New Ways to Get Big Things Done with Andrew McAfee

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Chase Jarvis

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4.8 • 641 Ratings

🗓️ 6 December 2023

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Andrew McAfee shares his insights on "The Geek Way", a new book that explores a different approach to work and collaboration. Andrew McAfee is a Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-founder of MIT's Initiative on the Digital Economy. He has written several books, including "More from Less" and "The Second Machine Age".

During the conversation, McAfee discusses the importance of embracing a geek culture that revolves around science, ownership, speed, and openness. He explains how this culture can lead to freewheeling, evidence-driven, and autonomous organizations. McAfee highlights the discomfort and challenges that come with implementing the geek way, but emphasizes that it is far more rewarding than working in stifling bureaucracies.

Some highlights we explore:

The benefits of iterating and taking action before feeling fully prepared
The power of pointed conversations and learning from constructive criticism
The contrast between bureaucratic environments and geek culture

Transcript

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0:00.0	iterating before you feel like you've done enough planning, it's uncomfortable.
0:03.2	Arguing with people, having your ideas shot down, I can tell you from ample experience,
0:08.1	it is uncomfortable. Openness is uncomfortable. You know what else is uncomfortable?
0:13.2	Working in a stultifying bureaucracy where you don't know why you're doing exists.
0:20.0	Working in some kind of clock punchy job where you know nobody's
0:23.3	listening to you and you're just kind of going through the motions for a paycheck, I think that's
0:27.3	not that's not just uncomfortable. I think that's excruciating. And people don't want to live their
0:31.9	professional lives that way. So it's not that the geek way is effortless and fun for everybody
0:36.8	at all times.
0:37.9	Pointed conversations can be difficult. I had Chris Ardress when I was collaborating very, very
0:42.9	kindly call me out for not holding up my end. I did not love that conversation, but I learned a lot
0:48.3	from it. And it's better than this kind of, you know, stultifying, sclerotic, bureaucratic thing that we associate with big legacy organizations.
1:01.6	Hey, everybody, what's up? That was Andrew McAfee. He is a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He's the co-founder and co-director
1:13.1	of MIT's initiative on the digital economy and the inaugural visiting fellow at the
1:18.2	technology and society organization at Google. To say that he is very schooled in organizational
1:26.4	technology in what makes us creators, entrepreneurs, tick,
1:31.9	how to build great organizations to say that he's an expert.
1:34.6	There would be a radical understatement.
1:36.6	He is also a New York Times bestselling author of a couple of previous books.
1:40.8	Today we talk about an exciting new work that he's putting out in the world called The Geek Way. Today's conversation is a handbook for disruption. It's incredibly valuable.
1:51.6	I'm very excited to share Andy's work with you today, our conversation about how we ought to
1:56.2	think about building things, people, organizations, and even our own lives.
	...

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