Curious Minds at Work

Why do some succeed with so little, while others fail with so much? Scott Sonenshein, author of the book, Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less and Achieve More than You Ever Imagined, thinks it happens because we get caught up in a mindset of chasing. A Professor of Management at Rice University, Scott is also a strategy consultant for organizations in healthcare, education, manufacturing, and technology. Drawing on research from psychology and management, Scott makes a case for doing more with less, what he calls stretching with what you have -- and it is a far cry from being cheap or refusing ever to spend. In this interview, we talk about: How waiting for the perfect tool gives us an excuse to delay working on our goals Why chasing after resources can cause us to get caught up in destructive comparisons Looking beyond the conventional uses for a particular resource and why that matters How reflecting on scarcity can help us get more out of the resources we already have How a mindset and culture of ownership lets us solve problems more creatively How stretching with the resources we have is a skill we can teach and learn How a culture of belief in people to solve problems creatively makes all the difference Why stretching is a far cry from being cheap and more about being frugal Why more expertise, knowledge, and practice does not equal greater problem solving How we approach problems more narrowly when we look only for expertise How and why outsiders bring a fresh perspective to problem solving Ways we can cultivate an outsider perspective in ourselves How, when we overplan, we count on a world that may or may not exist Why, in turbulent environments, successful organizations are both fast and accurate The power of running lots of small experiments to learn How we can leap without looking by doing and gathering data without learning from it How sticking to our plans at any cost can work against our own best interests The creativity the comes from unthinkable combinations How stretching makes a difference in how we live our lives Episode Links @ScottSonenshein http://www.scottsonenshein.com/ Not Impossible by Mick Ebeling Ron Johnson 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!

Research shows that happiness is elusive. So how can we achieve a deeper, longer lasting sense of joy? Emily Esfahani Smith, author of the book, The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life that Matters, studies the powerful distinction between meaning and happiness and why it matters. An editor at the Hoover Institution, a policy think tank at Stanford University, and a columnist for The New Criterion, her writing  has also been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and the New York Times. Her research reveals four pillars, or themes, associated with meaning. The stronger these pillars are in our lives, the more meaningful our lives will be. In this interview, we talk about: Why we should strive for meaning over happiness How meaning helps us think longer term The fact that meaning helps us connect to something larger than ourselves The four themes of meaning -- belonging, purpose, storytelling, and transcendence Why belonging is the most important pillar of meaning How belonging helps us see how we matter, helps us feel valued, respected, cared for Why purpose is all about what we can contribute to others How the story we tell about our lives is a way of crafting our identities How transcendence helps us connect to something larger than ourselves How we can help each other have a healthy sense of belonging at work through the social cues that we send, like making eye contact and smiling How purpose and belonging overlap when we become more focused on service Why we need to act on our talents and strengths to recognize our purpose Narrative identity arises from the stories we tell about our lives and our experiences We have agency in shaping the story of our lives in ways that help us move forward Paying attention to our current future selves - who we want to become How astronauts rethink their values and their ambitions as a result awe experiences What growing up in a Sufi household taught Emily about meaning vs happiness Episode Links @EmEsfahaniSmith http://emilyesfahanismith.com/ The New Criterion The Hoover Institution Pursuing Pleasure or Virtue by Veronika Huta and Richard M. Ryan Shawn Achor The Gratitude Diaries by Janice Kaplan Carlos Eire Jeffrey S. Ashby Sufism Rumi Whirling Dervish 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!

