Difficult Conversations with Empathy | Full Interview

well it's been a while last time my uh last time I worked with you I think you were based up in New York um you had some different people on your team we had a lot of fun what so people have been connecting deeply with our guests um they where bring yourself into the room a little bit here what is what Simon been working on where I hear are you living in La now you've got it your life has changed a little bit life has changed my life has changed a lot actually um uh uh so my sister and her family live in Los Angeles and so when kovitz struck um I thought you know what I'll go to La for a couple months while covid you know blows over that'll be nice weather's nice and I'm still here so I guess I live in Los Angeles now um you know I I I'm a great believer that the world is made up of balance um and for anything good that happens to us it comes at a cost always and I'd like to consider what that cost is but when something bad happens to us there's also opportunity or lessons or something and I'm I'm very I sort of made a practice out of always trying to keep the balance so I don't take good for granted and bad I always try and get something out of it and covered was such a shock to the system the the opportunity was huge I mean total reinvention if you wanted it and for our business it was total reinvention but for me it gave him an opportunity to sit and breathe um you know uh I and I think many people in this room can relate you know that we're on a hamster wheel for our careers and we think that we're setting the speed of the hamster wheel by how fast we're running and the the hard lesson that I that I learned is I'm just running to keep up and for a period of time covet stopped the wheel and I got off and then I got to look around and say do I want to get back on that wheel or is there something else I want to do um and so there was a ton of introspection I I'm I've grown up a lot to be honest um uh and I worked hard I had that time to to do it um and I also decided how I want to spend the rest of my life um I'm very very very proud of the work that I have done and the work that I do and spreading a message and challenging traditional Notions of how business works and how we can change that uh you know my Nemesis Jack Welch um uh but the question is is like like I'm proud of that and it has its own momentum and I'm a great believer in measuring uh success not by hitting absolutes but by counting momentum and that's for us individually as well as businesses um uh and then it's much easier to maintain momentum and so when you when um when I first started hearing about people are like you've gotta you gotta you know as we're getting into this purpose thing and why you've got to meet Simon he's incredible blah blah blah and it was you know you'd written these books my favorite was leaders he'd last um that just the concept alone is so true um starting with why there was this meteoric rise where everybody watched a 15-minute video yeah you know just as simple as a TED Talk somewhere yeah yeah and and uh did you know that I mean did you sense that was going to happen or were you just kind of out riffing on your thoughts and something took hold I'd been giving that talk for are you a little inside baseball now okay so I've been giving I've been giving that talk for three years and the shortest I ever did it was an hour and wow when they invited me to do the tedx uh I was like yeah fine they're like do you want to do rehearsal I'm like no it's the same content I've been doing it for three years like I know it and like the night before I was like I've never done it in 18 minutes and like then the Panic wow uh but I figured I'll just leave some stuff out I just had a you just had a piece of paper and a couple searches so it was funny because right before I was supposed to speak and it was only like 50 people in the room right before I was supposed to speak I realized that my old introduction for an hour-long talk was like eight minutes I'm like I can't use up eight minutes on an introduction so I like went for a walk around the block to try and come up with a new introduction that was just like 30 seconds um but yeah I I I didn't expect it to do what it did of course not I mean it's like winning the lottery you know uh I never expected it to do what it did but it makes sense to me it's a deeply human message it I knew from the three years that I've been giving that talk that people related to it so I understand it but I also think it was timing you know I came out at a time where tedx was a relatively new thing and there weren't that many of them now there's thousands and thousands of them a year I don't know if it would pop the same way today as it did yeah so I think I got lucky with the timing Leaders Eat Last start with start with why um and then um and then that that sort of created the this whole thing and I've always felt like and on the one hand you've got you you kind of access revolutionary thoughts and you know change you you I think you believe um that America is a great place but it needs to change corporate America capitalism is a is a great thing but it's not gonna it's not gonna make it in its current if it keeps going the Jack Welch kind of kind of mentality that yeah win at all costs um and and so since then you've been working on a new body of work the infinite game um and and more recently what how do you summarize sort of where your thinking has evolved from purpose to more than that yeah I mean my work is all uh it's all a journey so it all builds upon the last thing like they stand alone as separate ideas but it all builds upon the last thing of course um and uh the infinite game I'm obsessed with it to be honest um the original definition was proposed by a theologian and and uh uh philosopher by the name of Dr James cars back in the mid 80s and I'd known about Carson's work for years and had read his original book finite infinite games and it's a kooky little philosophy book um but I realize it's starting to impact the way I thought and for those who don't know I'll give you the quick synopsis so there are two types of games there are finite games in their infinite games a finite game is defined as known players fixed rules and an agreed upon objective football baseball there is always a beginning middle and an end and if there were if there was a winner necessarily they have to be losers right then you have infinite games infinite games are defined as known and unknown players which means anyone can join at any time and you don't necessarily know who all the other players are the rules are changeable which means every player can play however they want and the objective is to perpetuate the game to stay in the game as long as possible we're players in infinite games every day of Our Lives whether we know it or not like you're not going to win your marriage right you can't be number one in your marriage number two for sure but never number one um uh nobody wins education you can come in first for the finite amount of time you're at school where we agreed upon the time frame and we agreed upon the metrics called grades but nobody wins education nobody wins health care nobody wins career and definitely no company is declared the winner of business right but if you listen to the language of so many leaders it becomes abundantly clear that they don't know the game they're playing in they talk about being number one being the best or beating their competition based on what based upon what agreed upon metrics objectives or time frames and this is a problem because when we play with a finite mindset in an infinite game when you play to win in a game that has no Finish Line there are predictable and consistent outcomes the big ones being the decline of trust the decline of cooperation the decline of innovation like when Circuit City went bankrupt Best Buy didn't win anything right all that happened is they lost one of the players other players fill the Gap and they have to learn to reinvent because now Amazon's a new competitor and now they have to completely change the way they want to play otherwise they'll fall out of the game as well um and so this was profound for me because when I started to apply that definition to my work and the