Why is it seemingly so difficult to find a human to speak to when having an issue with your bank or mobile phone company? And if you do, why do they sound like robots and/or aren’t empowered to make a decision that will solve your problem? More broadly and worryingly, why is it nearly impossible to hold an individual accountable for decisions that led to a major societal or organisational calamity like the Global Financial Crisis, or the UK’s Post Office Scandal?
Something is going on, and today, we're going to talk about it. My guest is author Dan Davies, and we are talking about his latest book, The Unaccountability Machine - Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions and How the World Lost Its Mind. The book was long-listed for the Financial Times and Schroder's Business Books of the Year.
Dan is a former investment banker turned author. His previous book, Lying for Money, was about the 2008 global financial crisis in which no banker went to jail. Dan became interested in why that was the case and to see if the same types of causes for that exist elsewhere. And they do. And it led him to write The Unaccountability Machine.
Dan also has a wonderful term called the “accountability sink”, in which a human system delegates decision-making to a rule book rather than an individual, which means that when something goes wrong, no one is to blame. We get into all of that and so much more.
Show notes:
-The Unaccountability Machine: https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/
-Dan’s newsletter: https://backofmind.substack.com/
-Dan’s author page: https://profilebooks.com/contributor/dan-davies/
-Lying for Money: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38605195-lying-for-money?from_search=true
-Dan’s previous appearance on the podcast: https://allthingsrisk.libsyn.com/ep-89-dan-davies-lying-for-money
-Stafford Beer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stafford_Beer
-Brian Eno: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Eno
-“Designing Freedom”, Stafford Beer’s lectures from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNVZ3IuNlXY&list=PLW6YNX5jIRDEvjZz0_icNAaelHXArzfc-
-Norbert Wiener: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener
-Neural Networks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network_(machine_learning)
-Variety engineering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(cybernetics)
-Good regulator in management cybernetics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_regulator
-Ben Recht: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~brecht/bio.html
-Jen Pahlka’s Recoding America: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61796680-recoding-america
-William Butler Adams / Brompton Bicycles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Butler-Adams
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Learn more about The Decision-Making Studio: https://thedecisionmaking.studio/
All our podcast episodes are here: https://thedecisionmaking.studio/podcast
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Today, I welcome Roger Spitz back to the show. Roger is a futurist, author, and president of Techistential, which is a strategy consultancy. He's also the chair of The Disruptive Futures Institute, which is a global education hub. For the purposes of this episode, however, he is the author of a new book, Disrupt with Impact - Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World, which is all about helping to guide us through uncertainty and unpredictability.
Roger was in London at the end of last year and we met up and recorded this fabulous episode in an external studio. We covered lots of ground with this chat, including what Roger means by “disruption 3.0”, uncertainty, AI, some of the shortcomings of our education system, and what leaders can and should be doing to disrupt with impact.
Show Notes:
Disrupt with Impact - https://www.thrivingondisruption.com/disrupt-with-impact
Roger on LinkedIn - Roger Spitz
Techistential – www.techistential.ai
Roger on the podcast on episode 198 - https://open.spotify.com/episode/0LTP4xkhxwpjwpUEDeE7Xe?si=LhgixrbnRXGB9OXSccLK4Q
Joseph Schumpeter - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter
Clayton Christensen - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Christensen
Dr. Peter Bishop - https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-bishop-2866257/
Teach the Future - https://www.teachthefuture.org/
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Learn more about The Decision-Making Studio: https://thedecisionmaking.studio/
All our podcast episodes are here: https://thedecisionmaking.studio/podcast
Our latest newsletter: https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=f19fc74942b40b513cf66af32&id=1e2a6c0ea9
This “inbetweenisode” is based on the latest edition of our newsletter.
It’s all about uncertainty. After two and a half decades of working with decision-making under uncertainty, I have come to the following conclusion: uncertainty is about emotion.
Show notes:
Our latest newsletter: https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=f19fc74942b40b513cf66af32&id=1e2a6c0ea9
Scenario planning guide: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ben-cattaneo_scenario-planning-taster-guide-activity-7200947403045175296-EXlT?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
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