Mike Roberto is the Trustee Professor of Management at Bryant University. He served on the faculty at Harvard Business School and as a visiting professor at New York University's Stern School of Business. He is the author or co-author of numerous Harvard Business Review Case Studies and the best selling simulation, the Leadership and Team Simulation - Everest. His books include Unlocking Creativity, Why Great Leaders Don't Take Yes For An Answer, and Know What You Don't Know.
Quotes from This Episode
Michael's Books/Website
A Sample of Michael's Case Studies
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
Mike Roberto is the Trustee Professor of Management at Bryant University. He served on the faculty at Harvard Business School and as a visiting professor at New York University's Stern School of Business. He is the author or co-author of numerous Harvard Business Review Case Studies and the best selling simulation, the Leadership and Team Simulation - Everest. His books include Unlocking Creativity, Why Great Leaders Don't Take Yes For An Answer, and Know What You Don't Know.
Quotes from This Episode
Michael's Books/Website
A Sample of Michael's Case Studies
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
Note: Voice to text transcriptions are about 90% accurate.
Scott Allen 0:00
So today, I'm really excited I have some plans this fall to, because a lot of my courses now are online, I have I have some new simulations that I'm actually going to try. And so I was thinking about potential guests to ask. And I'd look down at one of the authors of this really exciting simulation that I'm going to be using. It's called Everest Leadership and Team Simulation. And the co-authors, Mike Roberto, and he's at Bryant University is a Professor of Management. And I thought, well, I need to have a conversation with him, like the guy who designed it, right? And kind of find out what I'm in for what to expect and what we plan to experience. So Mike, I'm so thankful that you're willing to take the time to be with us today. We really appreciate it. Our focus in this podcast is leadership. Oftentimes, I've been interviewing a lot of leadership scholars, leadership educators, and you are among that crew. And so maybe share a little bit about you. And again, thank you so much for being with us.
Mike Roberto 1:03
Well, thank you. It's great to be with you, Scott. So I am Yes, I've been a professor now for hard to believe 20 years, and I teach leadership, I have developed a lot of case studies, multimedia cases, and simulations. And I really believe in active learning, having the students not just sit passively and listen to lectures, but engage in decision making, engage in action, be able to reflect on that, and learn. And so I, I sort of like creating new content like that. And I've done that a lot over my career. And I'm glad to see others embracing the methodology. So I'm excited to hear how your first experience goes with one of those simulations, Scott.
Scott Allen 1:43
Well, so how did you even get into the space of simulations just as a layperson, it feels, it feels daunting. And so was it something that you worked up to? Or if you would just, and why Everest that maybe we started there. And then we start with the simulations, because I just I love anything having to do with mountain climbing, and there are always great opportunities for storytelling there.
Mike Roberto 2:06
So let me say a little about why Everest and then I'll get back to tell the story of how I got to building simulation. So the why Everest, I was a young faculty member at Harvard Business School, I just finished my doctorate there. And I flew out to a conference out in San Diego and I very vividly remember being at the gym in the hotel, when we used to go to hotels and get on airplanes and do things like that. Right. And, and I was on the treadmill, and there was a woman, a professor from the Midwest on the treadmill next to me, and she had been in my session that I had presented a paper at earlier in the day. And she struck up a conversation and she said, "You know, I know you're a case studies as well as you know, published scholarly papers, and you might want to write a case study about that just finished this book. And as fascinated seems to me your work would really inform this case, I read a book called Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer." Yep, yeah, about the 1996 Mount Everest tragedy. And shame on me. I had not read the book. And I really didn't know a lot about that tragedy. But she was very convincing and persuasive. So I, when I went to the airport, two nights later, I was taking the red-eye back to Boston. I picked up the book at the airport. And I did not sleep a wink on that flight that read I home. I just couldn't book. It's a great book. I couldn't put it down. Yeah. And, you know, Scott, I, I got enamored with the idea. And I thought, and, and it really struck me because for a particular reason, which was, I was going to be building this new course on decision making for my students at Harvard. And the issue was that 95% It seems like the case studies at the time, yeah, in business school are success stories. Now, by the way, some of those success stories aren't successful anymore, you know, now 20 years later, but back then they were. So I thought, "My gosh, you know, we got to write about failure." The problem is CEOs don't want to be interviewed about their failures, right? Yeah. So I thought, well, I'll write about this failure, this tragedy, and it'll be informative for students. I don't know if students will be interested in this non-business case or not.