business World it became abundantly clear that starting in the late 70s early 80s our nation was the way we we distorted capitalism like Adam Smith capitalism that made this country great and made it what it as wealthy as it is and gave it such remarkable influence and we're the most Innovative Innovative nation in the world almost almost every great invention that has affected the planet Earth came from us right um which is astonishing modern modern inventions clearly mathematics wasn't ours um uh um but you start to see the dismantling of that infinite mindset that Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson and all these folks embraced uh Thomas Jefferson was a huge fan of Adam Smith um and you start to see this more finite-mindedness the rise of shareholders Supremacy where an ex a disinterested external constituency becomes more important than a customer or an employee which is like a coach of a team trying to make a great team by taking advice from fair-weathered fans and ignoring the needs of players I mean that's kind of what that is um you see the rise of things like using mass layoffs on a regular basis to balance the books we were profitable just not as profitable as we had promised so all of you lose your job oh no you've been great it's not a meritocracy you know and you start to see the steady drumbeat over the course of the past 30 40 years where we have actually been dismantling the awesomeness of American capitalism I'm a die hard capitalist just not the form that we've we've we've created and it's very very recent it's very very modern and Jack Welch is the poster child for that form of capitalism you know Gordon Gekko but he's a fictional character um uh and and we've seen the result which we've seen massive backlash we've seen the decline in the life of a lifespan of companies right it went from 60 years to now which is 17 years the average lifespan of a company um we've seen declines in Innovation we've seen disengagement from employees we've seen lack of loyalty from employees we you know we complain about young people that you know they're not loyal and they Bounce from job well think how they grow up they watch their parents get laid off through no fault of their own because of this insane system um so why should they be loyal I don't blame them um and we see we see uh the results we see increases in stress and disengagement and malaise and depression and anxiety these are all relate the great resignation which if we want to go down that rabbit hole all related so um I think there's a massive opportunity for forward-thinking companies because GE and and those companies had massive influence in the direction of capitalism because they were so wealthy others just copied them right not because they were good but because they had short-term success other but others went well it's working for them and because the whole system's an upheaval there's massive opportunity for for newcom for a new company there is no Heir Apparent to redirect what the future of American Business will look like in addition GE was the leadership Factory for that model if you had GE on your resume you could go anywhere and you were a senior executive you can be our CEO right it's the number of CEOs that came from GE was disproportionate um there has been no error apparent for the modern leadership Factory for the the the the what capitalism should be for infinite-minded capitalism so I think uh the opportunity is available to this because I like to think that it's in this room something a lot of people don't know is uh Jack Welch put on a full court press to buy this company um he uh he he did he put on his A-game and um the my grandmother um her sister didn't want to and you know they didn't really know why they just didn't quite feel right it was a ton of money you know everything daddy did so to speak was coming to fruition and man what are we going to do in this new world but they there's this picture where um Jack Welch is like giving a big thumbs up like with my with my grandmother and she's she has she had a look about her she was looking at him sideways and it was a very prophetic because I think he thought everything was done but she was like yeah I would love a copy of that picture yeah I'll get it for you it's it's a great picture and her her facial expression reflects what what you're saying about that mindset but it was this you know I think what she said was in her mind and she may have told me this um daddy wouldn't have liked this um you know this it was never about money it was about employees and it was about thanking people that got us here and it was about a relationship between you know yes we own this thing but we're we owe something to you know the folks we started it with and and um and uh you know and that's that's always been the mindset and so we we're here we are now in this saying that I'm I'm just kind of thinking out loud here but some of the things that are frustrating all of us frustrating me is like this sense of control and facts and what we know to be true yeah is like Challenge and it's so weird to think that facts are not facts or what is a fact I actually got into this conversation unfortunately over Thanksgiving with my mother-in-law she had a couple glasses of wine but she I said you have to admit that you have you can't you know you have to you have to admit that a fact exists and she said you'll have to prove that to me I'm like okay we can't I can't do this this is yeah beyond my pay grade but you know so vaccines yeah you know oh you know this horrible thing is happening um we're all out of the office we can't come back to the office without vaccines I mean you can't have like some people that are mysteriously not vaccinated some people that are and you wear like a bracelet and I'm good and they're not you just can't it's kind of like smoking if you're walking around secondhand smoking you're getting other people sick yeah it's just not fair yes it's your right to do so I guess as a human but it's not you're right like sort of in the workplace so we have to do this thing so are we all agreed sure now you start to tell employees there's a large group of people that are like I'll be damned you know how dare you this this company is all about it all about empowerment it's all about you know um telling me it's my choice you're giving me the power to do what I want now you're telling me I have to do this or I'm fired yeah we're like you're not fired you're it's just we hope you agree that the world will never get back to normal unless all of us jump in and and and and and be safe and and more importantly it's not about you it's about spreading it to others and you have to stop it you have to stop it with your body and there's no reason to believe it's dangerous you know all that and um yeah but what about theirs have you read verse I went on there and you know there's there's somebody who said they took it and they died the next day and I'm like well if they died the next day how would they put that on bears bears is an open mic there's no there's no scientific validity to it but everybody has their version yeah everybody's arguing there's no way to win the argument yeah so who's in control are we able to tell employees to come to work are we asking them uh you know what it's a frustrating time and every person in this room has been through the frustration yeah there was a cartoon in I think it was a New Yorker cartoon uh and a flight attendant on the plane said uh is there a doctor or anyone who's done their own research aboard please um a little I thought maybe maybe it's just me um uh so okay that's let's jump into this um there's a lot there's a lot to unpack there obviously um there are two thoughts that come to mind one is about control and one is about and it goes back to finite mindedness which is our nation over indexed on finite mindedness for 30 40 years and it affected everything it affected business affected politics it affected military it affect every aspect of life did it change with the with Vietnam you mentioned that a long time ago before you wrote the book it was like we we invaded we were going to win and beat them we had completely they weren't trying to beat us they just wanted to live past us and there was no City to take over you couldn't