Is it time to drastically change the way we think about failure? What if failure is the key to success?

John Danner is a faculty member at UC Berkeley and Princeton University and the author of Built for Growth and The Other “F” Word. His research focuses on leadership, strategy, and innovation. He regularly consults with Fortune 500 companies, offering actionable strategies to help them adapt to ever-changing landscapes and grow.

John and Greg discuss the paradox of Silicon Valley’s celebration of failure and the reality behind it, turning regrets into strategic resources, the importance of self-knowledge, both for individuals and organizations, and how understanding your personality can influence successful entrepreneurship.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

**This episode was recorded in 2021.**

Recommended Resources:

• Thomas Edison
• Daniel Kahneman
• Mark Coopersmith
• Jeff Bezos
• Barry Schwartz | unSILOed
• Sara Blakely
• Ben & Jerry’s
• Jack Ma

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at UC Berkeley
• Professional Website
• Profile on LinkedIn

His Work:

• Built for Growth: How Builder Personality Shapes Your Business, Your Team, and Your Ability to Win
• The Other "F" Word: How Smart Leaders, Teams, and Entrepreneurs Put Failure to Work

Embracing failure leads to growth

03:33: There's something quintessentially human about failure that connects all of us because we are all experts at it. We do it all the time in very unexpected ways, yet we tend too often to walk away from it, to ignore it, to not talk about it. And it's become, I think, a taboo unto itself, but also, from a leadership point of view, in my experience, both in teaching, consulting, and running organizations, starting organizations, it is a huge barrier in most organizations that I'm familiar with. If you can't talk about failure, if you can't genuinely, honestly, openly discuss it and understand what's behind it, you're never going to be in a position to actually leverage and benefit from it.

Failure is like gravity

12:11: Failure is like gravity. It is a force and fact of nature. It is inexorable and unavoidable, and it's not a strong force of nature. It's a weak force of nature, but it is the kind of phenomenon that I think we're dealing with.

The value of failure

02:41: What failure almost always is: reality's way of telling you that you weren't as smart as you thought you were, you were conducting an experiment all along, and it's reality that's telling you what you didn't know but thought you did. So, it's got some value for sure.

How can we embrace failure without being overwhelmed by it and use it to improve the odds of success

25:21: How can you both accommodate the likelihood of failure but not be overwhelmed by it, not ignore it, but manage through it and, more importantly, perhaps manage with it because failure is a little bit like the coal that holds the diamond; there's insight in every failure. There is something of value that is there to be mined if you have the humility to acknowledge it and the tenacity to go after it. And to that extent, I like this notion of thinking of initiative and action as chances to improve your odds that the experiments you're conducting are more likely than otherwise to prove successful.

Given the advancements in technology and AI, how have humans learned to navigate the ever-shifting boundaries of morality in an increasingly complex world?

Webb Keane is a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan. Through his books like, Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories and most recently Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination, Webb offers insights into the nuances of moral life and human interaction.

Webb joins Greg to discuss how different cultures navigate ethical boundaries, the complexities of human-animal relationships, the growing phenomenon of anthropomorphizing AI, and the challenges of understanding what it means to be human.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Recommended Resources:

• Max Weber
• Clifford Geertz
• Erving Goffman
• Joseph Henrich
• Gregory Berns | unSILOed
• Antigone
• William Pietz
• Kant’s Categorical Imperative

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at University of Michigan
• Google Scholar Page

His Work:

• Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination
• Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories
• Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter

How anthropologists immerse themselves in other ways of life

53:09: Anthropologists just do what everyone does—they just do it more intensely and with more intentionality. As I said, our most valuable tool is just knowing how to be a person and how to get along with other people. And that, I mean, in principle, anyone can learn a new language. You're never going to learn it as well as you learn your first language, but it's something that's available to you. And so, in some sense, that goes for learning to eat differently, to walk differently, to wear different kinds of [clothes], to interact with people differently, even to imagine yourself into a different kind of metaphysical system. Like, hang out with shamans long enough, and you're going to start to think that, yes, they do turn into jaguars and roam the forest at night.

Key difference between anthropologists and other social scientists

05:52: One of the key differences between what we do and what other social scientists do is we actually live with them and take part in their lives. And so, that way, you catch not just what people say, but what they do—and not just what they put into words, but what they hint at and imply.

Moral propositions must be livable to matter

15:28: If you're looking for inhabitable, feasible, ethical worlds—moral ways of living—you can't just sit back and think, "Well, how should this be?"... Moral propositions are great, but to be livable, they have to exist in a world that makes them possible and sustains them.

The boundaries between human and non-human are not universal

32:26: In many situations that look like we have dramatically different moral or ethical intuitions, the difference is less in what our moral intuitions are, but rather where we draw the line between us and them—between something to which it applies and something to which it doesn't. We may, in fact, share moral intuitions with people who seem utterly strange to us, but we just don't think we agree on where they apply properly.

Why are external accountability and thoughtful integration of algorithms necessary now to ensure fairer labor dynamics across work environments? What’s the puzzling problem that comes with increasing the level of transparency of these algorithms?

Hatim Rahman is an Associate Professor of Management & Organizations at Northwestern University in the Kellogg School of Management, and the author of the new book, Inside the Invisible Cage: How Algorithms Control Workers.

Greg and Hatim discuss Ratim’s book, and his extensive case study of a company matching employers with gig workers, exploring the ways algorithms impact labor dynamics. Hatim draws connections between Max Weber's concept of the 'iron cage' and modern, opaque algorithmic systems, discussing how these systems control worker opportunities and behavior. Their conversation further delves into the evolution and consequences of rating systems, algorithmic transparency, organizational control, and the balance between digital and traditional workforce structures.

Rahman emphasizes the need for external accountability and thoughtful integration of algorithms to ensure fairer labor dynamics.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Recommended Resources:

• Control Theory
• Max Weber
• Gig Economy
• Goodhart's Law
• Ratings Inflation
• Frederick Winslow Taylor
• Fair.work

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Kellogg School of Management | Northwestern University
• LinkedIn Profile

His Work:

• Inside the Invisible Cage: How Algorithms Control Workers
• Google Scholar Page
• Fast Company Articles

Experimenting to find the right balance between regulation and self-regulation

33:36: Finding the right balance between self-regulation—where organizations can figure things out for themselves—and real legislation, regulation that creates societal and broader outcomes that are beneficial is where we are right now. Of course, the tricky thing is that you don't want to get that balance wrong either. But, I do think we're at the stage where we need to experiment, right? We need to figure out those optimal levels of transparency, opacity, regulation, and self-regulation.

Why employers struggle to recognize and value skills badges from lesser-known institutions

39:55: The problem with the skill sets that people develop is that, employers, they didn't understand what it meant. Right? Let's say you have a badge from some smaller university or community college. Employees generally struggle to understand what that means, right? Or they'll pass over it. They'll look for more recognizable, established credentials and proxies for skills. And so, at least when I was studying, many of the workers, employers—like we tried, but it didn't help us because the employer didn't know what it meant or how the passing of that skills test would concretely help them do the job that they required.

Why do digital platforms struggle to balance transparency and risk?

14:17: Organizations and digital platforms want to find the right balance, but they just struggle a lot to do so because many employers are risk-averse and want to limit their liability. I imagine that this is one of the reasons why they have favored opacity, right? If we don't have to reveal or tell, then it limits our ability to get exposure to lawsuits or exposure to gaming, zone, and so forth.