A TARTLE leadership interview with Tania Luna. We dive deep into her book "The Leader Lab". In this powerful interview, you will find many practical "how-to" manage gems.
BIO: Tania Luna (New York, New York) is the co-founder of LifeLabs Learning, author of The Leader Lab, and co host of the podcast Talk Psych to Me. She is a researcher, educator, advisor to alt-protein startups, and partner at Columbia University’s eLab — an accelerator for entrepreneurs who increase equity and access in education.
Her company, LifeLabs Learning, has helped over 350,000 people at some of the world’s most influential companies (including TED, Yelp, Tinder, Slack, Reddit, jetBlue and 2,000+ others) become more confident, competent, and compassionate leaders.
Her podcast blends humor and psychology to help people get better at being people.
Her TED Talk about her experience as a Ukrainian immigrant and the power of perspective has over 1.8 million views. Tania lives with rescued pigs, dogs, goats, a cat, and the love of her life. In everything she does, she strives to bring people instructions for humankind(ness), rooted in research and play. Her work and book have been featured in TIME, Harvard Business Review, Psychology Today, CNBC, NPR and more.
For more information, visit https://www.tanialuna.com
TCAST is a tech and data podcast, hosted by Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby. Together, they discuss the most exciting trends in Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Humanity. It’s a fearless examination of the latest developments in digital transformation and innovation. The pair also interview data scientists, thought leaders, and industry experts. Pioneers in the skills and technologies we need for human progress. Explore our extensive TCAST selection at your pace, on your channel of choice. What's your data worth? Find out at ( https://tartle.co/ )
Creating a one-size-fits-all learning process is incredibly difficult. When it comes to learning, each person has a different way of approaching and comprehending certain topics. This is why computer scientists are always developing new technologies to complement different types of learning.
One common misconception is that education technology (edtech) is a fairly recent phenomenon. Justin Reich points out that computer scientists and learning scientists have partnered together to create computer programs that help teach human beings ever since the beginning of the technology—even when we still worked with those computers that took up entire rooms.
In this episode, Alexander McCaig and Justin Reich discuss how edtech can be used to strengthen the school system—and in turn, what we need to do to make the most out of these new developments.
Is our current school system set up to accommodate a variety of learning styles? There is only so much that a human teacher can do, especially if they are assigned to teach large groups of students. Imagine having to effectively tweak your instruction to maximize the learning experience for 26 elementary students, who are all learning the basics of education; or a lecture hall of 140 college undergraduates, who are expected to build on what they already know by following new lines of reasoning.
This is where machines come in. The expectation is that they optimize the individual learning trajectories of each student.
The key to making the most out of these new technologies is to set reasonable expectations. These technologies were not created to disrupt or overhaul existing systems; rather, as Justin Reich puts it, they were created to “be domesticated” by the complex and rich educational systems that we already have in place.
Our job is to look at these new technologies, not to replace our systems of learning, but to see where they can fit in a particular place, for a particular population, and with a particular purpose in mind. There is nothing disruptive about their presence.
One exciting thing about being a human is that we are all incredibly different. We have different interests, cultural backgrounds, background knowledge, and personal preferences. And one key feature of human brains is that we have a limited working memory.
This means that the field of education is constantly trying to find a sweet spot between this duality: in some cases, we’re all the same; but in others, we’re all wonderfully different.
What environment helps you learn effectively? On one end of the spectrum, learning amidst peers and from mentors is necessary. For these people, education must have a social aspect, or a peer review of sorts, for it to be truly effective. These people struggle with online learning, remote education, and edtech.
On the other end of the spectrum, we also have those who prefer learning everything from online, behind the comfort of an internet screen. They process information best when learning is independent and self-directed.
Of course, there’s no need to be one or the other completely. Plenty of us fall in the middle, where online learning is okay but must be supplemented with a social aspect as well.
How do we strike a balance between automation and creative reasoning? One strength of computer-based learning is that you can use incredibly effective tools to evaluate the quality of your computation. However, technology does not yet have the capabilities to evaluate an individual’s ability to reason from evidence.
For example, becoming a musician takes a lot of work. True musicians don’t just play pieces; they also know how to execute beautiful, emotionally-charged orchestral performances. Behind the scenes, a pianist needs to spend hours on end just practicing their scales because this helps develop mastery and fluency in specific parts of that domain.