go to Berlin and have this all right over the Ho Chi Minh city was empty so so what Alex is referring to in in the book I have this opening story to make the case which is in Vietnam over the course of that 10-year War uh we won almost every major battle we fought most people don't know that we actually won most most the battles we've fought uh most major battles uh over the course of those 10 years we lost 58 000 soldiers and Marines they lost uh over 3 million and so it raises a very interesting question if you win the battles and you decimate your enemy how do you lose the war and so that's one of the things that got me interested in in this definition of the infinite game which is clearly there's more than one definition of winning and losing um uh and in this case America was fighting with a finite mindset in an infinite game they were fighting to win and the Vietnamese were fighting to survive and they would fight to the very last person if necessary and a finite player who's playing with a finite mindset an infinite game where you're uh the other players are playing with the right mindset will always find themselves in Quagmire always and the resource the the the currency of an infinite game is Will and resources resources obvious and business it's money War it's money too um but this will of the people remember we left Vietnam because the will of the people back home yeah and and will is one of those things that's very often forgotten companies think they're strong when they're rich Enron was rich GE was rich G is a shadow of its former self you know uh but what was the will of the people you know when when when the foundation shook did they abandon ship for themselves or did they hunker down and come together and our nation because of this obsession with finite mindedness for the past 30 40 years which means you know a couple of generations were raised with that mentality and they were told that you will excel in at work and in your career if you if you do this and now they're the senior executives um and uh uh operating under that operating under that mentality that trade so our nation double we we over indexed rugged individualism and we forgot cooperation you know there's an entire section of the Bookshop called self-help an industry by the way that was invented in the 1970s there's an entire industry there's an entire section of the Bookshop called self-help and there's no section in the Bookshop called help others you know in politics compromises become a dirty word and the reality if you if you have been if you are married or if you have a relationship um good luck with with trying to always be right like compromises listening you know give and take that's part of the game for success and um and businesses is a community a company is a tribe and sometimes things will go exactly your way and sometimes they don't but there has to be this general feeling that the company cares about me as a human being that I'm seeing that I'm heard that I'm understood that I believe in the vision that I want to advance the culture and I and I believe and I fit the value set and the value set fits me and I feel like this is part of my personal identity working here like when I say the company's name and I say my name they feel they feel that feels right um and and we all know that within those relationships that there's give and take for management all the way on down um and this goes back into control which is we we are happy to give up control when we feel that there is trust first and I'll give you an extreme example um so I had a conversation with a marine a marine officer and uh he was talking about because the Marines are pretty amazing as a culture they're pretty dynamic they believe in Semper Gumby always flexible you know we got a Marine in the audience so they believe in sambergambi and they encourage creativity they encourage decision making at the front lines um they and they they're very good at building trust and and and and it's a values-based organization right they instill the values in their Marines and all of that trust and all of that flexibility builds to something which is in a high stress situation combat it is all command and control the officer says you do that and the Marine just does it there is no question asked and there's no pushback this is not the time for well I'd like to share my ideas about what you've proposed pick up land low right now right it doesn't work that way and the and the reason is is because in high stress we need we need command and control it's actually very very important but it's done so with the absolute undying belief that you're making decisions with what you believe is the best interest of the organization the mission whatever it is and I accept that sometimes you almost make mistakes and that in in the case of combat could cost people's lives and I accept that because I believe that you still have the best interests of this organization more than yourself you're not sending me to Harm's Way you're not leveraging the trust and and the command for personal gain you're doing it for the gain of us and and that is exactly the same in a well-run organization which is you in good times we we share the wealth we don't hoard the wealth in good times we save money that's amazing to me how many companies give away all the money in Good Times save that because not all times are good right huge amounts of savings as well reinvestment ignoring shareholders short-term desires I have no desire to make a 27 year old NLS rich and meet his financial goals we have ours first one of my one of I don't know if you know Gary Ridge the CEO of WD-40 he had an uncomfortable analyst call not for him but for his analysts uh uh one of his reporting one of his quarterly calls the analyst said to him uh you've missed your numbers and Gary responded no I I missed your numbers my numbers are fine um um uh uh but in a company especially in a high stress situation of which covet is one of them and keeping the there there is an element of I I'm gonna do this and and you can't maintain command and control for long periods of time because then you break trust it's it's episodic um and it's usually under high stress um because that's the system um and you've spent years building up the trust and um if people don't trust then it just raises questions um did they not fit our values maybe maybe we accidentally hired people that don't belong here so okay that's good to know or maybe I need some more leadership training at my middle management levels because it's breaking whatever it is or maybe Senior Management needs to take a look at have we been good at communicating or and Etc et cetera is it circumstantial is it situational it's complicated it's messy and and the best companies are not perfect they're constantly improving everything they're doing is constant proven like the best people aren't perfect but they're in constant growth mode it's exactly the same thing um so and then the elements of control also um which you touched upon and I'm fascinated by this element of control can I just sort of yeah talk a little bit about one of the ways I'm like a wind-up toy I'll just keep going yeah one of the ways I'm I'm I think about control is so we used to have you'd have a job description and somebody would show up and say I like that roll here's my resume it fits together and we say okay we'll pay you right X and hopefully you'll do these you know these things and um and uh love to have a great career and all that and you know you come into the office you know we see you yeah you kind of do you play you do these things it's an it's an expectation so now you've said yes covet happens and now we're on the other side of that and we've told you to leave we sort of expected that one day this would end I mean I remember putting out a video so this might last till the end of the month right I think it was March April uh you know this might last this could go through the summer yeah let's go to Labor Day it could go to December you know we might go into this I was the outlier by the way I predicted the end of the summer really yeah yeah that was the that was the outlier and then it just kept going and now it's gone on so long yeah that we don't really know what lies on the other side and so I had