unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

Greg La Blanc

unSILOed is a series of interdisciplinary conversations that inspire new ways of thinking about our world. Our goal is to build a community of lifelong learners addicted to curiosity and the pursuit of insight about themselves and the world around them.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

  1. 627. Unlocking the Secrets of Love and Happiness with Sonja Lyubomirsky

    1D AGO

    627. Unlocking the Secrets of Love and Happiness with Sonja Lyubomirsky

    How important are relationships and the feeling of being loved to human happiness? How have the fields of happiness studies and relationship studies converged?  Sonja Lyubomirsky is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside. She is also the author or co-author of the books How to Feel Loved: The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most, The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want, and The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does. Greg and Sonja discuss her shift from happiness research to her co-authored book with Harry Reis, How to Feel Loved. Sonja explains that many happiness interventions (gratitude letters, kindness practices, and variations like texting gratitude vs. social media posting vs. private writing) work largely because they increase feelings of love and connection They also discuss why listening is difficult, with Sonja sharing her experience in a Tel Aviv listening workshop, and the need for compassion and a growth mindset. Other themes include the Michelangelo effect (helping others become who they aspire to be), balancing sharing and listening (avoiding monologues or interrogations), appropriate vulnerability and gradual self-disclosure, and the “multiplicity” mindset of seeing people as complex quilts of good and bad traits to reduce harsh judgment.  The episode also considers whether people can feel loved without being loved, including AI companions that can mimic excellent listening but lack a genuine open heart, and the risk that some people may substitute simulated relationships for real ones.  *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.* Episode Quotes: What’s the distinction between being loved and feeling loved? 07:42: A lot of us are loved, but we do not feel loved. So we might have, we might know that our partner loves us or child, or a family member or friend or colleague. But we do not really feel loved. And when you think about it, feeling loved is what really matters even more, right? Because if, you know, if you love me, but I do not feel loved by you, it is almost like you do not love me, right? Like, because I am not really sensing that, and so feeling loved is really important. That is what really matters to happiness. The key to feeling loved is really to be known and to know the other 10:16: The key to feeling loved is really to be known and to know the other, and we get known by taking the wall down a little bit. And I get to know you if I help you take your wall down. How do I help you take your wall down? By showing curiosity. Then hopefully you will start to open up a little bit. I show even more curiosity. I ask you questions and I l truly listen, not really just try to fix it or help you or tell my own story. I just listen to learn. The first step to feel more loved 09:11: If I want to feel more loved, the first step, which may sound counterintuitive, is to help the other person feel loved first. You go first. I go first. The first step is to show genuine curiosity in the other person, in their inner life and the details of their day, their dreams, goals, values, fears. We all want that. We want to be seen, we want to be heard, and we do not get genuine curiosity very often. When was the last time you remember telling a story about yourself and the other person was so curious they could not wait for you to finish the sentence? It is rare. When it happens, it is priceless. That is such a gift to someone, to show authentic curiosity in them. It has to be authentic because you cannot fake it. That is the first step. You help the person be seen by showing curiosity in them, and that helps them open up more. Real connection requires both listening and sharing 18:48: If you only share, it is a monologue. You are spouting off. If you only listen, then it is an interview. It is an interrogation sometimes. You really need to do both. They go together. That is where the emotional intelligence comes in. Because when you are sharing, the entire time you are sharing, and we all know people who do not do this, they go off and they seem to not see any cues that the other person is not interested in continuing the story. Show Links: Recommended Resources: Harry Reis Relationship Science Michelangelo Phenomenon Impression Management Multiplicity The All-or-Nothing Marriage: How the Best Marriages Work Esther Perel Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become Techne Unsiloed 208: Psychological Safety and the Benefits of Discomfort with Todd Kashdan Guest Profile: SonjaLyubomirsky.com Faculty Profile at UC Riverside LinkedIn Profile Profile on Wikipedia Social Profile on Instagram Social Profile on X Guest Work: Amazon Author Page How to Feel Loved: The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does Google Scholar Page TED Talk | 1 thing you can do today to be happier Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    44 min
  2. 626. Connective Labor: The Art of Human Connection in a Disconnected World with Allison J. Pugh

