unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

How do bad leaders persist in current-day environments, and how do they use factors like fear, rewards, and the natural difficulty of uprooting entrenched authority to their advantage? Despite the challenges inherent to speaking out, what duty and role do followers play in identifying and addressing bad leadership? Barbara Kellerman is the founder and a fellow at the Center for Public Leadership a...

There’s no instruction manual for how to be a CEO, and that role has undergone massive change in recent decades. So how do the leaders of great corporations today prepare themselves to make the hard decisions? Jeff Immelt, former CEO of GE and now current instructor at Stanford University, shares some of his top lessons on leading a major corporation in his book, Hot Seat: What I Learned Leading a...

What are practical strategies to avoid overload and exhaustion in today’s digital world? What norms can organizations create for tool usage, and how can finding offline activities that provide a mental contrast to digital work? Paul Leonardi is the Duca Family Professor of Technology Management at UC Santa Barbara, a consultant and speaker on digital transformation and the future of work, and an a...

What changes happened in the histories of Europe and China to create two economies that developed so differently? How did different forms of local cooperation influence state development, rule of law, and economic progress? Guido Tabellini is a professor of Political Economics at the University of Bocconi in Milan, Italy. He is also the author of several books, most recently co-authoring Two Paths...

Where did the concept of management as a profession come from, and how did it develop? Why do bureaucratic practices persist? How can companies break free from those constraints to unlock greater potential and adapt more effectively to the relentless change and competition in today’s business world? Gary Hamel is the founder of the Management Lab, a professor at the London Business School, a visit...

When are meetings the best way to coordinate and make decisions and when do they make things worse?? How do you use the two-pizza rule to hold effective meetings and what happens when you start including too many people in a process? Rebecca Hinds is the head of the Work AI Institute at Glean and the author of Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done , a boo...

Whether in markets, organizations, or the universe itself, today’s guest is a master at navigating complex systems where existing models have stopped working, and new ones must emerge. Geoffrey Moore is a consultant in the high-tech sector and a prolific author, with titles including  Crossing the Chasm ,  Inside the Tornado: Strategies for Developing, Leveraging, and Surviving Hypergrowth Markets...

What is the real importance of understanding architectural history, and how is its teaching different from the histories of other disciplines? How can good design influence business decisions? Witold Rybczynski is an emeritus professor in the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the author of several books on architecture and its history. His most recent titles h...

What was the role of experimentation in early science? How did past scientific paradigms continue to influence current scientific discourse? What is the utility of understanding the history of science for modern scientists? Peter Dear is a professor emeritus of history at Cornell University, and the author of several books, including The World as We Know It: From Natural Philosophy to Modern Scien...

While evolution is often thought to be conducive to perfect adaptation, there are plenty of reasons why we never get there.  Laurence D. Hurst is a professor of evolutionary genetics in the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath. His book, The Evolution of Imperfection: The Science of Why We Aren’t and Can’t Be Perfect is an expansive look into the imperfections of the human genome...

How can organizations make more equitable changes to their internal norms and structures, to promote fairness over merely seeking profit? What are alternate ways to tackle the difference in agreeableness that underpins many professional gaps between men and women? Cordelia Fine is a professor in the history and philosophy of science department at University of Melbourne, as well as the author of s...

Despite its long-held place in history as the lynchpin of America’s recovery from the Great Depression, what if the New Deal did more to hinder the country’s recovery than help it?  George Selgin is a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Georgia and former director of the Center on Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute. His books like, False Dawn: The New Deal a...

How does our legal system treat children today, and how do policies affecting their parents and communities cascade down to shape their lives? What forces create a pipeline to criminalization, and what would it take to break that cycle for the children who come next? Adam Benforado is a professor of law at Drexel University and the author of two books titled A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Ki...

Is the point of life to minimize suffering, or to understand and embrace it on some level? How do different belief structures view the ideal human response to negative situations? Is there a degree of suffering that would be bearable in order to enable something pleasurable that could offset it? Scott Samuelson is a professor of philosophy at Iowa State University and also the author of several bo...

What are the nuances of organizational design and risk-taking? What are the roles of both curiosity and trust in fostering an environment ripe for innovation? How can you create serendipity intentionally, and harness its power for your organization? David Cleevely is a British entrepreneur and international telecoms expert who has built and advised many companies, principally in Cambridge, UK. He...

If ideas and knowledge are the software, then books have always been the longest-running hardware. Author and former publishing executive Joel J. Miller’s latest book, The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future , delves into the history and evolution of books as a physical technology for idea transmission. Joel and Greg discuss the book’s origins from ancient times with Socra...

How did the US Dollar become the dominant currency internationally? What keeps other currencies, fiat or crypto, from displacing the dollar's role? Does the aggressive use of sanctions by the US Government put the dollar's role at risk? Paul Blustein is with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as well as an author and journalist. He has written several books including his latest wo...

Unlike some other academic fields, the study of business has always had the challenging task of striking a balance between theory and practice. How can theoretical concepts aid business practitioners in real-world situations? And how can business academics expand their understanding of theory through that real-world application?   Jay Barney is a professor of strategic management at the University...

Why might ‘bring your whole self to work’ be terrible professional advice, and what should we be thinking about instead? Why does authenticity come into play more now than in previous generations?  Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of business psychology at University College London and Columbia. He is also the author of several books, including Don't Be Yourself: Why Authenticity Is Overrate...

How do evangelism and business go hand in hand? Well, for today’s guest, evangelism is the purest form of sales.  Guy Kawasaki is the Chief Evangelist at Canva and former Chief Evangelist for the Macintosh Division at Apple. He’s a prolific author, speaker, and podcaster, with hit books like Think Remarkable: 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference , Wiser Guy: Life-Changing Revelatio...

What practical advice could leaders and managers implement right now in their organizations to increase productivity and decrease friction between disparate elements of their companies? How can managers reexamine legacy processes that have remained in place simply because they were, and reimagine them for the specific challenges of today’s business environment? Donald C. Kieffer is  a lecturer at...

What if you could find a strategy for gaming the systems all around to work more in your favor? If you did, then things like coveted restaurant reservations, scarce concert tickets, landing the dream job, or even admission to top colleges could become much more in reach.  Judd Kessler is a professor of business economics and public policy at the Wharton School and the author of Lucky by Design: Th...

What strange thing happens when a neuron is left alone? Are there ways to moderate stress and anxiety, and even channel them into productive and helpful signals there to assist you in making good decisions? How can you develop initiative, and what has to change in today’s education landscape to accomplish this?  Angus Fletcher is a Professor of Story Science at Project Narrative of Ohio State Univ...

How has rational choice theory come to dominate both our understanding of the world and our view of good judgment, and why is that a problem? What are the benefits of remembering to zoom in and out to get a better picture of problems and solutions? Why do we prefer reducing things to numbers even if that abstracts useful levels of data? Barry Schwartz is a professor Emeritus at Swarthmore College...

For organizations that are tempted to throw out the classic organizational management handbook in favor of a structure with no managers – think again.  Nicolai J. Foss is a professor of strategy at Copenhagen Business School and the co-author of Why Managers Matter: The Perils of the Bossless Company . The book pushes back on the notion that the key to breakthrough success for organizations is thr...