Speaker 1: What happens to our ability to think critically when we
Speaker 1: start outsourcing it to AI all the time? My guest today,
Speaker 1: Professor Scott Anthony, is one of the world's leading experts
Speaker 1: on innovation and disruption, and he believes that how we
Speaker 1: use AI today could shape the future of our judgment,
Speaker 1: our creativity, and even our careers. Scott is a professor
Speaker 1: at the tuch School of Business. He's also the former
Speaker 1: managing partner at Innosite, the firm co founded by the
Speaker 1: Lake Clayton Christensen, and the author of several books, including
Speaker 1: his latest one, Epic Disruptions. In this conversation, he shares
Speaker 1: how AI is transforming the way he teaches, consults and thinks,
Speaker 1: and why he draws a very firm line on where
Speaker 1: he will never let AI do the work. By the
Speaker 1: end of this episode, you'll know exactly how to leverage
Speaker 1: AI as a teammate without letting it hollow out your
Speaker 1: critical thinking skills. Why protecting your judgment is more important
Speaker 1: than ever so if you've ever wondered, am I thinking
Speaker 1: less deeply than I used to? This episode might just
Speaker 1: change the way you work. Welcome to How I Work,
Speaker 1: a show about habits rituals and strategies for optimizing your day.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber. I want to start
Speaker 1: by talking about change, because obviously a lot of your
Speaker 1: work in the last couple of decades has involved massive
Speaker 1: change in helping organizations navigate that, and I dare say
Speaker 1: in both our careers, AI is the biggest disruptor that
Speaker 1: we have both seen. Is that fair to say? Would
Speaker 1: you say the Internet was larger Scott or are we
Speaker 1: going with AI? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Time of course will tell on this, but I suspect
Speaker 2: time will ultimately judge AI as the biggest disruptor in
Speaker 2: our lifetime. And who knows what will come after this,
Speaker 2: but at least of what we have seen thus far,
Speaker 2: just the pervasive impact of it and really changing the
Speaker 2: way that knowledge is created and transmitted and processed. That
Speaker 2: has so much ubiquity, it's hard for that not to
Speaker 2: have cascading disruptive effects.
Speaker 1: So I want to know, then, what are the biggest
Speaker 1: changes that it's made to the way you work? As
Speaker 1: a business professor.
Speaker 2: I am in the maybe somewhat advantage position compared to
Speaker 2: some of my colleagues. I've only been teaching for three years,
Speaker 2: so there's not that much I have to unlearn as
Speaker 2: opposed to people who might be my age but have
Speaker 2: been teaching for longer than three years.
Speaker 3: But whatever.
Speaker 2: But really you're seeing a change just about everything. Change
Speaker 2: the way that you're doing research, change the way you're
Speaker 2: putting together courses, change the way that you're running your classes,
Speaker 2: change the way that you're assessing students. And we can
Speaker 2: go deeper in each of these areas, but I think
Speaker 2: that the headline is AI is to a degree changing
Speaker 2: everything that's happening in universities, which really isn't a surprise.
Speaker 2: I mean, what is a university. It's the creation and
Speaker 2: dissemination of knowledge of words.
Speaker 3: And what is AI?
Speaker 2: Generator of AI very good at it's very good at
Speaker 2: putting together words in unique ways. So those two things
Speaker 2: come together in a kind of predictable sort of way.
Speaker 1: I do want to dig into learning, and we will
Speaker 1: go there and also teaching as well. But first, one
Speaker 1: of the things that when we last spoke that was
Speaker 1: not a recorded conversation, one of the things that intrigued
Speaker 1: me most is your latest book, Epic Disruptions. Your clause
Speaker 1: with Harvard, who's your publisher, had what I thought was
Speaker 1: quite a unique AI clause. Can you tell me about
Speaker 1: what they stipulated for your book?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and in preparation for this, I got the actual
Speaker 2: language from it, which I hoped them any trouble with Harvard,
Speaker 2: But I'll explain that the why behind it, which I
Speaker 2: think will help. The exact clause is authors shall not
Speaker 2: generate or use content for the work and collaborate with
Speaker 2: or buy artificial intelligence tools SLASH applications without the prior
Speaker 2: written consent of publisher. So I called it the thou
Speaker 2: shalt not use AI clause again without coordinating with the publisher.
Speaker 2: And when you first see that, you're like, oh, that
Speaker 2: sounds kind of dragconian. But what's behind that. Well, it's
Speaker 2: still unclear if work is generated by AI what that
Speaker 2: means for copyright. And if you're a publisher and you
Speaker 2: care about copyright, that's a really big deal. So if
Speaker 2: you're reporting something to be original work but it's actually
Speaker 2: plagiarized or not original work, that could be a real problem.
Speaker 3: So, of course there are.
Speaker 2: Ways that you can and should and do use AI
Speaker 2: during the writing process, but the idea here is don't
Speaker 2: outsource it, and if you do, please tell us not
Speaker 2: Please tell us you must tell us.
