unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

In today’s world where every imaginable product can appear at your doorstep with the click of a button, the art that goes into manufacturing those products is increasingly overlooked.  Tim Minshall is a professor of innovation at the University of Cambridge and the author of How Things Are Made: A Journey Through the Hidden World of Manufacturing. As head of the Institute for Manufacturing, Tim is shaping the future leaders of manufacturing and reinforcing the critical role manufacturing plays in today’s world.  In this conversation, Tim and Greg discuss the disconnect happening between modern-day consumers and the products they buy, plus the misconception that manufacturing has declined. They also delve into the complexity and fragility of manufacturing systems, the role of education in manufacturing, challenges in reviving manufacturing, and the future of manufacturing and software integration.  *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.* Episode Quotes: Bridging the gap between idea and implementation 08:09: The narrative has got a bit confused. This idea that there is a thing called innovation where you have got all the great science and technology and all this cool stuff happening, and that is brilliant. And then there is a bit, which is now implement, or we can call that manufacturing and, as you say, not without its challenges to scale and support software at scale. It is a non-trivial challenge. But if you are scaling up the production process for a new cell therapy to treat cancer or scaling up the production of, a novel semiconductor approach using, I do not know, compound semiconductors, there is, as you say, massive physical challenges involved there, so, but to me that is all part of the same innovation story. You go from the idea and the market opportunity all the way through is part of the innovation story. There is not this neat line in the middle which goes, yes, we have done with the innovation, now we manufacture. Have we become disconnected from how manufacturing happens? Every single thing we can see, unless it is a plant, a rock, an animal, or another human, has been manufactured...All of these things have been manufactured, and so there has been a slight worrying thing that has happened, certainly in the UK, and I suspect a little bit in the US as well, which is we have become disconnected from how that happens. And the more we become disconnected from it, the less we appreciate how incredibly clever it is. What are one of the biggest challenges facing manufacturing? 16:39: One of the biggest challenges facing manufacturing is. Getting good people to want to work in factories. Surely step one is making it visible. If you do not know it and you have not seen it, you are unlikely to just go, oh, I want to get involved in manufacturing. You need to have seen it. Repositioning manufacturing as the thing that drives solution 23:24: We have to reposition manufacturing as the thing that drives solutions. It is the thing that pushes us to deal with the energy transition. It allows us to deal with our multiple healthcare crises. It is what allows us to deal with sustainability challenges, all of these, it allows us to deal with the defense challenges. Geopolitics at the moment is pointing to extremely important role for manufacturing. We would rather not be in this situation, but it is an absolute truth. Show Links: Recommended Resources: I, Pencil Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang  Why Isn't the Whole World Developed? Lessons from the Cotton Mills by Gregory Clark Jeff Immelt | unSILOed John Taylor Ha Joon Chang | unSILOed Guest Profile: Faculty Profile at University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing Professional Profile on LinkedIn Profile on X Guest Work: How Things Are Made: A Journey Through the Hidden World of Manufacturing – A Guide to Sustainable Innovation - US Your Life Is Manufactured: How We Make Things, Why It Matters and How We Can Do It Better - UK  Google Scholar Page Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What is the impact of land reform on economic development? What are the implications of property law when a financial crisis hits? This episode offers a comprehensive look at how land has shaped socio-economic landscapes.Mike Bird is the Wall Street editor at The Economist and the author of the new book, The Land Trap: A New History of the World's Oldest Asset.Greg and Mike discuss the historical and contemporary importance of real estate as an asset class, its undervaluation in modern investment strategies, and its critical role in the financial systems. Their conversation explores the distinction between land and other assets, and how mortgage-backed securities have revolutionized real estate finance. Mike lays out the history of land financing from colonial North America to present-day reforms, touching on the influence of key historical figures and economic theories. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How land reform fueled economic growth41:29: These sort of moments of expropriation are really focused on land quite tightly. They do not spread over into sort of general expropriation attitudes. They can have seemingly really positive impacts. So lots of people credit land reform in Japan in particular with sort of establishing the basis of a democratic society, of massively accelerating the education boost in Japan. If you are a tenant farmer and you are given land yourself, you are able to actually invest in it. And you want to make the most of it because it is no longer the landlord taking it from you. The surplus you create is your own. Most of those people used the extra money they made to massively accelerate the education of their children. This generation of people in Japan becomes a more educated one, which fuels the economic development that happens, you know, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. So the spillover effect from land reform is really quite large.ETF vs home ownership psychology50:15: I would say, I think half the answer here is behavioral and slightly irrational and social, and half of the answer is deeply rational and makes sense to any student of finance. The side that is irrational is home and land ownership has a reputation and a status that other asset ownership does not have. You have people who say they do not want to form a family until they can own a home. That is a fairly common sentiment in large parts of the world. Nobody says, I have got to own $300,000 in my S and P 500 ETF, or I am not starting a family. It is not a common thing. There is a sense of status security, middle class belonging that comes through owning a home, which makes it very unusual. And I think this digs into a deep historical thing about freedom from feudalism, from living under a landlord, from living, in sort of someone else's pocket.Why housing isn’t diversified54:52: Obviously what you cannot buy unless you are buying an extremely well diversified REIT, for example, you cannot buy a US house, right? It has to be somewhere. You are plugging into the opportunities and rewards or punishment of a local economy, and so on, I am not enormously surprised at that. I think the thing that is unique in the US relative to the rest of the world is just how well you can do and have done historically investing in listed equities, investing in risk assets and getting the compounded returns relative to home ownership, which I think is massively to America's credit. This is not true in other large portions of the rest of the world.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Samuel AdamsHernando de SotoZamindarHenry GeorgeProgress and PovertyGeorgismLeasehold EstateDuke of WestminsterWolf LadejinskyCase–Shiller IndexGuest Profile:MikeBird.coProfile on The EconomistLinkedIn ProfileSocial Profile on XSocial Profile on BlueSkyGuest Work:The Land Trap: A New History of the World's Oldest Asset Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What if a company could deliver high quality products at low cost, improving the value for customers and giving it a competitive edge, all while offering higher pay and career growth opportunities for its employees and not hurting the bottom line?Zeynep Ton is a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, president of the Good Jobs Institute, and author of The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay, and Meaning to Everyone's Work. Zeynep joins Greg to explain the interconnected components of the “good job strategy,” such as standardization, empowerment, cross-training, simplification, and the incorporation of slack in schedules. She emphasizes that companies should view their workforce as value drivers rather than costs to be minimized, advocating for investment in employees for better productivity and sustainable company growth.