Unlearn

Snehal Kundalkar, Senior Director of Engineering at Reddit, grew up in a world of dualities. On the one hand she was taught that her place as a woman was between the kitchen and the kids, but on the other hand she was encouraged to embrace uncertainty to solve complex problems. She was naturally attracted to engineering and she channeled her anger at the injustice of her situation into creativity. She didn’t see herself in the expected role of home provider, so after completing her Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, she left her home country to pursue her Masters in the US. She longed to find the adventure she needed in her adopted country. Celebrating Failure After a little bit of success, failure feels unwelcome”. Don’t let that be you. Embrace it as a natural yin yang of the journey. It takes a lot of patience and grit, but you have to learn to expect and even embrace that some of your efforts will fail. Innovating, building things that have never been built before, is a highly unpredictable situation with loads of unknowns. What Snehal learned from her time at Apple was to break down your big vision into smaller sets: make small things that are almost as good as the big thing, then combine them together to build momentum. Failure is good information: it tells you what didn’t work. It's regrettable that our culture stigmatizes failure as bad instead of focusing on what you learned and how that’s going to help you move forward. Barry points out that in reality, you’ll never be able to predict the future, so you need to test the future: you need to fail as much and as quickly as possible to learn what works and what doesn't. Make Decisions Quickly. It’s natural to be scared when making decisions in a high-stakes, uncertain environment, but the trick is to make decisions fast and stick to them. If your strategy doesn't work, then make another decision fast. Soon enough you'll have a successful process. Encourage all members of the team to come up with their best solution within a limited timeframe. Bring them all to the table and choose the best idea/solution. Unlearning Is Not Forgetting Barry reminds us that unlearning does not mean forgetting everything you know. Your experience stays with you but you recognize that the behaviors that work in one context may not work in another. This is what Snehal experienced when she transitioned from the Apple ecosystem which she knew, into Reddit whose culture was totally different. At the same time, however, she was able to successfully introduce some of the behaviors she learned at Apple. A leader needs to be flexible when introducing a new culture. You may have big aspirations, but you can’t force culture, you have to be patient. Consider your previous knowledge and experience as tools in your toolbox: you don't necessarily have to use all of them at the same time, just the ones that work in your present context. This is what learning and unlearning means to Barry: helping people adapt to their particular context and find the right methods to achieve their desired outcomes. What’s Next for Snehal? Role models like her 71-year-old father, who recently completed his degree in music, inspire Snehal’s unlearning journey. She says that no one is born great, you continuously develop your skills into greatness. She's excited about being part of Reddit’s foray into conversation AI, as well as the company’s expansion into new international markets. Snehal Kundalkar on: LinkedIn, Medium

Creativity can come in a variety of forms, and for Jake Knapp, author of Sprint and Make Time, it was a mixture of painting, artistry and old school programming. Jake finds creative satisfaction in trying to figure out how to design, optimize and improve everything from the default settings in his own life, to how people run meetings and design products. Sometimes, having an outsider’s view can be quite useful. What’s holding us back? We’ve all had times when we feel like we haven’t gotten enough done, or we haven’t gotten done the one thing that would have helped us make real progress. Jake talks about how experiencing moments of intensity helped him understand and prioritize the outcomes from his life he really wanted. Looking at and thinking about the outcomes he wants, and then gathering data that allows him to review his behavior in light of these outcomes is one of the keys to Jake’s success – and perhaps one that can be replicated, even by people who don’t see the world as he does—as code. Listen from 6:15 Failure actually… sucks. You’d think that tech startup founders are handed a script before being interviewed, outlining how they should mention that they absolutely love failure. It doesn’t bother them in the slightest. Most of us don’t feel quite that way about it. Unlike the popular ideology would have you believe – screwing something up sucks. It hurts, it’s embarrassing, it impacts other people and it can feel terrible. The thing to do with failure isn't to pretend you like it, but to actively and intentionally learn from it as part of the coping process. Listen from 12:00 Principles have to be learned to be unlearned. There are certain assumptions we make when we start to gain experience and expertise in our fields, especially when we’re leaders. One of the most critical