And as I'm working on it, I wrote an email. I tracked down my research associate track down David Breashears. David's one of the world's great climbers. Yeah, was on the mountain during the 1996 tragedy, but he actually turned around when others continue to go forward. His IMAX documentary team, he and Ed Viesturs turned around. So she tracked down his email, and I wrote to him, and 60 seconds later, he replied, this is when it's better to be lucky than good. Scott, right. Turns out, he's office was across the street from mine in Boston. Because he had an office at the public television station, WGBH. In Boston, and at the time, they were literally their building was across the street. So he says, Why don't we meet for lunch in your cafeteria? I eat there all the time because it's better food than ours. And he came to class. I wrote the case, it was still a draft. He came to class the students were in awe. Yeah. And that's how I got to Everest and it's been in the best selling case for almost 20 years now. It's like it's just an unbelievable lucky circumstance, kind of odd thing how I got to it.
Scott Allen 5:10
Well, if I remember how Krakauer starts that book, I mean, I think, I think the opening scene of the book, it's when everything's kind of, quote, unquote, hitting the fan. I mean, he just draws you in. Did you ever read the there was a Russian who wrote, yes, The Climb? Did you ever read that
Mike Roberto 5:28
I think, I think I've read like every version, every survivor, Anatoli Boukreev, e was the Russian he wrote the clot. He strongly disagreed with some of Krakauer's take, so it was important to see his perspective. And then I heard from other climbers who I didn't know, after I started writing about it, I met Ed, and David. And I've actually taught it alongside both of them now a number of times. So you've learned a lot from the people who were actually there. I don't pretend to be on I love. I love hiking and the outdoors. But I would never go to something like I'm not that crazy. It's got that but what I do think is there's a tremendous amount to learn about leadership from failure, not just success, and from high stakes, high-pressure extreme situation. So since then, I've written cases about the Columbia Space Shuttle accident and smoke jumpers who've died fighting forest fires in the West. And students and executives especially it really resonates. I think they enjoy stepping out of their own business context. You know, they're just been doing so many cases about their industry are so many so much study of their industry that they appreciate the chance to look at something a little different. Yeah.
Scott Allen 6:38
So what have you. So now let's talk about you write the case. Now, how do you transform it from the case into a simulation? Because that seems like a Herculean task?
Mike Roberto 6:51
Yes, so I didn't initially do that. So let me tell you what happened is that over the course of starting back, when I was doing my doctorate in the late 90s, up through for about a 10 year period, I had been increasingly starting to do some things with technology in addition to writing plain paper-based case study. So in during my doctorate in the 90s, I had done some decision-making exercises where we thought it was revolutionary. The students would do a team activity, they would respond to a survey on the internet, and we would instantly analyze the results. And in 1996, we thought this was revolutionary.
Scott Allen 7:27
Pretty awesome, right?
Mike Roberto 7:28
It was! And then 2004-05 I did two multimedia cases. Probably the most to one about Paul levy and the turnaround of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston case we published paste republish to Harvard, it's a multimedia case. And the other was that what about the Columbia Space Shuttle accident? Yeah. Both with co-authors with colleagues because they were big team projects. And the Columbia was particularly interesting because what we did there is we didn't just take and put some video on the web, what we said was, we wanted the students to really be in the shoes of the people making the decisions. So what we did is, we identified six people at NASA, who were crucial at different levels of the organization during that accident. And what we did is we figured out what they knew, and when they knew it, if you will, and we captured all of we were able to get meeting recordings, all their emails, because they were the public agency we got and we recreated there, you know. And so literally, the multimedia case shows you their emails, and you're able to listen to audio reenactments of meetings, they took part in, and then you come to class. And what you heard and seen isn't quite the same as what people who played other roles, have heard and seen, and then you come together. So we've been working our way up not to simulations, but to increasingly immersive experiences, Scott, and then the question actually came from Harvard Business Publishing, and a woman named Heide Abelli. And Heide called me and said she was in product development. There one of their senior folks at the time and said, Mike, we're thinking about launching a line of simulations. And we know you're really like working with some of these technological solutions. Would you like to build a simulation with us?
