91. Ed Hess

The Iowa Idea: Ed Hess

“Inner peace… that’s the human journey.”

For the first episode of year two at The Iowa Idea Podcast, I’m joined by Ed Hess. Ed is Professor Emeritus of Business Administration in the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia. His new book Hyper-Learning: How to Adapt to the Speed of Change sets forth a cognitive, emotional, and behavioral model designed to enable the highest levels of human performance in the Digital Age. Ed is the author of 13 books and over 160 practitioner articles dealing with innovation and learning cultures, systems, and processes. Some of the common themes of his work address high performing individual and organizational performance. Ed’s work has appeared in Fortune Magazine, HBR, Fast Company, WIRED, Forbes, INC., Huffington Post, Washington Post, Business Week, and the Financial Times. His book Smart Growth was named a Top 25 business book in 2010 for business owners by Inc. Magazine and was awarded the Wachovia Award for Research Excellence. His book Learn or Die was an Amazon best seller and was awarded the Wells Fargo Award for Research Excellence.  Prior to Hyper Learning, Ed co-authored, Humility Is the New Smart: Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Age.

Ed and I dig into the importance of hyper-learning, built on high quality, making meaning conversations; caring, trusting teams; and a mastery of self, through the reduction of one’s ego, and why those are critical if we’re to successfully adapt and address the power and potential of digital transformation.

I appreciated Ed sharing his journey from high school in Georgia, to attending The University of Florida on a scholarship as an athletic manager, to the world of investment banking, to academia. His passion for understanding deep principles has guided his work for decades. His research explored high performance organizations, which led to high performance leaders, which in turn led to the science of learning. Spoiler alert: humility is the key element  of high performing leaders and organizations. Ed and I explore the need for us to embrace our humanity, work on inner peace, and help others if we’re to succeed. See the links in the show description for more resources on Hyper Learning. If you’re enjoying the podcasts, please do me a favor  — tell a friend or colleague and leave a positive review on Apple Podcasts. Ratings and reviews can really help .

It was an honor having Ed join me on the podcast. I want to thank him for his time and insights. I’d also like to thank Adam Hansen, author of Outsmart Your Instincts, for introducing me to Ed. I hope you enjoy the episode

About Ed

Professor Emeritus of Business Administration

Batten Faculty Fellow Emeritus

Batten Executive-in-Residence Emeritus

Darden Graduate School of Business

University of Virginia

Education:

J.D., University of Virginia

L.L.M., New York University

Professor Ed Hess spent more than 20 years in the business world as a senior executive at Warburg Paribas Becker, Boettcher & Company, the Robert M. Bass Group and Arthur Andersen.

He joined academia in 2002 as an Adjunct Professor of Organization and Management at the Goizueta School of Business at Emory University where he was the Founder and Executive Director of The Center for Entrepreneurship and Corporate Growth and The Values-Based Leadership Institute.

In 2007, he joined the faculty of the Darden Graduate School of Business as Professor of Business Administration and the first Batten Executive-in- Residence.  He teaches in the MBA & EMBA Programs; has taught in over 21 Executive Education programs at Darden, IESE (Barcelona), the Indian School of Business, Georgia Tech and AVT Denmark and consults regularly with businesses and governmental agencies.

He is the author of 13 books and over 160 practitioner articles and over 60 Darden cases, etc. dealing with innovation and learning cultures, systems and processes. The common theme of his work is high individual and organizational performance.

His book Smart Growth was named a Top 25 business book in 2010 for business owners by Inc. Magazine and was awarded the Wachovia Award for Research Excellence. His book Learn or Die was an Amazon best seller and was awarded the Wells Fargo Award for Research Excellence.  His recent best-selling book is Hess & Ludwig, Humility Is the New Smart: Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Age (Berrett-Koehler, 2017).

Hess’s work has appeared in Fortune magazine, European Business Review, HBR, SHRM, Fast Company, WIRED, Forbes, INC., Huffington Post, Washington Post, Business Week, the Financial Times, in more than 400 other global media publications as well as on CNBC Squawk Box, Fox Business News with Maria Bartiroma, Big Think, WSJ Radio, Bloomberg Radio with Kathleen Hayes, Dow Jones Radio, MSNBC Radio, Business Insider, and Wharton Radio.

His new book Hyper-Learning: How to Adapt to the Speed of Change (Berrett-Koehler, 2020) sets forth a cognitive, emotional and behavioral model designed to enable the highest levels of human performance in the Digital Age.

Links

Ed’s Website:  https://www.edhess.org

Hyper Learning Roadmap: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ec6793e434c515632040cb6/t/6007b240c762f95979c8f21b/1611117162375/edhess–hyper-learning-roadmap.pdf

Credits

Episode produced by Spark Consulting Group (www.inspiredbyspark.com) in Iowa City, with support from Executive Podcast Solutions (https://www.executivepodcastsolutions.com/).

The Iowa Idea Podcast theme music written and performed by Paisley Bible (https://paisleybible.bandcamp.com/).