Speaker 1: I found that interesting because I'm working on my fifth
Speaker 1: book at the moment with Penguin Random House, and there
Speaker 1: was no AI clause with them, which, after having that
Speaker 1: discussion with you, made me think, hmm, maybe it's in
Speaker 1: there now since I signed contracts. Maybe they're making all
Speaker 1: their authors do that. But I was intrigued. And so
Speaker 1: then in your book writing process, how did you use AI?
Speaker 2: If it all so the research and writing of the
Speaker 2: chapters and just brief overview of the book epic disruptions
Speaker 2: eleven innovations that.
Speaker 3: Shape our modern world. This is a history book.
Speaker 2: It starts with gunpowder, it goes up to the Apple iPhone,
Speaker 2: with then a conclusion looking at disruptions that are in
Speaker 2: process today. But there's a lot of research. So the
Speaker 2: actual research of the chapters and the writing of the
Speaker 2: chapters I did independently. What I used AI for was
Speaker 2: to brainstorm, so what are really the epic disruptions that
Speaker 2: should make the short list? I had some thoughts I
Speaker 2: parried with open AI, chat GPT to come up with
Speaker 2: some additional thoughts, kicked around ideas and so on, titling
Speaker 2: what's the right way to title and trying to pull
Speaker 2: out what are some of the themes that I'm seeing?
Speaker 3: Is it three? Is at five?
Speaker 2: Those kinds of things that are not in the writing,
Speaker 2: but really in some of the things that wrap around it.
Speaker 2: I found a to be incredibly helpful, not always perfect
Speaker 2: at the end, you know, you have to own it yourself,
Speaker 2: but if you're trying to expand your thinking, it's a
Speaker 2: really useful tool.
Speaker 1: I know you're obviously an early adopter of Jenai, and
Speaker 1: I imagine your approach to prompting and getting the best
Speaker 1: out of it has evolved. Tell me how you use
Speaker 1: it as a brainstorming partner.
Speaker 2: A lot of it is context engineering, you know, making
Speaker 2: sure that you put in place the right parameters so
Speaker 2: that you are getting a legitimately different perspective on things.
Speaker 2: So whether that's taking on a different role, or it's
Speaker 2: saying let's be a skeptic or let's be a supporter
Speaker 2: or whatever, trying to make sure that you a set
Speaker 2: the context where you're going to get something that is
Speaker 2: what you're looking for, which might be something that's as
Speaker 2: novel as possible or something that's more fine tune as possible,
Speaker 2: whatever it is. The second is multiple tools My favorite
Speaker 2: at the moment are Claude and chat Shept, So I'll
Speaker 2: play them off each other so i'lle be simultaneously brainstorming
Speaker 2: a topic. I'd be like, oh, the other one said this,
Speaker 2: what do you think?
Speaker 3: Think about that?
Speaker 2: And at some point they converge because all the foundational
Speaker 2: stuff will get you to the same place, but they
Speaker 2: actually will start sometimes in very different places. And of
Speaker 2: course we know if we use the systems, sometimes the
Speaker 2: exact same prompts will go in different directions, just depending
Speaker 2: on whatever is the magic that's happening underneath the hood.
Speaker 2: But those two things are really trying to say, let's
Speaker 2: push for the personas and get the context right and
Speaker 2: then using different models. Those are the two things that
Speaker 2: I found to be the most helpful.
Speaker 1: I will quite often when I'm working on quite a
Speaker 1: big project where I want to get different views, I
Speaker 1: will quite often have the same prompt in CHETJPT Claude
Speaker 1: and Gemini and then finish with ask me you know
Speaker 1: any questions so you can be ninety five percent confident
Speaker 1: and doing a great job. And it's quite interesting the
Speaker 1: different questions that I'll get back when it's a task
Speaker 1: that could go in several different directions, So I do
Speaker 1: love that as a way and kind of sparring them
Speaker 1: against each other I found really useful. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I wonder as I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people and particularly knowledge workers that you know, whose value
Speaker 1: is in their thinking use AI a lot, is I wonder, firstly,
Speaker 1: what's going to happen to our ability to think critically?
Speaker 1: And then what's going to happen to our ability to
Speaker 1: maintain good judgment? And I want to know for you
Speaker 1: with the thinking critically, how do you think about that
Speaker 1: for yourself? And do you worry am I going to
Speaker 1: lose the ability to think critically if I kind of
Speaker 1: crossed that line where I've suddenly outsourced just a little
Speaker 1: bit too much to AI?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is something that I worry about a lot.
Speaker 2: I worry even more about for my students and even
Speaker 2: more for my children. So as you've got then three
Speaker 2: generations there, You've got me nineteen seventy five, my kids
Speaker 2: who were born between two thousand and five and twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: and then the students who generally are about thirty years old,
Speaker 2: so the average day of birth would be about whatever
Speaker 2: that is, nineteen ninety five. It really is being very
Speaker 2: clear about the lines. I'm trying to do something that
Speaker 2: does rep present original thinking. I just can't outsource that.
Speaker 2: I can't ask AI for a first draft of something
Speaker 2: I tried, you.