things Jake had to learn was that other people’s ideas and contributions were as likely to be the best ones as his own. The idea of not selling or pitching your idea to your team goes against most of what we’ve been taught about working in companies. It's a skill set that can be totally unrelated to the problem you’re trying to solve, and it’s better for the best idea to win, not the loudest or most popular person. Jake shares a story about the development of what would eventually become Google Hangouts – and what it taught him about collaboration. Listen from 21:00  The value of the supporting the Decider role. There are people whose job it is to come into a situation and make the call—the deciders. It’s important to have some empathy for that role – even though it may not result in the decisions you personally would make. You can support leaders and decision-makers by giving them the tools and resources they need to make the best possible decision. It’s not always a democracy, but if you do the groundwork to minimize the possibilities of bad options, then great things can happen. Listen from 28:45 What’s next for Jake? Something helping Jake learn and unlearn right now is writing a science fiction novel. He’s not sure when it will be finished, but creating it and using the process he’s refined in other areas of his life, gathering and analyzing data to help optimize for outcomes, is playing a role in how he writes. Listen from 33:00

You always want to look back on your life and say that your path from point A to point B was linear. It almost never really is. Today’s guest on the Unlearn Podcast is Mark Graban, author of Lean Hospitals and Measures of Success, who started out as an engineer for General Motors. It’s been quite a journey. Today, he and Barry O’Reilly will be talking about how that kind of a shift can happen, and what he learned and unlearned along the way. Clashes of Culture You might not think that the worlds of manufacturing and healthcare have much in common, but having worked in both, Mark thinks they have plenty in common - especially when it comes to culture. People aren’t machines, but the culture of many hospitals and clinics echoes what you’ll find on the factory floor - especially in institutions that haven’t done much to modernize the way they manage and lead people. Barry points out that there are similarities in tech as well: every industry thinks it’s unique, but it’s all human systems and people working together to drive outcomes.  Unlearning Your Whole Career When you’ve invested years or decades into a career, you often feel like you need to stay in it. Having made a major career transition, Mark knows that doing so allows you to bring fresh insight into an organization that may not be expecting it, and when you’re in a wholly new environment, you’re in a better position to avoid the curse of expertise. Looking back, Mark wishes he’d unlearned top-down style management earlier - the benefits of engaging people in change are so many and so valuable.   Seeking and Finding Clarity Before you start optimizing for, or worse, applying a solution, you have to be exceptionally clear on what the problem really is, and what outcome you want to achieve. Mark and Barry discuss the ways this can manifest in different kinds of organizations, and the framework for problem-solving that Mark uses to help healthcare providers make changes to their operations with input from people working at all levels. The process is one that listeners will be familiar with: unlearn, re-learn and breakthrough!   The Courage to Change It’s easy to tell when something isn’t right, but it's harder to create a moment where people are open to truly unlearning and making changes. Mark notes that looking outside of your area of expertise takes a fair amount of courage - but many people are highly skilled in their specific profession and not in the other areas of running a business or managing a team. This is often problematic because when we’re faced with things we don’t know, or feel scared and threatened - our higher-order brains shut down. There is never going to be a ‘perfect’ time for a major change, so you might as well just get started.  What are the Top 3 Reasons to Do This? Management from the top-down usually doesn’t usually provide the results companies are looking for. It’s much more effective to lead as if you had no authority - by seeking input and finding out what makes people tick, and why they think the way they do. Something that Mark had to unlearn over the course of his career was that you can’t just tell people what to do, even if you’re wildly excited about helping them. Change has to be based on feedback and engagement with the people it affects. Mark has some insights on what makes people more open and receptive to change and leaves us with the thought that it’s okay to struggle with change. It doesn’t make you a bad person or a bad manager - it’s just something to figure out.  Resources Lean Hospitals  Measures of Success