    3D AGO

    626. Connective Labor: The Art of Human Connection in a Disconnected World with Allison J. Pugh

    How could AI shift medical value toward primary care relationships if pattern-recognition specialties are more automatable? What would people prefer if given the choice between discussing their problems with a human or with non-judgmental empathic AI? Allison J. Pugh is a Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University and the author of several books. Her most recent works are The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World and The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity. Greg and Allison discuss Allison’s newest book and her concept of “connective labor,” defined as the relational practice of seeing another person and having them feel seen. They also contrast this idea with more individual-centered ideas like EQ. Allison argues that this type of work is reciprocal, widespread across roles (therapists, teachers, chaplains, primary care, managers, service work), and increasingly important as the economy shifts toward requiring more “feeling.” Allison also talks about how AI is being used in new ways to help automate different aspects of different jobs, and along with that come connected effects like the rise of automated medical scribes amongst the medical community, but also the drastic reduction of interns and the near elimination of that valuable aspect of education and job training for an intern’s future professional life. They also discuss how the different efficiency tools can backfire because of the increased need to oversee and validate automated output. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.* Episode Quotes: Why friction is essential to human connection 17:26: Part of the relationship with another human being involves the friction of not being able to control what they say, of running up against their disagreement or conflict or even tension, or they have their own ideas, their own desires. And that is part of making our way through this world, and it is a really important part of being in community, in relationship with other human beings. And that is what chatbots do not give us. They give us no friction. AI is mirror, not a relationship 17:08: So with chatbots, you are not really experimenting how to be with another human being. You are instead experimenting with a mirror, and that is just not going to have the same powerful impact. Who gets humans, and who gets machines? 12:27: The idea that technology will be better than nothing, I am afraid, will not lead to greater opportunities to be seen, for less advantaged people. Instead, they will just have machines seeing them, and the rich people get humans seeing them, and that is an inequality that I find kind of tragic. Seeing people is a leadership skill 49:52: When people have a chance to kind of express their values at work, figure out who they are and have their values kind of enacted in their work and kind of basically attach a purpose to what they are doing, a more transcendent purpose than just kind of earning the paycheck, it translates into a kind of deep meaningfulness, and that is part of the outcome of connective labor. And so it is really worth it for managers to get good at this because it enables people, the people they are seeing, to figure out what matters to them and to find that in relationships at work. That is a path to meaningfulness that can be very important. Show Links: Recommended Resources: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Automated Medical Scribe Chat Checkout Lanes Unsiloed 469: Matt Beane - The Importance of Learning by Doing Guest Profile: Faculty Profile at Johns Hopkins AllisonPugh.com LinkedIn Profile Social Profile on X Guest Work: Amazon Author Page The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity Beyond the Cubicle: Job Insecurity, Intimacy, and the Flexible Self Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture Google Scholar Page Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    52 min
  3. 625. How to Not Just Face Uncertainty, But Thrive In It feat. Nathan and Susannah Furr