Speaker 3: Know, when it first came out. Of course, I'm going
Speaker 3: to play around with it.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, okay, I've got an idea for a
Speaker 2: new class, please, is not a curriculum for me? And
Speaker 2: A the output was not particularly good, and B my
Speaker 2: brain wasn't in it. I hadn't thought about it, I
Speaker 2: hadn't processed it, I hadn't struggled, et cetera. So now
Speaker 2: when I'm working on a new course, certainly I'll say, okay,
Speaker 2: this bit of it, I need to think about some
Speaker 2: additional readings, or I want to think about some of
Speaker 2: the principles I want to teach here, so I'll get
Speaker 2: help to sharpen. But ownership of the integration it has
Speaker 2: to be by me or else. That's just a skill
Speaker 2: that's going to lapse. So that, to me is the
Speaker 2: most important thing. Drawing the line and being really clear
Speaker 2: about where you draw that line. There are other tasks
Speaker 2: that are less critical where I'm very happy to outsource.
Speaker 2: More so as an example, I was facilitating a panel
Speaker 2: discussion a couple months ago, and that was pretty much
Speaker 2: churn and burn. You know, here are my panel us,
Speaker 2: make me smarter about who they are, give me a
Speaker 2: few good questions.
Speaker 1: Task.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's great raw material. I can then turn that
Speaker 2: into a finished product. But I was totally fine with
Speaker 2: first draft being done by AI. But when you really
Speaker 2: need to turn on the critical thinking and reasoning, first
Speaker 2: draft by AI, I think the research shows is really
Speaker 2: really dangerous.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because I it would have been about a
Speaker 1: year ago now. I had an executive from Google on
Speaker 1: the show and they were talking about how their default
Speaker 1: was to use AI or Gemini for the first draft
Speaker 1: of everything as a place to start. And I kind
Speaker 1: of get that because the blank page in any kind
Speaker 1: of work can be a little bit confronting. No One,
Speaker 1: particularly writers like us, like a blank page. But then
Speaker 1: how do you decide like because I imagine sometimes it
Speaker 1: is a fine line. The example that you've given is
Speaker 1: quite stark. But are there examples where m you're kind
Speaker 1: of on the fence about whether to use A to
Speaker 1: help do the thinking versus you sit and struggle with
Speaker 1: it and do the hard unpleasant deep work yourself.
Speaker 2: So you know, last term, I had sixty five students
Speaker 2: in one of my classes, and there's qualitative feedback that
Speaker 2: comes from the sixty five students, and the easy thing
Speaker 2: to do is to dump it all in chat shept
Speaker 2: and say, tell me the three themes that you see here.
Speaker 2: And I did that, except I said, I want the
Speaker 2: three themes that you see. I want the biggest outlier
Speaker 2: that you see that is negative and that's positive, and
Speaker 2: I want something random that you can throw back me.
Speaker 2: And then I went and did the same thing over
Speaker 2: at Claude. So again tried to have it go through
Speaker 2: multiple models, so I didn't fall into the easy trap
Speaker 2: of saying, Okay, this is set to warm, so it's
Speaker 2: going to tell me that the very nice things my
Speaker 2: students had to say, and I'll just be all done
Speaker 2: and moved on. So I tried to make sure that
Speaker 2: I balanced the big efficiency gains that I got from
Speaker 2: not going through every word of everything while also being provoked.
Speaker 2: And then I was so interested in the feedback I
Speaker 2: did in the end go back and read all of it.
Speaker 2: So it didn't end up saving any time at all,
Speaker 2: but it was fun to look at it from various angles,
Speaker 2: so you know, that is the thing that again back
Speaker 2: to the conversation we had about the different ways that
Speaker 2: you contact engineering, set perspectives. If you do, put some
Speaker 2: things that will force you to critically reason into your
Speaker 2: prompts so that what you're getting back is not just
Speaker 2: the answer, but is an answer with outliers and as
Speaker 2: you said, questions for consideration. Those I think are great
Speaker 2: things that can help make sure we don't lose that
Speaker 2: is that again, I think it is probably the most
Speaker 2: important thing we're going to have to struggle with over
Speaker 2: the next decade. And I worry, in a parallel to
Speaker 2: what we saw in the book, that many of the
Speaker 2: early adopters of AI are going to say, what have
Speaker 2: we done? They'll say, at first, this is great, We've
Speaker 2: got all these efficiency gains, and then X number of
Speaker 2: years in the future they will have hollowed out their
Speaker 2: ability to actually do things, and they'll say, we got
Speaker 2: something wrong when we did this short term gain but
Speaker 2: long term pain.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I really are worry about people's ability to think critically.
Speaker 1: I mean, as humans, where we're programmed to go down
Speaker 1: the path of least resistance, and that is to outsource
Speaker 1: our thinking to AI, and I worry, like I feel
Speaker 1: it in myself that it takes willpower to go Okay,
Speaker 1: I need to sit here and I need to sit
Speaker 1: in discomfort, and I need to do the thinking. And
Speaker 1: I do choose to do that because integrity is valued
Speaker 1: of mine. But I think it's you know, it's also
Speaker 1: like I can see how a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are known for their thinking and their quality of their thinking,
Speaker 1: it's really easy to go down that path. And you know,
Speaker 1: like I kind of look at what LinkedIn has become,
Speaker 1: where you know thinkers that I used to follow kind
Speaker 1: of like that is not you. You have not generated that.
