Stanford Meeting Expert: Your Packed Calendar Is Not Work!

Rebecca Hinds (0:00)

Most employees say AI is making them more productive. But when we zoom out, the story changes, and it changes quite a lot. Just about 13 percent of those same employees say their organizations are experiencing significant value from the technology. So a massive gap. Each person looks productive, but you look at the system and you realize, wow, this is just a hamster wheel of AI sloth. It's frustrating, it's annoying, it's exhausting.

Jessica Neal (0:29)

What would happen if we just told the truth?

Rebecca Hinds (0:31)

Welcome to TruthWorks, where we dig into the nitty gritty of leadership and work.

Jessica Neal (0:37)

What needs to change? I'm Jessica Neal.

Rebecca Hinds (0:40)

I'm Patty McCord.

Jessica Neal (0:41)

Our journey together started in HR, but trust us, it's evolved into something wild, honest, and well, a bit rebellious.

Rebecca Hinds (0:49)

So throw out the handbook. We're here to redefine rules to work for us, not against us.

Jessica Neal (0:56)

Let's dive into another episode.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of TruthWorks. I'm your host, Jessica Neal, and I'm going solo today, but that is A-okay with me because I get my guest all to myself. She's actually a friend of the family. She's a good friend of Bob Sutton, who I think all of you know, and he co-hosted a little bit with me. But she and I share a passion, and Bob shares a similar passion, but it is why is work so hard? Why do we inflict so much pain on ourselves, keep doing the same things over and over and over again, even though we know they don't work? She has written a book, which I'm sure many, many, many, many of you have read because there's a best seller, but it's called The Best Meeting Ever. And if you haven't read it, you should read it because meetings are a plague, and we're going to unpack that, and she's going to tell us all the research she did to prove that they're a plague and give you some things that you can do differently. But I've got Dr. Rebecca Hinds here. I'm so excited to have her. We're going to talk meetings and how to make them better. We're going to talk AI because, you know, what's a podcast conversation without talking about AI. But Dr. Rebecca Hinds, welcome to the show. I'm so happy to have you.

Rebecca Hinds (2:30)

Thank you so much for having me, Jessica. I'm thrilled to be here and excited for the conversation.

Jessica Neal (2:34)

Yeah, me too. So why don't we go back in time? I always like to go back in time a little bit because it's interesting to hear people's stories of how they got to where they are.

So I'd love to hear your story and what led you to all of this research that you've been doing and the passion behind your work.

Rebecca Hinds (2:56)

Sure. Bob has been certainly a big part of that path.

I was a competitive swimmer growing up and through college, I came, I'm originally from Toronto, I came to Stanford primarily to swim on the incredible Stanford swim team and became struck and inspired by the power of teamwork in a Division 1 collegiate setting. And as I was transitioning from a world of athletics to a world of academics and industry, I started to think very carefully about, wow, I'd seen this incredible team mentality and team atmosphere at Stanford. What would it look like to replicate some of that goodness in an organizational setting and started to study teamwork, organizational design. I took Bob's class very early in my Stanford career. My final project in his class on organizational design was comparing the ideal organization to a colony of vampire bats. And that vampire bat paper truly changed my life. But I became really intrigued by how we design organizations and how we can design organizations to extract the best out of people such that it's good for humans and also good for business.

Jessica Neal (4:13)

Yeah.

One question, what was your stroke? What did you swim?

Rebecca Hinds (4:17)

So I don't have the height. So I always had to get through with a with a work ethic and as some of the short axis strokes, a brush stroke and I was primarily a 200 butterflyer.

Jessica Neal (4:29)

Okay. Okay. I grew up as a swimmer. I didn't go and swim in college like you. But I used to be really good at butterfly and I got disqualified once because I don't think this was true, but they said my legs weren't touching.

And I mean, I was probably like 10 But anyways, I was so mad and I got out of the pool and I like slammed down my cap and I was like, I'll never swim butterfly again because I won the race, you know, and it was like a big race. But anyways, I love the butterfly, but I don't swim it anymore because I got mad. I don't know if that's a good quality.