When we get angry or excited, our emotions can seem automatic. But are they? For decades, scientists have described these feelings as hardwired, beyond our control, and associated with certain parts of the brain. But recent breakthroughs in neuroscience and psychology are upending this classical view, with revolutionary implications for how we understand ourselves and the world. In her book, How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, Lisa Feldman Barrett, a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, helps us rethink what it means to be human, with repercussions for parenting, our legal system, and even our health. Lisa received an NIH Directors Pioneer Award for her groundbreaking research on emotion in the brain and has been studying human emotion for over 20 years. In this interview, we talk about: The fact that our emotions are not hardwired but are made by our brains as we need them Old, inaccurate ways of thinking about emotions and the brain, like emotions as associated with specific parts of the brain How variety is the norm when it comes to expressing and feeling emotions How having emotional granularity helps us feel, express, and understand our own and others emotions more deeply The fact that our brains are not reacting but rather are predicting and constantly guessing what will happen next based on past experiences How the predictions our brains make, based on past experience, yield the thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and beliefs we hold and feel How the brain of a baby is awaiting instructions for how to wire itself by capturing experiences it can draw on in the future How baby brains look very different from adult brains because they have not yet had the experiences an adult has had How our present and future selves are conjured from our past The fact that our emotions are not universal or identical by have variations and shades based on the situation How we actually have not one anger but many angers and happinesses and so on Why we must have knowledge of an emotion in order to experience it How the easiest way to gain knowledge of an emotion is through emotion words How an extensive emotion vocabulary benefits us socially and academically and helps us see varied emotions in other people, gives us greater empathy The fact that we can combine past experiences in brand new ways to create new knowledge if we have not yet had those actual experiences The fact that emotions are abstract concepts rather than physical properties and that they can guide us toward a particular goal of say using anger to overcome an obstacle If a tree falls in a forest and no human is there does it make a sound? No! If we have no concept of a tree then we would not hear the sound of it falling in a forest. Why we cannot understand unfamiliar languages or music How our brain is constantly anticipating sights, sounds, tastes and taking in information from the world and our bodies based on past experience How granularity in color perception is similar to what it means to have emotional granularity Why staying physically healthy is tied to being emotionally healthy How awe experiences help us gain perspective and regulate our physical and emotional health How curating awe experiences daily -- like walking outside, reading something new, taking in nature -- helps make our immediate problems seem smaller and less worrisome How the physical health of our bodies is intricately connected to the emotional health of our minds How many gun laws work against what we now know about our predicting brains the the ways past experiences taint our beliefs and what we see and how we act How understanding how our emotions are made helps us see that we are more in control and empowered than we may think to create the life we want to have How we are the architects of our own experience Episode Links @LFeldmanBarrett http://lisafeldmanbarrett.com The Memory Illusion by Julia Shaw 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!

Do successful people possess talents that we lack? Or do they just do things that scare the rest of us? Andy Molinsky wants to help us embrace difficult challenges that can lead to growth. He is the author of the book, Reach: A New Strategy to Help You Step Outside Your Comfort Zone, Rise to the Challenge, and Build Confidence, and a Professor of Psychology and Organizational Behavior at Brandeis International Business School. Andy has spent his career studying how people learn to have difficult conversations, take on new roles, overcome shyness, and achieve the success they crave. He often writes on this topic for Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, Fast Company, The Economist and The Financial Times. In this interview, we talk about: Concrete steps you can take to step outside your comfort zone The connections Andy made between what immigrants face and what we all face when we enter a new, challenging situation How so much of learning new things and taking on new, stimulating challenges is about stepping outside our comfort zones What we gain by stepping outside our comfort zones Why it is about everyday acts of courage, like making smalltalk with supervisors, speaking up at meetings, connecting with someone who holds a different point of view How reaching helps us grow and advance in our lives and jobs to take on new roles, achieve goals and dreams, and help others The techniques we use to avoid reaching, like playing the avoidance game The excuses we make when we try to avoid reaching and how they harm us How perfectionists can avoid reaching The important role scaffolding plays as we take on new challenges and opportunities How we can customize or personalize aspects of a situation to feel more empowered The props, behaviors, costumes, and poses we can employ when we reach How fear is about trying to predict the future rather than living in the present How reaching is so often a process of self discovery The epiphanies we have when we reach -- easier than we thought and better than we imagined we would be How a friend or colleague can remind us of how well we did the last time we reached in this way Why sticking with it when things get hard means all the difference How we can build small wins into our plan to help us gain perspective and resilience Why reaching is really about learning, not failure Why it is all about adopting a learning orientation How keeping a diary can help us track our learning journey Why reaching is about much more than taking a leap -- it includes planning, practicing, trying out tools and techniques The fact that we are not alone when we feel uncomfortable reaching -- most of us feel this way How so many of us feel like imposters when we reach Links to Topics Mentioned in this Podcast @AndyMolinsky www.andymolinsky.com Global Dexterity by Andy Molinsky Emotional Agility by Susan David Lev Vygotsky Carol Dweck 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!