Once this part of the performance is committed to memory, pianists can move into more complex performances where they can quickly recall these well-rehearsed materials, while their attention shifts to other aspects of the piece such as tone, speed, and strength.
Flight simulators work in a similar way. They aren’t expected to teach you everything about flying a plane. This technology exists so that you can learn how to mentally automate certain aspects of flight, so that you can shift your attention to other experiential concerns when you get to work on the real deal.
Justin Reich points out that there are two challenges with teaching people how to reason. First, humanity does not have a universal set of reasoning facilities. This means that the way we reason differs depending on the topic we are on. For example, we can’t apply the reasoning we use in cooking to hairdressing.
Second, plenty of evidence suggests that people who are capable of reasoning proficiently, have made it to that point because they have deep factual knowledge in the domain in which they are reasoning.
On that note, Justin Reich revealed that his perspective of an ideal school system would be capable of two things. First, it is capable of finding things that individuals have a natural affinity for and care about, and then creating the avenues to help them develop their proficiencies. Second, it should be able to have a consensus about topics and ideas that the system believes everybody should know about.
This creates a good sounding board for people to start developing their reasoning skills.
Changes in the education system don’t just happen because we innovate new technologies. We also need to look at tweaking the curriculum, looking at professional development, analyzing schedules, testing the relevance of our systems. This is not just an organizational change, but a political and social one as well.
As Justin Reich puts it, it’s not about removing everything and replacing it with something else. It’s a step by step process of making something a little bit better right now, so that we have the capacity to change again.
Every tech solution poses new questions is a human capital problem. The introduction of new technologies must be accompanied by human support. That’s how we can make edtech, and the human learning experience, more effective and meaningful.
What’s your data worth? Sign up for the TARTLE Marketplace through this link here.
Making opportunities more accessible. Helping underdeveloped and underrepresented communities alleviate their socioeconomic status. Closing the wealth gap. Demand and supply in the labor force.
All of these social issues can be solved with an education system that is capable of catering to the needs of its students. In the past, higher education was a privilege that only a select few could afford. Today, we have millions of perfectly eligible college-age adults and other individuals who have chosen to make a career change in order to cater to differences in supply and demand—but is our education system keeping up with what our economy needs?
In this episode, Alexander McCaig discusses alternative approaches to continued learning with special guest, Jim Bologa.
Jim Bologa is the President and CEO of the Porter and Chester Institute, which services Connecticut and Massachusetts; and the YTI Career Institute in Pennsylvania.
Remember what it felt like to graduate high school and suddenly feel bereft of purpose? You’ve got an entire world of possibilities that’s yours to take, but you just don’t know how to get your foot in the door.
Jim Bologa revealed that from time to time, he starts discussions surrounding higher education. The main issue is trying to find another viable path after high school for both young working adults who want to do something different, or elevate their career path from low-skill service jobs; and older individuals transitioning into different jobs.
The reality is that today, one college degree is not enough to last us a lifetime. In a world where information travels at the speed of light, we are pressured to become lifelong learners and to mold ourselves to an ever-changing job market.
Jim’s solution is to offer short-term diplomas and degrees in fields with high demand, with opportunities for asynchronous learning. This gives students the capability to transition into learning at their own pace, or to juggle a variety of other personal responsibilities alongside their education.
These programs usually take between 10 to 20 months to complete and in most cases, his students find jobs even before they graduate. This is made possible due to partnerships with companies who are looking for a reliable source of talent and skill in an unstable job market.
The COVID-19 outbreak has changed the way we live and work. Plenty of people are struggling with learning the skills needed to land a stable job when social distancing measures and public health issues make it difficult to maintain a semblance of normalcy.
This just goes to show that edtech is an incredibly powerful tool. Strategies like asynchronous learning and online classes are helpful for both schools and students because it’s giving everybody the best of both worlds. It’s a beautiful example of education changing for the better.
This paradigm shift in higher education caters to the job market in a way that benefits everyone involved. For example, if you’re a medical assistant and you’ve decided to become a practical nurse or respiratory therapist, you don’t need to go through four years of schooling to get certified. The return on an individual’s time and investment is increased, and companies are getting the talented people they need to maintain their operations.
Our economy needs a bridge that everyone, regardless of age, social status, or educational level, can use to adapt to an incredibly dynamic job market. That’s what Jim Bologa promises in his schools: a relationship-driven approach that offers flexibility to students, so that everyone can supplement their lifelong learning.