I said, Sure. Amy and I went to Amy Edmondson is my co-author, Amy and I, we co-authored the Columbia work, and she's a world-renowned scholar on leadership and teams. And Amy, and I said, Okay, and then the question of what the settings should be for the sim?
Scott Allen 9:29
Wow
Mike Roberto 9:31
I wasn't sure, you know, we were initially going to do just a business simulation. And Haide said, "you know, you've written this best selling case, on average, people know you for that. They love the case. Why don't we set the simulation on Everest?"
Scott Allen 9:44
That's how we got to Everest again, did this end up being so much more than you ever imagined? Was it fairly smooth? Did you kind of get into this and say, "What have I done?"
Mike Roberto 9:53
It was such a complicated endeavor, right? Because it's not like a marketing simulation. You know where you're, you're, you know, do putting a bunch of calculations in and you students make choices. And then you decide whether sales go up if you advertise or if you cut price like, this is like we're trying to predict how humans will behave. Oh my god, hard to do. Scott so hard.
Scott Allen 10:20
And you there's been a few different iterations of it. Correct?
Mike Roberto 10:24
Yes. So we what we did, we worked with the company. So the Harvard team, there were several people from Harvard publishing. There's Amy Edmondson and I on the faculty side. And then there was a team of people out who were the actual software developers in San Francisco, a company called Forio Simulate. And Michael Beam, their founder and CEO, and Michael would fly out initially, we initially did our meetings in person. Interesting, right? We didn't believe we could do it all virtually. So Mike actually would come out and sit with us until we got comfortable with the idea. And Amy and I had written this paper, this leaves paper for leadership quarterly with a colleague named Mike Watkins, you may know, Mike from the famous book, First 90 Days. And in that paper, we looked at the challenge teams face when people come to the table with different information. And the difficulty it is, they often don't share that information very effectively. Yes, the whole reason we bring teams together is to leverage different expertise. And yet what happens when teams come together is we often talk about what we all know in common. This is a phenomenon discovered by a scholar named Gary Sasser, you probably know Scott back in the 1980s. So Amy, and I had written that paper with Mike, we'd written about that some. So that was in our mind, then we had this sort of Everest setting. And then we start brainstorming, how could we use the Everest setting to study so actually, the Everest simulation teaches a totally different set of ideas. not totally different, but pretty different set of ideas than the case because it dives into this information sharing problem, which really was not the issue on on on in the Himalayas in 96. That was a different set of issues. Yeah. So the issue was, we decided we would create some problems that teams had to solve on the mountain. And what we did is talk to some I knew some climbers, right? And we did some research, and what kinds of issues do people find? Well, they have issues with health, they have issues with whether they have issues with how much oxygen do they need supplemental, they have issues with rope, with what time to leave in order to set your timing correct on. So we discovered these, and then we tested the daylights out of them, literally with paper and pencil before we spent a lot of money coding. Once we were getting the kind of behavior we wanted, we built it we built-in launch, I think it was, '07-'08. Scott, the first version, we're now on version three. And version three is the most robust because now what we have is multiple challenges. And faculty can choose which challenges they want to throw at students. what it also does is it prevents students from cheating because they can Google it on the web, but they don't actually know what scenario they're playing Scott. So if they use their quote on solutions, they find it doesn't work because we mix and match. So we've learned something over the years. And of course, we updated the tech right from 2007 to today, like, you know, night and day on the technology side.
Scott Allen 13:15
Well, so tell me about writing cases. I've never even thought about that as a way of producing scholarship. But of course, it is. I just have never had a conversation with someone who is prolific as you are in this space. So what is it about writing cases that you really love that you enjoy? Is it just the puzzle and putting it all together?
