recession: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review (HBR Insights)Mastering the Science of Organizational Change (Inspiring the Next Game)Coronavirus: Leadership and Recovery: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business ReviewYour Strategy Needs a Strategy: How to Choose and Execute the Right Approach Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.