This is how humanity evolves. Our goal of creating data champions can only be achieved when people get the education and financial stability that they deserve. For the longest time, the best opportunities were only reserved for those who were already at the top of the socioeconomic ladder. Today, edtech and initiatives like the ones run by Jim Bologa make it possible for everyone else to access it too.
The increased access to educational opportunities have also been a clear win for companies because they also have a growing supply of talent and skill to supplement their operations. This idea has helped cause a domino effect between schools, companies, and the general public. It’s clear that we only truly win when we all win together.
What’s your data worth?
Responsibility is one of those things that a lot of people talk about but not a whole lot of people actually get real serious about. Just look around, there are a ton of people blaming everyone else for their problems. Yet, responsibility is about more than being personally accountable for making sure you don’t mess up your own life. It’s also about making sure that you don’t mess up someone else’s. Most people when they go through their daily lives don’t actively try to hurt anyone else. In fact, I’d go so far as to say most people will go out of their way to not inadvertently hurt anyone.
However, the more remote other people are, the less visible the consequences of our actions, the less likely people are to take responsibility for what they do. Just as an example, when I was a kid, my uncle was burning some tires and other stuff in his backyard. My dad called him out on the tires, pointing out that the tires are some pretty nasty things to be sending into the air. My uncle responded that it was just one or two. Almost sounds fair at first glance. What can two tires do versus the entire atmosphere? Not much. But as my dad responded, what if everyone burned just a couple? What then? Pretty sure my uncle never burned another tire.
What’s the point of the story? My uncle didn’t think he was doing anything bad, he didn’t think it mattered, not because he’s such a bad person but because he just didn’t think it through. It’s the out of sight, out of mind principle and it is very hard to fight against it. To do so requires really thinking a couple steps beyond what you are doing right now and how that might affect others far away in both time and space.
Let’s take a hypothetical situation. Imagine if someone were dumping candy bars in some remote African village. The people would almost certainly eat them. In fact, because the food is showing up for free with an apparently unlimited supply, they would probably eat a lot of them. The result would likely be a lot of overweight people suffering from diabetes and heart disease. Who is responsible for that outcome? Is it the people because they ate all the candy bars, or is it the person dumping the candy bars? I would say the primary responsibility is with the person dumping the candy bars. The villagers would very likely be unaware of the dangers of eating too many of the things. They would almost certainly have little to no experience with a sustained source of sugar like that and what it can do to the body. The person providing that source though likely would know and therefore would have the responsibility to educate the villagers as to the consequences of what they are eating.
A less hypothetical example and one that we can all relate to in some way is the modern app and its terms of service. The app itself is like the candy bars, it’s a bait pile, there to attract you. Then they say, ‘Here's our terms of service, just agree to these and you can use the app’. It’s as if the hypothetical villagers were given a detailed study of the effects of sugar, full of scientific jargon. They wouldn’t know what it means, just like most of us can’t translate the legal-ease of the TOS. But the lawyers and the app developers know full well what they are doing and how they plan to take full advantage of them.
I would argue that the app developers have a responsibility to make their terms clear. Much like the candy bar dumper should make it clear that too many of them will make you sick and kill you early, so the developers should just say ‘we are doing to sell your data’ or whatever it is they intend to do with it.
That is the beginning of responsibility, simply being open about your intentions and not lying to people. It sounds so simple doesn’t it?
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
Anyone who knows anything about government, in general, knows that it likes to grow. This was true before Alexis de Tocqueville identified that principle in his massive masterpiece Democracy in America and it is no less true now. The only thing that really changes is what direction it’s trying to grow in.
One direction you can always count on government growing is towards anything that is currently outside of its reach. One of those areas right now is blockchain. Blockchain is a decentralized system of currency and information exchange not tied to any one government or its currency. Which of course means that it is not regulated by any government and that in turn means that the government doesn’t much like it.
A while ago, we talked about a lawsuit that the SEC brought against the digital payment processor Ripple. That lawsuit was considered by many to be an attack on the entire cryptocurrency world. Now, there are signs that the SEC will be making further moves to try and regulate, or at least contain cryptocurrency to minimize its effect on the US and other economies.
We see this in the recent appointment of Gary Gensler to the head of the SEC. Gensler comes with an impressive resume. He has served as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and at the moment is a professor at MIT. MIT may or may not be something you would immediately associate with blockchain but his focus is on teaching blockchain and digital assets. As such, he will be the first head of the SEC with extensive knowledge of cryptocurrency. However, is that going to be a net gain or net loss for those like TARTLE who push for decentralization? The signals are mixed.
