Curious Minds at Work

Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor and author of The Attention Merchants, delves into the hidden effects of constant attention demands in our lives. He discusses how advertising shapes our decisions, tracing its roots from wartime propaganda to modern clickbait. Tim shares fascinating stories, like early suffragettes promoting cigarettes and the rise of Consumer Reports against ads. He emphasizes the importance of creating ‘sacred spaces’ and highlights the need for genuine human connections to reclaim our attention in a monetized world.

Is it possible to lead with full transparency? Can openness be the cornerstone of a large, fast-growing tech organization? These are just some of the questions that Catherine Turco answered when she spent 10 months observing all aspects of a fast-growing, high-tech company determined to build a new form of management. The result was something she calls The Conversational Firm. While she points out that it is not an easy or predictable path for leaders to choose, it is one with powerful benefits for the organization and its employees. Catherine Turco is the author of the book, The Conversational Firm: Rethinking Bureaucracy in the Age of Social Media, and an Associate Professor of Organization Studies at MIT. An ethnographer and economic sociologist, her work has appeared in the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology. In this interview, we discuss: What happens when openness in products gets applied to organizational culture What it means to apply principles of holacracy to an organization What an ethnographer learned after spending 10 months immersed in a tech company What it means to be a conversational firm How open communication and hierarchical decision making can exist side by side How leaders sharing company information can rally employees to offer solutions The power of collective problem solving through radical information sharing Why trust makes all the difference for leaders and employees The important role design plays in crafting a healthy corporate culture How an open culture is self-reinforcing How openness encourages employees to see themselves as problem solvers How openness increases employee engagement Why new approaches to company culture require new images of leadership Building a different kind of organization requires intention and focus Making the shift from punitive to educative approaches to management and leadership How the public nature of social media is helping companies get past thoughtless policies How the pros can outweigh the cons of an open work space Why the influx of tech in any org makes it easier to rethink traditional hierarchies Why harnessing the collective wisdom of employees ups meaning and engagement Why we need new models of leadership where leaders want to listen The important role thoughtful organizational culture plays for everyone Episode Links Catherine Turco Holacracy TINYpulse Silo Effect by Gillian Tett Dilbert Adria Richards Sendgrid PyCon Hipchat Slack If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!

Gratitude has a dramatic impact on well-being and success, yet many of us are not aware of this research. In this groundbreaking book, The Gratitude Diaries: How a Year Looking on the Bright Side Can Transform Your Life, Janice Kaplan explains the science behind the power of gratitude. The author of twelve books, including The New York Times bestselling memoir, I will See you Again, Janice was an award-winning producer at ABC-TV Good Morning America, Executive Producer of the TV Guide Television Group, and Editor-in-Chief of Parade Magazine. In this episode, Janice explains the surprising, counterintuitive connection between gratitude and happiness. She also shares simple steps we can take today to increase the amount of gratitude we express and how doing it can change your life. Here are some things that came up in our conversation: how a mindset of gratitude gives us control over our own happiness simple steps you can take to express gratitude right now with family and friends the mental and physical health benefits of practicing gratitude 90 percent believe gratitude makes us happier yet under 50 percent express it Our attitude toward life events determines how they impact us Choosing gratitude means gaining control and not waiting for happiness to arrive Gratitude is as simple as finding one thing each day to be grateful for When we appreciate others and show gratitude, they flourish Gratitude changes our brain Gratitude helps us sleep better, and lowers stress and blood pressure Experiences and interactions with others makes us happier than buying stuff Prioritizing gratitude helps us pay more attention Recognizing how fortunate we are helps us be more generous 81 percent say they would work harder for a grateful boss 90 percent believe grateful bosses are more successful Being appreciated is highly motivating Ambition and gratitude play nicely together - can achieve and be appreciative Gratitude can get us out of the comparison game We are built to find redeeming value in difficult life events It is not happiness that makes us grateful but rather gratitude that makes us happy Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers figured out gratitude a long time ago Share a photo of something you are grateful for Send a text of gratitude Episode Links Parade Magazine John Templeton Foundation National Gratitude Survey TSA Habituation Massachusetts General Hospital Tom Gilovich Paul Piff Monopoly game Daniel Gilbert David Steindl Rast Essentialism by Greg McKeown If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes - your ratings make all the difference. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!