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The ‘good job strategy’ requires systems thinking43:47: A lot of organizations operate in silos, and ‘the good job strategy’ requires systems thinking, interconnected decisions, and all the decisions coming back to: how do we create value for the customer and how does this interact with other choices to deliver that type of value? And as long as we do the AB testing and requiring on, rigorous, and I do not think it is rigorous, it is, yeah, it is math, but it is not rigorous logic, it will be very difficult to adopt this.Standardization is a gift28:51: Standardization is a gift because there are so many things I do not even have to think about. So, think each of these choices is helpful to say what are the mindsets that are driving the choices, when used that way, and standardization is not just about work, [but also] standardization of management practices.Why ‘the good job strategy’ creates competitive advantage13:02: I can see a lot of companies in the same industry using ‘the good job strategy’ as long as they have a differentiation in the eyes of their customers and they’re improving their value, continuously using the strategy. It’s not good jobs that differentiates. It’s the customer value that is a source of competitive advantage.Why unmet basic needs drive employee turnover17:02: You ask our students what motivates people. Everybody is gonna talk about is a sense of belonging, achievement, meaning, recognition. Of course, those things are the motivators. But so many people do not have their basic needs met. And there is tremendous lack of awareness. And those are, oftentimes, the biggest reasons for employee turnover that I have seen in many organizations that I work with.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Good Jobs Institute Toyota Production SystemJohn Paul MacDuffieCharlie MungerQueueing theory“How CEOs Manage Time” by Michael Porter and Nitin NohriaBob NardelliPete StavrosGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at MIT Sloan School of ManagementProfessional WebsiteProfessional Profile on LinkedInGuest Work:The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay, and Meaning to Everyone's WorkThe Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When did society change from matriarchal to patriarchal, and why? What was the advice on fatherhood from Plato and Aristotle, and how did other writers on the subject put one philosophy of fatherhood on the page but live a very different one in practice?Augustine Sedgewick is the author of two books: Fatherhood: A History of Love and Power and Coffeeland: One Man's Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug.Greg and Augustine start by discussing the lesser-explored history of fatherhood. Their conversation get into why the history of fatherhood may be understudied, the societal and cultural shifts impacting the role of fathers, and how historical figures like Saint Augustine, Rousseau, Jefferson, and even Thoreau have shaped modern perceptions of fatherhood. They also touch on Augustine’s first book, Coffeeland, for the economic and social structures underpinning the coffee industry, emphasizing the role of capitalism in shaping labor conditions, and Augustine reflects on his own personal journey through fatherhood and the influence of his historical research on his understanding of the subject.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Patriarchy is not a loss for men05:48: Obviously there has been some really great work on patriarchy. A lot of that has come from feminist historians. As a result, I think a lot of the greatest work on the history of patriarchy has been the history of the consequences of patriarchy for women, much fewer, much less work on the history of patriarchy and its consequences for men. I have come to believe that that is, we are in a moment where we hear often about the crisis of men and boys. And I actually think it is the best thing that men could do for themselves, be to learn something about the history of patriarchy and masculinity. Like, that would not be a loss for men. That would be an incredible gain if we could begin to understand where those ideas originate, how they have changed over time, and what they have cost us. I will say.Fatherhood as a system of power05:24: I think you could argue that fatherhood is the most widespread and arguably enduring form of social inequality and metaphor for power that we have in human societies.Why father knows best was never humanly possible18:22 There is almost plasticity built into that God-like mandate of father knows best, I will protect and provide, if you do what I say. Because I think what is interesting about that set of edicts and mandates is that it is impossible for human beings to fulfill. No one always knows best. No one can always protect; no one can always provide God-like jobs because they cannot be fulfilled by actual human beings. And so the process of fatherhood, historically, has been exactly negotiating the distance between those promises and the reality. Plasticity has been the required element there.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Simone de BeauvoirPatriarchyPater familiasPlatoAristotleAugustine of HippoJean-Jacques RousseauThomas JeffersonGreat Father and Great MotherSally HemingsHenry David ThoreauSigmund FreudGuest Profile:AugustineSedgewick.workGuest Work:Amazon Author PageFatherhood: A History of Love and PowerCoffeeland: One Man's Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What challenges come with taking a marketing strategy global, and what strategies can be created to account for and even take advantage of differences from one market to another? How are differences in Japanese culture reflected in the buying practices of the population?Katherine Melchior Ray is a global marketing executive and consultant, who also teaches global marketing at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, and is the author of the book Brand Global, Adapt Local: How to Build Brand Value Across Cultures.Greg and Katherine discuss the importance of both maintaining global brand consistency and adapting to local cultures. Katherine explains the history and evolving definition of marketing, the balance between data-driven strategies and creative intuition, and the necessity of cultural intelligence in global business. Throughout the conversation, Katherine shares anecdotes from her diverse career, offering insights into the challenges and strategies for successful global marketing.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:What does it mean to be a global brand?13:51: Just because you can access it on a global level does not mean it is going to be relevant to you in your culture. And this is where it is tricky. So we have gone way beyond the Ted Levitt era, where you have global brands, but in order for them to connect, create meaning, which is where value lies, and ultimately loyalty with consumers in different cultures, they need to do both. And this is where the book title came, Brand Global. Be a global brand, hold certain things very consistent, but adapt local, and that is tricky. It is really tricky. Which aspects do you want to hold the same, and which aspects are you willing to flex?What is cultural intelligence and why is important in leadership39:21: We all know about emotional intelligence, and I think we have come to realize how important that is in leadership. Well, cultural intelligence takes us one step further. It relies on a lot of the aspects of emotional intelligence, but it adds culture on top of it. And basically, it is the ability to see and, and bridge cultural differences. So you do not have to be an expert in every culture. You do not have to know how to code, I guess, in technology. But you have to have a couple qualities that help you learn how to see what is often not actually being explicitly said with words.The notion of balance in brands18:52: When you think of a brand, the strongest brands actually do play simultaneously in opposite, seemingly opposite, directions, but really, those two seemingly opposed directions are complimentary, right? One might be the traditional side, and one is the innovative side. One might be the classical side, and the other is the trendy side. But actually, that duality gives the brand elasticity; it gives it range. So it can reach a lot more customers, and it gives it this inherent dynamism, tension, and excitement.Story is important for expansion20:20: The reason story is important is for expansion. You cannot control every aspect of a brand as you expand, right? Because the same people, like if you think of Steve Jobs, he could review every aspect of the computer as it was being designed. But as it was being marketed in different markets, in different countries, in different stores with different salespeople, you cannot control all of that. And so the way to create a form of consistency is by telling the same internal stories, and then those stories go externally so that everyone understands why certain things are in the way that the company operates and the brand shows up in products and services.