Curious Minds at Work

By Gayle AllenBusiness Science Social Sciences Arts Books Management

Curious Minds at Work episodes

June 20, 2016 CM 041: Liz Wiseman on Why Learning Beats Knowing
Do you fear becoming obsolete? Liz Wiseman offers a solution. Rather than run from challenging roles, seek them out. In fact, in a world where 85 percent of your knowledge could be irrelevant in as little as 5 years, this strategy may be the key to maintaining and advancing a successful career.
Liz is the bestselling author of Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work. She helps us see how taking on a new challenge, especially when it feels like a stretch, gives us the best chance of staying relevant in an ever-changing world. She also points out the immense value of rookies for our organizations, particularly in leadership and mentoring roles traditionally reserved for more experienced workers.
A frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Inc. and Time, Liz has been named one of the top 10 leadership thinkers in the world, and her firm has worked with organizations like Apple, Disney, eBay and Google.
In this conversation, we talk about:
Why what we know is less important than how fast we can learn
Why we should take jobs that we are not qualified for
How experience may get in the way of what we most need to learn
How experience can actually decrease our relevance and performance over time
How choosing jobs that involve inquiry and discovery will keep us relevant
Why one of the most valuable aspects of learning something new is the struggle involved
Why rookies bring in 5 times the expertise of experts
Why we need to watch out for mediocre thinking to stay relevant
The link between surfing with the rookies and testing your assumptions
What effective reverse mentoring looks like
Why the word leadership may not mean what you think
Anti-perfectionism and the power of keeping things small
Liz is curious about what distinguishes between a rookie and a novice with rookie smarts. She wonders why some people persist while others give up. She is equally curious about why so many senior leaders look and feel so broken and what we can do about it.
Episode Links
@LizWiseman
The Wiseman Group
Oracle and Oracle University and Larry Ellison
Fortran
Growth Mindset and Carol Dweck
Stretch by Karie Willyerd
Herminia Ibarra and Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader
Bob Hurley of Hurley International
Wayne Bartholomew
C K Prahalad of the University of Michigan
Pareto Principle
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!
42 min
June 13, 2016 CM 040: Therese Huston Shatters Myths About Women Leaders
When it comes to risk, confidence, and stress, who handles them better, men or women? Believe it or not, just asking this question shows we have a lot to learn. Turns out it is not about better, but about different. And while conventional wisdom often has us thinking women are indecisive, risk averse, and fragile, those perceptions are far from what research reveals.
In her groundbreaking book, How Women Decide: What Is True, What Is Not, and What Strategies Spark the Best choices, Therese Huston, founding Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning at Seattle University, clues us in. Armed with a doctorate in cognitive psychology from Carnegie Mellon, she is a contributing writer for The New York Times and Harvard Business Review.
Therese pinpoints what the research reveals around perceptions of women. Perhaps even more importantly, she discusses several research-based strategies for overcoming these misperceptions.
In this conversation, we talk about:
How we misunderstand female decision making
The mistake parents make when dealing with daughters on the playground
The bias in the term risk averse and the term that should replace it
Two traits that make the top 10 list for men but not for women
Who pays a higher price for failure
The risks women take when they speak up
A dating app with unique features for women
Confidence as a dial we need to turn up or down, depending on the situation
Which gender has the more appropriate level of confidence
Two things women can do to overcome negative perceptions of self-promotion
How men and women differ when under pressure to make a crucial decision
Strategies to avoid being nervous before an important event
Why failure trumps regret
Episode Links
@ThereseHuston
Daniel Kahneman
The Honest Truth about Dishonesty by Dan Ariely
Chip and Dan Heath
Pew Research Center 2015 Study on What Makes a Good Leader
Barbara Morrongiello
What Women and Men Should Be by Deborah Prentice and Erica Carranza
Victoria Brescoll
We Are Way Harder on Women Who Make Bad Calls by Therese Huston
The Center for Advanced Hindsight
Siren dating app and CEO Susie Lee
OkCupid
Linda Babcock
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!
46 min
June 06, 2016 CM 039: Anders Ericsson on Peak Performance
If you are searching for your natural talents, think again. Award-winning psychologist, Anders Ericsson, is reshaping our conception of innate ability versus learned skills. Anders has spent decades unearthing the secrets of expertise, and his research shows that the experts sitting at the top of most fields do not have more innate ability than their peers, they have more time spent in guided practice.
Anders shares his fascinating findings in his book, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. Along the way, he corrects our misconceptions around 10,000 hours of practice, and helps us see how we can master just about any skill at any age. He also points out how important it will be to understand high performance as we change jobs and careers with increasing frequency.
