What Corporate Cultures Are Getting Wrong (And How to Fix It) | Andrew McAfee

Andrew McAfee (0:00)

Look, we are the planet's only species that gets together with large numbers of unrelated other individuals and cooperates intensely and learns very quickly. Culture is how you get stuff done.

Michael Gervais (0:24)

Welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by training and training a high-performance psychologist. Today, I'm thrilled to have Andrew McAfee join us for a deep dive into cultures of innovation.

And so what are those? They're environments where risks are not just taken, but they're embraced, where failures are seen as pivotal to learning, and where the status quo is openly challenged.

The combination of those three are radical, and that's where Andrew comes from. That's what I want you to feel in this conversation, what it means to work in that type of culture. Andrew is not only principal research scientist at MIT, but he's also a visionary thinker, and he's also a best-selling author. His latest work, The Geek Way, is providing a framework to help teams work well in our rapidly changing business landscape where success means more than profits in market share. Andrew has identified four pillars of The Geek Way, science, speed, ownership, and openness. The beauty of The Geek Way is it's not confined to the boardroom or the tech lab. This approach can have profound implications for all of us in any and every aspect of our lives, whether you're in business or sport or arts or really any field. Andrew has some fascinating insights and frameworks and tools that I think you'll find helpful on your personal and professional journey. So with that, let's jump right into this conversation with Andrew McAfee.

Andrew, it is awesome to have you on the podcast.

Andrew McAfee (2:01)

It is awesome to be on the podcast. Thank you for having me.

Michael Gervais (2:04)

We have so much to learn from you. And so I'd love to just roll up our sleeves and get right into it. Yep.

What do you see as the biggest mistakes that companies are making right now in regards to culture?

Andrew McAfee (2:19)

I'm actually going to outsource this question because I had the chance to ask this exact question to Jeff Bezos a few years ago.

And via a weird chain of events, I found myself in a small group at a cocktail party standing right next to Bezos. And I thought to myself, you know, I'm a business researcher. This is kind of what I'm supposed to do for a living. I am not going to pass this opportunity up.

So just kind of apropos of nothing, I cold called him. And I turned to him and I said, Jeff, when you look at other people trying to run large companies, what's the biggest mistake you see them make? And he didn't hesitate. He said, they become too risk averse.

They just they find ways to say no. They find ways to stop being bold. The penalties for getting something wrong become too high. And the whole organization just becomes just more more risk averse. Defensive is another good word for it. And he said, we spend a lot of time at Amazon trying not to fall into that trap. And he said, there are a few very, very big decisions that we have to get right. So we spend a lot of time talking about them. You know, what's what's the backplane architecture for AWS? Kind of can't screw that up and redo it. So you've got to work really hard on that upfront. He said, aside from that, I want the philosophy, the bias of this company to be the opposite. Don't sit around analyzing, talking. Just go try something and see if it works. And if you fail at it, we're going to try very hard to have that not be a black mark on your career.

It sounds simple, but think how few companies actually do that.

Michael Gervais (3:51)

Yeah, I hear that and I go, oh, I resonate with that in my own life. Meaning, I feel like I took bigger swings, faster swings, a bit more reckless swings when I was younger. And then as I'm older, I'm measuring twice, cutting once, which feels appropriate in a lot of ways. So I understand there's probably a developmental psychological thing that's happening for both individuals and for companies that are pulling them back from the edge. Okay, so let's push back just for a minute, just for some clarity.

What have you been fascinated by in the research and the writing of your new book, The Geek Way? What is the thing that right at the center that has you most interested?

Andrew McAfee (4:35)