Leadership in the Era of AI | Full Conversation

Conversation with Simon

Speaker 1: Thank you so much Simon, you know uh I’ve read quite a bit about I’ve read a lot of your books and I’m sure many of the audiences we’ll keep a few questions at the end for Simon to talk about um I like the name of your company uh optimism you know I was reading your bio and uh it talks about you being an unshakable optimist and you believe in building the world together in the context of everything happening around us a refuge crisis all over the world depending on who you ask they would tell you we are in a recession or we are not in a recession Energy prices food prices International Trade diplomatic ties are on an all-time low I mean you know who gets to war for these kind of the situation we are in m Jamie Diamond actually said last week Jamie Diamond actually he spoke about multiple things he said AI will take to three days a week then he said we are living in the most dangerous time in the world in a few decades R Delio literally spoke on Monday and said 50% chance that there’s a World War II I want to ask you are you still a unshakable Optimist not anymore uh so I I think we have to be clear what optimism is uh and I and I when when I describe myself as an optimist uh people’s immediate reaction is that I’m naive or blind optimism is neither I it is not to be confused with blind positivity everything’s fine everything’s good you know or the obsession with focusing on the things that are working and ignoring the things that are broken um in in leadership this is dangerous we there’s a lot of leaders who think that they have to be positive all the time so that their teams will be POS positive even when things around them are difficult and that actually backfires to be honest because when people are struggling and people are finding it hard to to be positive in the day and your leader comes in he’s like everything’s great it actually makes us feel worse because we think there’s something wrong with us um optimism uh is is very realistic uh it allows for frustration and sadness it can allow for sadness uh uh difficulty like but it’s the undying belief that the future is bright so an optimist would say we are in a dark tunnel um I do not know how long we’re going to be in here and it will be difficult but I know one thing for sure if we work together and take care of each other we will get through this and we will come out of this stronger than we went in um and I still firmly believe that that if we work together and we find ways through um uh that we will come out of this stronger than we went in and I do believe the future is bright but how do you get people to believe that I mean if they How do you get people to believe start to believe that they will start to work together but to get to the point for them to believe um how do you get them to that point to believe that the world is the the future is going to be bright and therefore they should come together to fix it I we have to remember that Human animals are social animals and one of the disadvantages you know I I just as an aside um I believe I believe the world is balanced um I don’t believe in strengths or weaknesses for example um so you can take company or human beings when people like what are your strengths you know what’s your biggest weakness that famous uh uh interview question well I’m a perfectionist you know um uh I work too hard um uh I believe that there’s no such thing as strengths and weaknesses we have characteristics and we have attributes and in some contexts there advantages and strength in some contexts there are weaknesses and liabilities and what you have to know is what your your characteristics and attributes are and you have to know the context in which they either and avoid the ones where their liabilities and try and put yourself in ones where their uh where their strengths um uh uh and I think the same is true here we have to remember that human beings are social animals and what makes us uh Happy what makes us live longer what makes us healthier is human interaction and over the course of the past you know couple of decades with the rise of Technology we’ve seen a decline in the human skills we need for this um you know there’s an irony to this which is cats don’t have to work very hard to be cats they’re just good at it uh but it actually takes a lot of work to be good at being human and we aren’t doing that work um uh and we can see it just just take a look at what’s happening um in in with with the the crisis in in in Israel and Gaza right now uh uh it used to be a time where when we read the news the horrible news we would call a friend and we would vent our anger or sit in our sadness and our friend could hold us our friend could hold space for us while we went through this process right now what’s happening is we see the news and then we go online and we vent our anger or express our sadness in the open for the world to see right uh and then what’s happening is people are reacting to our reactions and do you think the connectedness is kind of anti to getting out of the pessimism to an optimistic world I mean yeah the more that you feel that someone has your back the more that you feel in relationship the more that you feel your colleagues your co-workers your your leaders see you as a human being the more at peace you feel and the more open you are to allowing uh uh uh the more at peace you feel that someone will be there for you and that is what generates optimism it’s the quality of relationships and for all the benefits of technology and I love technology we cannot we cannot