Everyone benefits from understanding great design. Whether you make products, program apps, or provide services, design plays a critical role in how effectively you accomplish your goals. And if you work in the field of design, there has never been a better time to showcase your skills. In this thought-provoking interview, John Maeda talks about all of this and more. An award-winning designer who was described as a bellwether for the design industry by Wired Magazine, John sits at the crossroads of business, design, and technology.. His TED talks have been viewed by millions, and his books have been translated into dozens of languages. John began his career Professor and Head of Research at The Media Lab at MIT. He then served as President of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), authored a number of books, and then left academia to work as Design Partner for venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. He now works as Global Head of Computational Design and Inclusion at open-source tech firm, Automattic. John shares what he has learned along the way. Insights from our interview include: How the arduous practice of engineering informs his perspective on design How he was raised not to know what he could not be How curiosity is about having an openness to now knowing How much of what he saw in Silicon Valley was reminiscent of MIT How resilience can increase with curiosity How each challenge he has chosen stretches him How creatives often lack confidence - a normal occurrence for them How a brilliant professor taught him to say I do not know The three kinds of design that exist right now How digital design is constantly changing, immature How design thinking is a powerful strategy for understanding users How schools can benefit from real-world practice Why stepping out of academia was important for his understanding of the world Why the addictive aspect of tech is not a problem for him How he is always looking for new people to learn from Why he wishes we were talking less about beauty in design and more about effectiveness How he wishes design were more about who we can serve rather than trends How he is asking how design can be more inclusive How we can get caught up in making things in our own image through design The fact that design tends to come to the foreground only once the tech matures The challenges of leading and working with people in design How he is learning to work in a 100 percent remote tech company Episode Links John Maeda @JohnMaeda MIT Media Lab Rhode Island School of Design Kleiner Perkins Automattic Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer Design Report 2016 Walker and Company, Bevel Brand Grindr Jackie Xu Justin Sayarath The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling Matt Mullenweg of Automattic Paul Graham of Y Combinator CRISPR If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!

It is essential to achieve our goals, yet few of us practice it. It is emotional agility -- the ability to navigate the thoughts, feelings, and stories we tell ourselves as challenges arise. This does not mean ignoring how we feel or wallowing in those emotions. And it is certainly not about just being happy all the time. It is about recognizing that the monologue inside our heads is not in control of us but, rather, we are in control of it. That is something Susan David knows a lot about. Author of the book, Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life, she is a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, and CEO of Evidence Based Psychology. Her writing has been featured in numerous publications, including Harvard Business Review, Time, Fast Company, and The Wall Street Journal. Insights from our interview:   How we deal with our thoughts and emotions impacts our well being In a time of unprecedented complexity we need to be agile and responsive We get hooked when we treat our thoughts and emotions as facts How we can be blind to what is right in front of us The fact that we will look for information to support the stories we make up We engage with thought blaming when we give too much power to our thoughts We need to let go of our need to be right Between stimulus response, there is a space where we can choose When we bottle emotions our emotions, we miss out on what they can teach us When we brood or give too much space to thoughts and emotions, we get stuck Brooding prevents closure and moving forward Our consumer culture can make us feel that we are not good enough When we extend compassion to ourselves we are more open to change Constant comparison to others sets up a never ending competition Giving language to our emotions helps us make plans and solve problems Journaling thoughts and feelings for just 20 minutes a day can be life changing When we walk our why, we are more resilient and focused Walking our why helps us overcome social contagion The value of tweaking our emotions from have to to want to Making the shift from have to to want to is about prioritizing our values Have to language makes our brains rebel and is about obligation and shame Our brains are wired to make us comfortable - the unfamiliar feels unsafe Aim for a state of whelm, rather than over- or underwhelmed Emotional labor is the difference work demands and how we feel How many workplaces are operating out of old industrial models? How to raise emotionally agile children? Help them identify and label emotions. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is fear walking. Faced with complexity, we are less likely to collaborate, innovate or relate Complexity requires we develop inner skills Episode Links Susan David @SusanDavid_PhD Emotional Agility article in HBR Victor Frankl Charles Darwin James Pennebaker Take Pride by Jessica Tracy NYTimes article - Teaching Your Child Emotional Agility The Quiz - Emotional Agility Report - Susan David How Levis Is Building Well-Being Programs Where They Matter Most: In Factories by Adele Peters If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!