Entrepreneurs tend to talk about the success, the fun and excitement of running a company. Fewer talk about struggles. Today, on the Unlearn Podcast, Barry O’Reilly talks to Teresa Torres, Product Discovery Coach at Product Talk. They get into what’s hard about the path to success, and at the end of the day, what really matters. No One Has All The Answers Like many young CEOs and founders, Teresa found herself working with people who were older, more experienced, and with access to more resources than she did as a leader. She shares a key unlearn moment about discovering that no one really has all the answers - and how that gave her the confidence to start trying things to see what worked. Barry points out that trying is a learned behavior, and Teresa discusses how education and experience in design-thinking instilled in her the idea that your first attempt won’t always work: iteration is the key to achieving your goals. A Process for Decision-Making Very little about being a CEO is black and white - and coming from an environment where situations were more granular was a challenge for Teresa. She says sales is a lot like product development and gives us some insight on the similarities, and how she brought an outcome-based focus into her work as a product leader and later as a CEO. Every process has parts, and those parts can be modeled, measured and optimized. Our Defaults Can Be Unhelpful When people are working under stress, they tend to revert to the skills, strategies, and habits that they are the best at - it feels good, and more importantly, it feels productive. Barry and Teresa talk about how this tendency can actually work against people whose roles are less about producing, and more about helping other people produce, or taking a bigger picture view of the growth and direction of a company. This is especially challenging when every situation feels extremely high stakes. Letting Other People Help You Teresa recalls the scenario her company was navigating through during the economic downturn, and how critical it was to let her team play to their own strengths and be responsible for their outcomes - and importantly, create a space for them to be transparent with her about her work and responsibilities. During a particularly fraught time, Teresa wasn’t going to make payroll and ended up offering team members the option to become owners in the company. This had several beneficial outcomes and ended up giving her employees a unique learning experience, as well as company stock.   Defining Success on Multiple Levels After being a CEO, Teresa had to decide what came next. She experimented with different projects and determined that what she wanted to tackle was the waste of time and talent endemic in many startups, founding a new company to do so—Product Talk. Barry brings up how, as a solopreneur, it can be difficult to handle loss-aversion, and constantly feeling like you have to take every opportunity that comes along. Teresa’s answer to this is to try and make sure you have only awesome options to choose from and shares some examples of how she’s made that a part of her working life. What Feels Fun That Helps? Teresa used what she calls a divergent-convergent process to try many different options to help weed out what she didn’t want to do. Barry and she discuss how this applies to both business and to life, and why embracing an abundance mindset can help you identify and create many amazing options for yourself—therefore improving the options you end up selecting to succeed. Resources: Product Talk| LinkedIn

CEO School and The Future of Work with Stephane Kasriel In this episode of the Unlearn Podcast, Barry O'Reilly speaks with Stephane Kasriel, the CEO of Upwork—the world’s largest freelancing platform where businesses and independent professionals connect and collaborate remotely. Upwork is driving the future of work conversation, and discovering what it really means along the way. Creating Capability To Continuously Change Stephane feels one of the most exciting aspects of the tech industry is how quickly it changes— a key competency he believes people must develop is adapting to that change, learning continuously, and unlearning what is no longer useful. He talks through two specific changes Upwork has experienced: the switch from traditional waterfall development to remote agile teams, and sourcing and clarifying Upwork’s values from within. Secrets To Distributed Agility Several years ago, no one believed that agile could work in teams that weren’t co-located, but Upwork—along with other companies like GitHub and Automatic—has demonstrated it can. It takes an open mind, strong culture of feedback and honest personal evaluation to understand if working remotely is a fit for you. Making this clear during hiring is crucial. Not everyone will be passionate about or motivated to work in a distributed manner—and that’s okay. It’s better to discover it as quickly as possible because it means the people who join your organization are aligned with the opportunities and affordances of distributed work. They’re happier, more productive and stay longer. Challenges Transiting To The Top Transitioning from one role to another can be challenging, but the transition to CEO is unique. There’s no CEO school. Stephane shares how he found his way by applying many of the strategies that made him successful as a product and engineering leader. Actively learning from the people around him—wherever they are in the hierarchy—helped guide this approach to lead the company forward. In the tech industry, where so many