Continuing Conversation with Simon

Speaker 1: Forget uh that we are Legacy animals living a in a modern world and we have to do the work to Foster relationship and great companies do that great companies do that Simon in the you know Human connection taking on to the topic of human connection you spoke about human Connection in the age of AI and I actually believe it’s more important now than before y but is AI a threat to the human connection again I’ll go back to what I said before it is it is neither a good thing nor a bad thing it is depends on what we do with it how we deploy it and how responsible we are with it can it be a a a threat to the human condition of course I think we’ve we’ve seen that I mean if you saw the movie her I mean that’s becoming a real thing where people will have relationships with an AI bot but the problem is that AI bot is having simultaneous relationships with millions of people so how special are you um it can but it can make you feel special we already have words for this we saw this with Facebook it’s called a parasocial relationship where you have all of the feelings of like oh my God I’m in love this person cares about me but on the other side is nothing um but at least the ones who don’t have those relationships will feel good because they at least have somebody to except for the fact that it’s fake one minor little detail um that but level plays everybody is having fake if everybody has fake relationships at some point it’s going to collapse um you know I think again there’s a hubris that human beings have which is we think we’re above nature we forget we’re a part of it and at the end of the day um our we only know what we know and what we don’t know is way vaster and we we are pretty junk at making predictions I mean let’s be let’s be honest all the predictions of what the internet would be I remember they were saying that the death of bricks and mortar meanwhile you know Amazon’s opening stores and you know uh uh pred not predor what’s the one you rent clothes what’s that one Rent the Runway they’re opening stores they have stores you know because we’re forgetting the very human nature which is we like we like Gathering and hunting like we like browsing we actually enjoy it um anybody who’s in retail knows this that’s why they keep moving things around in the store things are never exactly where they used to be they move them because we like to go looking um uh people in retail know this um uh so I think we always forget the humanness of things um and at the end of the day we We crave relationship we need relationship I’m going to switch topics Trust in business a little bit um you know trust in public institutions has fallen um significantly over the last few years but the trust in business in comparison to other public institutions is still the highest yeah I mean there is something called the edlen trust barometer which kind of measures this and business is the only institution viewed both competent and ethical uh and everybody has actually put their own employer as the highest trust institution to believe in yeah you think that’s going to fade away a little bit with machines and AI being in the mix and of course now the bigger question is how do you build trust in the age of AI so let’s preface with I’m a cynical bastard um and I I think we have to be careful with uh trust barometers because they’re relative you know just because we don’t trust in Government doesn’t mean we love corporations right it’s a relative scale yeah all it means is our trust in government and public institutions is so low we feel good about the business that that I can’t believe that corporations are number one um so uh it is ironic that that that uh that that uh that people trust in business more but I think again I think we have to take it in context I also think we have to consider how we view companies these days and and by the way uh this also puts pressure on companies which is um if you go back a few decades our lives were sort of distributed and where we got all of our all of our our needs so for example um uh you got your sense of community from the bowling the bowling league you got your sense of uh uh sort of purpose from church you had we had neighbors that we actually had bar with our neighbors on the weekends um and work was a place that um uh you were loyal to work and work was loyal to you and you worked until you got your gold watch and as an aside I will stand on stages and I will ask a group of people like you know who knows what I’m doesn’t know what I’m talking about when when I talk about the gold watch and like all the young hands have no idea what I’m talking about like literally that metaphor is lost on an entire Generation Um but we would give our lives and and by the way there was trust both ways the company would take care of us and we would take care of them now over the course of time we’ve seen the bowling leagues disappear we’ve seen a church attendance Decline and what we’re now asking our companies to do asking our work to do is we want them to fill the gaps we need you to now offer me a sense of purpose we need you to offer me a sense of community now we need you to agree with my Politics as well and this massive pressure on companies to fulfill all these human needs which um it’s not a good thing or a bad thing it it is a thing um and so companies have to respond and so I think the fact that people find a lot of those things at work it probably increases the level of trust so that’s one of the one of the positive sides so do you do you see that flipping at some point of time where uh institutions which are public in nature should have higher trust than businesses I would love to believe that we should trust government more I mean I guess I’m an idealist I I think you know these things are cyclical I think world events will affect them you know after September 11th we saw public trust Skyrocket so I mean I don’t think it’s fixed I think it’ll it’ll it’ll wax and wne over the course of time Simon I’m going to switch gear to a um very different Circle of safety topic you wrote about circle of safety uh in your book Leaders Eat Last and that was way back in 2013 and I actually think organizational behavior has changed in the last 10 years um if you had written that book

Continuing Conversation with Simon

Speaker 1: Now, would you write it differently on Circle of safety and do you think it’s very different now than what it was then?