this extraordinary conversation it was just a it was the first one I had it wasn't that extraordinary it was just the first time I experienced it but I was you know I used to do the lunch uh you know I go down to the cafeteria and we see people and I'd sit down with somebody at lunch and just chat and you know how are you and uh all that so I I was missing that I was recreating it on Zoom so you know just to pick so and so in the I.T department or so and so in sales and just have a zoom call it's not quite the same but you know I was like so how are you doing you know I'm so excited it looks like with the vaccines and everything will be coming back and and without it without thinking that he was saying anything that was like concerning to me he was like well you know I've moved down to Saint Pete and I was like Saint Pete like St Petersburg Florida and he works in the building with me I mean I see him all the time and uh not in St Petersburg no yeah I mean and and up in Dunwoody and I was like so that's amazing so are you uh do you live there now or are you are you going to be are you coming back here he said oh yeah I mean I'll manage my time of course but uh we have we have never been happy we just took the plunge my whole family and he was just like so thrilled with his life and I'm like I'm so happy for you but I'm like at scale I don't know what this means um you know we have a campus with like 8 000 uh people on it um we've never you know when we did when we did um dress code we used to dress in suits I mean coming to work in a suit and then it was business casual what does business casual mean can you wear jeans uh what if they're ripped what if they're frayed you know what if you could see your underwear underneath and there was all these like what if what if what if and I think Goldman Sachs um had a long book or as Morgan Stanley had a long book it was like 70 pages long of all the exceptions you know flesh colored tights and it was like got really weird JP Morgan said dress appropriately right and I was like I feel kind of like dressed appropriately just I mean if you look weird your boss should just tell you and yeah it shouldn't be like we're gonna get sued moment um I I feel like you know this is the same thing it's like work appropriately but I hope we can all agree that life is a live event you know yeah you you there's nothing like being here with with our colleagues there's no there's nothing like um you know a a a game a live you know basketball or something is not the same on Nintendo I mean it's cool but it's not it's not as you just don't get that same thing so we want people to come back together we want them to use their best judgment but we don't know if they will and it all it all just gets to control at some point you're like listen you got to be in more than half your time it has to be the exception not the right the rule not the exception or kind of thing but you can't really do that because we're in a weird place and and that translates to lots of different parts of our life company Barry waymiller calls it responsible Freedom you know companies say we love to give our people freedom and and they say we give our people responsible freedom and I love the word that they add I love the way that they add responsible before Freedom it doesn't mean you can do whatever you want it means that you know you can't just blow a budget for someone's birthday you know I mean you do we act responsibly um I mean and you know what's responsible I mean like I think we most people know what that line is and sometimes there's blocking tackles and corrections as you said um uh but I think one of the things we're seeing you know is um is there's been a general feeling in the United States of lack of control and control and the feeling of control is a is a remarkable thing in how it affects human beings um there was some there were these studies done in the 1970s in the UK called the Whitehall studies and they wanted these social scientists want to understand this thing that they labeled executive stress syndrome right which the Assumption was the more senior you get the more responsibility you have the more impact your decisions can make the more stress that that that puts upon you so they did the study in government in Whitehall because they could control for variances in health care because everybody got the same um and here's what they discovered the more senior you get your stress goes down yes you have more responsibility yes the stakes are higher but you also have more agency you get to decide how to spend your day you get to have more control over how you solve a problem and when you're in the most Junior position you have the least amount of agency because somebody tells you what to do and you're going to do it this way and there is no creativity and there is no there is no variability and it's the lack of control that actually increases diabetes heart disease and some cancers right I always think it's amazing when you ask for a meeting with somebody their immediate assumption if they don't know you and they're further down in the organization as they're getting fired yeah you know it's like no I'm giving you a bonus I mean I just want to you know they're like oh God thank God I thought you're going to fire back why would I fire you but you're raising that feeling of a lack of control but you and you're touching upon I think um a phenomenon that has happened again I blame the past 30 40 years where you know people give their entire lives to a company and then get the proverbial gold watch there's an entire generation that when we talk about the gold watch they don't know what we're talking about uh because this doesn't exist anymore and if you think about it and again because of the the commonality the frequency of of the use of layoffs as a as a as a tool right we all I'm for those who saw the better.com video I don't know if you saw it it was embarrassing you know the CEO made a video that he played to employees that over Zoom did he fired 900 people 900 people with a video saying if you're unlucky enough to be seeing this video and effectively effective in your your terminated effective immediately you know two weeks before Christmas and when the CFO was interviewed about it he said well we need to and I love this terminology we need to Fortress the balance sheet like this is why we should not let CFOs like talk to the public [Laughter] uh uh I was a wonderful man properly [Applause] we love you baby it's very rare you must it must it must be great here because CFOs never get that kind of Applause it's really wonderful um uh uh but the point the point is is is um is what he what he Amplified is that if you have your own business if you're a small business owner you know you're going to go out of business months before like no small business owner goes to work the one day thinking everything's fine then the next day there's nothing right it just doesn't exist but we now live in a society where having a stable job with benefits could end tomorrow effective immediately is what they were told not a meritocracy no fault of my own the company's doing well and so if you think about how twisted that is that a quote unquote stable job is actually not stable at all and that stress sits with every single employee you said we need to have a meeting and fear is the first reaction says something not necessarily about the company but it says something about business yeah and the way business and Corporate America is viewed um and when we don't feel like we have control it manifests in crazy ways our health is one of them but when when we don't feel like we have control we look to exert it in strange ways so companies that have an excessive amount of office politics it's so I'll give you a real life example this is a true this is a true story there was a uh entry the person was either an intern or entry level I can't remember but it was beginning of their career uh and they had 11 interviews why why an intern needs 11 interviews there's a different conversation but they had 11 interviews including many Senior Management and this is a big company this is thousands of employees and then finally they all loved the person they all loved the candidate and then the CEO interviewed them and the CEO decided