Olivia: Alright Jackson, I've got a book for you. Redesigning Leadership. What's the first image that pops into your head? Jackson: Oh, easy. A CEO's office, but instead of a mahogany desk, there's an IKEA standing desk with a half-finished pottery project on it. And lots of Post-it notes. Everywhere. Olivia: That is… shockingly accurate. You’ve basically just described the whole vibe of the book we’re talking about today: Redesigning Leadership by John Maeda, with Becky Bermont. It’s this fascinating look at leadership through the eyes of an artist and a technologist. Jackson: I was joking, but now I’m intrigued. An artist’s take on leadership sounds… potentially chaotic. Or at least very colorful. Olivia: It’s both! And what’s wild is that Maeda, who was a famous professor at the MIT Media Lab, took over as president of the Rhode Island School of Design—one of the world's top art schools—right as the 2008 financial crisis hit. Jackson: Whoa. Okay, so he's not just theorizing in a lab. He's testing these creative ideas while the whole economy is melting down. Talk about trial by fire. That changes things. That’s not just redesigning leadership, that’s leading on the deck of the Titanic with a paintbrush instead of a life raft. Olivia: Exactly. And that’s what makes his insights so powerful. He’s forced to throw out the old playbook because, frankly, it was useless. His first move wasn't to lock himself in a boardroom, but to do something completely different.

Olivia: He started with this core idea that leaders need to lead with 'dirty hands.' Instead of being this detached figurehead, he believed you had to be on the ground, feeling the pulse of the organization directly. Jackson: That sounds good on paper, but what does 'dirty hands' even mean for a college president? You can’t exactly code a solution for a budget crisis or paint a masterpiece to boost morale. Olivia: Well, his version of it was, to many, very 'unpresidential.' He started serving food in the student cafeteria. He’d show up at the dorms on move-in day and carry luggage for incoming freshmen and their parents. He’d deliver donuts to the campus security guards on the late-night shift. Jackson: Hold on. I can just picture the board of trustees seeing this. A nice photo-op, for sure. But does carrying a freshman's suitcase really help you lead a multi-million dollar institution through a global financial meltdown? It feels a little… performative. Olivia: That’s the exact criticism he got! But his argument, which I think is brilliant, was that it wasn't about the act itself. It was about data collection. Not numbers and spreadsheets, but human data. He said it was the only way to "feel the whole system." By doing those things, he wasn't just the 'president in the ivory tower'; he was a person. Students would talk to him, staff would open up. He learned about the real problems, the real anxieties, the real joys of the place. Jackson: Okay, I can see that. You’re not getting the sanitized report in a meeting; you’re hearing about a broken dorm faucet while you’re handing someone a tray of mashed potatoes. It’s unfiltered feedback. Olivia: Precisely. And it plugs into this deeper idea he found at RISD, which is that artists and creative people have a different relationship with struggle. He tells this amazing story about sitting with a freshman who confessed she felt guilty. And her guilt wasn't because she was failing, but because her second semester was going too well. Jackson: Wait, what? She felt guilty because things were… easy? That’s the most unrelatable problem I’ve ever heard. That’s like complaining your lottery winnings are too heavy to carry. Olivia: Right? But when Maeda asked the Provost about it, she explained, "It’s because all artists yearn to struggle. Without it, they don’t feel alive." They are driven to find the next challenge, to make themselves uncomfortable, because that’s where growth and meaning come from. For a leader, that’s a radical idea. It suggests your job isn't to eliminate all problems, but to create a culture that embraces productive struggle. Jackson: Huh. So the goal isn't to create a perfectly smooth, problem-free organization. It's to build a place that's resilient and creative enough to take on the right kind of struggles. The ones that make you better. That’s a very different job description for a leader. Olivia: It completely reframes it. You’re not just a manager; you’re a curator of challenges. And to do that, you first have to understand your people. You have to be willing to get your hands dirty.