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Louis VuittonPhilip KotlerTheodore LevittPark Hyatt | Masters of Food & WineSotheby'sXiaomiGuest Profile:KatherineMelchiorRay.comLinkedIn ProfileFaculty Profile at UC Berkeley Haas Business SchoolSocial Profile on ThreadsSocial Profile on XGuest Work:Brand Global, Adapt Local: How to Build Brand Value Across Cultures Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How do bad leaders persist in current-day environments, and how do they use factors like fear, rewards, and the natural difficulty of uprooting entrenched authority to their advantage? Despite the challenges inherent to speaking out, what duty and role do followers play in identifying and addressing bad leadership?Barbara Kellerman is the founder and a fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and the author of many books, addressing many different aspects of leadership. Her latest works are Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers, LEADERSHIP: Essential Selections on Power, and The Enablers: How Team Trump Flunked the Pandemic and Failed America.Greg and Barbara discuss Barbara’s critiques of the leadership industry, highlighting its focus on 'good' leadership while often neglecting the study of 'bad' leadership and the crucial role of followers. She argues for a more nuanced understanding of leadership that includes the contexts and followers that shape and are shaped by leaders. Their conversation dives into the complexities of trust in leaders, the need for rigorous education and credentialing in leadership akin to doctors or lawyers, and the significance of managing both leadership development and organizational design. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The three-part leadership system06:25: The leadership system is slightly more complicated than just leadership, but only slightly. It’s got three parts, each of which is of equal importance. One is the leader. None of this is to say that leaders are unimportant, but equal importance. This is—think of it as an equilateral triangle—the leader is one point, if you will. One of the two other points are the followers, the constituents, the stakeholders, whatever language. If you do not like the word follower, we can do all the euphemisms. I tend to use follower because in English, it is the only natural antonym of leader. So let's say, for the purpose here now, one part of the triangle is the leader, the other part is the followers, and the third part, again of equal importance, is the context—or better put, are the contexts, ’cause it is always plural within which leaders and followers are situated.There is no leader without followers29:55: We tend to obey. We do not tend to disobey. So the idea that this broad thing called the field of leadership pays such inadequate attention to the obvious other side of the coin—leadership is, after all, a relationship. You cannot have a leader without at least a single follower. Why is that other, by definition, so much less consequential? The answer is they are not, but the field pays that other virtually no attention.Does being a good leader automatically make you ethical?15:45: The word bad is so complicated. And it is adverse good that I have found it practical in my work generally to divide bad and good into two categories. One is a continuum of ethics, so you’re a good leader if you’re ethical. You’re a bad leader if you’re unethical. And the other continuum is effectiveness. You’re a bad leader if you’re ineffective, and you’re a good leader if you’re effective.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Deborah RhodeMartin WinterkornVolkswagen Emissions ScandalHippocratic OathGroupthinkList of prime ministers of the United KingdomNiccolò MachiavelliJeffrey PfefferMarco RubioGuest Profile:Personal WebsiteProfile on LinkedInWikipedia ProfileCenter for Public LeadershipGuest Work:Amazon Author PageLeadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad FestersLEADERSHIP: Essential Selections on PowerThe Enablers: How Team Trump Flunked the Pandemic and Failed AmericaWomen and LeadershipProfessionalizing LeadershipThe End of Leadership: A Provocative Reassessment of Leadership in the Digital Age—Questioning Beliefs That Are Dangerously Out-of-DateFollowership: How Followers Are Creating Change and Changing LeadersBad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It MattersReinventing Leadership: Making the Connection Between Politics and BusinessThe President As World LeaderLeadership and Negotiation in the Middle EastBad Leadership – Why We Steer ClearTEDx Talk: What do we do about bad leaders? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There’s no instruction manual for how to be a CEO, and that role has undergone massive change in recent decades. So how do the leaders of great corporations today prepare themselves to make the hard decisions?Jeff Immelt, former CEO of GE and now current instructor at Stanford University, shares some of his top lessons on leading a major corporation in his book, Hot Seat: What I Learned Leading a Great American Company.Jeff joins Greg to reflect on his long career at GE, discussing his sense of belonging and the changing nature of career expectations, especially among today's youth. They delve into the intricacies of being a CEO, the differences between traditional and modern management practices, and the importance of both depth and breadth in business expertise. Jeff shares insights on organizational design, the importance of listening, and the critical role of teaching and continual learning in leadership.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:What actually makes people stay, grow and perform in a company.07:36: Every company I work with, you know, I said, why do people leave? Right? Because there is a finite number of options and all this other stuff we can give people. And basically money counts for sure. But the second reason why people leave is I have a bad manager. The third reason why people leave is I am not getting any better. I am not getting any training, I am not getting any coaching. I am just like a work unit, and so those are the things we have to solve for. I think if we really want to turn back on the productivity engine of the next era.Every job looks easy till you're the one doing it38:41: Every job looks easy till you are the one doing it, right? So when you step in, do not come in and say, “This person stunk. I am the new sheriff. Everything is going to be great.” Just keep your mouth shut and do your job.Every good leader has three voices39:42: One of the things, Greg, that I teach, particularly founders, on is I say, look, every good leader has to have three voices, right? You need to be able to have the all-employee meeting, right? You need to be able to stand up to 400 people and communicate to 4-0-0 people. You need to be able to run a meeting, and you need to be able to give one-on-one feedback. And you know, those voices, the vocabulary is very different, right? In terms of how you motivate people in those three settings. And I try to give them examples of, you know, what they can work on, and, and very few people are really good at all three. But a lot of people give up at one, and it is hard to be a good leader. It is hard to be a good leader if you cannot traverse those three settings.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Inside Crotonville | GEDavid L. JoyceSam Bankman-FriedBill RuhStephen A. SchwarzmanLean Six SigmaAT&T LabsRoss PerotGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Stanford UniversityProfessional Profile on LinkedInGuest Work:Hot Seat: What I Learned Leading a Great American Company Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What are practical strategies to avoid overload and exhaustion in today’s digital world? What norms can organizations create for tool usage, and how can finding offline activities that provide a mental contrast to digital work?Paul Leonardi is the Duca Family Professor of Technology Management at UC Santa Barbara, a consultant and speaker on digital transformation and the future of work, and an author of several works. His latest book is called Digital Exhaustion: Simple Rules for Reclaiming Your Life.Greg and Paul discuss the complementary nature of his two most recent books: the first focuses on harnessing digital tools, and the second on mitigating the overwhelm they can cause. They also explore teaching technology management, including the importance of understanding technology’s impact on people and organizational processes. Paul explains the 30% rule, emphasizing the need to understand digital tools well enough to use them effectively. They also explore the concept of digital exhaustion, the subject of his most recent book, its symptoms, and how to manage it, both at work and in daily life. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How can we reduce exhaustion?41:29: One easy way of reducing our exhaustion is to match the sort of complexity of the task that we are trying to do with the affordances or the capabilities of the technology. And I say match, not over exceed, because we also have the problem where, like me, I am sure you have been in many, many meetings that should have just been an email, that there is not the need. And so what we have done in that situation is we have overstimulated people, right, in a setting with, you know, 15 other folks, and we have taken an hour out of their day and maybe the travel time to get there. And that has created other avenues for exhaustion when, if we had just perceived this information via email, we could not have had the meeting. So you do not want to overmatch, you just want to like match to the complexity of the task. And that is the key to reducing our exhaustion.It’s not just distraction that exhausts us18:28: I think we have failed to look at how it is not just being distracted that is a problem, but it is the act of switching itself across all of these different inputs really is a significant source of our exhaustion.Inference is a big driver of exhaustion32:45: Inference is really a big driver of exhaustion. And I would say the place that it most shows up, although not exclusively, is in our social media lives. Because, of course, people are curating their lives in terms of what they post, whether that is LinkedIn or TikTok or Instagram, that does not really matter. And we are constantly not only making inferences of them, but what I find is that we are also very often making inferences about ourselves because we see a past record of all the things that we wrote and all of the things that we posted. And then we are also making inferences of what we think other people think about us based on all the things that we post.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Human MultitaskingTask SwitchingFatigueUnsiloed Podcast Episode 612: Rebecca HindsGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at UC Santa BarbaraPaulLeonardi.comWikipedia ProfileLinkedIn ProfileGuest Work:Amazon Author PageDigital Exhaustion: Simple Rules for Reclaiming Your LifeThe Digital Mindset: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AIExpertise, Communication, and OrganizingMateriality and Organizing: Social Interaction in a Technological WorldCar Crashes without Cars: Lessons About Simulation Technology and Organizational Change from Automotive DesignGoogle Scholar Page Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What changes happened in the histories of Europe and China to create two economies that developed so differently? How did different forms of local cooperation influence state development, rule of law, and economic progress?Guido Tabellini is a professor of Political Economics at the University of Bocconi in Milan, Italy. He is also the author of several books, most recently co-authoring Two Paths to Prosperity: Culture and Institutions in Europe and China, 1000–2000.Greg and Guido discuss the historical divergence in prosperity between Europe and China, exploring when and why it began, and whether it arose from cultural or institutional phenomena. Guido also emphasizes the contrasting roles of corporations and clans in both regions, the impact of state capacity, and the lasting effects of these differences on modern economic and political landscapes. Their conversation touches on the historical process of cooperation across regions and its implications for modern development economics.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:What are the political origins of corporations?31:55: So, we should not think of the corporation just as a firm, as a way to organize production that is important, but actually comes at the later stage. And the very important role of the corporation is also to have a political role, to govern a city, to represent a city in parliament, in China. The role of the corporations, when they emerge. Instead, it is purely economic. You do not have self-governing city, and even at the level of monasteries, you do have Buddhist monasteries, which are important, but each one of them is organized as an entity. You do not have a congregation of monasteries like the Cluny monastery or like, eventually, the church. Reframing the conversation on the Great Divergence02:34: Rather than talking about great divergence, we actually like to talk about great reversal in the book because it has been a reversal. So even before starting to debate when the divergence begins, meaning that Europe gets ahead of China, we should acknowledge that the opposite was true, that China was ahead of Europe at the turn of the first millennium. The high stakes of clan adjudication49:05: In China, the demand for external enforcement was probably less, evident because the clan needed less of an external enforcement. They were smaller communities, they had stronger reciprocal ties. The reputational mechanism within the clan was much more important because if I cheat on my clan member, I am kicked out of the clan. And if I am kicked out of the clan in a society which is organized around clans, I am on my own and I die. In Europe, of course, reputation is very important, but the penalty of cheating is not as harsh. So the altruistic value ties are weaker, and the penalty of cheating is also weaker. And so you have a stronger demand for external enforcement. Show Links:Recommended Resources:Great DivergenceCharles TillyClanCluny AbbeyConfuciusGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Brocconi UniversityWikipedia ProfileCEPR.org ProfileGuest Work:Amazon Author PageTwo Paths to Prosperity: Culture and Institutions in Europe and China, 1000–2000L'Italia in gabbia: Il volto politico della crisi economicaThe Economic Effects of ConstitutionsPolitical Economics: Explaining Economic PolicyFlexible Integration: Towards a More Effective and Democratic EuropeMonetary and Fiscal Policy: PoliticsGoogle Scholar Page Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Where did the concept of management as a profession come from, and how did it develop? Why do bureaucratic practices persist? How can companies break free from those constraints to unlock greater potential and adapt more effectively to the relentless change and competition in today’s business world?Gary Hamel is the founder of the Management Lab, a professor at the London Business School, a visiting professor at the University of Oxford, and the author of several books. His recent titles include Humanocracy, Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them, What Matters Now: How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation, and Competing for the Future.Greg and Gary discuss the evolution of Gary’s thinking on management over the years and the detrimental effects of entrenched bureaucratic systems in organizations. He argues that bureaucracy stifles innovation, efficiency, and human engagement, leading him to suggest that organizations need to adopt more human-centric, dynamic, and decentralized models. He also points out the eventual trajectory of all companies that don’t follow this path.