Leaders face an onslaught of new challenges that demand increasingly innovative solutions. Yet their approaches to finding them often get stuck in either blue-sky brainstorming or bottom-line decision making. Instead, leaders need a path that blends these two approaches -- a middle road that engages not only the minds of their teams, but also their hearts. To address these challenges, Lisa Kay Solomon co-authored the book, Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations that Accelerate Change. Lisa is an innovation, leadership, and design expert and Principal Faculty and Managing Director of Transformational Practices at Singularity University. Her writing has been featured in BusinessWeek, the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. In this interview, we talk about: Why we need to bring the human side -- our hearts and minds -- to strategic conversations How designing strategic conversations is an important leadership skill How strategic conversations differ from brainstorming and decision making Why strategic conversations are about more than getting the right answer Why these kinds of conversations are about the future of our organizations, of challenging the status quo, and of multiple perspectives, whether that involves new products and services, entry into new geographic regions, new business models, or new ways of staffing How strategic conversations can help us build understanding and help us see what success looks like The power of staying in the exploration space, staying expansive in our thinking Why these conversations are about mindsets, emotions, new ways of thinking, and new possibilities versus logic, right over wrong, or defending particular points of view Why strategic conversations require leaders to develop greater self-awareness and an understanding of their biases Why strategy is emotional How our education and schooling tees us up to think of strategic planning as all about the correct, numeric answer The important role design thinking, empathy, and supposed soft skills play in strategic conversations Why designing strategic conversations is a craft, not a crapshoot The importance of engaging multiple perspectives rather than just identifying participants -- paying attention to diverse ages, people outside the organization, visualizations, etc Why we should prepare participants before bringing them together, so that we set them up for success How background readings, information on who else will be in the room, meeting goals, etc, can help participants do their best work Why we want to design backwards when bringing people together for strategic conversations The importance of asking what participants will be thinking or saying to friends before, during, and after strategic planning meetings Why framing the issue of the strategic conversation is so important and so challenging How framing the issue is like providing the picture on the puzzle box because it is about setting the parameters How we can reframe discussions of market competitors by asking who is delivering value in new ways to our customers Why a school considering adding a high school asked should we do it versus can we do it Why leaders need to get comfortable bringing emotion into the room How setting the agenda is about making it an experience, getting people invested, and engaging emotionally, rather than just about getting things done Why we should value discussing our fears, what we care about, and what makes us nervous about the issues we are discussing Addressing the yeah but of long-term vs short-term thinking and planning Being able to speak to the reality of organizational politics and turf wars Having empathy for knowing how to engage with one another in these ways -- with visualizations, storytelling, conversations, and new ways of thinking Recognizing that strategic thinking can be learned and that it is a set of skills we are not taught and that probably did not get us to where we are in leadership The value of helping employees understand the purpose and intention of the organization The fact that every day is an opportunity to ask ourselves what we can learn, how we can stretch, and what is possible Links to Topics Mentioned in this Podcast @lisakaysolomon Pierre Wack Simply Brilliant by William C. Taylor The Nueva School Chris Ertel Singularity University California College of the Arts and its MBA in Design Strategy Design a Better Business by Lisa Kay Solomon 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!

How can we stay on top of changes that are not only getting faster, but more complex? We need strategies to take advantage of breakthroughs in fields as diverse as data mining, artificial intelligence and machine learning, since they are changing the ways we work, research, and live. To navigate this change, Joi Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab and author of Whiplash, shares insights from research at the Lab and offers us nine strategies for surviving our faster future. In this interview, he does a deep dive on creative problem solving, teams, diversity, and learning. He talks about: How the Media Lab got started and the current focus of its work The importance of the white space between and beyond disciplines How the Media Lab has shifted from operating as a container to operating as a node How neuroscientist Ed Boyden embodies the multi-disciplinary approach of the Lab How pull over push problem solving is about finding and using the resources you need when you need them How the 2011 Japanese earthquake became a focal point for pull over push problem solving The power of diverse teams - and diverse tools - for creative problem solving The sweet spot of disagreement and diversity among productive teams When it comes to diversity, why we need to ask, are we looking to the other or just another? How innovative cybersecurity folks are designing systems that assume failure rather than seeking to avoid it and how this is about resilience over strength Why we need to think about the interaction among objects - the systems in which they operate - in order to innovate for greater success The role nuance and complexity play in thinking about open source How machine learning and artificial intelligence are impacting fields like cryptocurrency and genetic engineering The fact that policies and regulations are behind where machine learning and artificial intelligence are taking us Why lawyers need to learn more about tech and scientists need to learn more about ethical and legal issues Kevin Esvelt and his work at the Media Lab in genetic engineering and his focus on responsible ways of deploying these tools in conjunction with everyday citizens Why we cannot wait on ethicists and policymakers but must get scientists on board instead How our education system is the opposite of what robots and artificial intelligence are ensuring we need when it comes to creativity and innovation Why the Media Lab emphasizes the 4Ps of play, passion, projects, and peers and how that differs markedly from what U.S. schools are about Why our education system and our schools need to be as dynamic and open to change as the fields that will have the greatest impact on us and them How we might look to the ed system in Finland regarding assessment and project-based learning The value of the Montessori approach The value of looking at countries like India and others where they are experimenting with schools and learning The power of informal, interest-driven learning Why we should be spending more time on getting people engaged in their learning Why he believes learning is a social and cultural problem, not a tech problem, and why we need to create a culture of learning How he thought programming and coding would be more about mindset and creativity than employment Why he believes we need to nudge human-machine interactions in the right direction Episode Links @Joi https://joi.ito.com/ MIT Media Lab Jerome Wiesner Nicholas Negroponte Marvin Minsky Seymour Papert Muriel Cooper John Seely Brown Ed Boyden Optogenetics Just-in-time manufacturing The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly Scott E. Page Donella Meadows Reid Hoffman Kevin Esvelt and Rewriting the Code of Life CRISPR Mizuko Ito (Mimi Ito) and Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out 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!