Mike Roberto 13:38
Yeah, you know, I will admit it. I mean, this is, if I had asked if you got asked me what's my strength, right, I think it is my strength as opposed to you know, writing lots of scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles. Hey, I've done that. But I much prefer and enjoy writing cases, right? And writing books and doing other things. The case thing, I am a storyteller, when I teach, I'm a storyteller. So when I present I am so that's why I think I love cases. I love a rich story. In many ways. The other thing is I really love, I believe that teaching management, we have to be really rooted in the actual practice of it. So I, I think it's really important to, for students to be immersed in actual managerial problems situations. So that's, I think part of it. I mean, I, to be honest, how cool is it to go out there and just get to interview people? I mean, the people I've met writing these right is, and people say, how did you get in there? You know, I mean, I've been at Bryant now for a long time. And so you say what, what's one thing maybe when you're at Harvard and you can pick up the phone and sample at Harvard, but it doesn't matter actually. People just love talking about themselves and they love providing you're not writing about failure, the failure cases I typically use public sources right cuz like I just finished one on the Boeing 737 Max crisis. They did not give me the time of day, right. I wrote it based on public ports, but it's a great story in It's a puzzle as you say, and, and I love getting the student reaction from it. And the other thing is, I just think it's always fun to kind of uncover what's really going on in that order. So I, you know, I'll tell you sometimes I write them based on something I read in the news. Sometimes it's, I just give an example. Probably one of the other cases that's gotten the most traction in the media and elsewhere is I wrote this case on Trader Joe's. Scott, why I read it because I'm a frickin fan. Like, I'm a crazy fan of the company. I love it. And I go, how are they so successful? Like, yeah, that puzzle was interesting to me. And so I decided to study it's like, kind of the way my mind works if that makes any sense. But
Scott Allen 15:40
I love it. Well, I mean, you're the world, everything happening around us, whether it's where you're shopping. They're right there. They're absolutely right case studies for exploration. What do you have any on in your head right now that you're willing to share that you're thinking about something that you would just love to learn about?
Mike Roberto 16:01
Well, so this Yeah, this Boeing, one is the one that it's literally not yet published. It's being reviewed, peer-reviewed right now. So that's the one I most currently was fully immersed in. Because I was so curious about what happened with the 737 Max. And obviously the other one that Amy and I've had a little bit of a chat about is do we write something on COVID? You know, do we write something? And not so much the political leader response because we don't want to get mired in politics? That's not our expertise anyway. But looking at how other organizations, you know, how, you know, obviously, every organization has been touched by it, and every leader had to respond. So I don't know the angle yet. I've obviously been reading a lot about it. But I'm very curious. It's interesting to watch how some organizations that really thrive during this pandemic. Yeah. And some of that is just because of the nature of the business, right. So in some cases, just our, our customer buying habits shifted in a way that really helped some companies and hurt others. But some of it is, you know, seems to me about how organizations mobilized and were led. So I'm curious to look at that. I don't know what that's gonna look like. But I'm, that's my current, one of my current areas of interest.
Scott Allen 17:18
But we see that we see that at all levels, even in our local community, whether it's the local arts organization that very quickly, hustled, they had some, they had they, they innovated, they were creative, and they stayed relevant. And then there were other arts organizations that just they were stalled and everything was canceled. And, and it's fascinating to watch it play out. There's an organization. I'm in Northeast Ohio, I'm in Cleveland. And there's a wonderful French restaurant in our community called EDWINS. EDWINS is the founder. It stands for education wins. And it's a restaurant and Leadership Institute. So students are formerly incarcerated individuals who enter this. I believe it's a six-month program. And they learn butchery. They learn baking, they learn front of the house, they learn back of house, beautiful restaurant, doing incredible things. For people who graduated from this program, it's about a 2% recidivism rate. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But there's a documentary it was Academy Award-nominated documentary called knife skills about their work. As soon as this hit Brandon, (Chrostowski) the founder, and I had a conversation with him. It was fascinating to hear his mindset. He basically he said, well look right away, I knew people weren't going to want French cuisine, they were going to want comfort food. So we completely restructured the menu, and we came up with this for 40 deal where for $40, we're going to feed four of you, they're going to be some kind of comfort food. We did some light construction in our facility so that we could have things like eggs and milk and peanut butter for people who wanted some of that. And their sales were up 75% year over year. When when I last spoke with him, which was probably it was late March, early April. But there was a hustle there was a mindset and it was this is going to work. We're going to figure this out. We're going to rapidly experiment. I mean, as Heifetz would say, it's an adaptive challenge. No one has the answer to what so they rapidly experimented. And if I could bet money on whether or not he will move that organization through this, yeah. Right. It's fantastic. I think your observations capacity accurate. But the mindset, the mindset of the individuals. Wow. So I think that would be fascinating from a COVID perspective and who, you know, obviously, like an Amazon is positioned to do well, right. But I wouldn't even I guess I'm not thinking clearly on what Organizations that maybe weren't positioned well, but they've done great.