How do breakthroughs happen? Not how we think. Movies, books, and articles, constrained by time and word limits, often leave out the realities --  the messy work, filled with dead ends, abandoned questions, and accidental discoveries. That is what Stuart Firestein, Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, wants to change. He believes that the roles ignorance and failure play in the discovery process are vastly underappreciated, so much so that he has written two books about them, Ignorance: How It Drives Science, and Failure: Why Science is So Successful. An advisor for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation program for The Public Understanding of Science, Stuart shares insights from his own work as a successful researcher and scientist and from those of his peers, as well as scientific philosophers and historians. Insights from our interview:   Knowledge and facts are important insofar as they help us ask better questions Conscious ignorance offers a useful playground for discovery The messy process of science and discovery is where the value lies The disconnect between scientific textbooks and courses and actual science The innovative course he teaches that helps students gain a scientific mindset What it is that makes a problem interesting How scientists, researchers, and creatives look for connections Why failure can be useful even if it never leads to an eventual success The fact that the more expert a person is the less certain they will be How systems limit innovation Why we need better tools for assessment and evaluation in schools Why we need feedback tools that are more diagnostic and less judgmental Why he worries most about people who dislike or are disinterested in science Why he sees his lab as a cauldron of curiosity How writing books requires a different way of looking at things How philosophy and history can impact science in an interactive way Episode Links Stuart Firestein @FiresteinS Be Bad First by Erika Andersen Is the Scientific Paper a Fraud by Peter Medawar James Clerk Maxwell Principles of Neuroscience Eric Kandel Kenneth Rogoff D.H. Lawrence Do No Harm by Henry Marsh MCAT NIH NSF Sidney Brenner Michael Krasny Karl Popper Thomas Kuhn Isaiah Berlin If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!

Want to succeed in work and life? Be bad first. Do not confuse this with the familiar call to fail fast (so often heard in the startup world in recent years). This is a longer game. It is about getting comfortable with being novices and of committing to learning new, hard skills that take years to acquire. In a world of rapid-fire change, constant connection, and lots of choices, it is a necessary goal. Erika Andersen, wants to teach us how to do just that. Erika is the Founder of Proteus, author of three books on leadership, and a Forbes contributor. She shares concrete tips and great examples in her latest book, Be Bad First: Get Good at Things Fast to Stay Ready for the Future. Insights from our interview:   The key skill for success in the 21st century Why being bad first is not about failing fast or failing forward How open are we to learning new ideas? Less open than we say. How we hate being bad at things but love getting good at things How our desire for mastery can work in our favor with new challenges How hard are you clinging to the skills you have? How is that working for you? Four mental skills crucial for learning How Michelangelo successfully navigated being bad first The role innovation plays in getting ourselves to learn new things How to put our self talk to work for us rather than against us How we cannot get the help we need if we do not know our gaps How to revise and reframe our negative self talk What does healthy curiosity look like in adulthood? Confused about curiosity? Watch a 3-year-old! Get curious by unleashing your drive to understand Value the expertise of others enough to ask them questions Expected to be expert in your field? Beware of asking these questions. Want to reclaim your innate curiosity? Start with your hobbies! Anti-curiosity strongly connected to negative self talk Risk-free way to practice being bad first? Write with your non-dominant hand. It is impossible to be good at something you have never done - remember that Learning something new? Find your bridge - the part you know something about. Three things we need to believe in order to change our behavior. When leaders model new behaviors, change goes faster in their orgs Every year, pick something new to be bad at. Episode Links @ErikaAndersen Erika Andersen Rookie Smarts by Liz Wiseman Duolingo If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!

Is pride a deadly sin or a key to our survival? Will it lead us down a destructive path or can it actually help us resist temptation? In this conversation, Jessica Tracy answers these questions and more. Jessica is a Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia and author of the book, Take Pride: Why the Deadliest Sin Holds the Secret to Human Success. Her research has unearthed findings that help us see just how important pride is for human progress and survival. Her discussion of pride takes us beyond associations of boastfulness and arrogance, in order to understand how feelings of pride can boost creativity, encourage altruism, and confer power and prestige in ways that benefit us as individuals and as a society. In this interview, we talk about:   Why we need pride to feel good about ourselves The fact that pride is innate, rather than learned The body language we associate with pride and what it signals How residents of Burkina Faso helped us recognize that pride is universal How philosophers like Aristotle and Rousseau helped us see pride as positive How studying narcissism clued us into key aspects of pride The fact that there are two kinds of pride - authentic and hubristic What we learned when we asked people to talk about times when they felt pride How the speech of one political candidate included both aspects of pride Why asking if you are a voter vs if you will vote makes you more likely to vote How we can resist temptation by imagining the pride we will feel if we do How displays of pride convey status and why that is important What residents of Fiji taught us about pride, status, and evolution Why we evolved to have hubristic pride and the dominance that comes with it The connection between prestige and authentic pride How people with hubristic pride dominate through fear How dominant leaders are better at helping groups solve problems How prestigious leaders cultivate creativity and innovation in groups The fact that cultural ideas evolve through learning How pride motivates us to create and make things better How pride helps us want to teach and share and let others copy When people show pride in answering questions observers will copy them The fact that pride guides social learning How pride helps helps scientists make progress - they want to be right and it feels good when that happens Why we did not evolve to be selfless - we evolved to build a sense of self How hubristic pride is about a false sense of self and why it leads to shortcuts Why our sense of self is different from that of any other animal To what extent do pride and shame drive bad behaviors? Episode Links http://ubc-emotionlab.ca/people/dr-jessica-tracy/ @ProfJessTracy Dean Karnazes and Ultramarathon Man The Gratitude Diaries by Janice Kaplan Cumulative cultural evolution Lance Armstrong If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!