In this conversation, we talk about:
The myth of the prodigy or naturally talented performer
Choosing a goal and pursuing it rather than waiting to find a particular gift or talent
The advantages for children when parents enjoy the skill they are teaching
How gaining expertise in one area helps us gain expertise in other areas
What high performers do that is different from the rest of us
Differences in our brains as we shift from amateur to expert
The difference between what experts and novices do with information
How hard it is to get good by yourself and why nothing beats an expert teacher
Anders plans to spend more time learning about the kind of concentration involved in deliberate practice. He hopes to develop ways for us to find the time and energy to engage in the kinds of training and to develop the kinds of habits needed to perform at the highest level.
Episode Links
Improvement in Memory Span by Pauline Martine and Samuel Fernberger (1929)
William G. Chase
The Knowledge London cab drivers test
Alexander Alekhine
Mental representations
Top Gun Project
Guitar Zero by Gary Marcus
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!
44 min
May 30, 2016 CM 038: Dan Ariely Shares the Truth about Dishonesty
We like to think that cheating is limited to criminals and other wrongdoers. But what if it were true that the majority of people cheated most of the time?
That is exactly what has been revealed in the extensive research of Dan Ariely, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University. Dan has found that not only do most people cheat, but that it is true even of the service providers that we trust the most, such as our accountants and our doctors. Even more surprising, traditional deterrents, such as harsher punishments, do not have any effect. His work has profound implications for our work, our families and our society.
Founder and Director of the Center for Advanced Hindsight, Ariely is the author of the bestselling books, Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, Irrationally Yours, and the book we discuss in this interview, The Honest Truth about Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone -- Especially Ourselves.
In this conversation, we talk about:
How dishonesty is a lot more common than we think
How most punishments do very little to eliminate dishonesty
Why conflicts of interest, like team or company loyalty, make it harder to be honest
The role creativity plays in dishonesty
Why it is so important to get a second medical opinion
The reason the slippery slope of dishonesty is so frightening
How a good cause - a charity or a loved one - can cause us to cheat even more
The important role simple rules can play in keeping us honest
Dan also shares his theory on what may actually have caused the Volkswagen emission crisis, and he talks about the topic of his most recent work - hate.
Episode Links
@danariely
danariely.com
Mensa
Enron
Gary Becker and Simple Model of Rational Crime (SMORC)
Cost-benefit analysis
Mortgage-backed security
Prada
Harpers Bazaar
Signaling
Coach
Donald Sull and Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World
The Dishonesty Project documentary
Joseph M. Papp cyclist
Volkswagen
Yael Melamede of Salty Features
Pilates
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!
46 min
May 23, 2016 CM 037: Steve Case on the Next Wave of Internet Innovation
Steve Case, co-founder of America Online, believes that Internet companies have grown in three successive waves. Tech entrepreneurs spent the first wave getting us on the Internet. They spent the second wave connecting us to the apps and platforms they built on top of it. Now, in the third wave, innovative partnerships and policies will help entrepreneurs rethink large parts of our daily life, such as healthcare, food, and education.
That is the argument Steve makes in his award-winning and bestselling book, The Third Wave: An Entrepreneurs Vision of the Future. Steve was the co-founder of America Online, the first Internet company to IPO, and Chair, Founder, and CEO of Revolution, a DC-based investment firm.
In this interview he talks about the challenges early tech entrepreneurs like him faced, and he paints a picture of the challenges and opportunities to come. He also talks about the power of entrepreneurship to support ongoing innovation in the kinds of sectors that impact the lives of millions of people around the world.
In this conversation, we also talk about:
How Steve got his start as a tech entrepreneur
Key differences between entrepreneurship today versus decades ago
The story behind AOL
Lessons learned from the TimeWarner acquisition
Why entrepreneurs need vision and thoughtful execution to succeed
Key factors and skills that will set Third Wave entrepreneurs apart
Possibilities for healthcare, education, and food industry disruption
The important role government will play in the Third Wave
What Steve means by the Rise of the Rest for Third Wave entrepreneurship
Why Steve gets so excited about food entrepreneurship
The power of impact investing for companies, employees, and investors
Why he chose to write a book about the future instead of the past
Steve plans to spend the next 10-15 years of his life making the ideas of the Third Wave a reality. He believes his book offers a framework and that it is up to leaders like him to support the kinds of diverse people and companies who will put that framework into action.
Episode Links
@SteveCase
The Third Wave: An Entrepreneurs Vision of the Future by Steve Case
The Third Wave: The Classic Study of Tomorrow by Alvin Toffler
Agricultural Revolution
Industrial Revolution
P&G
Pepsico
Atari
Modem
AppleLink
Apple
IBM
Sears
RadioShack
White Label product
Time Warner
Microsoft
Thomas Edison
The Creators Code by Amy Wilkinson
Khan Academy
MOOCs
Snapchat
Drones
Driverless cars
Total addressable market (TAM)
Revolution Foods
Sweetgreen
Impact investing
BlackRock
Bain & Company
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!