Speaker 1: Why am I even on LinkedIn? How do you feel
Speaker 1: now about that as a platform, Like you're very active
Speaker 1: on it, but what is your view of what's going
Speaker 1: on there and how you're approaching it yourself as someone
Speaker 1: who is you know, a great thinker?
Speaker 2: Well, ye, first of all, thanks for calling me a
Speaker 2: great thinker sub days better than others. But you know,
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, I was participating in offsite
Speaker 2: with a bunch of senior leaders from a large organization
Speaker 2: and they said, we want some stimuli, and we want
Speaker 2: stimuli not from you, but from younger voices. So I
Speaker 2: asked my son Charlie, who was seventeen years old at
Speaker 2: the time, to come in and share a perspective about AI,
Speaker 2: and he said, look, everyone in my school is using
Speaker 2: it all the time, and the thing I really worry
Speaker 2: about is that we're going to end up like those
Speaker 2: really obese humans in the movie Wally that have completely
Speaker 2: lost their capacity to think about anything. None of the
Speaker 2: metaphor we were talking about is you know, back in
Speaker 2: the day when we were in high school, you could
Speaker 2: go to the bathroom and you could buy the answers
Speaker 2: to the test. You know, someone at the stall next
Speaker 2: to you would have the answer key or whatever. And
Speaker 2: people didn't do that because it was just so blatantly
Speaker 2: obviously cheating. But now when you go to a large
Speaker 2: language model and you ask for a first draft to something,
Speaker 2: it doesn't feel like cheating, So, you know, it just
Speaker 2: it feels different. And you talked about acting with integrity,
Speaker 2: but you could also argue that people are using the
Speaker 2: best tools available to be able to get the best
Speaker 2: answers they can. So, you know, back to what we
Speaker 2: are thinking about on campus, how do you actually go
Speaker 2: and design educational experiences that encourage people to learn that
Speaker 2: help them sit with the discomfort you talked about, teach
Speaker 2: them to be comfortable in that discomfort, and then go
Speaker 2: and assess them in a way that goes and says, Yes,
Speaker 2: use the best tools that you can, but make sure
Speaker 2: we're also developing critically as human beings.
Speaker 3: It's an incredibly hard topic.
Speaker 1: It's really good segue into your work in the business school,
Speaker 1: the Taxical of Business, one of the top business schools
Speaker 1: in America, Like, how is your approach to teaching what
Speaker 1: I'm sure are incredibly smart minds, but who do have
Speaker 1: access to AI and who theoretically can outsource their thinking?
Speaker 1: How do you design a course and then assess these
Speaker 1: students in this new world that we're in with great care?
Speaker 3: That's the short answer.
Speaker 2: That have some advantage in that the courses that I
Speaker 2: teach are generally not fined and apply a mathematical formula
Speaker 2: or use an off the shelf framework, but more around
Speaker 2: critical thinking, really, and how do you deal with uncertainty
Speaker 2: and how do you go and act when the data
Speaker 2: is telling you not to and hear the voice that
Speaker 2: doesn't speak and that stuff isn't regurgitation of frameworks that
Speaker 2: you find in books. It's going and puzzling through things together,
Speaker 2: very discussion oriented courses and so on, so along some dimensions.
Speaker 2: I think it is easier in that context to do
Speaker 2: what I do, which is tell students please use AI
Speaker 2: to go and go through the case material or to
Speaker 2: come up with first answers to questions.
Speaker 3: But we're going to be in a room.
Speaker 2: We're going to put ourselves in the shoes of a
Speaker 2: participant or a case protagonist.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk about it, and the laptops.
Speaker 2: Are going to be closed and the cell phones are
Speaker 2: going to be off. So you know, whatever you've done
Speaker 2: to prepare, that's fine, But fifty percent of your grade,
Speaker 2: then it is the discussion quality that we have in class.
Speaker 2: So it's pushing on that in class experience and discussion.
Speaker 2: That's point number one.
Speaker 3: Point number two.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, and this is still emergent, thinking about how
Speaker 2: do you assess learning in different ways? So I started
Speaker 2: a couple terms ago giving people an option for the
Speaker 2: final assignment.
Speaker 3: The old final assignment.
Speaker 2: Was take everything we learned in class, write a paper
Speaker 2: about some company, some leader, apply learning from class. The
Speaker 2: new option is take everything we learned in class, find
Speaker 2: a leader, give me two hundred words about why you
Speaker 2: pick this leader. Then design an AI tool to help
Speaker 2: them learn something that you learned in class. And the
Speaker 2: most critical thing I learned about that is and show
Speaker 2: me your work. So the output I kind of care about.