We produce more wind and solar power than ever before, yet coal, oil, and gas constitute over 90 percent of our energy sources. Why? Blame it on the grid. While our electrical grid was once an engineering marvel, today it is the Achilles heel of energy efficiency. In her book, The Grid: The Fraying Wires between Americans and Our Energy Future, McGill University Professor Gretchen Bakke explains why. A former Fellow in the Science in Society Program at Wesleyan University, she holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago. In this interview, Bakke shares how our grid became what it is today and offers fascinating insights into the technologies, personalities, and policies that got us here. Along the way, she explains all the fascinating ways innovators are helping us rethink it and what the future of energy looks like. In this interview, we talk about:   What the U.S. electrical grid actually is The history that informs the grid Why it matters when we use electricity Why the more we invest in green energy the more fragile our grid becomes How our current grid binds us to non-renewable energy sources How overgrown trees, sagging power lines, and a computer glitch caused a massive blackout in 2003 How electricity became a monopoly and a commodity How grid complexity works against complete reliance on alternative energy The good, the bad, and the ugly of smart meters Why energy storage is the holy grail of the energy business The innovation of vehicle-to-grid initiatives The feasibility of wireless electricity How an energy platform can help us reimagine the grid How an energy cloud can help us de-regionalize our reliance on energy sources What a cultural anthropologist brings to our understanding of the grid The values and history embedded in our electrical grid The fact that we made the grid and the grid makes us Whether choreography serve as a tool for helping us rethink power Episode Links Arc lamp Charles Edison Charles Brush Samuel Insull National Energy Act PURPA Energy Policy Act of 1992 Enron Walkable City by Jeff Speck Vehicle to grid Elon Musk The Paris Talks Energy cloud If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!

Do good people discriminate more often than they think? That is exactly what a team of researchers found when they analyzed the thoughts and reactions of millions of people around the world.   Harvard University Professor of Social Ethics, Mahzarin Banaji, author of the book, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, shares surprising findings from Implicit Association Tests taken by over 18 million people from over 30 countries. What she reveals may surprise you. Banaji is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, as well as the Radcliffe and Santa Fe Institutes. She and her co-author Anthony Greenwald, Professor at Washington University, have spent their careers uncovering the hidden biases we all carry when it comes to issues like race, gender, age, and socioeconomics. In this interview, we talk about: How knowing our blindspots can help us innovate How we can measure the extent of our biases with the Implicit Association Test How the implicit association test can launch a dialogue around bias Who we say is American versus who we really believe is American How our tendency is to be curious and to want to learn about ourselves How much we want to know is a measure of our smart we are The role competition and social knowledge play in motivation to learn and grow Why we need to get beyond learning about it to doing something about it The importance of what we are willing to do to address our biases Knowledge of bias helps us rethink hiring, law, admissions, medicine, and more Bias in our minds hurts us, too The fact that implicit bias starts as young as 6 years old Disappointing differences in explicit vs implicit love of our ethnic or racial group What is not associated with our groups in society gets dropped from our identities Bias and discrimination can come from who we help How referral programs can reinforce bias and lack of diversity A tip on how to ensure referral programs cultivate diversity The fact that we all like beautiful people and how that harms us Ways to outsmart our biases What symphony orchestras can teach us about overcoming bias in hiring The fact that good people can and do have bias How we will be perceived by future generations if we can address our biases Whether Mahzarin likes science fiction Episode Links @banaji http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~banaji/ Anthony Greenwald Implicit Association Test Fitbit Inclusion Conference 2016 What Works by Iris Bohnet Social imprinting Group identity Stanley Milgram Abu Ghraib My Lai Massacre If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!