Professor Jonathan Miles’ path to teaching organizational behavior at Rice Business is anything but conventional. Before entering academia, he earned a degree in computer science, worked in IT and even launched a comic book store — experiences that shaped his perspective on leadership, influence and human behavior.

Today, Miles is known for challenging students to think differently about power, workplace dynamics and ethical decision-making. A co-adviser at the Virani Undergraduate School of Business and voted “Teacher of the Year” by our undergraduate business students, he has built courses that push both MBAs and undergraduates to confront uncomfortable truths about what it really takes to lead and succeed.

In this episode, Miles joins host Maya Pomroy ‘22 to discuss why so many talented people struggle to advocate for themselves, what his comic book store taught him about entrepreneurship, and why influence is often misunderstood. He also shares his perspective on AI’s growing impact on the workplace, the future of Rice Business and his hope for bringing undergrads and graduate students together in ways no business school has done before.

Episode Guide:

0:00  Introduction & Teacher of the Year Award

2:29  Growing Up: Family, Influences, and Early Life

4:40  The Winding Path: Journalism to Engineering to Computer Science

7:40  The Value of Exploring Outside Your Major

9:57  From IT to Teaching: Discovering a Calling

15:56  Teaching Power & Influence at Rice

17:55  The Biggest Misconception About Influence at Work

22:15  Professionalism & Ethics: Why People Break Their Own Moral Frameworks

25:04  AI in the Workplace: Hype, Risk, and the Road Ahead

30:19  What Jon Hopes Students Take Away

32:27  The Comic Book Store: Lessons in Entrepreneurship

37:46  The Future of Rice Business & the New Building

40:50  Closing and Conclusion

The Owl Have You Know Podcast is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.

Episode Quotes:

Why hard work alone won’t get you promoted

20:24: I find it interesting that, in the eight years I've been teaching it here at Rice, I don't think I've ever had a class where the majority of people in the class, when I talk about the things that hold them back from power, won't raise their hands and say, "Yeah, at least one of those affects me." And, you know, things like—we call it the just world hypothesis—the idea of like, oh, well, you know, merit exists, and if I do a really good job, I will rise in the organization because people will notice. And we talk about the fact that our research is pretty clear that that's not true. We have years of research on this that says your boss doesn't have any idea what you do, and your boss's boss certainly doesn't. And so this idea of you have to advocate for yourself, even though it doesn't feel great to you. 

Leaders vs. bad managers

36:09: What I told my students is, "I'm not here to make you into great leaders. Some of you will be great leaders because you have that natural piece, and I'm going to teach you this, and if you follow and do this information, you'll become a great leader. But I guarantee you, if you just follow what I say, you won't be a bad manager. You won't be a bad leader." And I've had enough bad leaders over the years that my crusade is to get rid of them, to try and, try and teach people so that we don't have them. And I'm hoping that the people who come out of here with Rice MBAs, and even our Rice undergrad degrees, have the understanding of how to be a manager that does the right things.

What Jonathan hopes for the future of Rice Business

45:19: I hope that we can maintain doing that because we could provide our undergrads with a tremendous ability to get a great education, and one that they're not going to get in an undergrad program elsewhere, from people who really know what they're talking about and are good at teaching it.

Show Links: 

• Transcript

Guest Profile:

• Jonathan Miles | Rice Business
• Jonathan Miles | LinkedIn