Teaching notes: Futures

  • after each episode: summarize on the blackboard
  • no AI, but societal/work questions
  • Spitzer: AI will not replace humans, but humans who use AI will replace humans who do not use AI

Video summary: Grant/Gladwell: Uncomfortable with the future

Note: the last part complements the technology-focused futures and focuses more on organizations/people. It relates to several topics we discussed earlier in the lecture (e.g., remote work, excellence individually and in teams, development of skills)

  • Lack of diversity in leadership and company culture’s comfort focus hinders diversity and risk-taking.
  • Embracing discomfort is crucial for fostering diversity and innovation.
  • Encouraging questioning and learning helps challenge the status quo and drive growth.
  • Focusing on learning experiences and teamwork over grades fosters better outcomes.
  • Team success relies on collective performance, emphasizing interdependency and consistency.

Start

  • Lack of diversity (in leadership) still an issue (talent pool, “need to feel uncomfortable”)
  • Persistent company culture: desire of those in charge to be comfortable.
  • Need to embrace the feeling of uncomfortable. Related to diversity and risk. (Need to be aware that a “comfort-culture” may not contribute to diversity.)

6 minutes

  • How to encourage learning (questioning how things are done)
  • Cost of uncomfortable: perception of friction
  • Who benefits? (do we allow all uncomfortableness into our work? - destructive leadership)

10 minutes

  • Encouraging disagreements/challenging thoughts in teams
  • Coworkers who criticize can be the “canaries in the coalmine” or an “irritant” (sounding board)

11:20 minutes

  • Future of leadership in distributed environments
  • Evaluating performance and learning is more difficult in remote settings (example with the mentorship model of the reporter / mimicking hard work)
  • Remote / online does not always translate - fidelity of the experience is different
  • How to approach learning: focus on learning experience/challenge (not grades), focus on teamwork (including team grading)

-> question: who would agree with the learning/challenge over grades?

18 min

  • Excellence in teams: basketball vs. soccer (in basketball, the best player counts, in soccer, the worst players on the team count)
  • Longevity, consistency, productivity
  • Interdependency in interconnected worlds (the work of the team can be undone by individuals)
  • Example: 1 million-dollar operation with a 5 $- shot forgotten: already killed the patient

24 min.

Homework

  • Read the HBR article on the skills that are hard to replace by AI