founders are CEOs, knowing where to step up and step back is key in creating a healthy culture within leadership teams. Stephane shows how he’s tried to let the smart people bring their skills to bear. Unlearning At The Global Level There are a handful of things reshaping the economy: automation technologies, the acceleration of the rate of technological change and innovation, and the geographic mismatch between where jobs are being lost and where they’re being created. Stephane talks about how these forces are causing changes in the labor market and how you need to approach learning to stay current. It’s the people who can be in the habit of doing new things, and consistently adding new small skills who are ultimately going to be successful. Stephane adds that if we can’t embrace change, we’re doomed. We’re part of the future that’s coming; we can be a part of making it happen, or let it happen to us. The Power of Remote Work Upwork is focused on making remote work possible, and that’s not just about profitability. When the cost of living becomes unbearable in the big tech centers, but other towns are dying for a lack of good jobs—the best solution can’t be for everyone to move to expensive cities. Responsible tech leaders need to abandon the idea of having their entire workforce in a single building in a big city. Many jobs do not need to be on-site, and they shouldn’t be. Society as a whole will be better when we start making growth and success inclusive of more people. It’s not a good outcome for the world to have a huge part of the population unemployed or underemployed. One of our most precious resources is the human mind, and we shouldn’t be wasting it.

Barry O’Reilly has had many mentors over the years, and among them, Mary and Tom Poppendieck have been some of the most inspirational. In today’s conversation, they talk about challenges the Agile community faces, debunk the myths of scaling agility, and finally, Mary and Tom reveal how they have stayed relevant for decades as they continue to coach, mentor, and help others. About Mary and Tom Neither Mary nor Tom started with software. Mary was an engineer who worked with problems that had life and death ramifications, and Tom was a physics teacher whose students contact him decades later to say ‘thank you - you made a big difference.’ They’ve written many of the seminal books and contributed much to the Lean and Agile movement and have seen fads and trends come and go. Barry asks them what has been their key insights over the years. When did you discover agile? Agile developed as a reaction to what was happening in the software industry in the late 1990s. Agile has to grow up, to no longer be reactionary when bad things happen, but to determine how to create GOOD software engineering from the start. She draws on her experience as a traditional engineer and shares a lesson about how proxies between engineers and people with problems are a bad idea. It’s a matter of trusting professional judgment. Tom observes that, too often, Agile tries to solve problems with processes. But the problem isn’t usually the process; it’s architectural. He talks about the different structures, from software to the leadership teams, that can lead to dysfunctional situations. If you want to solve a problem, you need to fix the structure. How Agile Can Grow There’s no simple answer to this, Mary points out because it depends on where you’re at. You can understand all the fundamental steps needed but if your team isn’t well-integrated, it will get you nowhere. She shares an experience with a company who had accepted a big contract they weren’t ready for. Mary recommended the ‘sync and stabilize' method and taught them how to use it. It didn’t just save their contract; it changed how they looked at their whole company. Tom highlights the non-technology component of software, the ‘wetware,’ or what happens with people. He points out that money isn’t the issue; it’s the shortage of passionate, creative people - especially in isolated IT departments that are treated as cost centers. Tom believes you should give them challenging problems and get out of their way. Teams Tailored to Problems Mary loves to talk about how organizations such as AWS and T-Mobile handle their organizational structure and customers. When there is a customer problem, a team is brought together to solve it and integrate it into the rest of the services so everything works. That team is given a lot of autonomy, including trading immediate profits for better customer experience AND have accountability to ensure they are also adhering to operational excellence and profitability of their service. Ultimately, better customer experiences drive bigger profits. Tom makes an important point: scaling isn’t possible after a certain point. At some point, complexity dominates future gains and wipes them out, so you have to descale. In other words, you have to do things in ‘little chunks’ that are independent and don’t require strict coordination. Tom uses the example of a city and how it functions. Final Thoughts Part of what helps Tom and Mary stay current is that they are truly agile. Mary points out that she’s never seen anything in technology last two decades and remain current. Agile has been around for about that long, but has it been changing and adapting? Resources https://twitter.com/mpoppendieck http://www.poppendieck.com/