Speaker 2: What I really care about is the exact prompts you use,
Speaker 2: the back and forth you had with the large language models,
Speaker 2: the critical thinking you displayed, blah blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 2: because I learned the first run. And sometimes you get
Speaker 2: these very very elegant outputs that had a lot of
Speaker 2: mess that went into them. I'm like, this is you
Speaker 2: didn't do much work and actually did a ton. And
Speaker 2: then sometimes you see these things where the output looked
Speaker 2: super sophisticated, but the students did basically no work and
Speaker 2: had no understanding. So if you don't see the work,
Speaker 2: you don't understand that. And then finally, I sample size
Speaker 2: the one. But I ran an experiment the last term
Speaker 2: where I did a thirty minute interview with the student
Speaker 2: at the end of the term and said, we're going
Speaker 2: to try this out, just see what it's like. But
Speaker 2: pick a situation, let's talk, so you know, just trying
Speaker 2: to figure out different ways to assess whether people really
Speaker 2: have learned, in some cases leaning into AI, in some
Speaker 2: cases going about as old school as you'll go. And
Speaker 2: this is an example of one of something that every
Speaker 2: educator is thinking about right now.
Speaker 1: Now, I do want to talk about consulting and the
Speaker 1: context you worked in the world of management consulting for
Speaker 1: I want to say about twenty years Scott nailed it. Yeah, fantastic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And during that time you were managing partner of you know, Site,
Speaker 1: which is the firm that the late Clayton Christiansen started,
Speaker 1: and that is how we connected when you were you know,
Speaker 1: several years ago. So I want to understand, like, if
Speaker 1: you were still working in consulting, how do you think
Speaker 1: you would be using AI for client work.
Speaker 2: I want to give you a historical example first, then
Speaker 2: I'll come answer it. So, you know, fourteen forty Gudenbergen
Speaker 2: team comes up with the printing press. We know the
Speaker 2: basic story. The world changes. The thing that I just
Speaker 2: want to reflect on is who is Gudenberg's first actual customer. Well,
Speaker 2: it's the Catholic Church and it makes a lot of
Speaker 2: sense dominant organization.
Speaker 3: It's time.
Speaker 2: Not that many Bibles could be created if you have
Speaker 2: to hand inscribe them. The printing press makes it much
Speaker 2: easier for the Catholic Church to disseminate the Bible that
Speaker 2: looks good in the beginning. Martin Luther picks up the
Speaker 2: very same technology and the Reformation happens, and the Catholic
Speaker 2: Church might ultimately regret the fact that it helped the
Speaker 2: fund and innovation that yes, helped u spread the Bible,
Speaker 2: but also kind of tore the church apart. And I
Speaker 2: tell this story because I think you're going to see
Speaker 2: a very similar story for the major consulting companies and
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence. Right now, it's a great time for a
Speaker 2: lot of the consultancies. But I think you're going to
Speaker 2: see two things. I think one, clients are going to say,
Speaker 2: we actually don't need a consultancy. There's a lot more
Speaker 2: that we're now capable of doing ourselves. A number two,
Speaker 2: we have hollowed out the consultancies will say a lot
Speaker 2: of our capabilities. So we've got a generation of leaders
Speaker 2: that can go and provide eye to eye advice to
Speaker 2: top senior leaders and have great judgment and so on.
Speaker 2: But the efficiency gains that we got mean that we
Speaker 2: don't have another generation that comes after it. I think
Speaker 2: we're going to see both those things happen over the
Speaker 2: course of the next five to ten years.
Speaker 3: If I were in the field now, I.
Speaker 2: Would be doing all the things that I think smart
Speaker 2: people are doing, which is show up to client meetings,
Speaker 2: being even smarter, have teams work even faster, have multiple
Speaker 2: possibilities being considered in ways that you couldn't do before,
Speaker 2: really live up to the full possibility what you can do.
Speaker 2: I was at a small company, but now a small
Speaker 2: company can look like a big company because you have
Speaker 2: all these tools you can take advantage of. That's if
Speaker 2: I was still at that company. The thing I also
Speaker 2: would be thinking really hard about is is.
Speaker 3: This the right model?
Speaker 2: You know, in a site, like many people in consultancy
Speaker 2: got a traditional pyramid model, and people are beginning to say, well,
Speaker 2: maybe it's diamonds where you've got you know, a few people.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's something that is an inverted pyramid where actually
Speaker 2: you have more people at the top who are the
Speaker 2: good judgment people that can advise senior clients, and they
Speaker 2: don't need to have the people who are doing all
Speaker 2: the work at the bottom. I don't know the answer
Speaker 2: to that, but I certainly would be thinking really hard
Speaker 2: about the new models that are going to be emerging.
Speaker 1: If you were still working with junior consultants, how would
Speaker 1: you be teaching them to think critically?
Speaker 2: AI essentially is your new teammate, your new intern, whatever
Speaker 2: metaphor you want to use. It's got amazing superpowers. Sometimes
Speaker 2: it does some really weird things like make stuff up
Speaker 2: or dramatically underperform some things you think it's going to
Speaker 2: be good at. The way you figure these things out
Speaker 2: is by working very closely with it, never ever outsourced
Speaker 2: to it, and recognize life is better in teams and
Speaker 2: research shows life is actually sociologically better with AI, as
Speaker 2: long as you don't do too much with it and
Speaker 2: now source too much to it. But make sure that
Speaker 2: you are pushing and using it to augment versus replacing,
Speaker 2: because that will be a very short sighted and destructive path.