Can extraordinary innovation happen in ordinary organizations? Yes, if you know how. In his latest book, Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways, Bill Taylor shines a spotlight on innovation in organizations such as banks, fast-food joints, and nonprofits. And he shares how they do it. Co-founder of Fast Company and bestselling author of the books, Practically Radical and Mavericks at Work, Bill has written for the NYTimes, the Guardian, and Harvard Business Review, and he blogs regularly for HBR. In this interview, he talks about: How Silicon Valley companies make up less than 10 percent of businesses How having a compelling lighthouse identity helps ordinary organizations stand out The 4 key elements of a lighthouse identity What it looks like when innovation meets the ordinary world of banking The fact that we want to do business with companies and brands that are fun Why being ordinary is not an option for every day organizations How an investor seeks out missionary over mercenary businesses The role teaching and psychology play in a fast-food standout What happens when leaders read and discuss books together Why an every day company requires its leaders to teach What it looks like when company expansion is driven by employee growth How big and rapid growth can decrease what makes a young organization so special The incredible role thought leadership plays in extraordinary organizations What Bill learned by spending a training day with employees from Quicken Loans How being bold, exciting and compelling in the marketplace requires we be that way in the workplace How the most successful organizations prioritize ideas and people Steps experts can take to see their work with fresh eyes What jazz can teach leaders about provocative competence What it takes to find our next ideas and why that is more important than ever How a wildly successful company prioritized learning to get unstuck Needing to ask: When is the last time you did something for the first time? Why we need to spend less time being interesting and more time being interested How being interested is about seeking out big ideas and small sources of inspiration Needing to ask: Am I learning as fast as the world is changing? Why the future is shaped by tough-minded optimists The importance of asking how to help more people benefit from the wealth of the few Episode Links @williamctaylor https://williamctaylor.com/ Metro Banks Willy Wonka John Doerr of KPKB Pals Sudden Service Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award The Art of Sun Tzu The Innovation Formula by Amantha Imber Quicken Loans and Dan Gilbert Rosanne Haggerty and Community Solutions MacArthur Fellows Program Robert Wennett WD-40 John W. Gardner 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! Thank you to Emmy-award-winning Creative Director Vanida Vae for designing the Curious Minds logo, and thank you to Rob Mancabelli for all of his production expertise! www.gayleallen.net LinkedIn @GAllenTC

Innovators often invent the future and some do so by rethinking the past. For example, innovative historical researchers not only help us understand what happened yesterday, they improve how we respond to those issues today. Ibram Kendi is one of those researchers. In his book, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, he uncovers the history of racist ideas in America. Winner of the 2016 National Book Award, his research reveals that racist policies fuel ignorance and hate, rather than the other way around. His findings challenge what many of us were taught to believe about racism in America today and the strategies we use to address it. Highlights from our conversation include: How racist ideas stem from racist policies that reinforce power structures History shows that 200+ years of educating and persuading away racism has been less impactful than eliminating racist policies How uplift suasion has worked against blacks by making them believe they are responsible for the racist ideas of others Why there is a very real mutual interest in working against racism, sexism, homophobia, and poverty to eliminate one and all of these isms How eliminating racist policies and disparities are key to eliminating racist ideas The fact that racist ideas connote racial hierarchy while anti-racist ideas connote racial equality How misleading statistics and unscientific approaches reinforce negative stereotypes around predominantly black neighborhoods How the academic achievement gap is a racist idea Three perspectives on our ongoing historical debate on race - segregationism, anti-racism, assimilation - and what they mean for blacks How W.E.B DuBois helped us recognize that black striving for suasion and uplift maintains false notions of black inferiority How Angela Davis taught us about the complexities of our identities in terms of gender, race, class, sex, age, etc How scientific racism served to reinforce notions of black inferiority How even after scientific racism was disproven by biologists and geneticists those in power wanted to fixate on any tiny percentage of difference to reinforce superiority How the debates we are having today about race are not new and are informed by a long history of racist policies in the US that allow those in power to argue that blacks are inferior How the US government sought to use deportation to evict freed slaves Episode Links @DrIbram http://www.ibram.org/ Jefferson Davis Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy ONeil How the Academic Achievement Gap is a Racist Idea by Ibram Kendi Cotton Mather Thomas Jefferson William Lloyd Garrison W. E. B. DuBois Double consciousness Angela Davis Intersectionality Bill Clinton Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald 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!