Joe Norena is the Managing Director at HSBC and the Global Markets Americas COO. From corporations to startups to corporate digital, his experience has run the gamut of organization. Joe has led a life of unlearning, and every new thing he learned he has applied to the next situation. In this episode, Joe and Barry talk about the pivotal moments in his career that brought him where he is today. Unlearning Starts Early... From the beginning of his life, Joe has been surrounded by people who modeled the type of behavior that would shape his success. His father, an immigrant who didn’t speak the language, began work in the mailroom of Citibank and retired as the Vice President. His mother always encouraged him to ‘just go and try it.’ Joe shares a funny story about nearly drowning when he tried out for the swim team in grade school. ...And Continues Through Life During his time at Citibank, Joe continued to have powerful role models. First among them was Michael, a senior trade manager. Michael was willing to sit down with the most junior of employees - even graduates - and open his mind to new ways of thinking, doing things, and techniques. He was a true ‘unlearner’ who modeled that behavior for everyone around him. Joe’s time at Bridgewater taught him another very important lesson: having a voice based on principles rather than the desire to be right. Understanding that success might be revealed through another lens, or way of thinking, helps a company grow and remain sustainable. The debate then becomes about what the real issue or problem is, and what is the right thing to do. Unlearning Moments You need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable; it’s the hallmark of a life-long unlearner. Joe experienced this several times during his career. First among those was the huge mind-shift he had to make when moving from being a trader to a COO. A trader knows whether he was an asset to the company at the end of the day; he only needed to look at profit/loss. But when Joe became COO, it wasn’t that obvious. It took 3-6 months before he knew if he was succeeding or not. The second unlearning experience for Joe was at the hedge fund startup. Every day he had to deal with and make decisions about situations he had no experience in. He was also used to having many people to help him, but in the startup, he only had himself. In the end, they had to close the startup, but Joe brought all the new learning with him. Joe’s time at the startup taught him about the need for lean startup principles, and he was able to apply that learning at HSBC. In effect, while leading a team of 30 people on a limited budget Joe looked at an experiment as being successful if it failed because he learned something. From those ‘failures’ came some of the greatest successes. Organizational Learning Learning comes from the bottom up, but if you don’t have support from the top, it becomes very difficult. The message from the top should be ‘we want to change, we want to try this out, and it’s okay.’ This doesn’t mean that C Suite managers need to know exactly how the change will occur or be a daily part of it; the tone they set will be the change maker or breaker. A Principle for Business In any decision that you make, it has to be about building a sustainable business model, which means it goes far beyond your own career. Joe admits it’s not easy, especially when you don’t know if you’re making the right decision for the future. He likens it to raising children. Another is that if you don’t speak, you lose an opportunity for teaching and learning. Joe shares how his office is set up to mirror that belief. Resources LinkedIn

Have you ever felt boxed in based on your job description? Join us today as Katri Harra-Salonen, the Chief Digital Officer of Finnair Oyj, shares what she’s learned and unlearned throughout her career of mixing industries, mixing roles, and being comfortable with being uncomfortable. The Un-comfort Zone: By design, Katri actively puts herself in situations where she has to grow, and calls this being in the Un-comfort Zone. When you put yourself in a place that challenges you, you become energized, you’re able to be curious and explore, and you learn new things, not just about the situation, but about yourself as well. Katri has gone from the consultancy world into the airline world, which has meant a lot of discomfort, learning, and unlearning. But there is so much that the two worlds - consultancy and airline - can learn from the other, so she believes in building bridges between different kinds of companies and different kinds of thinking. That’s where creativity stems from. Inspiration: Working with other countries is strategic. But for Katri, there are intangible benefits as well. For example, they work with a lot of exciting Asian companies, which gives them insight into how mobile services are developing, what’s happening in the digital world, and how they can possibly incorporate this into a European country. For example, many cities in Asia are cashless societies, whereas Europe has been slow to adapt to digital money. But studying Asia, you can see how people behave and what it means, and insights like these can help