Speaker 2: I mentioned Bobby Hansen before. In his book Leaders Make
Speaker 2: the Future that the third edition, he said, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the most important things that a future has
Speaker 2: to do is be very precise on language, because the
Speaker 2: right language will pull you somewhere, the wrong language will
Speaker 2: push you away from And he writes in his fifty
Speaker 2: years doing this. Artificial intelligence is the worst name for
Speaker 2: a new technology he has ever seen, because artificial makes
Speaker 2: it sound like it's replaceative, and what you really want
Speaker 2: is augmented, where it is something that allows you to
Speaker 2: stretch and push and develop further, and that is the
Speaker 2: thing I would really be pushing among the young talent
Speaker 2: at the organization.
Speaker 3: Don't stop thinking. Once you stop thinking, it's kind of over.
Speaker 1: If you're finding this conversation with Scott Anthony as helpful
Speaker 1: as I am, stay with us because in the second half,
Speaker 1: Scott reveals why he has started thinking about his life
Speaker 1: in five year cycles, and also his advice for improving
Speaker 1: your ability to think critically in the age of AI.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for more tips to improve the way
Speaker 1: you work can live. I write a short weekly newsletter
Speaker 1: that contains tactics I've discovered that have helped me personally.
Speaker 1: You can sign up for that at Amantha dot com.
Speaker 1: That's Amantha dot com. How would you be approaching recruitment
Speaker 1: because I feel like I'm seeing a lot of companies
Speaker 1: really struggle with this, particularly in those early stages where
Speaker 1: you're not having those in depth interviews face to face
Speaker 1: because I mean even virtual interviews these days, you know,
Speaker 1: I hear all sorts of stories about an AI going
Speaker 1: on in the background and putting out answers to questions
Speaker 1: that people are being asked. What would you do to
Speaker 1: test the ability of someone to think? In this day
Speaker 1: and age.
Speaker 2: What I would wish for is a way to be
Speaker 2: in a physical location with someone and have a conversation
Speaker 2: with them. I think, just the ability to actually have
Speaker 2: a conversation with somebody and not ask how many taxi
Speaker 2: cabs are there in New York City or whatever, but
Speaker 2: just see the way that they approach issues. The approach
Speaker 2: I followed what I was interviewing in a sight is
Speaker 2: I said, would give people here are ten disruptions that
Speaker 2: are in process right now, or ten companies that have
Speaker 2: been called disruptive. Pick any one of them and come
Speaker 2: up with a point of view, are they actually disruptive?
Speaker 2: And if you were caught in a lift with the CEO,
Speaker 2: what would you say to them? And I did that
Speaker 2: for two reasons.
Speaker 3: One, I want to.
Speaker 2: See what they did with it, and then two, once
Speaker 2: we're in a room together that I can push them
Speaker 2: and they've had the benefit of being able to think
Speaker 2: about it for some period of time.
Speaker 3: And we'd have fun.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Sometimes people would go and produce a PowerPoint tech. I
Speaker 2: didn't ask them to do that, but sometimes people would.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I get a Microsoft word memos. Sometimes people would
Speaker 2: just talk. But it was a really good way just
Speaker 2: to get into a conversation where you could see how
Speaker 2: someone thinks. I don't know a better way to do it,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean you could say psychometric tests or whatever, perhaps,
Speaker 2: but you know, I mean, as we know, anything can
Speaker 2: be gamed these days.
Speaker 3: It's not easy.
Speaker 1: We talked about critical thinking. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: good judgment. How do you help your students develop the
Speaker 1: ability to have good judgment? I feel like, and maybe
Speaker 1: this is a flawed assumption, but the longer you do something,
Speaker 1: the more experience you develop. Generally your judgment becomes better
Speaker 1: and better because it's the collection of all the different
Speaker 1: experiences that you've had. But how do you think about
Speaker 1: the ability to have good judgment and to improve that ability?
Speaker 2: I would like to think that experience makes you better
Speaker 2: at having judgment, but I think at least some research
Speaker 2: and data would suggest you get some real blind spots.
Speaker 3: Is you're used to.
Speaker 2: Defaulting to certain things and if the situation changes. And
Speaker 2: with that, what I really try to do is I
Speaker 2: try to essentially give students heuristics and say, what you're
Speaker 2: going to do or what you're going to get are
Speaker 2: rules of thumbs, mental models, way to think through things
Speaker 2: that essentially can help you. So it's not that you
Speaker 2: as an individual have judgment. It's you've got a tool
Speaker 2: that you can use, and what you have to figure
Speaker 2: out is what is the right tool to use in
Speaker 2: a context. And this is the thing that I learned
Speaker 2: from Clay Christiansen. You know, he used to joke that
Speaker 2: his wife Christine would say the famous disruptive line diagram
Speaker 2: that's in all of his stuff, it was etched onto
Speaker 2: his glasses. Everywhere he looked, he saw disruption. I wear
Speaker 2: contact lenses, so the models are like fused under my eyes,
Speaker 2: so you know, everywhere I look, I see it. And
Speaker 2: that's sometimes maybe a tiny bit of a curse, but
Speaker 2: what it really is is a blessing. It allows you
Speaker 2: to see things that you wouldn't otherwise see. And whenever
Speaker 2: someone asks Clay what's your opinion or your viewpoint about
Speaker 2: extra y, Clay would say, I've got no viewpoints or opinions.