Employee engagement is at an all-time low, but why? Francesca Gino, an expert on employee engagement and productivity, advises that if we do only one thing to fix it, we should encourage our employees to stop conforming and be themselves. When she and members of her research team introduced small interventions that encouraged people to be more authentic, the results were dramatic. Francesca is a Professor at Harvard Business School and author of the recent Harvard Business Review article, Fostering Rebel Talent at Work. She has won numerous awards for her work in psychology and management, and her research has been featured in publications like The Economist, The New York Times, and Scientific American. She is also author of the book, Sidetracked. Highlights from our conversation include: Why being ourselves at work increases engagement, creativity, and productivity How authenticity at work increases employee engagement and retention How opportunities to reflect on our strengths and unique qualities as early as onboarding increase our engagement and desire to stay on Why engagement goes up when we ask employees to share strengths during onboarding Concrete ways to encourage new employees to add to organizational culture How reflecting on who we are increases happiness and engagement Simple ways we can be authentic at work without waiting for permission The importance of asking why we do things this way How an award-winning chef helps his employees be authentic at work How it takes courage to be authentic and why it breeds success How leaders can model non-conformity for their employees What leaders can say to encourage employees to voice dissent How leaders can make clear when conformity is the rule The one quality a high-powered search firm seeks in candidates above all others How curious people can be better decision makers and creatives Why asking people to read a variety of books may hold the key to fostering creativity How her own experience coming to the U.S. from Italy led her to the research she does That rebel talent is something we can learn to embrace and cultivate How leaders can start small to help their employees be themselves at work Episode Links @francescagino http://francescagino.com 360-degree feedback HBR The Conversational Firm by Catherine Turco Massimo Bottura and Osteria Francescana elBulli Mellody Hobson and Ariel Investment Egon Zehnder Pixar and Ed Catmull IDEO 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!

Self-driving cars are just around the corner. Are you ready? With the advent of machine learning and related tech, autonomous cars are more technologically mature than most of us think. Yet old-school policies and regulations are lagging behind, making it difficult for large scale adoption to take place. Essentially, driverless tech has become a people, rather than a technology, problem. To help us sort out the complicated landscape on our horizon, Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman wrote the book, Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead. Lipson, a roboticist at Columbia University who specializes in artificial intelligence and digital manufacturing, and Kurman, an expert on the impact of technology on the economy and our daily lives, lay out the advances in technology that got us here and the benefits and challenges that lie ahead. Highlights from our interview include: The staggering number of lives self-driving cars will save How the maturity of driverless tech has outpaced updates to policies and regulations How traditional models of car insurance do not hold up to what autonomous cars require How a safety standard comparing driverless tech to humans is key How driverless tech can reduce noise and idling pollution Ways parking spaces and garages can be repurposed with fewer cars on the road The fact that city planners are focusing on public transportation and neglecting driverless tech and its impact on transportation budgets The important safety challenge of an incremental versus an all-out shift to driverless tech How driverless tech is now able to out-perceive humans at the wheel The role DARPA played in advancing driverless accelerating driverless tech How a shift from rules-based to machine learning birthed driverless car tech How sensors and software feed information to driverless cars How a combination of sensors and software help driverless tech overcome individual vulnerabilities in tech How gaming software held the key to advancing driverless tech The role ImageNet played in advancing image perception needed for driverless cars The fact that deep learning includes machines learning what we may not have words for Why we need to be talking about the impact of driverless tech on jobs How driverless tech can reduce isolation and increase mobility for the elderly and visually impaired How networked driverless cars can amass thousands of lifetimes of experience very quickly as they learn from one another in ways humans cannot How the shift to self-driving cars is less about the tech and more about the human issues of policies and regulations How driverless tech will usher in new businesses we cannot even imagine or predict Episode Links Creative Machines Lab at Columbia University DARPA Grand Challenge The Grid by Gretchen Bakke Lidar GPUs ImageNet Deep learning Qualia 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!