The Counterintuitive Steps to High Achievement - How Metric-Tracking Prevents Innovation

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In order to make innovative progress in complex problems and achieve universal high achievement, we need to recognize and traverse through counterintuitive stepping stones. Traditional metrics fail to detect these stepping stones because they are not what we would expect. The complexity of the problem lies in not knowing the stepping stones, and if we already knew them, it wouldn't be a problem. To overcome this, we need to proliferate stepping stone candidates and tolerate the risk of some not working out. This is similar to investing in a portfolio of ideas where we cannot predict which ones will pay off. Having an accountability culture that only focuses on metrics prevents the proliferation of stepping stones and stifles innovation.

Artificial intelligence researcher and author Kenneth Stanley has argued that “as soon as you create an objective, you ruin your ability to reach it.” So what should you consider when thinking about your objectives, and what will set you up for success? On this episode Stanley discusses how to set the right objectives for your life, why we’re too tied to accomplishments, what role accountability plays in our education system, the value of peer review, why transformative innovations are always counter intuitive, and so much more. Stanley is the co–author of Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective, as well as the former Head of Core AI Research at Uber AI and the Open-Endedness Team Leader at OpenAI. He has also served as the Charles Millican Professor in Computer Science at University of Central Florida.

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