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Why organizations stop being technical and start being bureaucratic08:29: I don’t think administrative skills are any more a competitive advantage. You need them, but they are not much of a differentiator. So far as I can see, they are not really a source of competitive advantage. And yet, given that history of them being so rare, we basically turned our organizations into administrative aristocracies . And so what that meant practically was, once you reached a certain level in an organization, a fairly low level, the only way to advance your career was to become a manager. And that is still true in most organizations. People tend to compete for those jobs because, and I have young friends, and kids and so on who, very capable people worked in organizations, and however capable you are technically, you reach a point where they are coaxing you into an administrative or managerial role as the only way to grow. And the desire to keep great employees and to pay them well means that those positions proliferate. We create more managerial roles because that is the way of rewarding people and escalating their salaries.The radical shift from static hierarchy to dynamic power39:04: I am all for having a hierarchy, but I think it needs to be highly dynamic depending on the issue, and the hierarchy needs to be able to shift also. When people in power are no longer adding value or whatever they need to, you need to be able to fire those people from below.Why traditional leadership programs create administrators, not leaders47:18: In survey after survey, by Fortune, by McKinsey or others, the vast majority of executives do not think leadership development is producing positive returns or noticeably positive returns. And again, I think the reason for that is what we call leadership development is, first of all, almost done completely in the bureaucratic frame. We are not trying to find people with genuine leadership, natural leadership capacity. We are not trying to find people who understand how to mobilize and catalyze others to do things that people thought were impossible. Our leadership training is basically training people to take on bigger administrative jobs and stratified just like the pyramid: managing yourself, managing a team, managing a unit, managing a function, managing the organization. So number one, we have that problem. It is simply replicating, and it is creating better administrators. I do not think the data says that it is creating leaders.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Thomas PaineMax WeberMcKinsey & CompanyJames G. MarchHerbert A. SimonDisruptive InnovationKKR & Co.Open Strategy: Mastering Disruption from Outside the C-SuiteDominic BartonJeffrey PfefferBarbara KellermanLeadership DevelopmentManagement DevelopmentPeter DruckerGuest Profile:GaryHamel.comLinkedIn ProfileWikipedia ProfileHumanocracy.comThe Management LabSocial Profile on XGuest Work:Amazon Author PageHumanocracy, Updated and Expanded: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside ThemWhat Matters Now: How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable InnovationCompeting for the FutureThe Future of ManagementThe Corporate Lattice: Achieving High Performance In the Changing World of WorkLeading the RevolutionBringing Silicon Valley InsideGoogle Scholar Page Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When are meetings the best way to coordinate and make decisions and when do they make things worse?? How do you use the two-pizza rule to hold effective meetings and what happens when you start including too many people in a process?Rebecca Hinds is the head of the Work AI Institute at Glean and the author of Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done, a book outlining the way to address one of the ways productivity is lost in organizations.Greg and Rebecca discuss the importance of intentionality in information flow within organizations, the common pitfalls of meeting culture, and practical strategies to improve meeting efficiency. Rebecca emphasizes the use of data and AI to measure meeting effectiveness and reduce 'meeting bloat', while sharing insights from her experiences at Asana and her studies on organizational collaboration. They also explore the evolving collaboration between HR and IT departments in the era of AI and the necessity for both tech and HR professionals to exchange and enhance their skills.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How ‘visibIlity bias’ fuels endless meetings[07:28] We know that humans have a bias to associate presence with productivity. And so what I find to be often the case is people start to associate more meetings with more importance and status within the organization, and so when you're stuck and not sure how to make progress or you're worried about productivity, a meeting becomes a knee-jerk solution to solve that. You might not accomplish anything meaningful in the meeting, but at least you've sat together and shown that some progress or perceived progress was made. And so I think at the core of this, is this pervasive productivity theater that goes on in organizations, this visibility bias where we associate meetings with importance within the organization. There are a host of other problems, but at the core, I think that's the fundamental problem that we're dealing with.The pressure ingrained in our calendars and meeting cultures[09:37]  As soon as someone extends a meeting invite. They're establishing this social contract where you feel like you have to reciprocate. Even when we think about terminology around, it's a meeting invite. You either accept or you reject. You start to feel like you're not just rejecting the meeting, but rejecting the person. And it's taken very personally. AI tools can help reveal participation imbalances in meetings[22:59] If you're seeing that leaders are consuming 70%, 80% of the airtime, that's an opportunity to course correct and improve your meeting effectiveness. And often when it comes from an AI tool or an objective analytic tool, it's much more effectively received than a less powerful person trying to voice that takeaway in the meeting and try to veer influence that way.Are we socially conditioned to hate meetings?[28:48] Humans have what I call a meeting suck reflex, right? For a multitude of different reasons.When we hear the word "meeting," we have this negative, visceral reaction. So much so that you know when you're asked to evaluate your meetings in public versus private, you tend to rate your meetings much more negatively when you're around people in public as compared to privately, because we think that we should hate meetings. We've been socially conditioned to feel such, and there's few things that bond coworkers more quickly than bonding over a bad meeting that could have been a five-line email, right? And so to avoid that, assessing whether a meeting was worth your time helps to level set. Everyone has an intuitive sense of whether a meeting was worth their time. Is there something more productive they could have done with that time or not? And so that tends to be a good gauge for you as an organizer.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Asana, Inc.Parkinson's lawSteven RogelbergLaw of TrivialityAmazon’s Two-Pizza TeamsROTIRobert I. SuttonGuest Profile:RebeccaHinds.comThe Work AI Institute at GleanLinkedIn ProfileSocial Profile on X for GleanGuest Work:Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Whether in markets, organizations, or the universe itself, today’s guest is a master at navigating complex systems where existing models have stopped working, and new ones must emerge.Geoffrey Moore is a consultant in the high-tech sector and a prolific author, with titles including Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado: Strategies for Developing, Leveraging, and Surviving Hypergrowth Markets, and, most recently, The Infinite Staircase: What the Universe Tells Us About Life, Ethics, and Mortality. Geoffrey and Greg discuss his transition from Renaissance English scholar to high-tech strategist, why narrative is critical in business, the challenges of disrupting industries, and what “The Infinite Staircase” reveals about life’s meaning and human purpose. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The importance of sales and the failure of business schools09:32: It's absolutely a travesty that business schools don't teach sales. It's, it's crazy. And there are a bunch of people that have made that argument before. But the reason why academics didn't like sales is it felt too much like Glengarry Glen Ross: sleazy, you know, closers, "coffee is for closers," and all the kind of stuff the academics hate. But the point about it is that, particularly in contemporary B2B sales, that's not what a salesperson does anymore. You have to help the customer find the use cases and the ROI that validates why they're gonna buy this thing, which means you have to be intellectually curious about their business and not just yammer about your own business. And so it is, it's actually a really interesting profession if you approach it, you know, in a kind of more in-service-to-the-customer approach, as opposed to, "I'm going to make my commissions and go to the club," although that's also a big motive among salespeople.Venture capital is literary criticism06:10: Venture is a form of literary criticism prior to investment. And then, as you invest, you start to figure out, now how can I verify? How can I validate? And eventually, the analytics and the numbers become very important. But not at the beginning. At the beginning, it is really about the story.Venture Capital vs. Corporate metrics38:11: Venture capitalists do not fund performance. They fund power, but everything in a venture model is about becoming more powerful, not becoming more performant. When we exit, then they'll become performant, but not now, and that idea is still very hard to land in a large corporation.The correct sequence for success33:51: The correct sequence has to be customers first, employees second, investors third. Any other sequence doesn't work, not for sustainable success.