embrace development. Best of both worlds: Katri is a third-generation engineer, and at one point in her career, she worked for a design company. How did she bring those two worlds together? Don’t put people in boxes. “Boxes are for dead people.” You need to be able to change perspectives in order to be creative, so don’t limit yourself to the box that’s been given to you. Just because you’re an engineer by profession, that’s not all you are and all you can do. Thinking you’re locked in does nothing to help you move forward. Katri believes in lifelong learning and unlearning. You want that exchange of disciplines and perspectives. Collaboration and building bridges: Katri shares about an experiment they conducted where the employees themselves designed their office space instead of hiring a design firm. It was done in five batches, and the teams were a mix of people from different departments. People collaborated, learned about how different teams work, and were learning and unlearning at the same time. Structures: Structure follows strategy. And when the strategy changes — as it does, because it needs to be agile — it’s so important that the structures are alive as well. Be aware of the structures you create, and think of them when you think of serving your talent best. For example: how can you build collaboration into the structure of your organization? Many departments are siloed from one another, but to innovate and move things forward, people need to be able to work together across disciplines. The future of technology: Technology is everywhere, and Katri is looking forward to it solving the big issues today. What do we need to do so we can create a setting where technology is working for the benefit of the world? Resources: Katri Harra-Salonen (LinkedIn)| https://twitter.com/KinStockholm

How do you figure out what works? On this episode, we have Gibson Biddle, a speaker, advisor, and teacher who is the former Vice President of Product Management at Netflix. He’s been involved with many startup companies to help them develop products, and today we’re talking about consumer science, metrics, and experimenting our way through work and life. Data and consumer science: “I don’t care what they said, I don’t care what it looks like, I just want to see the data.” These were a former boss’s words to Gibson and a moment of great insight for him. Consumer science is about forming hypotheses quickly, putting them into A/B tests to see which ones move the metrics, and then create a system where you can test and discover what consumers love. And though he worked for people who said they didn’t care what a focus group said (“launch it, get it out there, and see if it moves the metrics or not”), speaking to people was still important for Gibson because it gave him great ideas. It kept the voice of the customer top of mind when he generated new hypotheses. Top line metrics and proxy metrics: Being able to measure whether you’re successful are critical. At Netflix, Gibson’s top line metric was to improve retention. But the key thing is to also develop proxy metrics to help you achieve your top line metric. One of their proxy metrics was the percentage of members who watched at least 15 minutes in a month. These proxy metrics work on a local level to impact your top line metric and define success. They also help build in a system of accountability — that ties in with freedom and responsibility — for people on the front lines. Context not control: Inventing the future is really hard, and to build and teams that can figure things out for themselves, the idea is context, not control. Success relies on testing and the willingness to experiment with ideas to discover what works. Strategy meetings would discuss hypotheses to hit proxy metrics, and while there is a certain discipline to all that, it wasn’t about telling people what to do. Things to think about: One of the most effective tactics Gibson has for learning new things is to teach. For years, he would teach a topic of the week on Friday mornings, and having to codify his thoughts and share them with others was an amazing way for him to learn. Another nugget: building a career is a lot like building a product. You have theories, hypotheses, and metrics, and you can test and learn and experiment your way to discover what works. Gibson also has a personal Board of Directors: a collection of peers, people he’s worked with, and mentors, who care about him and give him insight about the things he’s trying to explore — while being candid and giving him the hard truth when he needs it. “Treat me like I’m stupid” is one of Gibson’s catchprases. It’s simply daring to acknowledge that you’re at the beginning of your learning curve, and that there are no stupid questions. Resources Gibson Biddle (LinkedIn)

Kent Beck, creator of Extreme Programming and pioneer of Agile Manifesto, shares insights on unlearning, creating a safe work environment, and the power of small experiments. He discusses the importance of trying new experiences, rearranging furniture to foster collaboration, and using Twitter for idea testing. Beck also talks about leveraging technology for customer feedback, critiquing traditional decision-making methods, and embracing fast experimentation in programming to drive innovation.