I don't like him and the kid didn't get the job that means 11 people were told your opinion actually doesn't matter and so this company was fraught with politics because when I can't even decide as a senior executive to hire a freaking intern I'm going to look to exert control any stupid little way I can because I gotta feel like I have control January 6th is a you know there's a lot of people who felt out of control um and uh I read an article that it disproportionately high percentage of that population who who invaded the capital that day were either currently struggling with or have dealt with significant financial trouble whether it's debt or personal bankruptcy disproportionately high right and coming from a population that felt disenfranchised by politics for the past 20 years and so they there's looking to exert control in crazy ways right um and so uh uh the question is is what can we as companies do to make people feel and have agency one of the ways is accountability right which is you have responsibility for this project if it goes right I will give you credit and if it goes wrong I will stand by you and support you as you try and mend it right I'm not swooping in right I'm not swooping in and I'm not taking the credit and and we give people control and this is a huge mistake that's made in leadership all the time which is all the all the authority sits at the top all the information set to the bottom this is David Marquez work and many falsely believe we have to push information up so but decisions can be made which is if inefficient and it never really happens but the real responsibility is to push Authority down and I go back to the Marine Corps you know commander's intent the company wants to go in this direction and we would like to accomplish this how would you like to solve that problem like customer service I mean take something really basic you know um which I find fascinating the number of senior Executives who sit in a room to fix a customer service problem and yet why are there no Frontline employees in that room because there's one group of people who knows much more about customer service than anybody else in the company it's the people who talk to the customers every day we're gonna uh get into some questions um because I have the mic I'll ask the first question as a member of the audio but um so this is this is one of those ones that I you know is uncomfortable but um you know power control has got a new word in the last uh two years 18 months that I'd never had not heard prior to that but it's it's not control it's it's privilege yep so you have come you know I I'm among the most privileged people in ever that lived on Earth and and I know that and I you know it's made me think about that very differently but you know you've seen this event of privilege happen you know I've I've sat there we did this on Zoom it was so weird that we couldn't do this in person but you know the social events were happening and we realize we need to listen we need to we need to talk there's something going on here and it's not something going on it's just there's been a lot that has not been said that's always been there yep and I'm gonna hear it now and and there's this discontent with I don't like the facts or it's unfair that you're in control it's not just me I mean it's all basically everyone in this room is privileged above the average person in the world yep um what is privilege what is what does that whole thing mean to you and how do we how do we deal with it I mean you kind of can't help it you're in the role you can't just like not be in the role anymore and do your job but so what what it goes back to feelings of control of course um and uh what it what it requires is empathy the the correct response is empathy right um uh uh and the sort of excessive apologizing like to apologize for how you were born is a strange reaction but the most important thing I think is empathy to try to understand uh to try and uh uh relate um and we saw this happen uh it it didn't happen unfortunately because we don't teach the skills we don't teach active listening we don't teach Executives or any employee in our company how to make someone else feel heard feel understood feel seen um which is where it starts and if that can happen then all kinds of trust builds and and all the other things start to break away the so for example when after the murder of George Floyd I was astonished at the number of uh people in a leadership position regardless of you know mid-ranking on on up um did nothing you mean and the police force or just in right no no in companies people who would lead teams that after the murder of George Floyd they didn't talk to their teams they just did nothing and it's not because they're bad people it's because they didn't have the skills they didn't know how to have an uncomfortable or difficult conversation and so they chose nothing which makes things worse and uh and and and this is just a skill we can teach people and here's how to have a difficult conversation you bring your team together and say um we need to have an uncomfortable conversation um about race and our company and um uh I'm nervous to have this conversation because I'm afraid that I'm I'm going to Bumble something I'm afraid that I'm going to say something that will trigger somebody and I'm afraid I'm gonna say something or someone will say something that that may agitate and make this worse but I think it's more important that we have this conversation than we than than my fear of doing this perfectly and that's how you start a difficult conversation and it is difficult but it is necessary and those conversations are not happening and again not because of bad people it's because people are afraid and they don't have the skills to start those conversations and it is the responsibility of leaders because that's what we call you leader we call you leader because you go first not because you're in charge but because you go first first to the unknown first to the difficult first of the dangers um and it is our responsibility as as as uh as a corporation to empower and educate our leaders to to do the things that they need to do with their teams um and of course up on high same thing um so I think that's where it begins there's a there's a tremendous lack of listening in our nation yeah um uh and a lot of talking a lot of yelling very little listening and hopefully you know going you know get past the Omicron wave which you know I heard this morning in Europe is horrible and hopefully it will be less less symptomatic than than before and we'll be able to get physically back together which will which will make that better but if we could um possibly bring the lights up just a smidge and um if there's a we've got 15 or so minutes but we'll take as much time as we want there's a hand here in the middle good morning thank you so much for being here today thank you thank you for bringing um Mr cynic Simon Simon sorry um I'm struck by this last exchange compared to the earlier discussion of command and control yeah and Alex's point about people getting vaccinated right that seems like an opportunity for command and control but there's the need for empathy and listening 100 how do you balance that so the decisions we make are not um disconnected from our need to be human right which is it is amazing so so listening is a trust building exercise right if you've if you're in a take it down to a personal relationship if you've been in if you've ever had a romantic relationship it's a loved one right um um making someone feel heard doesn't mean you're wrong saying sorry doesn't mean you're wrong it just means you take accountability for your for your actions and I think it is important that when somebody objects to vaccination that we don't demonize or villainize them but we attempt to hear them make them feel heard doesn't mean we have to agree but they have to feel heard and you know listening is not hearing the words you know it's making the other person feel that they were heard it's it's it we don't get to decide when when hearing has happened when listening except they do and and by the way it's not 100 successful either you know because some people are just hell-bent on and but that's a minority and so I think the exercise is