Mike Roberto 20:04
I think that's the interesting thing, right to study Amazon or to study the companies that write naturally threat to thrive. It's, it's more interesting to study the situations where someone thrived in a difficult circumstance, right? I mean, it's, by the way, why I always say, when I look at Everest, I look at that IMAX team, you know, led by David and Ed, and I say, Look, they're the most interesting team in the mountain, because first of all, they were the most capable team on the mountain. And David is, you know, the most probably the most accomplished climbers on the mountain. Well, Rob Hall was very accomplished, but Ed and David, and that team were very strong. And they made a different set of choices. And they all survived. And, you know, they, they helped to the rescue. And yet, later on, in that month, they got still got to the summit. And so to me, that's always that contrast. By the way, that's something that's really important. And that's true in the simulation too, right? contrast is important. So in the SIM, the vivid learning, the most powerful learning comes from the fact that some teams thrive and others don't. And then in the reflection, we can ask students, well, why did some teams do better than others and try to talk through the behavior, right. And I think that's the beauty of it, as opposed to studying a company or set of companies where they're either successful or not here, you get this spectrum of teams deployed, if you have six, seven teams compete for the simulation, everybody's got a little different experience. And so you can compare and contrast how they did very quickly. So you know, the key to the sim is that in a couple of hours, the students experience a whole bunch of decisions, they get a whole bunch of feedback on how they did they get scored? And then we can have a great discussion about it. That's the power of something like simulation is that ability to very quickly get feedback more quickly than you can ever in the real world. Right?
Scott Allen 21:50
Exactly, exactly. Well, into your point where you started with this whole conversation that the experiential nature of it, you're not going to forget that we could talk to a student 20 years later, and they will remember the avarice simulation in a very different way than maybe a traditional case that was reviewed or some other content from the class. I mean, it's just going to stick in a fundamentally different way. And I'm sure you've heard that right.
Mike Roberto 22:17
All the time. And you know, it's a, it's amazing, I hear it from all around the globe. I'm stunned when I hear stories of people who've done it. And I get these notes, sometimes from former students who go on to graduate school, whatever, and they go, Hey, I didn't even know you did this, like I ran into this, like, somewhere and you know, whatever it is I but yeah, it is memorable. People are very proud. If they do well, they are eager to tell me. And then, of course, you know, they, they have their stories of failure. If they didn't, I do think that you I think there's also the element of you gain a tremendous appreciation for how hard collaboration really is. When you go through the semi go, Ah, you know, it says not some touchy-feely, you know, you know, we're not doing, it's fun. But it's hard. Like the problems we have students solve, as I said to them, you actually have to do this thing called math to solve some of these problems. This is a leadership class we're talking about, right, like, but it's hard, right? And we wanted it to be hard, like Danny and I did this. But we what we show them is actually an actually Amy's done this really well like we were with a group of exact in the Midwest, and she walked them through one of the problems that they had stumbled on. Yeah. And she showed them that if one person alone was simply presented the data map wasn't hard. The problem was hard to solve. But put five people around a table with different personalities and different goals. And holy cow all of a sudden, it's hard, right? You know, and that is really cool. We do that we show them that the problems actually aren't themselves that hard. But when we're trying to do them in a collaborative way, it's a dose of reality, we're trying to get people's like, collaboration isn't just natural and easy. It takes really strong facilitation skills. It takes really good listening skills, it's hard to do. We hope that by showing them that talking them through it, that helps them become better at some of those skills.