40 min
May 16, 2016 CM 036: Michael Casey on Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Our Economic Future
While bitcoin and blockchain may sound like something from science fiction, they have become powerful tools to help us rethink banking and finance. What began as a cypherpunk vision has become a viable model of currency and exchange for everyone with access to a Smartphone, from the unbanked in Afghanistan to the urban hipster in New York City.
Eager to learn more about where bitcoin and blockchain technology has come from and where it is headed, co-authors Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna researched and wrote the bestselling book, The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain are Challenging the Global Economic Order. In this interview, Michael J. Casey, Senior Advisor to the Digital Currency Initiative at the Media Lab at MIT and former global finance columnist for The Wall Street Journal, shares what they learned and why we should care.
In this episode, we talk about:
Connections to science fiction, cryptography, and cypherpunks
The blockchain and bitcoin origin story
What it means to decentralize the banking system
The mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto
Trust and the huge role it plays in launching a new currency
How it all started when someone bought a pizza
What bitcoin and blockchain mean for us as customers and as business owners
How blockchain and bitcoin can upend industries from medicine to music
What this tech means for the poor and unbanked
How mobile tech, bitcoin, and blockchain are empowering millions
Ways Wall Street is already co-opting ledger tech for its own purposes
How this tech will govern the economy of the future
Episode Links
@mikejcasey
http://www.michaeljcasey.com/
Satoshi Nakamoto
Cypherpunk
Cryptography
Michel Foucault
Hyperinflation
Deflation
Casa de cambio
Laszlo
Ripple
Ethereum
MIT
Internet of Things
Micropayment
www.dougrushkoff.com
Oliver Luckett
The Audience
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!
34 min
May 09, 2016 CM 035: Greg McKeown on Achieving More by Choosing Less
Productivity strategies do not work if we are focused on the wrong things. What we really need is an effective system for determining what is absolutely essential and the discipline to work on that thing. We need criteria that empower us to select our highest priority, and a strategy for eliminating everything else.
My guest, Greg McKeown has designed this system, and he has written about it in his award-winning bestseller, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. In addition to his writing and speaking, Greg is CEO of THIS, Inc., a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum, and a lecturer at Stanford University. In this interview he shares incidents in his own life that led him to develop this system, as well as the elements that make the system powerful.
In this episode, we talk about:
How we forget our power to choose
How our language shapes how we view the world
How our priority became priorities and what that means for our lives
Non-essentialism as a form of malware that has infected all areas of our lives
How the smartest, most driven, capable, and curious people are the most vulnerable to non-essentialism
Why we need to retire in our roles in order to gain perspective and get our lives back
How a list of 6 can get us to our number one priority
A game-changing way to use our journals as reflective, proactive tools
The power of small wins
The downside of email-to-email living
Why technology makes a good servant but a poor master
What it means to protect the asset in order to lead an essential life
The unimportance of practically everything
How discerning what is essential gives us the courage to push back on what is not
Teaching young people how to focus on what is essential
The three historical waves of non-essentialism or how we got here
Why you want to be an essentialist before the busyness bubble bursts
The trade off between our highest contribution versus what we got done today
Greg also talks about how he is making a deliberate choice to hold off on his second book in order to focus on his highest contribution. He explains how challenging it is to do that and how aware he is of the trade offs he is making along the way.
Episode Links
@GregoryMcKeown
http://gregmckeown.com/
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
Panem - bread and circuses
World War II
Facebook
Tulip mania
Deep Work by Cal Newport
@JaniceKaplan2
http://www.janicekaplan.com/
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!
46 min
May 02, 2016 CM 034: Amy Wilkinson on the Secrets of Successful Entrepreneurs
We may believe that successful entrepreneurs possess innate abilities that set them apart, but what if those skills are just the result of practice and experience?
That is the conclusion of Amy Wilkinson, bestselling author of The Creators Code: The Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs. She performed five years of interviews with the founders of organizations such as LinkedIn, eBay, Under Armour, Tesla Motors, Spanx, Airbnb, and PayPal. The result? She learned that these entrepreneurs share six common skills that made them successful. Perhaps more importantly, she contends that these are things that any of us can learn.
Wilkinson is a strategic adviser and lecturer at Stanford Business School. Her career spans leadership roles with McKinsey and J.P. Morgan. She has served as a White House fellow, special assistant to the U.S. Trade Representative, and as a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.
