András Tilcsik

How many things need to go right for your project to succeed? As soon as that question needs asking, you’ve got a complex system on your hands, says Meltdown co-author András Tilcsik. In this gripping talk drawn from his National Business Book Award-winning title, Tilcsik show that there is more potential for catastrophic failure now as our technology, organizations, and ambitions have grown. Practical and proactive, Tilcsik initiates audiences into the pivotal principles of transparency and simplicity—and how you can endow your professional systems with them. Keeping it simple (but not stupid) means finding ways to make your complex system more legible and accessible. The second principle that you’ll learn about is transparency, which really comes down to human dynamics, and dialogue around errors. It’s up to leaders, managers, and organizers to leave a clear path to open conversation so that the system in question can evolve. You will leave this talk with a set of logical and surmountable principles (none of which will radically affect your budget), pivoting you safely towards success.

Corporate diversity: it’s one of today’s most urgent topics. But how does it actually influence teams and organizations? According to cutting-edge research, diversity is indeed beneficial—but not because it brings more diverse perspectives to the table. Rather, it helps by making things more difficult (in effect, by erecting speed bumps that slow down our decision-making processes). Being in a diverse team feels less comfortable than being in a homogenous team; it threatens to be a source of interpersonal friction. And that makes us more skeptical, critical, and more vigilant, all of which make us more likely to catch errors—and avoid failure.

In this keynote, András Tilcsik brings forward the newest and best research on how diversity can help us—and what techniques leaders can employ to change the makeup of their own organizations. He’ll reveal how most diversity programs prove largely ineffective—and even sometimes counterproductive—despite the vast amounts of money spent on them. He then outlines what does work: how voluntary, rather than mandatory, diversity training is a better idea; how formal, structured mentorship programs for junior employees are so necessary; and why we should track diversity in an appeal to people’s inclination to be fair-minded. To Tilcsik, diversity is vital. But it’s the soft tools that work the best: tools that don’t try to strong-arm managers into giving up control, or enforce a list of dos and don’ts. Instead, to succeed with diversity, we need to engage managers, expose them to a wider variety of people, and appeal to their natural desire to do good.