Scott Allen 24:12
I love that perspective that this is I think at times factions of the leadership development community is so concerned with creating a comfortable, safe space that we can miss opportunities to highlight. You know, it's not all chocolate bars, warm fuzzies. And it's difficult. It's hard. Literally, I was on the phone before we were talking today with a leader in our community, who was sharing what he's experienced. And it incredibly tackles football. It's hard, it's difficult. So I love the fact that you're challenging the students because again, I think you're exactly right, that too is going to add to and cement that learning. It's just another feature that exists within
Mike Roberto 25:00
You know, and what we try to, you know, Amy and I try to convey is that the best teams as Amy would argue the best teams have a safe or a safe environment for where people can be candid and speak up. Yeah. And I have argued in written about the power and value of constructive conflict and debate that you know that, but what we want to show them is right, that creating a safe environment, and speaking candidly and like, that's not we're not talking about something where people feel comfortable in the sense that they're, you know, there's no disagreement. Yeah, that there is disagreement, and you have to work through it. That's the whole point. Like we want people to speak candidly, respectfully, but candidly, and that, boy, that's as you know, as our society knows, right, it's really hard to do, like, yeah. And so the more practice we get, the better. And the beauty of a simulation is, there's nothing actually at stake, right? We're not when life and death is not really at stake so that students get a chance. So the executives, whoever's doing it gets a chance to practice this behavior, you know, without any big negative consequences. I never have grades riding on performance in the simulator, anything like that, right? This is we learned from it, I might ask them to write a memo reflecting on what they learned, but the actual scores don't mean Yeah, I mean,
Scott Allen 26:21
we're not going to fail management, if
Mike Roberto 26:24
it turns out they mean a lot to people, right. I do care. And I mean, you know, I usually give out some small prizes for the best team just to juice the competition a little more. Yeah, it's fun. But you know, but yeah, so they care anyway. But you get my point. Yeah, that's right.
Scott Allen 26:42
So what are you working on? Now? What are you thinking about? From a team or a leadership perspective? what's on your mind? I know that you'd mentioned the, you know, the question kind of puzzling around COVID. And how is that impacting business? But is there anything else that you're really into?
Mike Roberto 26:56
Yeah. So you know, I, the last book I wrote, I focused on creative problem solving and creativity. And so shifting gears from a lot of the study of like why people make bad decisions, which is a lot of my earlier work. This one was more around the obstacles to good creative problem-solving. The last simulation I built is something called the food truck challenge. It is a much shorter sim that takes a very short period of time to run. And the idea there is you to compete with others, and you try to run a food truck business for like five weeks. Injecting as much revenue. And the key is to try to figure out what the optimal menu and location within the city combination are, there are a multitude of combinations of menu and location within the city. And the power that sim is is trying to teach people the value of prototyping and iteration of experimentation, right, which is, I think, key to creativity. So that's where I've been the last few years a lot of work in design thinking, and I think I would love to, that's been successful, I'd love to do something else in that space. I think we're all desperate for creativity and innovation, whatever field we're in. And but it's hard. I hope to continue my work there. Scott. I think what I've learned is that, that while we all seen the videos, and we've read about the wonderful stories of the people with the post-it notes and how they're, you know, that reality and you know, this Scott, leadership is that looks so easy, and it isn't right. Yeah. And if we could figure out how to teach people to be better at brainstorming, better and experimentation, right, better, and empathy, then we can all be more successful and creative problem-solving. So that's where a lot of my current focus and energy is. I still study failures. I've never gone away from that. And I don't know what it is calling me. Strange. I do get obsessed with the stories of failures. I just think there's so much to learn that I didn't know, by the way, there was a new documentary, apparently out about the failed Iranian hostage rescue. Oh, I didn't
Scott Allen 28:57
No, I haven't heard of it.