    5D AGO

    625. How to Not Just Face Uncertainty, But Thrive In It feat. Nathan and Susannah Furr

    We live in an age where uncertainty lurks around every corner, but what if uncertainty didn’t have to be an anxiety-inducing, uncomfortable part of life?  The Upside of Uncertainty: A Guide to Finding Possibility in the Unknown, by INSEAD professor Nathan Furr and entrepreneur Susannah Harmon Furr, presents strategies and tools to embrace uncertainty and turn it into opportunity.  Nathan, Susannah, and Greg discuss why humans are naturally wired to avoid the unknown, and how our capacity to face it can be strengthened through learnable tools. The conversation covers some of the strategies described in the book like creating “islands of certainty” through rituals and support systems, maintaining a portfolio of personal options instead of going all-in too early, and focusing on what’s within one’s control while pursuing other meaningful goals, internally.  *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.* Episode Quotes: The golden space of uncertainty 26:59: [Nathan Furr] The American can-do attitude is it was this kind of illusion that we control the world. And most people who have been through something hard recognize it is not totally in our control. We sure we influence it, we nudge it, but a lot of things are outside our control. And so the people who are able to approach uncertainty with greater calm also kind of said, you know, what is in my control? I will focus on that, and what is outside of my control, or partially outside of my control, I am not going to obsess about that. And so there is this kind of golden space where you are focused on what are my internal goals, being the best, doing my best, making a contribution in the world. And I recognize that, there is some element of, in this complex, ambiguous world that I do not control, and so I am just going to focus on the things I can control and let the other pieces go. That leads to a much calmer view of the world. The video and audio are not synched On being comfortable with uncertainty 11:42: [Susannah Furr]: All of us could have cooler and more brilliant lives if we just tried a little bit more, if we got a little bit more comfortable with uncertainty. It is good to know, like, Ooh, I do not like risks. And we have a tool for that. Like, know what risks you have affinities and aversions for, but definitely do not just decide, Nope, I do not do uncertainty, because you are, you are missing out. The real danger isn’t risk 18:29: [Nathan Furr] The real danger is not that you are going to go all in on the uncertain thing, it is that you are probably going all in on the certain thing, and you are not bringing that thing you care about, that thing you dream about, into the portfolio of options in your life. Show Links: Recommended Resources: Ben Feringa  World Uncertainty Index  Sam Yagan  Martin Seligman  Kathleen M. Eisenhardt Ayana Elizabeth Johnson Guest Profile: Nathan Furr Faculty Profile at INSEAD Nathan Furr on LinkedIn Susannah Harmon Furr Profile at INSEAD Susannah Harmon Furr on LinkedIn The Uncertainty Possibility School Guests’ Work: The Upside of Uncertainty: A Guide to Finding Possibility in the Unknown The Innovator's Method: Bringing the Lean Start-up into Your Organization Leading Transformation: How to Take Charge of Your Company's Future Innovation Capital: How to Compete--and Win--Like the World’s Most Innovative Leaders Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    55 min
  4. 624. Time, Distraction, and Investing in What Matters with Cassie Holmes

    FEB 27

    624. Time, Distraction, and Investing in What Matters with Cassie Holmes

    What happens when you start thinking of time as a scarce resource? What practical strategies can you use to protect it from being passively spent or hijacked so that you can spend the time you have in more fulfilling and meaningful ways? Cassie Holmes is a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, and also the author of the book Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most. Greg and Cassie discuss how to use time more intentionally to increase both day-to-day joy and overall life satisfaction. Cassie explains how even though these happiness questions are timeless, they have become newly urgent due to modern distractions, cell phones, productivity culture, and the pandemic’s effects on time perception, anxiety, burnout, and workplace engagement. Cassie describes exercises such as tracking one’s time and rating activities to identify what is personally most joyful and meaningful, noting common low-happiness activities (commuting, work, housework) and how individuals can find variation within them. Cassie opens the window on some of the examples of this within her own life through her regular coffee dates with her daughter and a prearranged commitment device that allows her to count on date nights with her husband. They also cover bundling chores with enjoyable activities, selectively outsourcing tasks, and the tradeoffs of pricing time in money, emphasizing that better time management enables more meaningful and satisfying life activities, not simply doing less. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.* Episode Quotes: Why being busy doesn't make you fulfilled 08:46: The unhappiness comes from when you have been busy and have spent your time and are looking back on it, feeling unfulfilled, like it got spent without you having invested in anything that ultimately matters to you. Whether it is things that give you that like true sense of joy and enjoyment, oftentimes through our interpersonal relationships, but also even that sense of satisfaction when you are making actual progress on whatever your project is, whatever that endeavor that you are sort of working towards is in line with your purpose, whether it is your personal purpose, which is really what my focus on is in the book, is the individual, and then ideally it is aligned. Your personal purpose is aligned with the sort of purpose of the work that you are doing. What is time poverty? 40:31: What time poverty is, it is this feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to do it. It is a feeling of being limited by the resources, in this case, time that you have available to achieve what you set out to do. Why isn't more enough, when it comes to happiness? 20:22: Not recognizing the role of hedonic adaptation is sure that first half hour, like, yes, that is the delight, right? You have your glass of wine, and you finally can kick back. But once you press, next episode, and you are three hours into your watching TV that night, you see on the happiness ratings that it, your enjoyment goes down over time. So that is also really helpful information, right? Because if we are trying to optimize using your optimization, sort of discipline and thinking, then we will, well, actually, we should spread out those positives, like my TV watching. This is also where intentionality comes into play. Like instead of zoning out for like many hours every night, just watch that first half hour. Show Links: Recommended Resources: Happiness Hedonic Treadmill Intentionality Marie Kondo George Shultz Time Poverty Katy Milkman Guest Profile: CassieHolmes.com Faculty Profile at UCLA Anderson School of Management LinkedIn Profile Guest Work: Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most TEDx Talk | Finding Happiness in Ordinary Moments Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    52 min
  5. 623. From Classroom to Boardroom: Unstoppable Entrepreneurs with Lori Rosenkopf