Jackson: Okay, I get the 'feeling the system' part. It’s about being present and human. But how do you scale that? You can't serve everyone donuts or have a heart-to-heart with all 2,000 students. I assume he used some high-tech MIT solution to communicate with everyone else? A sophisticated social media strategy? An AI-powered town hall? Olivia: That's the beautiful paradox of this book! He, the technologist from MIT, makes this powerful case that for leadership communication, high-tech is often the wrong tool. He draws this critical distinction between transparency and clarity. Jackson: What’s the difference? They sound like the same thing. Olivia: He argues that transparency is just dumping information. It’s giving everyone access to the raw data, the 50-page report, the budget spreadsheet. It makes the leader feel like they’re being open, but it doesn’t mean anyone actually understands what’s going on. Clarity, on the other hand, is about creating shared understanding. It’s about context and meaning. Jackson: So transparency is a data dump, but clarity is the story that makes the data make sense. Olivia: Exactly. And his methods for achieving clarity were surprisingly low-tech. He tells this fantastic story about the launch of a big, scary strategic planning process. The room was full of nervous faculty and staff. Instead of putting up a 100-slide PowerPoint, the Provost, Jessie Shefrin, had him get a few oranges. Jackson: Oranges? For a strategic planning meeting? Is this a leadership book or a grocery list? Olivia: Stay with me! She starts the meeting by tossing an orange to someone and says, "In one sentence, why are you here?" That person answers, then tosses the orange to someone else. And it goes around the room. Within minutes, this simple, physical, slightly absurd act broke all the tension. It connected everyone. It was playful. An organizational development expert later told him the smell of the citrus oils in the air might have even biochemically helped create group cohesion. Jackson: That is brilliant! So the secret to corporate strategy is… citrus. I love it. It’s like he’s saying a real, tangible, human interaction, even a weird one with fruit, trumps a thousand perfectly crafted emails. Olivia: It absolutely does. He found that his personal Facebook page was great for connecting with alumni, but for current students? The most powerful tool for convening them was, and I quote, "free food." He learned that until you can serve pizza over the web, social media will always have its limits for building a real, physical community. It’s about creating shared experiences. Jackson: That feels so true. We’ve all been in those Zoom meetings where everyone is 'present' but nobody is really there. But you put a pizza in the middle of a real table, and suddenly, you have a real conversation. Olivia: And that’s where he says the most important communication happens. He has this great line from a colleague: "Less presentation, more discussion." He learned that the shortest path between two people is a straight talk. It’s about human connection, not just information transmission.

Jackson: That idea of straight talk and real connection feels like the perfect foundation for the next logical question: how do you actually build a team? Especially a team of creative, opinionated people who are used to struggling and arguing. Olivia: You’ve just hit on the final, and maybe most profound, part of the book. It’s about moving from being an individual contributor—a professor, an artist, a coder—to being a leader of a team. And his big insight is that you have to embrace conflict and difference, not smooth it over. Jackson: That sounds good in theory, but in practice, conflict is what tears teams apart. Olivia: He makes a distinction between destructive conflict and productive conflict. And to illustrate it, he tells this incredible story about a small foundation he worked at in Tokyo. There was one employee that everyone on the staff disliked. He was negative, contrarian, a real thorn in everyone's side. Jackson: Oh, I know that guy. Every office has one. The 'Well, actually...' guy. The professional devil's advocate. Olivia: Exactly! So Maeda asks the director, "Why don't you just fire him? He’s killing the morale." And the director gives this unbelievable answer. He says, "We need him. He is our 'virus.' An organization is like a human body. It needs to be exposed to a few viruses to learn how to survive, to build up its antibodies and remain strong." Jackson: Wow. That is a wild take. So instead of seeing this difficult person as a problem to be eliminated, they saw him as a necessary function of the organization's immune system. Olivia: Precisely. The director was saying that this person's different, even negative, point of view forced them to see their own blind spots. It prevented them from making errors. Maeda has this wonderful quote about it: "Misunderstanding is a missed opportunity to understand." He’s arguing that the leader's job isn't to build a team of people who all agree, but a team with enough diversity of opinion and constructive friction that it produces better, more resilient ideas. Jackson: That requires an incredible amount of humility from a leader, though. To not just tolerate dissent, but to actively see it as a gift. Olivia: It’s the core of it all. And it leads to his final point about being a human leader. He talks about the immense power of a genuine apology. He tells this story about a public meeting where someone was incredibly hostile to him. Later, the person came to him privately to apologize, but asked him to keep it a secret. A "private sorry." Jackson: A 'private sorry'? That’s not a real apology. That’s just managing your reputation. Olivia: Maeda was perplexed too. But his response was to apologize back, for putting the person in a position to be so angry. And this is where it gets deep. He says, "Saying you are sorry is meaningful only if your ego has left the room." It’s not a strategy. It’s a genuine act of vulnerability that makes you more human, more real, and ultimately, a more trusted leader.

Olivia: When you pull it all together, you see what he means by "redesigning leadership." It’s not a set of rules or a corporate framework. It's a creative act. It’s about approaching your role with the hands-on curiosity of an artist, communicating with the directness and warmth of a human, and having the humility to know that your team, even the difficult 'viruses,' is what makes the whole enterprise stronger. Jackson: It’s a total shift in perspective. Leadership isn't about having all the answers. It’s about creating an environment where better answers can emerge. It makes you wonder, what 'unpresidential' thing could you do this week to actually connect with your team? Not as a gimmick, but as a genuine way to 'feel the system.' Olivia: That’s the perfect question to leave our listeners with. It’s not about grand gestures. It might be as simple as sharing a meal, asking a question and truly listening, or even just tossing an orange in your next meeting. Jackson: We're genuinely curious. What's the most effective 'low-tech' leadership act you've ever seen or experienced? The thing that cut through the corporate noise and created a real human connection. Let us know. We’d love to hear the stories. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.