Mike Roberto 28:59
I just heard it. I don't I think it's coming out in theaters here shortly. I'm a little bummed because I don't really want to go to the theater to watch but I guess I'll wait for it to come out on Netflix. But that, of course, scholars wrote about that many, many years ago. Right? Because I happen, you know, 40 years ago, my gosh, now but curious to read that or to see the news, you know, other new revelations there. And might there be something there to teach about? Yeah, my students, of course, have no idea what I'm talking about.
Scott Allen 29:27
Well, so the in the back of your office, I'm looking at a photo over your left shoulder. Is that the Red Sox?
Mike Roberto 29:33
Yeah, yeah. So I'm a Bostonian. So
Scott Allen 29:36
Yes! So but they had their share of failure over the years. And then there was a Boston is what the city of champions I mean, they've disrupted the Cleveland Indians several times.
Mike Roberto 29:51
Yeah, you know, it's, it's, we've been blessed. It's been a heck of a run although now with the GOAT going to Tampa, maybe the run is over, I don't know.
Scott Allen 30:01
Yeah, well, it's a great team and I had a perfect afternoon at Fenway. Gosh, it probably was about six years ago now, with my son and my father in law, and just what an incredibly historic place. But talk. I mean, I think of my son is really the person who's taught me about baseball, I didn't grow up a baseball fan, even in that context, watching the players night after night, you know, three out of 10 years success. there's a, there's a perspective there that that has to be incredibly challenging to get around some of the time, right.
Mike Roberto 30:38
Yeah, you know, there's something about, you know, in baseball on, I've coached my kids and the like, there is something about the ability to put behind you the failure. Yeah, very quickly. That's very hard. For me. It's why I never was a good baseball player. So I can't do it. Like, I got to think about it. Right. And the best players don't think about it, right. They somehow Forget about it. It's really tough, right? I mean, but by the way, baseball is and I did write a case years ago about the Moneyball phenomenon in baseball. Nice. Okay, there's a lot there about the whole idea of like how decision-making has shifted with statistics, and with all these things, and how much pushback there initially was to that movement in the early years. Yeah, even the shift. And I mean, just some recent revelations. I mean, the shift is more recent in the context again, correct. I do wonder, though, you know, whether, interestingly, all Smart Moves, all these things, right, paying attention to on-base percentage, instead of batting average and the shift. But I wonder if the game is good anymore. Like, have we outsmarted ourselves so much that the game might not be as enjoyable anymore? I don't know that as a baseball fan. I wonder about that. But there is a lot to learn about football, too. I mean, I do try to draw and I don't overdo it with the sports analogies, cuz not everybody is a sports fan. But there are some interesting things like I did an analysis of, of in my last book of NFL Draft, and how accurate predictions are about you know, success. And, you know, the answer is probably you would guess, NFL first-round draft picks are quarterbacks, you know, are is likely to be buses. They are to be stars. It's a crapshoot. Yeah. And there's something to learn there that like wait a second, our ability to predict performance is not nearly what we think it is.
Scott Allen 32:29
No, no, it's not.
Mike Roberto 32:32
And there's a lesson there about hiring right. As you might imagine, right around in businesses in organizations. We're trying to predict whether this person will be a good fit or when they'll be a performer. It's really hard to do.
Scott Allen 32:45
You are a curious man. I love the conversation with you. Because of the curiosity you must look at. Everywhere you look you. I have to imagine you're seeing an opportunity.
Mike Roberto 32:58
Yeah, but that's not always good. Right? Yeah, there's an element of being disciplined. I should be right. I mean, I go through these periods where sometimes I'll get myself distracted by a bunch of things, you know, and then I'm not as productive as I want to be. So it's so good and bad, right? I think you want to be what is what it does Steve Jobs once a real artists ship, huh? Uh, you know, and so, sometimes I say to myself, okay, I've got four pieces of unfinished work. real artist ship, Mike, you need to get off your keyster. So that's the downside, I think. I mean, obviously, there's some value in being curious. But you also have to corral it. Sometimes I talk to my students about it I have to admit, that's my feeling like, you know,
Scott Allen 33:41
yeah, I'm working. It's great, it's a great existence, right? Because you live in this space of exploration of things that wonder, the wonder you that you're curious about that? You want to learn about what a great and any new paid,
Mike Roberto 33:54
right? How cool...you know, what, Willie Mays once say, "I'd play this game for free." Yeah, I really do. I mean, you know, don't tell my university president that but I really love what I do, which is great, you know, I think that's something that I hope my kids find I got to in college now. I didn't find it right away. I kind of got there eventually. You Scott, clearly, I can tell you love what you do. I mean, I do. That's what I hope to get to.