    FEB 25

    623. From Classroom to Boardroom: Unstoppable Entrepreneurs with Lori Rosenkopf

    What makes for a good entrepreneur in today’s start-up landscape? How do you work to scale and when is it right to go from bootstrapping to seeking funding? How are the roots of innovation now fundamentally different than the dot com era? Lori Rosenkopf is a Professor of Management and also the Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship at the Wharton School, San Francisco campus. She is also the author of the book Unstoppable Entrepreneurs: 7 Paths for Unleashing Successful Startups and Creating Value through Innovation. Greg and Lori discuss Lori’s focus on Wharton’s student and alumni entrepreneurial ecosystem, and she explains how entrepreneurship skills overlap with the innovation inside large organizations and universities. Lori describes seven entrepreneurial pathways and six “Rs” that reflect an entrepreneurial mindset, emphasizing that many successful entrepreneurs first build industry experience in standard careers rather than launching ventures immediately after school.  Their conversation covers how Wharton’s curriculum has evolved over time, adding majors and coursework in entrepreneurship, innovation, analytics, and now AI; experiential learning; venture pitching for credit. Greg asks how the Venture Acceleration Lab helps expose students to scaling alumni ventures. Lori and Greg discuss different stereotypes of entrepreneurs, and Lori touches on why alumni and industry-affiliation networks remain powerful, how innovation increasingly happens through ecosystems, partnerships, and acquisitions rather than in-house R&D, and the continuing importance of universities in basic science commercialization, including Penn’s Pennovation initiative and strong biomedical startup activity. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.* Episode Quotes: The stereotype of a unicorn founder 17:18: I think that we have grown accustomed to a stereotype, which is, let us name them out, college dropout. Young. Venture capital backed tech, unicorn, great personal and commercial wealth. And now we are depending on them for philanthropy. We can have a whole discussion just about whether that is a good thing or not. But that is sort of the image. Is there a way people can cultivate their resilience? 32:00: Resilience, it can come from being in love with your problem and wanting to solve that so deeply. Now it has to be a problem that enough of the marketplace shares that they are willing to think about your solution. But people who want to solve a problem are going to claim lots and lots of different ways to attack it. And this is what entrepreneurs are constantly dealing with, negative feedback and challenges. In many cases, it is very rare that companies of ventures first offering is something that everybody falls in love with. What has Lori learned about information diffusion over 30 years of research? 11:17: I think that as we have gone to where more digital products and services, that it gives us the opportunity to build up these bigger ecosystems where different parties are collaborating in a variety. So it might be as extreme as acquisitions. And that is not just happening when Apple, that is CPG companies are buying little startups where people have developed new grants that are cool. They are partnering in many cases, so they may not be a full on acquisition, but there will be a contractual set of arrangements and maybe a conformance to a standard, as well. So that has become more and more common, and the idea that any one firm can invent everything in house, I think it does feel a little bit passé, you know, like rate of change is getting quicker and quicker. Show Links: Recommended Resources: Patrick T. Harker Entrepreneurship Venture Lab | University of Pennsylvania Max Weber Bell Labs Guest Profile: Faculty Profile at Wharton Business School LoriRosenkopf.com LinkedIn Profile Guest Work: Unstoppable Entrepreneurs: 7 Paths for Unleashing Successful Startups and Creating Value through Innovation Google Scholar Page Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    50 min
  6. 622. The Critical Art of Manufacturing & Why We Can’t Lose It with Tim Minshall