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Regis McKennaAlfred D. Chandler Jr.Edmund SpenserGreat chain of beingClayton ChristensenSatya NadellaNorthrop FryePhilip SidneyGuest Profile:Professional WebsiteProfessional Profile on LinkedInProfile on XGuest Work:The Infinite Staircase: What the Universe Tells Us About Life, Ethics, and MortalityCrossing the ChasmInside the Tornado: Strategies for Developing, Leveraging, and Surviving Hypergrowth MarketsDealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their EvolutionLiving on the Fault Line, Revised Edition: Managing for Shareholder Value in Any EconomyThe Gorilla Game: An Investor's Guide to Picking Winners in High TechnologyZone to Win: Organizing to Compete in an Age of Disruption Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What is the real importance of understanding architectural history, and how is its teaching different from the histories of other disciplines? How can good design influence business decisions?Witold Rybczynski is an emeritus professor in the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the author of several books on architecture and its history. His most recent titles have been The Driving Machine: A Design History of the Car, Now I Sit Me Down: From Klismos to Plastic Chair: A Natural History, Mysteries of the Mall: And Other Essays, and The Story of Architecture.Greg and Witold discuss Witold’s extensive work on various topics, including the present state and histories of architecture, urban planning, and design. Their conversation covers the cultural valuation of architecture versus fine arts, the historical impact of city planning and urban design in the United States, and the unique characteristics of American cities compared to how cities and urban planning happens in European countries. They also get into the interplay of style and function in car design based in the research from Witold’s new book.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.* Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What was the role of experimentation in early science? How did past scientific paradigms continue to influence current scientific discourse? What is the utility of understanding the history of science for modern scientists?Peter Dear is a professor emeritus of history at Cornell University, and the author of several books, including The World as We Know It: From Natural Philosophy to Modern Science and Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution.Greg and Peter discuss the evolution of science from natural philosophy, addressing how scientific progress is not simply a linear journey towards greater knowledge. Peter talks about the transformative periods like the Renaissance and the scientific revolution, and the debate over the definition and significance of terms like 'scientific revolution.' They also explore how today's scientific practices are deeply rooted in 19th-century developments. Their conversation also covers the historical context behind Newton's and Darwin's work among other famous scientists throughout history.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The two “registers” of science09:50: Science nowadays, and through the course of the last, well, developing over the last two centuries, really in the 19th and 20th centuries, science is still talked of as if it were a naturaln actual philosophy, even if that term is not used very much anymore. Science is sometimes regarded as something that is about understanding the universe, understanding the natural world as if it is an intellectual enterprise and just an intellectual enterprise. And at the same time, it is also regarded as something that is practically useful, practically valuable, and these two different registers for talking about science, I think, sort of ride alongside one another and switch back and forth depending on how it is that people want to represent any particular kind of knowledge.The birth of experimentation22:23: One of the things about experimentation, is that it was a matter of developing practices, procedures for generating knowledge claims about nature that were different from the ways in which experience had been used, particularly in Aristotelian or quasi-Aristotelian context, to talk about the behavior of nature. Experiments are a particular way of understanding what experience is useful for in making sense of the world.The twin dimensions of science40:30: I think all scientists have always relied on the twin dimensions of science, the fact that science can be regarded as an actual philosophy when it's talking about the way things are, and the fact that science can be regarded as, or talked about in terms of, instrumentality. When you are focusing on the capabilities, the practical capabilities, the particular ideas and procedures enable you to do, and at different times and places, scientists will sometimes play up the natural philosophy side of things and at other times play up the instrumentality side of things, depending on what it is interested in talking about at the time. But I think everyone, all scientists, regard those as both essential elements, so to speak, of what scientific inquiry is all about.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Scientific RevolutionFrancis BaconParacelsusAristotleNicolaus CopernicusGalileo GalileiIsaac NewtonRené DescartesRobert BoyleTaxonomyCharles LyellAlbert EinsteinThomas KuhnGuest Profile:Academia PapersProfessors Emeriti List at Cornell UniversityGuest Work:Amazon Author PageThe World as We Know It: From Natural Philosophy to Modern ScienceRevolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge in Transition, 1500-1700Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and Its Ambitions, 1500-1700Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific RevolutionThe Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the WorldMersenne and the Learning of the SchoolsResearchGate Page Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

While evolution is often thought to be conducive to perfect adaptation, there are plenty of reasons why we never get there. Laurence D. Hurst is a professor of evolutionary genetics in the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath. His book, The Evolution of Imperfection: The Science of Why We Aren’t and Can’t Be Perfect is an expansive look into the imperfections of the human genome and why humans seem to be predisposed to so much bad genetic luck. Laurence and Greg explore the evolutionary constraints that lead to imperfections, how population size affects mutation rates, the advancements in gene therapy, and why imperfection could be key to a deeper understanding of evolution. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Why humans have such bad genetic luck07:13: We have good reason to think that humans are far from being as fit as they might be. We have a very high mutation rate. We've got one of the highest mutation rates going, for example, and most mutations are deleterious. Most of the time, five to 10% of us will have a rare genetic disorder, for example. And we could be better. We could be a lot, lot, lot better.Medicine is anti-evolution47:17: Medicine is anti-evolution. Evolution is why we keep on having these genetic diseases, and medicine goes, well, you might have them, but we are going to stop them having their effects.Childbirth is more dangerous than the most dangerous job in America12:13: Childbirth is, for humans, a spectacularly dangerous pursuit. There was a lovely survey done by Forbes Magazine of America's most dangerous jobs, and it turns out nothing comes close to childbirth. Childbirth is an order of magnitude more dangerous than America's most dangerous job.Show Links:Recommended Resources:10 Most Dangerous U.S. Careers Heading Into 2025, Study Reveals | ForbesNearly neutral theory of molecular evolutionHe JiankuiGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of BathProfessional WebsiteMilner Centre Profile on XGuest Work:The Evolution of Imperfection: The Science of Why We Aren’t and Can’t Be Perfect Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How can organizations make more equitable changes to their internal norms and structures, to promote fairness over merely seeking profit? What are alternate ways to tackle the difference in agreeableness that underpins many professional gaps between men and women?Cordelia Fine is a professor in the history and philosophy of science department at University of Melbourne, as well as the author of several books, including Patriarchy Inc.: What We Get Wrong About Gender Equality and Why Men Still Win at Work, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, and Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society.Greg and Cordelia discuss the complexities surrounding gender equality, including the contested reasons for wage differences and occupational gaps between men and women. Cordelia critiques the traditional and evolving gender norms, explains her stance on DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) strategies, and advocates for more nuanced, context-aware approaches to addressing gender disparities. She challenges oversimplified evolutionary psychology narratives and underscores the importance of understanding the cultural evolution of gender roles. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Why valuing women isn’t enough52:52: You can say pretty words about valuing the feminine. Oh, you know, women are great. They’re so wonderful. They’re so empathic and collaborative and participative, and they’re really good at building people. But you can’t just say that—you have to actually change your organizations so that you literally put your money where your mouth is, so that is what is actually being rewarded.Redefining patriarchy10:37: There’s a sort of assumption that when we talk about patriarchy, we’re just talking about the harm to girls and women. Its long been recognized, I think, in feminism that often men and certain groups of men do also face harms in that kind of system that’s keeping some men on top.Why our ideas about sex differences often get it wrong20:58: I do think we have to be careful about looking at our—first of all, making assumptions about what sex differences actually are—because they’re often, you know, a huge amount of overlap, contingent depending on the context and the cues. But also, to then project that back into our ancestral past without taking a kind of wider look at societies beyond the weird populations—Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Cecilia L. RidgewayCailin O'ConnorThe Making of the Modern FamilyDavid BenatarLeonora RisseHILDA SurveyNancy FraserGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at the University of MelbourneCordelia-Fine.comWikipedia ProfileLinkedIn ProfileSocial Profile on InstagramGuest Work:Amazon Author PagePatriarchy Inc.: What We Get Wrong About Gender Equality and Why Men Still Win at WorkDelusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create DifferenceTestosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and SocietyA Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and DeceivesGoogle Scholar PageRelated Unsiloed Episode:Claudia Goldin - Understanding the Gender Wage Gap Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Despite its long-held place in history as the lynchpin of America’s recovery from the Great Depression, what if the New Deal did more to hinder the country’s recovery than help it? George Selgin is a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Georgia and former director of the Center on Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute. His books like, False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery and Floored!: How a Misguided Fed Experiment Deepened and Prolonged the Great Recession, examine macroeconomic theories through the lens of key moments in monetary history. In this conversation, Greg and George dive deep into the inner workings of The Great Depression, covering the biggest misconceptions surrounding the New Deal's role in ending the crisis, why many of President Roosevelt’s policies were counterproductive, and how pre-existing, international factors impacted the U.S.’s recovery.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The myth of New Deal wisdom47:17: The thing that people have to remember when they are inclined to think, oh, you know, we need to look back at the New Deal and all the wonderful things they did to end the Depression. They knew so much, you know, they had all these experiments. No. We know a lot more about how to fight recessions and depressions than they did because we know that fiscal and monetary stimulus are our best hopes. And those were two things that the Roosevelt administration did not put much, if any, emphasis upon. And that, of course, just hearing that should give a lot of people second thoughts about how helpful the New Deal was. They did a lot of stuff, but they did not do the main thing we rely on now. The main things, they did not promote monetary stimulus, and they did not promote fiscal stimulus except somewhat, reluctantly.Keynes vs. the New Dealers59:39: I certainly believe that if Keynes’s advice had been followed instead of what the New Dealers did, that the Depression would have ended much sooner than it did in the United States. The downside of "bold experimentation"35:56: Roosevelt made two statements that were probably the least, the two main unambiguous things he said, one of which turned out to be a very accurate description of what his administration would end up doing. And the other one of which would be a very inaccurate statement. This is all in the course of the campaign. The accurate statement was when he said that his administration planned to go about addressing the Depression through bold experimentation. And that is absolutely true. There was a lot of trial and error. And the problem is, as I say in my book, you know, the problem with bold experiments is they often fail.On war clouds and gold flows45:41: What keeps gold flowing in for the rest of the decade, and more and more of it as time goes on, is Hitler's rise to power and the, the gatherings war clouds that eventually have many, many Europeans thinking, I do not think this is place, this place is safe for our gold. And as long as they could, taking it and shipping it to the United States, where now after the suspension of the gold standard and the devaluation, the treasury alone is buying all the gold.Show Links:Recommended Resources:John Maynard KeynesFranklin D. RooseveltHerbert Hoover Henry Ford Alexander J. Field James Bradford DeLong Guest Profile:Faculty Profile at University of Georgia Professional Profile at the Cato InstituteProfessional Profile on LinkedInProfile on XGuest Work:False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933–1947 Floored!: How a Misguided Fed Experiment Deepened and Prolonged the Great RecessionMoney: Free and Unfree Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing EconomyThe Menace of Fiscal QE  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How does our legal system treat children today, and how do policies affecting their parents and communities cascade down to shape their lives? What forces create a pipeline to criminalization, and what would it take to break that cycle for the children who come next?Adam Benforado is a professor of law at Drexel University and the author of two books titled A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All and Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice.Greg and Adam discuss the deep-seated flaws in the US legal system, including cognitive biases and heuristics affecting legal professionals, and how historical assumptions about human behavior shape legal decision-making. Their discussion explores why the legal system is resistant to integrating behavioral sciences, and the impact of punitive criminal justice policies on society, especially children. Adam highlights the juxtaposition between overparented, affluent children and under-resourced, marginalized youth, advocating for evidence-based, preventative approaches to social issues rather than reactionary legal interventions. There are broader societal implications of legal practices and Adam stresses the importance of prioritizing children's rights now for a more equitable future.