sitting down with people and say tell me tell me what's what you're going through tell me what you're afraid of I want to understand because we're trying to make everyone safe I I wanna I wanna hear what what your thing is and let them tell their story we have no answers we're not there to object we're not there to react we're not there to fix or tell them that they're wrong women are better than this than men um uh uh uh uh and I think that has to happen and it can happen simultaneously they're not mutually exclusive um I'll give you one one example which is I have a friend who uh refuse to get vaccinated and I sat down with her and I said tell me tell me your reasoning right she goes well um this new technology like I don't wanna we don't know it hasn't been out long enough like we don't know so what I hear is fear of the unknown okay I go go on and she I let her talk and say her thing and explain all the things and I and then and I simply said so you're afraid of the MRNA technology right yes and I want them screwing with my DNA I said well just so you know it's 20 year old technology but then I found something I could agree with her but but you're right it is the first time it's been commercialized you're absolutely right that's the first time we've put it in the market so I affirmed her fear and then I said do you get flu shots every year she goes I do I said okay Johnson and Johnson is a good old-fashioned flu shot it's a different technology it's not mRNA so I you're 100 right if you're afraid of of the new technology don't get modern or Pfizer but Johnson and Johnson is it's just like a flu shot it's the same old Tech and she went it is when it is she went and got a modern shot foreign because she just wanted to be heard because most of her friends when she said I'm not getting vaccinated he yelled at her told her she was stupid told her she's an idiot told her she's letting her friends down told her she's making other people sick told her she's a risk to society that doesn't make somebody's mind open up all I did was let her feel heard I think we do we can't we have to do that we have to do that we did a interview recently with a doctor head of epidemiology at Emory that's we're I think sending out today or tomorrow but he said it calling it a mandate has a much different effect on an organization than calling it a requirement an office requirement and uh it's just how it's how it is taken and the it can be taken offensively um other questions Percy got one here coming back there um first of all shout out to all of our leaders in this room who did an incredible job managing through and are doing incredible job managing managing through the Mandate you guys are amazing um but Simon you're so much of what you said really resonated with me as somebody who previously worked at a company where at one point we they implemented a GE performance Force ranking system um that was very destructive in the end um what are your thoughts on income inequality and how to address you know the Gap in pay that we see that has just exploded between between CEOs and median income yeah because I think that is part of this finite yeah you're 100 right and I've forgotten the exact numbers but I'm not far off but over the past whatever it is 30 40 years the average CEO pay has increased something like 750 percent and the average employee has increased about 11 I mean so it's disproportionate and nobody Minds that senior Executives will be better compensated um but they want to share in the wealth that they're helping to generate um and income inequality is one of those things that makes people feel out of control because they don't get to determine their own income you know um uh uh and so again it's it's not it's not the it's not that somebody makes more that's the issue it's the are you letting me join in in the success that I am helping to produce um do I have opportunities to increase my own uh wealth like you do you know you hit certain numbers for example um uh so I think income inequality in this country uh I think it's only the tip of the iceberg and I think it's a and I think it is uh it is one of those things that has caused a group of people to feel disenfranchised in the nation and um they've largely their voices have largely been ignored for 30 30 years and it's coming to roost and by the way you can look through history whenever the the Delta between the Haves and the have-nots grows too big usually there's a revolution I don't know if anybody or I don't know if you've ever you're a Storyteller Have you listened to any of Hardcore History Dan Carlin it's this podcast it is unbelievable but he gets in he does a lot of series on the Romans and the lessons learned and the Gauls and the Celts and all that stuff and that hierarchy and yeah it brings down Empires it does and and unfortunately there's a lot of similarities between what America is going through right now in the Roman Empire but that's a different company Percy yeah Simon thanks for being with us today so I love the comment about balance so how do we fix the political landscape simple stuff thank you uh you know uh a change starts at home I I you know saying that the politicians have to change like everybody knows that but they're not going to because they have become more finite minded which is an election is a finite game there's a beginner there's a beginning middle and end and there's a winner and there's a loser but the minute you win your election now governance is an infinite game but the problem is they don't make that conversion and and it used to be it used to be and I talked to um some Congressman about this some Old-Timers and they were explaining to me that back in the day 80 of the negotiations will be done behind closed doors and the last 20 was for the cameras and now it's 100 for the cameras and uh in the back in the day the goal was that each party could go back to their constituents and say we won and they could go both go back and say we got what we wanted and appease their constituents now it's not enough to say we won we also have to demonstrate the other side lost which is a finite mindset in an infinite game which decreases trust cooperation and um uh and but if if we want to go backwards and look to the root I think that contract for America back in the day uh one of the one of the components of that and but this is not political I I don't care about the politics of it but there was a component of it that said to Congressman no longer don't move your family to Washington when you get elected stay home in your constituency so now what happens is you have congressmen come to work for about three days in Washington then fly home and they're not meeting their constituents they're fundraising for for five days a week right but the problem is back in the day they fought and they disagreed and they hated each other but they sat in the bleachers together to watch their kids play baseball and they went to the same PTA meetings and they were friends and they socialized and it's really easy to compromise with a friend and you could sit back and be like I can't do that you know I can't do that you know but now there's no friendships they don't know each other they sleep on their couches at work and they only know the people they hang out with which is their own party we don't want to go into gerrymandering as well you know we used to live in a world where you know we picked our electors now our electors pick us um and so they don't work they don't have Blended um uh districts anymore where they have to have a point of view that appeals to both sides they've they've both sides have gerrymandered the point they only have to appeal to your own so they've both gone more extremists um but to answer your question directly without you know I'm sorry I had to go on the little diatribe but the to answer your question more directly I think our politicians are a reflection of us I think we get what we deserve and this is none of this is a surprise and none of this is an anomaly it's all been a steady drum beat if we just go back 40 years you can see the steady drum beat to Republican and Democrat the steady jumping towards more and more finite and it's just come to a head these days it's been getting worse for decades uh since basically the fall of