Johanna

But, as impressively, she prompts her people to act originally by banning words such as like, love and hate, because, as a basic visceral response, they circumvent any critical thought. Saying why something is loved or hated inspires new, substantial ideas. She inspires originality in her people.”

The best ideas are fragile; most people don’t even start talking about them at all because they sound silly. Perhaps most of all, you want to be around people who don’t make you feel stupid for mentioning a bad idea, and who certainly never feel stupid for doing so themselves.

One way to create a shared context is through shared struggle. This is why many organizations implement ritualized hazing3 to initiate new members, but the important thing is not the hazing, it’s the sense that you are working together with your fellow humans to achieve a super-human goal. Whether that’s to develop vaccines, to drywall a shelter,... See more

Critically, we need to be much more strategic in the way we use published research findings (from the lab) to inform what we do next (e.g. clinical trials). We need to combine and integrate — systematically — the full granularity of research claims and their provenance to provide a richness of detail to our understanding. This process of... See more

To “hire slow, fire fast,” start by being absurdly selective in who you hire.