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:A different way to look at crime16:49: I think there's a really different way to look at crime, which is that everything is situational. It's a result of genes and environment. And of course society can play around with those things and make crime go up or go down. And so, you know, I think in this book, one of my hopes with doing it was honestly to provoke people to try to think about things that they think they know so well. And crime is one thing we think we know so well in our lives, but I think here we have to understand different countries, different people over time have taken very different approaches. And it is not that somehow, you know, people living in these cultures are fundamentally different. I've been to these other countries, and I would say humans actually are surprisingly similar. And what's different though in our country is how we approach it.Judges are human too07:30: I think the social science that we've accumulated literally over decades now tells a very different story, which is that judges are human beings, like all the rest of us. And so we need to be just as aware of potential biases that are coming into their judgments and decision making as everyone else.Where you’re born shapes who you become43:12: We promise economic, socioeconomic mobility. But if you look at it, right, if you’re in that bottom quintile of family income versus that top quintile of family income, in many ways your trajectory, no matter how inherently smart you are at third grade, a lot of that’s already tracked out simply based on all of that investment that wealthy parents are gonna make over the course of that young person’s childhood. And that’s both positive enrichment, but it’s also when kids, a lot of kids get into trouble. Something doesn’t work, they’re struggling in math, or they hit a kid in school, or they get sick. What happens, right? If you have wealthy parents, those problems get addressed and you get many second chances. If you’re a poor kid, you don’t.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Jon D. HansonConvention on the Rights of the ChildEmily OsterTrial by OrdealGuest Profile:AdamBenforado.comFaculty Profile at Drexel UniversityProfile on LinkedInSocial Profile on XGuest Work:Amazon Author PageA Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us AllUnfair: The New Science of Criminal InjusticeGoogle Scholar Page Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Is the point of life to minimize suffering, or to understand and embrace it on some level? How do different belief structures view the ideal human response to negative situations? Is there a degree of suffering that would be bearable in order to enable something pleasurable that could offset it?Scott Samuelson is a professor of philosophy at Iowa State University and also the author of several books, Rome as a Guide to the Good Life: A Philosophical Grand Tour, The Deepest Human Life: An Introduction to Philosophy for Everyone, and Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering: What Philosophy Can Tell Us About the Hardest Mystery of All.Greg and Scott discuss the universal accessibility of philosophy, the role of suffering in human life, and the balance between fixing and facing suffering. Scott shares his experiences teaching philosophy in prisons and how men in prison viewed suffering from different perspectives. He also explores the philosophical implications of thinkers like Epictetus, Nietzsche, and John Stuart Mill. Their conversation touches on the themes of modernity, the significance of facing suffering, and finding meaning in both joy and pain. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Philosophy begins with wonder and deepens through suffering04:26: I think there's a kind of built-in wonder in all of us. But I also think, and this goes to the suffering book, that another thing that tends to make philosophers out of everyone is suffering. There's something about suffering that kind of blows our minds. I mean, a certain amount of suffering seems to make some sense. I mean, it makes some sense that my hand, you know, feels pain when it gets near a fire so that I protect myself. But almost everyone has experiences where someone dies prematurely, or where perhaps they suffer pain that just doesn't add up, like a migraine headache. Or we look at the world and see great injustice, and it's hard not to be a human and start to ask philosophical questions in the face of that—to start to wonder what's going on here. You know, why is this happening? Sometimes, why me? And as I've had a chance to teach a really wide variety of people over the years, I've found that they all—it's without exception—people feel these questions quite deeply inside them.How philosophy provides us space to face life’s hard questions05:27: One of the beautiful things that philosophy can do is provide a space that kind of dignifies that part of us that is asking these questions and thinking about it. And so even when philosophy can't necessarily provide all the answers to the questions, there's something powerful just about being in that space where you're facing those questions.Why suffering is part of being human10:38: We, of course, are going to kind of combat suffering in some ways, shape, or form. But at the same time, it seems like we have to learn to face it and be open to it and to accept it and to see it as just a part of life rather than as a foreign invader of what it means to be human. And that when we do that, we open ourselves up to the adventure of being human. We had opened ourselves up to, you know, the possibilities of real growth and finding meaning. And a lot of people, when they come out the other side of difficult experiences, have a kind of weird sense that that was a very valuable and important thing, even something they're grateful for. Even though, at the same time, it's not that they wish that it happened, but they're grateful that it has become part of their story and their life. And so when we can do that, I think we're kind of living better lives overall.Show Links:Recommended Resources:William JamesPlato’s ApologyAlexis de TocquevilleAleksandr SolzhenitsynSusan NeimanEpictetusStoicismBeing MortalJohn Stuart MillUtilitarianismWhen Breath Becomes AirFriedrich NietzscheEichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of EvilGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Iowa State UniversityScottSamuelsonAuthor.comProfile on WikipediaGuest Work:Amazon Author PageRome as a Guide to the Good Life: A Philosophical Grand TourThe Deepest Human Life: An Introduction to Philosophy for EveryoneSeven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering: What Philosophy Can Tell Us About the Hardest Mystery of All Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What are the nuances of organizational design and risk-taking? What are the roles of both curiosity and trust in fostering an environment ripe for innovation? How can you create serendipity intentionally, and harness its power for your organization?David Cleevely is a British entrepreneur and international telecoms expert who has built and advised many companies, principally in Cambridge, UK. He is also the author of the new book Serendipity: It Doesn't Happen By Accident. Greg and David discuss the concept of engineered serendipity, which involves designing environments and life trajectories that optimize the occurrence of fortunate coincidences. David explains how places like Cambridge, Silicon Valley, and 18th-century Birmingham fostered innovative ecosystems. They explore how engineered structures can increase the likelihood of beneficial outcomes, the role of key individuals in creating networks, and the importance of interdisciplinary interactions. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How can we engineer serendipity?04:23: The thing that we need to do is look at how did those things actually happen? Why did they happen? And is it possible to get some general principles out of this, some insights, so that instead of just relying on chance to do it for us, we can change the odds. And really, serendipity does not act by accident. It is about changing the odds.Randomness in strategy29:09: You need an element of randomness in strategy. So you need to have things that are highly focused, and you need some things that are going to be cross-disciplinary and completely wacky. And you will need different proportions of those.Creating environments for good things to happen02:27: I think we need to do some research, and it's properly cross-disciplinary, 'cause it involves network science, it involves behavioral psychology stuff, all of these things that we need to understand how this stuff actually works. We've been taking this stuff for granted, and actually we need to not just go, oh, that's interesting, and then move on. No, actually we need to investigate this stuff and think, how can we actually create environments in which good things are more likely to happen?Show Links:Recommended Resources:Lunar Society of BirminghamFriedrich HayekStuart KauffmanSanta Fe InstitutePriestley RiotsNapoleonic WarsCambridge WirelessCambridge AngelsACAMSteve JobsDunbar's NumberNicholas ChristakisPride and PrejudiceJohn Maynard SmithGuest Profile:Chemify LimitedWikipedia ProfileLinkedIn ProfileCleevely & PartnersTrinity Hall ProfileCambridge Ahead ProfileGuest Work:ConductingSerendipity.comSerendipity: It Doesn't Happen By Accident Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.