Speaker 2: The model has a viewpoint, and he was such a
Speaker 2: good social scientist. When that didn't happen, he'd say, oh, great,
Speaker 2: we found an anomaly, something that didn't fit.
Speaker 3: Therefore the bottle must be wrong in some way. Let's upgrade.
Speaker 2: The vision of our school is to develop wise, decisive
Speaker 2: leaders that better the world through business. A wise leader,
Speaker 2: in my view, is one who has a whole range
Speaker 2: of tools that they can use and knows when to
Speaker 2: use them and how to use them.
Speaker 1: I love that, and I guess the follow one question
Speaker 1: from that, like, when you yourself are looking at creating a
Speaker 1: new model or a framework with which to view the world,
Speaker 1: what role does AI play in helping augment your thinking
Speaker 1: or does it not play a role there?
Speaker 2: I have an idea that's been bouncing around the back
Speaker 2: of my head for a few years now, and this
Speaker 2: is what does it really take to be a leader
Speaker 2: that can successfully navigate today's world of radical uncertainty? A brand,
Speaker 2: the idea, adaptive capacity. And the idea basically is you
Speaker 2: need three things. You need metacognition, which means you think
Speaker 2: about how you think and have lots.
Speaker 3: Of models at your disposal.
Speaker 2: You need equanimity, the ability to pause so you don't
Speaker 2: get overwhelmed with all these models that you have in
Speaker 2: your head at a paradox mindset that allows you to
Speaker 2: take perceive tensions and turn them into possibilities. As I've
Speaker 2: been advancing my thinking about this, AI number one has
Speaker 2: been a research partner, so use some of the emerging
Speaker 2: research capabilities to say that idea about.
Speaker 3: There not being anything like this, is that true?
Speaker 2: What else do you see out there? What research you
Speaker 2: see blah blah blah blah blah. So a research partner.
Speaker 2: Number two an experiment designer. So I have been trying
Speaker 2: to think about ways to actually go and test this, validated, etc.
Speaker 3: So this will be the sort of thing where I
Speaker 3: will idly go and brainstorm. I was thinking about this,
Speaker 3: what do you think, etc. Etc. I have a thought
Speaker 3: about doing synthetic research.
Speaker 2: I've not done that, but I thought it would be
Speaker 2: really cool if you were to actually use AI to
Speaker 2: create a simulation to go in test hypotheses. That is
Speaker 2: beyond my current capabilities, but something that is on the
Speaker 2: list of things to continue to push. Barring from slow
Speaker 2: productivity from caw Newport, I work on a five year
Speaker 2: timeline for some of these things. So I want to
Speaker 2: crack this in the next now four years, since I
Speaker 2: set that a year ago, so I'm okay with not
Speaker 2: having synthetic research yet, but that's an area that I'm
Speaker 2: watching to see if that's something that you actually can't
Speaker 2: do with any materiality.
Speaker 1: Tell me more about this five year cycle. I'm curious.
Speaker 1: I did not know that about you.
Speaker 2: So caw Newport, who I know. You're a fan of
Speaker 2: his book Slow Productivity. I was one of the best
Speaker 2: books I read a couple of years ago, and he
Speaker 2: had this idea, you know, slow down, slow down. Don't
Speaker 2: think necessarily about what you're doing over the next week, month,
Speaker 2: or quarter, but really think about what are your aspirations
Speaker 2: over a five year time period. As they said, when
Speaker 2: you relax the timeline, you're able to just handle things
Speaker 2: moving at different paces. So when I did this a
Speaker 2: year ago, I said three things that I would like
Speaker 2: to do professionally over the next five years. One, I
Speaker 2: want to crack this adaptive capacity idea. Two, I want
Speaker 2: to do something I've never done before, which is have
Speaker 2: my name on a peer reviewed academic article, not the
Speaker 2: lead author, but I can be the tenth author. That's fine.
Speaker 2: And number three, I'd really like to win a teaching award.
Speaker 2: I just validate and demonstrate that I improved my ability
Speaker 2: to teach in class.
Speaker 3: So those are the three things I'm saying this on
Speaker 3: am I allowed to say the date clus you are
Speaker 3: July fourteen, twenty.
Speaker 2: Twenty five, so we can time capsule and check in
Speaker 2: on this four years from now.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I love that. What are some other habits
Speaker 1: or rituals or things that you're you've been playing around
Speaker 1: with around how you do work? Like? I love the
Speaker 1: five year thing, and I always feel like you're someone
Speaker 1: that's experimenting with different ways of working and augmenting your productivity.