In this episode, we talk about:
How successful entrepreneurs seek not to be first, but rather, to be only
Why creators hold the key to a new economy
The importance of finding the gap between what is and what can be
How we can train ourselves to spot problems and see them as opportunities
How Starbucks built its success on the concept of lift and shift
Ensuring success by looking forward versus looking back
Why you might need to fire yourself in order to innovate
How nostalgia holds us back
What the OODA Loop can teach us about entrepreneurship
Why we all need to build a failure ratio into our work in order to grow
The power of networking minds to solve big problems
How you can be creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial within your current organization
Episode Links
@amywilkinson
AmyWilkinson.com
Elon Musk and Tesla and Zip2
Kevin Plank and Under Armour and the University of Maryland and the Terrapins
Howard Schultz and Starbucks
Nascar Driving School
Chris Guillebeau and Born for This: Find the Work You Were Meant to Do
Andy Grove of Intel
Gordon Moore of Intel
John Boyd and OODA Loop and Paypal
Billpoint
Palm Pilot
Youtube
Yelp
Digg
Founders Fund
Clarion Capital
Palantir
Jessica Herrin and Stella and Dot
InnoCentive
BP Oil
AOL
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!
32 min
April 25, 2016 CM 033: Karie Willyerd on Future-Proofing Your Career
Fear of job obsolescence ranks higher for most people than their fear of dying! Only half of workers today believe their skills will be valuable three years from now, and of this group, only a third feels their companies are providing the kinds of training they need to do anything about it.
That means the learning is on us, and we need strategies for navigating this strange new world.
Karie Willyerd has answers. Karie is the author of Stretch: How to Future-proof Yourself for Tomorrow’s Workplace. She is the Workplace Futurist for SuccessFactors, an SAP company, and the co-author of The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrows Employees Today. Her articles and blogs appear regularly in Harvard Business Review, and she has been a Chief Learning Officer for five Fortune 500 companies.
In this episode, we talk about:
How, no matter where we work, it is on us to manage our professional learning
What our professional learning has to do with Al Capone
Why millennials really are not that different from everyone else
The one thing that 83% of executives agree on
Five practices we can use to stay current
The power of a diverse network
What it means to: learn a living
A powerful system for reflection with a triple loop for learning
What a reverse mentor is and why we each need one
Why we need new experiences in our work
When to throttle down on productivity in order to learn new skills
Why bouncing forward is so much better than bouncing back
What it means to become an enhanced employee
Karie also shares insights on the power of virtual reality for learning and building relationships.
Episode Links
@angler
Gallup Report - Employee Engagement Findings
SAP
Oxford Economics
Al Capone
Sell-by date
David Kelly and IDEO
Farai Chideya and The Episodic Career
Mark Granovetter and the concept of weak ties
Adam Grant and Give and Take
Harvard Learning Innovation Labs
New York Times New Work Summit
NFL
Disney
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!
36 min
April 18, 2016 CM 032: Doug Rushkoff on Redesigning the Economy
Named one of ten most influential thinkers in the world by MIT, Doug Rushkoff asks some seriously big questions on this episode of Curious Minds.
The biggest one is: what if an economy predicated on growth is unsustainable? Growth at companies like General Electric (GE) used to mean jobs for hundreds of thousands of people. That same growth, at companies like Facebook and Google, yields, at most, tens of thousands of jobs. As growth-oriented tech companies absorb more jobs through smarter tech and automation, is this an opportunity to rethink the nature of work, jobs, and the overall economy?
Doug Rushkoff asks us to consider that topic in his latest bestselling book, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity. Rushkoff is a professor of media theory and digital economics at Queens College, CUNY. He is the bestselling author of a dozen other books, including Present Shock, Program or Be Programmed, and Life Inc.
In this episode, we talk about:
Why Doug sees growth as the culprit in our current economy
The unmet promise of technology and the long tail for artists and creatives
How big data analytics reduces unpredictability and, thereby, innovation
Ways more of us can take ownership of the platforms putting us out of work
How it is not the job we want but the meaning, purpose, and material benefits work gives
Money as a verb
How currency tools like blockchain can help us rethink power and authority
Twitter as a textbook case of tech success but growth company failure
How digital distributism can trump digital industrialism
The shift from tech as energizing to energy sucking
Ruskhoff also talks about how he thinks about technology use in his own life, including which tools he chooses to use and why.
Episode Links
@rushkoff
www.rushkoff.com
Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus by Doug Rushkoff
eBay
Etsy
Operating system
Bazaar
Crusades
Burning Man
Acquisition
IPO
Wired
Chris Anderson
Long Tail
The Long Tail by Chris Anderson
Free by Chris Anderson
Mondo 2000
Boing Boing
Ponzi scheme
Alan Greenspan
Taylor Swift
Power law dynamics
Distributism
Venture capital
Capital gains tax
Blockchain
Bitcoin
PGP - pretty good privacy
Distributism
Marxism
Capitalism
Marshall McLuhan
Peer-to-peer economy
Lendingtree
Fintech
Faustian bargain
Private equity
Flip this house
Michael Dell
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
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!
52 min

About Curious Minds at Work

From the publisher's feed

Want to get better at work? At managing others? Managing yourself? Gayle Allen interviews experts who take your performance to the next level. Each episode features a book with insights to help you…