the Berlin Wall you can go back to about 1989. um where that where it started and and and we are the ones who are complaining they need to compromise they need to listen they need to work across the aisle they need to stop being less judgmental well hello we need to compromise we need to listen we need to work across the aisle we need to be less judgmental it's us and I think change always starts at home I've recently um we have we have a pack and we try to find moderate nice people that are willing to have conversations on both sides and and um uh Senator masto um chair of the Senate uh Campaign Committee was with us in our office and I said I asked this question and she said um there's what you what you don't see is that we actually do have a lot of bipartisan work going on we I mean to get anything done we get into the room we get both sides of the committee we talk we see if we can go find some agree some agreeing votes we come back together and say the problems we're facing but we're the goal is to do the thing to to accomplish something there's these big iconic um you know votes on you know voting or reconciliating or whatever that you know compeller high water we won't but that's those are just things you hear about the things you don't hear about are just hundreds of laws that get passed all the time that we we work on together but when we go back to our constituencies you say I'm I I said no and you tell your constituencies how divisive you were and uh you don't mind all okay I mean that's that's the same to me what that's the same party line as well most cops are good cops you know it's like yeah I I know that but you have a problem it's like yeah sure you're very good at getting the mundane stuff done Kudos that sounds like table Stakes to me you know it's like it's the difficult stuff that the stuff that has to get done like the fact that we even came to another Brink where there that government could get shut down is just an embarrassment so I you know you know to me it's it's it's it's a moral equivalency you know it's that kind of thing was like well you know like you're looking at all the bad things like well but we do a lot of good things it's like you know you know last time we'll give to her yeah so I don't know I I I I I hear what you're saying her point was though that it's it's um it's like you said you're you're being um you get what you deserve they don't want to tell they don't want to say we're playing along publicly because their voters won't vote for them because we we are we are a divided nation and we come from different places and we we are un we don't trust the other side and so we're fighting and we like people that that fight for us you know when did compromise become dirty like you cannot have a successful marriage without compromise you know you cannot be a successful person unless the view your views change as you get older and wiser right it's only in politics where you have to believe the same thing for 30 years otherwise you're a bad person it's only in politics where talking to the side and trying to find common ground is considered is considered the devil's work um and uh I I just I just I call Bullen and I've worked with I've worked with both sides because I preach bipartisanships I won't I won't work with a candidate but I'll work with parties and I've worked with both parties and I can tell you some funny stories um and I've had private conversations and I'll tell you one of them so I sat down with a congressman just me and the congressman no no staffers around us and and and I had the uncomfortable conversation which I wouldn't have publicly with them because uh it's just inappropriate and I said you know what your problem is is you're not willing to sacrifice for this country I said I know men and women who wear a uniform who would lay down their lives for this country and you won't even give up your job for this country oh and by the way if you lost your election you're going to become a lobbyist or some consultant and you'll make more money than you've ever dreamed of so my question is what exactly are you losing whether you keep your job or lose your job the answer is nothing power and uh right and but the point is that they're in a win-win situation I'm either powerful or I got cash like that's your choice um and he looked at me and said you're right none of us are none of us are willing to and this is not what our finding fathers intended our finding fathers intended that you would leave your law practice you would leave your farm you'd come and serve your nation for a a a a few uh um uh Cycles uh and then you go back to your career we have professional politicians now people who've been in office for 30 years they actually don't know how to do anything else take anybody who's been doing something for 30 years and say you're going to stop doing it and fear is the motivation as well we I finally found has never wanted a class of professional politician that was never in the in in the design of this nation um so I I think there's there's um my my this is a horrible thought but it's a thought that I've struggled with for years now and I and I cannot reconcile it which is um we we lost something when the Berlin Wall came down which is we lost an external existential threat we always fought we always disagreed but at the end of the day we could come together and say that's not that that threatens all of us and so we could come together in defense of of our of our beliefs in our nation and when the Berlin Wall came down and we lost uh a perception because it still exists we just lost the perception of the external existential threat what happens it's a weird Quirk of humanity which is vision and positive stuff and all this stuff is all ethereal but negative stuff is usually tangible and so it's a weird Quirk of humanity that it's that it's that I can more easily Define what I stand for when I can see what I stand against but if that thing that I stand against doesn't exist then it's very hard for me to articulate what I stand for and so I look for something that I'm against to help me understand what I stand for and so if it doesn't exist outside our borders I'm gonna look inside our borders and we start to see a massive increase of infighting inside our nation because we don't have any sense that there's something threatening us as a tribe um so you've got this conundrum I don't know if there's others that by the way was also part of the Roman Empire after Carthage was flattened which was their Soviet Union um Rome went into steep decline because of infighting yeah so we've got this conundrum where you know where we have these goals we're trying to get things done there's the are you saying that we should stop thinking about our goals and think about what if you if you kind of transform your mind into the infinite are you thinking why are we really here is that is that what we should do as Leaders when you're thinking about vaccines and mandates and privilege and all these tricky things it's not about abandoning goals it's contextualizing the goals and what most businesses lack is context for the goals so we use all the wrong analogies in business we use War analogies it's a launch it's a campaign you know we use uh Sports analogies you know uh it's it's Fourth and goal and like we've got a and and they're all finite constructions um we need to start thinking of business like a lifestyle right think of it more like Health like I want to be healthy what does it take to be healthy well you have to exercise you have to eat right you have to nurse your personal relationships you have to have enough sleep there's probably 30 other things you can't do all of these things perfectly all the time it's a striving well what you have to do well in business you need good products you need good service you need good leadership so you can't do all those things perfectly all the time it's a striving and you can absolutely have arbitrary goals in that we love a metric human beings love a metric so for example I want to lose x amount of weight by X date arbitrary number arbitrary date which is largely how we pick financial goals we're going to hit this goal by this date make it this number you know um uh uh and it's arbitrary and that's fine and so you go and you stand on