Scott Allen 34:22
Yeah, it's, I didn't find it right away, either. I think it was probably around 31 or 32. But once I did, there's a there's jet fuel. There's, there's just a lot of energy in the tank. And, and that's a good way to be it's a good way to be helping others figure that out. Find that to your point. That would be a fascinating area of research. How do you help people, my wife and I often say that we kind of view our job is trying to help them figure out who they are in the world and what they're passionate about? And if we can at least be a part of that process and help them land on it. and explore that. That's how we see some of our work. But it's a gift if you've found it, right.
Mike Roberto 35:09
I yeah. And I'm very grateful that I didn't know whether good fortune or well at credit my wife, Kristen because we were getting married. I was working at Staples post MBA. Yeah, a great job. I was back in the entrepreneurial days where the founder, Tom Stemberg was still running the company. And I was talking about, you know, 20 years from now I'm gonna go back to grad school and become a professor. Because I had done some teaching during my MBA days, and I really enjoyed it and like, and she was like, you're gonna have three or four kids in college, you're gonna walk away from your job and go get a doctorate. Yeah, that's insane. Like, if you want to teach, go do it. Now's the time, right? We'll be poor together. graduate school at the same time. We just sucked it up. And I'm so glad she pushed me to do it. Right. Because sometimes we do that right. We go, oh, someday I'll do that.
Scott Allen 36:02
Yep. Yep. Well, as we close out, I often will ask the guest, what what you're streaming or reading or listening to anything that's on your radar right now?
Mike Roberto 36:13
I am reading a biography of Ulysses S. Grant. Okay. You know, there's been a sort of revival of interest in grant over the last I love history. I like student leadership. I like to read a lot of history. So I, I'd come off of reading a book about Churchill, I've read a bunch about Churchill veers, as looking for my next one. And I read some reviews of several new books that have come out about grants. And, you know, when I was in probably like you and I was in middle school, high school, we remember our grant was he was a great general, and he was a drunk. That's kind of thought out. I didn't really remember much else. And then I started going, Wow, I hear I heard all these fascinating things. So I'm about 40%. of the way through. Yeah, um, it's a great read. And he's a, he's a quite an interesting person to understand, you know, and to see the kind of his evolution from general to political leaders is that I'm right in the middle of that right now. He's not yet president as I'm reading. But that's my mind serious reading.
Scott Allen 37:18
Yeah, anything else? What's for fun, then either watching or listening or, or reading anything on that radar.
Mike Roberto 37:26
So my parents are from Italy. My brother was born there as well. I was born here in the United States. And so I'm watching on Netflix with my wife, a mini-series on Medici on the Medici family, okay. Medici family sorry, I should say it properly. I mean, I know it's not perfectly historically accurate. You know, it's kind of fun but, but it's interesting to read about and to kind of, I mean, to watch and kind of get immersed in Renaissance Florence. It's one of my favorite cities in the world. So it's been fun we're only about a season in so far, but we're really enjoying it. Awesome.
Scott Allen 38:00
Well, Mike, I need to let you get back to writing cases and creativity and doing the incredible work that you do. I will send you a note after our Everest experience this fall. I'm going to be running it in a couple of different sections. I just thank you for your work I thank you for your responsiveness you get back to me right away. We set this up and your willingness to share your experience and your wisdom we just really appreciate it
Mike Roberto 38:25
Well, thanks Scott Good luck with the same, and always love to hear people's feedback and experiences we always looking to make it better, you know the version for me and I will eventually do so. Let me know please do and I hope the students enjoy it right. I hope they not only learn but have some fun to say well,
Scott Allen 38:43
They will. Thank you sir.
Mike Roberto 38:44
Thanks, Scott
Transcribed by https://otter.ai