    FEB 20

    622. The Critical Art of Manufacturing & Why We Can’t Lose It with Tim Minshall

    In today’s world where every imaginable product can appear at your doorstep with the click of a button, the art that goes into manufacturing those products is increasingly overlooked.  Tim Minshall is a professor of innovation at the University of Cambridge and the author of How Things Are Made: A Journey Through the Hidden World of Manufacturing. As head of the Institute for Manufacturing, Tim is shaping the future leaders of manufacturing and reinforcing the critical role manufacturing plays in today’s world.  In this conversation, Tim and Greg discuss the disconnect happening between modern-day consumers and the products they buy, plus the misconception that manufacturing has declined. They also delve into the complexity and fragility of manufacturing systems, the role of education in manufacturing, challenges in reviving manufacturing, and the future of manufacturing and software integration.  *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.* Episode Quotes: Bridging the gap between idea and implementation 08:09: The narrative has got a bit confused. This idea that there is a thing called innovation where you have got all the great science and technology and all this cool stuff happening, and that is brilliant. And then there is a bit, which is now implement, or we can call that manufacturing and, as you say, not without its challenges to scale and support software at scale. It is a non-trivial challenge. But if you are scaling up the production process for a new cell therapy to treat cancer or scaling up the production of, a novel semiconductor approach using, I do not know, compound semiconductors, there is, as you say, massive physical challenges involved there, so, but to me that is all part of the same innovation story. You go from the idea and the market opportunity all the way through is part of the innovation story. There is not this neat line in the middle which goes, yes, we have done with the innovation, now we manufacture. Have we become disconnected from how manufacturing happens? Every single thing we can see, unless it is a plant, a rock, an animal, or another human, has been manufactured...All of these things have been manufactured, and so there has been a slight worrying thing that has happened, certainly in the UK, and I suspect a little bit in the US as well, which is we have become disconnected from how that happens. And the more we become disconnected from it, the less we appreciate how incredibly clever it is. What are one of the biggest challenges facing manufacturing? 16:39: One of the biggest challenges facing manufacturing is. Getting good people to want to work in factories. Surely step one is making it visible. If you do not know it and you have not seen it, you are unlikely to just go, oh, I want to get involved in manufacturing. You need to have seen it. Repositioning manufacturing as the thing that drives solution 23:24: We have to reposition manufacturing as the thing that drives solutions. It is the thing that pushes us to deal with the energy transition. It allows us to deal with our multiple healthcare crises. It is what allows us to deal with sustainability challenges, all of these, it allows us to deal with the defense challenges. Geopolitics at the moment is pointing to extremely important role for manufacturing. We would rather not be in this situation, but it is an absolute truth. Show Links: Recommended Resources: I, Pencil Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang  Why Isn't the Whole World Developed? Lessons from the Cotton Mills by Gregory Clark Jeff Immelt | unSILOed John Taylor Ha Joon Chang | unSILOed Guest Profile: Faculty Profile at University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing Professional Profile on LinkedIn Profile on X Guest Work: How Things Are Made: A Journey Through the Hidden World of Manufacturing – A Guide to Sustainable Innovation - US Your Life Is Manufactured: How We Make Things, Why It Matters and How We Can Do It Better - UK  Google Scholar Page Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    55 min
  7. 621. Land, Loans, and Legacy: Real Estate's Global Influence with Mike Bird

    FEB 18

    621. Land, Loans, and Legacy: Real Estate's Global Influence with Mike Bird

    What is the impact of land reform on economic development? What are the implications of property law when a financial crisis hits? This episode offers a comprehensive look at how land has shaped socio-economic landscapes. Mike Bird is the Wall Street editor at The Economist and the author of the new book, The Land Trap: A New History of the World's Oldest Asset. Greg and Mike discuss the historical and contemporary importance of real estate as an asset class, its undervaluation in modern investment strategies, and its critical role in the financial systems. Their conversation explores the distinction between land and other assets, and how mortgage-backed securities have revolutionized real estate finance. Mike lays out the history of land financing from colonial North America to present-day reforms, touching on the influence of key historical figures and economic theories.  *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.* Episode Quotes:How land reform fueled economic growth 41:29: These sort of moments of expropriation are really focused on land quite tightly. They do not spread over into sort of general expropriation attitudes. They can have seemingly really positive impacts. So lots of people credit land reform in Japan in particular with sort of establishing the basis of a democratic society, of massively accelerating the education boost in Japan. If you are a tenant farmer and you are given land yourself, you are able to actually invest in it. And you want to make the most of it because it is no longer the landlord taking it from you. The surplus you create is your own. Most of those people used the extra money they made to massively accelerate the education of their children. This generation of people in Japan becomes a more educated one, which fuels the economic development that happens, you know, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. So the spillover effect from land reform is really quite large. ETF vs home ownership psychology 50:15: I would say, I think half the answer here is behavioral and slightly irrational and social, and half of the answer is deeply rational and makes sense to any student of finance. The side that is irrational is home and land ownership has a reputation and a status that other asset ownership does not have. You have people who say they do not want to form a family until they can own a home. That is a fairly common sentiment in large parts of the world. Nobody says, I have got to own $300,000 in my S and P 500 ETF, or I am not starting a family. It is not a common thing. There is a sense of status security, middle class belonging that comes through owning a home, which makes it very unusual. And I think this digs into a deep historical thing about freedom from feudalism, from living under a landlord, from living, in sort of someone else's pocket. Why housing isn’t diversified 54:52: Obviously what you cannot buy unless you are buying an extremely well diversified REIT, for example, you cannot buy a US house, right? It has to be somewhere. You are plugging into the opportunities and rewards or punishment of a local economy, and so on, I am not enormously surprised at that. I think the thing that is unique in the US relative to the rest of the world is just how well you can do and have done historically investing in listed equities, investing in risk assets and getting the compounded returns relative to home ownership, which I think is massively to America's credit. This is not true in other large portions of the rest of the world. Show Links:Recommended Resources: Samuel AdamsHernando de SotoZamindarHenry GeorgeProgress and PovertyGeorgismLeasehold EstateDuke of WestminsterWolf LadejinskyCase–Shiller IndexGuest Profile: MikeBird.coProfile on The EconomistLinkedIn ProfileSocial Profile on XSocial Profile on BlueSkyGuest Work: The Land Trap: A New History of the World's Oldest Asset Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    55 min
  8. 620. The Secret to Creating ‘Good Jobs’ Where Everyone Wins with Zeynep Ton