the scale every morning you're doing all the right things we love measuring we love counting we love feeling the progress and then you hit your goal and you're ecstatic but here's the thing you have to keep exercising for the rest of your life it doesn't end and it's the same with business you hit your goal but the whole thing called business and all that striving and marketing and it it doesn't end like you have to keep doing it but I think it's more interesting when we miss the goal because if you're doing all this stuff and you stand on the scale on that day and you miss your goal you know what happens you keep working out nothing happened right and what's more important is the trend because you are more healthy now you're healthier now than you were when you started you just happened to pick the wrong date clearly you're going to hit it in a month and I think what we as companies need to start doing is first of all contextualizing the goal the reason we need to hit this goal is because it helps us build towards that bigger Vision yeah and when we hit it we look at the context do we have bad leadership that just you know at the last minute in the last quarter had all these promotions so they could hit their numbers but they're a terrible leader building a terrible team and this has been their year but we bonus that person versus the other team that's really well LED that's doing everything right beautiful steady growth line they just happen to miss the number we give them nothing so we're accidentally incentivizing the wrong behaviors I think we need to start looking at Trend data because that's infinite mindedness and I think we need to start contextualizing those goals if they lack context if it's goal for the point of goal you're in a finite game I'm going to use your um your leadership example here we have a finite amount of time that now is blinking red and um but I don't care because we're on a roll you know so thank you and I saw I saw somebody they're raising their hand in a moment of high stress we use command and control so we'll take one last question yes yes go ahead hi Sandra Davis first Forum new to Cox now first form ninja Cox actually came from um one of the companies you described a Jack Welch type company Globe is a big blue Globe is a logo whatever the case is welcome thank you thank you thank you I am just um you know so taken aback by this experience as a woman and a woman of color I'm struck by your comments on momentum versus sort of finite goals and I think part of the reason I'm here is because of Cox's commitment to diversity action speak Etc was really important for me as I looked to leave in the opening um it was said that you advise Alex and so I'm interested in how or if you're advising him on maintaining this momentum that Cox has from an action speaks perspective to make sure that you know what we're seeing with you know movement with women and people of color selfishly is not a finite goal that we achieve and we go back right but that we continue with this momentum so I'm interested in how you would advise someone sure so candidly Alex and I haven't talked for a long time there's a little reunion for us too which is fun um but I but I can I can address it which is uh when we treat Dei like a finite goal which I think unfortunately too many companies are um and uh he here's the here's the uncomfortable reality of all of this stuff right which is to truly make Improvement and fix things or at least improve things um it's a it's a steady sometimes slow process it's like rebuilding trust in a relationship it doesn't happen with one bouquet of flowers and a really nicely written card even if it's really heartfelt and important and necessary it's it's consistency and ongoing right but at the same time we need to see gestures so that we can see remember we love a metric we love to see that something's happening but we see it all over the place we see it in police reform we see it in D I always see a lot of companies and and communities doing the short-term stuff for show that may or may not be having the impact they need to have I'm okay with the short time of stuff for show so long as the difficult slow work is happening behind the scenes simultaneously right um and so and and great companies as we said like like good people they and by the way there's there's no competitors in the infinite game because you can't beat anybody there's only other players right the only true competitors yourself how do we become a better version of yourself today than we were yesterday and so all of these things you know George Floyd the murder of George Floyd forced our nation to hold a mirror up to ourselves and and just to go as an aside you know after uh Floyd is murdered I called um some of my African-American friends and I needed advice how to have difficult conversations I needed I wanted to hear how they how they were you know and on some of the conversations I was crying and I asked them though Something's Happened with uh with all of them I said I'm crying how come you're not crying and they said because I'm exhausted they said this is new for you this is not new for me this is I live this life you're just seeing it for the first time because the whole scene was captured we've been talking about this but usually you just see the dead body in the street and we don't see what led up to it what made George Floyd important was the camera that we got to see it and for for people who haven't seen that for for all the reasons it was shocking good you know um and so I think that when we talk about the infinite gaming about a constant Improvement you know blaming some someone for something they didn't see isn't helpful but now that they've seen it we say okay let's do that work and let's go through the constant Improvement like what are the things that we can do inside our company so this is not for show and temporary and fashionable but this becomes part of our part of our part of our growth part of Who We Are that we become more aware of these things we have systems in place we have different kinds of metrics we have different kinds of incentives we have different kinds of practices we have we've implemented things like listening skills we've implemented things like teaching anybody who gets promoted to any position of leadership to learn how to have a difficult conversation the reality is if you can have a difficult conversation about race you can have a difficult conversation about anything your performance is not doing so great that's a difficult conversation so I think this is a massive opportunity like any learning opportunity for personal growth and companies go through personal growth like people go through personal growth and what somebody says ongoing forever exercise eating right it's this is forever this is forever it's a striving and that's what we have to remember it's a striving somebody said something that stuck with me during all this which was diversion and inclusion diversity and inclusion you can have a as diverse of a Workforce as you want it doesn't make a it doesn't amount to anything if you don't have an inclusive culture and it's it's a mindset and it's not a number and and I look I got a bunch of phone calls after uh during right after uh the murder of George Floyd and I was really annoyed by how many Executives were more preoccupied with the press release than with the hard work they needed to do inside their company you know I understand you got to put the press release out I'm fine with that but it should be it should the press release reflect the work that you're deciding to do it shouldn't be the priority before the work you decide to do yeah I'd say everybody in this room did that and it's a great it's a great um great question to end on gives us plenty to think about I want to thank you for being with us it has been too long I do want to take your advice more and I don't want it to go to be another four years before we see you so thank you for joining us and thank you for what you're doing to add goodness into the world around us

Channel: Simon Sinek

Views: 208,601

Keywords: simon sinek, start with why, inspiration, motivation, leadership, career, inspire

Id: XC1F3-wA4cA

Length: 67min 42sec (4062 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2023