On one hand, Gensler has openly praised both bitcoin and blockchain technology, remarking on its potential to be a ‘catalyst for change’. However, he’s also talked about crypto and problems with fraud and manipulation. While we would never say there haven’t been at least some scams and manipulation in the crypto world, it’s dwarfed by issues with the stock market.
Just look at all the insanity created by the Gamestop situation. A bunch of hedge fund managers were betting against the company’s stocks and shorted them, which of course drove the price down. Then a small army of independent investors, some of them amateurs getting into the market for the first time, disagreed and started buying up the troubled store’s stocks, driving them not just up, but through the roof. The result has been a small panic on Wall Street as some hedge funds teetered on the edge of collapse and of course an ongoing roller coaster ride as Gamestop stock rises and falls in ways that have nothing to do with the company’s performance.
What this has done has exposed just how easy it is to manipulate the stock market if you have enough money to do so, or enough people getting together with a small amount of money each and acting together. Point being, the SEC might want to look into securing the Dow Jones before it goes adventuring into cryptocurrencies. Sadly, that is not the way things typically work. Despite the fact, blockchain is much more difficult to manipulate and commit fraud with than the traditional market you can count on the SEC to start poking around and trying to figure out how to manipulate the crypto market for its own ends.
How to prevent that? One way is to decentralize yourself from the system. Start educating yourself on cryptocurrencies and getting a little yourself. How to get some crypto, you ask? You can sign up with TARTLE and share your data. Payments are made with Bitcoin so just by sharing your data you are contributing to making the crypto world stronger and helping to decentralize your finances at the same time.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
TARTLE focuses on a lot of different things. We obviously focus on data, on using it to help others, on being Sherpas rather than glory hounds, on reaching out across lines, building bridges, etc. But what if we could narrow it down? Well, that’s what we did. We narrowed down our chief areas of concern to seven things we are trying to encourage and develop in order to build a better world for the future. Here they are.
1: Climate stability – That’s an unusual term. What does it mean? It means primarily minimizing the impact that we have on the climate in general and the local environment specifically. It certainly doesn’t mean keeping the climate the same all the time, it doesn’t work like that. Natural cycles happen. What we mean is not disrupting it. And one clear way to do that is to take better care of the environment near you. One way TARTLE can help with that is by sharing data across the world to find ways to solve whatever problem you are dealing with in your area.
2: Educational access – Wouldn’t it be better if more people had more access to more information? That is exactly what we are about here at TARTLE. We want to help people learn from the mistakes of others, building wisdom and solving problems to build a better society. The data marketplace is constructed with exactly that purpose in mind.
3: Human rights – By its very name, it’s clear that human rights are inherent in what it is to be human. That means everyone, everywhere has the same basic human rights no matter where they live. Just as an example, being able to be educated and living in an environment that isn’t falling apart should fall under the category of human rights.
4: Peace – One would think that as we solve problems around the world, increasing people’s access to knowledge and encouraging the growth of human rights, peace would be a natural result. Our drive to decentralize is also important here, as without significant power centers that people try to protect and expand, as we see each other more as individuals rather than rivals there will necessarily be less conflict. Even when conflict does arise it will be more like a squabble between neighbors rather than a battle between nations.
5: Public health – With more peace comes more resources. Both because we are not devoting resources to fighting each other but also because peace will allow more time to work on developing other, more productive resources. Since one of the main fields TARTLE works with is the medical field, we at least are certain to use many of those additional resources to improve medicine and treatments for all, helping people to live not just longer, but happier as well.
6: Government and corporate transparency – While we hope to work towards a more decentralized society, the fact is that we will still delegate some of the tasks of running a society to some form of government and businesses will still exist until the asteroid hits. Even then, people would rise out of the ashes and form new governments and businesses as soon as possible. What we are promoting is having politicians and businessmen who understand they are there to serve, not to take whatever they can for themselves.
7: Economic equalization – With greater peace and stability comes the opportunity to also lift everyone up, to help out everyone so that no one has to live a life of poverty.
Does this all seem rather optimistic? Perhaps, but we believe people are capable of amazing things, of overcoming incredible odds and doing the impossible. We believe that getting people to get to actual, real, source data will play an important part in that. It starts with us, it starts with you.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