Speaker 3: I'll call this one Can I watch? And can I watch?
Speaker 1: Is?
Speaker 2: I started teaching three years ago and the school that
Speaker 2: I teach at is blessed with a number of really,
Speaker 2: really world class teachers. So I've made a regular habit
Speaker 2: whenever I'm in a teaching cycle, which tends to be
Speaker 2: about a five week cycle, I try to go and
Speaker 2: observe at least one and hopefully two other faculty, usually
Speaker 2: ones that my students recommend, you know, just who's really
Speaker 2: great at running a class. And in those can I
Speaker 2: watch moments. I don't care at all about the content.
Speaker 2: I'm not going there to learn, you know, what this
Speaker 2: teacher is teaching about this topic.
Speaker 3: I'm just absorbing the way that they're running.
Speaker 2: The room, what the students are doing, who's locked in,
Speaker 2: who's not locked in, how they're using their physicality, blah
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah, and just trying to get a
Speaker 2: sense as to what it takes to really really command
Speaker 2: a room of sixty plus very smart NBA students who
Speaker 2: again are blessed with a lot of really great teachers.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure some of the things they're teaching are
Speaker 2: getting into my unconscious as well. But that idea of
Speaker 2: being very purposeful in getting stimuli that's different from normal stimuli,
Speaker 2: that has been something that has.
Speaker 3: Been one of the more rewarding.
Speaker 2: Routines I've had in the last few years. And I've
Speaker 2: made some new friends from doing it too, which is
Speaker 2: always nice.
Speaker 1: I love that. Tell me, what are a couple of
Speaker 1: things that you've larn from you? Can I watch sessions?
Speaker 2: Is one Joseph Garaco, who teaches in the accounting unit
Speaker 2: at talk. I said in one of his sessions, and
Speaker 2: you know, I thought, and Joseph, if you're watching this,
Speaker 2: I hope you take it in good spirit. I thought
Speaker 2: it was going to be the most boring session ever.
Speaker 2: I mean, he'd want a teaching a ward, but I'm like,
Speaker 2: it's accounting.
Speaker 3: You know. Even though my.
Speaker 2: Grandfather was an accounting teacher, he was not known for
Speaker 2: being dynamic. But the thing that Joseph really showed me
Speaker 2: is you can find real moments of inspiration by letting
Speaker 2: students really go and dwell on seemingly small things. And
Speaker 2: what he was really great at doing is opening his
Speaker 2: session with what seemed like a really simple question, but
Speaker 2: one that just expanded into an hour of really good
Speaker 2: discussion where he also could teach about how working capital
Speaker 2: works and all that. So the thing I learned from
Speaker 2: Joseph is the power of a very very well thought
Speaker 2: through opening question when you're in a good class discussion.
Speaker 2: Then I sat in the class that Paul Argenti, who
Speaker 2: tea in communication and a couple other fields, it talk
Speaker 2: a couple months ago, and I noticed he just had
Speaker 2: this theme where he was talking about corporate activism and
Speaker 2: he used pretty evocative language that I won't repeat to
Speaker 2: not get him in trouble, but I just really got
Speaker 2: the room. It's like the room like all devices went down.
Speaker 2: Everyone was on him and like, how rehearse was that?
Speaker 2: He said, I've been doing this for thirty years. It's
Speaker 2: just like not quite a scriptive performance, but you know,
Speaker 2: just really a way to pull people in. So this
Speaker 2: idea that you are, to some degree, for better or worse,
Speaker 2: when you're teaching a class, you're a performer, and you
Speaker 2: want to think about how you're going to use what
Speaker 2: great performers do is the thing I picked up from him.
Speaker 2: So great questions and think about, of course teaching, but
Speaker 2: a little bit of performance mixed in. Those are a
Speaker 2: couple of things I've picked up.
Speaker 1: I love that well, Scott. It's just like it's always
Speaker 1: just such a joy to talk. Whether it's on Mike
Speaker 1: or off Mike. I always feel like I learn so
Speaker 1: many new things and I just love your way of thinking.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for extending your workday on the
Speaker 1: East Coast to have this chat with.
Speaker 3: Me, Namantha.
Speaker 2: It is always a pleasure, and thank you for starting
Speaker 2: your workday early in Melbourne to have this chat with
Speaker 2: me very much.
Speaker 3: Appreciate it. As always.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this chat with Scott Anthony. For me,
Speaker 1: the biggest takeaway is this AI is an incredible partner,
Speaker 1: but it should never replace the discomfort of thinking for yourself.
Speaker 1: And if this episode gave you a new way to
Speaker 1: think about your own work, please share it with a
Speaker 1: friend or a colleague and make sure to follow How
Speaker 1: I Work so you don't miss future conversations like this.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening, and here's to working
Speaker 1: smarter with our brains fully switched on. If you like
Speaker 1: today's Joe, make sure you g'd follow on your podcast
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Speaker 1: Work was recorded on the traditional land of the Warrangery People,
Speaker 1: part of the Cooler Nation.