    FEB 16

    620. The Secret to Creating ‘Good Jobs’ Where Everyone Wins with Zeynep Ton

    What if a company could deliver high quality products at low cost, improving the value for customers and giving it a competitive edge, all while offering higher pay and career growth opportunities for its employees and not hurting the bottom line? Zeynep Ton is a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, president of the Good Jobs Institute, and author of The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay, and Meaning to Everyone's Work.  Zeynep joins Greg to explain the interconnected components of the “good job strategy,” such as standardization, empowerment, cross-training, simplification, and the incorporation of slack in schedules. She emphasizes that companies should view their workforce as value drivers rather than costs to be minimized, advocating for investment in employees for better productivity and sustainable company growth. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.* Episode Quotes:The ‘good job strategy’ requires systems thinking 43:47: A lot of organizations operate in silos, and ‘the good job strategy’ requires systems thinking, interconnected decisions, and all the decisions coming back to: how do we create value for the customer and how does this interact with other choices to deliver that type of value? And as long as we do the AB testing and requiring on, rigorous, and I do not think it is rigorous, it is, yeah, it is math, but it is not rigorous logic, it will be very difficult to adopt this. Standardization is a gift 28:51: Standardization is a gift because there are so many things I do not even have to think about. So, think each of these choices is helpful to say what are the mindsets that are driving the choices, when used that way, and standardization is not just about work, [but also] standardization of management practices. Why ‘the good job strategy’ creates competitive advantage 13:02: I can see a lot of companies in the same industry using ‘the good job strategy’ as long as they have a differentiation in the eyes of their customers and they’re improving their value, continuously using the strategy. It’s not good jobs that differentiates. It’s the customer value that is a source of competitive advantage. Why unmet basic needs drive employee turnover 17:02: You ask our students what motivates people. Everybody is gonna talk about is a sense of belonging, achievement, meaning, recognition. Of course, those things are the motivators. But so many people do not have their basic needs met. And there is tremendous lack of awareness. And those are, oftentimes, the biggest reasons for employee turnover that I have seen in many organizations that I work with. Show Links:Recommended Resources: Good Jobs Institute Toyota Production SystemJohn Paul MacDuffieCharlie MungerQueueing theory“How CEOs Manage Time” by Michael Porter and Nitin NohriaBob NardelliPete StavrosGuest Profile: Faculty Profile at MIT Sloan School of ManagementProfessional WebsiteProfessional Profile on LinkedInGuest Work: The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay, and Meaning to Everyone's WorkThe Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

    54 min
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4.6
out of 5
72 Ratings

About

unSILOed is a series of interdisciplinary conversations that inspire new ways of thinking about our world. Our goal is to build a community of lifelong learners addicted to curiosity and the pursuit of insight about themselves and the world around them.*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Information

  • Creator
    Greg La Blanc
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    600
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

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