Sublime

In principle, audiences should be more open to novelty than managers. They don’t have the blinders associated with expertise, and they have little to lose by considering a fresh format and expressing enthusiasm for an unusual idea.

When that happens, it causes communities to fragment, and we retreat into the little clusters of people we really trust.

FAVI’s team leaders act as coaches for their colleagues, as a clearinghouse for information, and as a point person when coordination is needed with other teams. This choice nevertheless carries a risk. Our cultural baggage of hierarchy is so strong that over time, team leaders could start behaving like bosses and become the primary decision makers

Dramatic changes, rejecting long-standing practices, are often produced by a nudge that starts a kind of cascade or bandwagon effect, because it gives people a sense of what others actually think, and thus authorizes them to say what they actually think too.

Unlike typical regional managers, coaches at Buurtzorg have no decision-making power over teams. They are not responsible for team results. They have no targets to reach and no profit-and-loss responsibility.

A fascinating example is the divide around emotional intelligence.38 On one extreme is Daniel Goleman, who popularized the concept.

Some economists are already working on that. They are using this brain-imaging data to support a new political philosophy known as asymmetric paternalism. That's a fancy name for a simple idea: creating policies and incentives that help people triumph over their irrational impulses and make better, more prudent decisions. Shlomo Benartzi and Richar

I began to ask myself questions like “What makes a group lively and engaged?” instead of “How good am I?” So palpable was the difference in my approach to conducting as a result of this “silent conductor” insight, that players in the orchestra started asking me, “What happened to you?”