381. Using Cultural Evolution to Design Better Companies with Andrew McAfee

Why are humans the only species on the planet that’s been able to cooperate on such a massive scale and continuously reinvent our culture? 

Andrew McAfee is the co-director of the Initiative on the Digital Economy and a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His books, such as the Machine trilogy and The Geek Way, examine how technology and cultural evolution have shaped the modern workplace.

He and Greg discuss what has allowed humans to evolve to be these super collaborators, how that evolution translates to organizational culture, and why the education system might be in need of an overhaul. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

What does science do with overconfidence?

27:00: What science does that is brilliant is it says to us, overconfident human beings, "You're going to win. You're so smart. Your evidence is going to be right. Go collect the evidence; you're going to be right," and we over overconfidently march off and go do all that. So the amazing thing that happens, the jiujitsu that happens, is that science takes our overconfidence and channels it exactly where it should be. Which is doing the hard work to gather evidence and then confidently getting up in front of your peers and presenting it and have them kick you in the teeth over and over again. It ain't fun, but that's what we signed up for. And what I think is going on at geek companies is they're importing that ground rule to make their decisions. That's why their batting average is higher.

What is it that allows humans to do this thing unique on the planet?

05:12: We human beings, this weird species, have two superpowers. One of them is that we come together and cooperate intensely with large numbers of individuals who we are not related to and who are not our kin…[05:34]The other one is that we evolve our cultures much more rapidly than any other species on the planet.

Navigating disagreement and safetyism in higher education

33:53: If we're not training people about how to debate, disagree, argue, and do it without being jerks or without being completely thin-skinned about it, we're not doing people a service. We're doing them a real disservice. So I think there has been increased safetyism, especially on college campuses. And I think that is not serving young people well for a whole bunch of reasons.

Is our politics and bureaucracy complements or substitutes?

45:53: We want status, and that's where bureaucracy comes from. I'm going to figure out a need to be involved in this work. That gives me status. I honestly believe that's the deepest reason for this stultifying bureaucracy that we come across. The CEO of most companies, if they look at what the processes are like inside their company, they go, "How did things get this bad? What is going on here?" This is not anything close to what I want, but that's because the people in the organization create that encroachment or that encumbrance all the time.

Show Links:

Recommended Resources:

• Amy Edmondson
  • Amy Edmondson on unSILOed
• Chris Argyris
• The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve by Steve Stewart-Williams
• The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter by Joseph Henrich
• The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science by Michael Strevens
• Final Accounting: Ambition, Greed and the Fall of Arthur Andersen by Barbara Toffler
• Maria Montessori

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at MIT
• Professional Website
• Andrew McAfee on TEDxBoston 2012

His Work:

• The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset that Drives Extraordinary Results
• The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies 
• Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future
• Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy
• Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization's Toughest Challenges
• More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources―and What Happens Next