Simon: Uh no, I think it’s the same book because the book is the same I’m saying if you have to write it now yeah yeah yeah it would be the I mean maybe I’ll use the different examples but it would be the same conclusion because I wasn’t trying to describe what uh what trust looks like in the moment I was trying to understand where trust comes from like what is trust and when you ask a question like that necessarily you have to go backwards and I went back you know to the beginning of humankind and anthropology and how we lived and overlaid the biology of human decision-making and human trust and the anthropological necessities of Trust on a corporate environment and so our need to feel safe uh to feel psychological safety in the places we live and work is a basic biological constant um it it it it hasn’t changed and it won’t change you know another book you wrote about is um um start with a y yep don’t Start with a Y tell the date of that one that’ll make me feel even older um and and that was a fascinating book um it’s about how you want to start with a because you know the purpose and cause and belief of a company and then you have a unique way of doing things and therefore you know the how and of course all of us know what a what a firm does or what an organization does I almost believe you need to add the who into the mix from the why how and what because anything you do in a company today could potentially be done by humans or could be done by machines and the Endeavor of humans and machines we’re going to live in a Endeavor of humans and machines which means uh the feedback loop with humans has to check the responsibility of the Y even if the machine takes decision on on your behalf um so in that context I mean doing responsible AI I almost think the who plays a important role on which task is done by who and how do you create the feedback loop to you know to make sure that you valid the way so who who is already built into the system um why is that underlying purpose cause of belief why you get out of B in the morning why your organization exists why should anyone care how are the values the actions you take to bring your cause to life and what are the tangible manifestations of your actions your product for example your your your advertising your public anything I can see touch or feel even your metrics um um and in combination those things make you who you are and when one of those things is out of balance it’s like I don’t know who you are anymore so if you’re only driven by uh by numbers and you have no sense of purpose people will lose your identity I don’t know what you stand for right but if all you are is purpose and you get nothing done then same thing which is it’s a hippie commune which advances nothing um and again I won’t know what your purpose is because I can’t see you doing anything in the world so if those three things are aligned that is who you are that is that is that is that is exactly what’s supposed to happen um I think your point about who does the work is an interesting one and I would because that’s tangible like who physically is going to do that task I think that fits on the outside so if you go back to your your cause and your values those decisions should um should run through that filter first and if AI can help with that filter then then great you know Simon um thank you for

Speaker 2: Four generations of workforce that one of the one of the things the workplaces are grappling with is four generations of Workforce um and it has never happened before in the last 100 years that you had four generations of Workforce working at the same time yeah um you wrote about Millennials I I I mean it was a Youtube video um did it have like 14 15 million hits it had 80 million in the first week which was 80 80 million in the first week I remember going it did caught me by surprise I didn’t expect it um I went up for dinner once with a guy this is unrelated obviously uh and uh I asked him what do you do he says I make viral videos and I said do you mean you make viral videos and hope they go viral um uh because that’s what happened I mean it’s like I didn’t predict this and I remember going out for dinner and it had 25 million views and when I was done with dinner it had 30 million views it was crazy um but yeah it it went very much controversial video what was that it was a little controversial as well um was and and and that’s the reason why it also had I think a few I think a few

Millennials and Zenzes in the Workplace

Millennials whose nerves I touched got a little yeah, that’s all I think, everybody else is fine with all the people in the world who are between 27 and 40, yeah, you touch the, I mean, you said nice things, you said they don’t like instant gratification, they’re lazy, they have low self-esteem, that’s how they’ve been described, and they’re up for entitlement, uh, but you equally spoke about very interesting four characteristics, you said parenting, technology, impatience, yeah, uh, and environment, tell us a little bit about how organizations can, you know, that’s a sizable part of organizational work, in fact now the, you know, the Zenzis, I don’t know what your view is, are they different to the Millennials, I actually believe they’re different to the Millennials, um, tell us a little bit how do organizations handle and create an environment for them to thrive both Zenzis and Millennials, sure, so generational differences are not new, um, you know, we always accuse the older generations of being stuck in the mud and you know, not willing to change and we always accuse the young generations of want to break everything, you know, and that they think they know more that that’s old, um, uh, what’s new is the entitlement thing that seems to be relatively new, um, and there’s some interesting reasons for it, um, one, it’s a very connected generation obviously because of the internet and they actually have more awareness of what’s going on in the world and have access to unlimited amounts of information obviously, um, but if you think when we started our careers um, we were, I think objectively speaking idiots, you know, like we came into the workforce actually knowing nothing right and so we had no choice but to defer to those who had more experience so that we could learn to advance our careers because we actually knew nothing and we knew we knew nothing, this young generation that’s coming in are starting work on day one with a knowledge of how the uh, how technology works, how personal branding works, how social media works and they’re actually bringing a skill set that sometimes those at work don’t have and so I think what it does is produced it produces sometimes a warped sense of value when I show up on day one for work which is I think I don’t think you realize what you’re getting here, um, and sometimes blinds them to the fact that that though those things are true I also need you to learn all these things and you have no life experience yet, um, and so I think that the way we interpret that is entitlement but what we also see is that when you when you bring that young people are bringing the sense of apparent self-confidence to the workforce learning very quickly that um, work doesn’t work the same way as school which doesn’t work the same way as your parents taking care of everything for you which you don’t which doesn’t work the same way we may not need those skills today we need other skills that what you find is that it can be quite traumatic um, um, and you’ll find that a lot of the self-confidence that they uh, uh, show is actually false and it’s actually a very insecure generation that has that struggled with coping mechanisms um, and we’re seeing that in rises of anxiety depression, you know, uh, and unfortunately suicides as well um, uh, and lacking those human skills that we talked about before so necessary for people to feel confident in work so I think all that is required quite frankly um, is empathy and though it would be nice to demand that they have empathy for us that we actually have gone through a little bit and have seen a few things in the world that’s less likely to happen and we’re supposed to be the older experienced ones so I think we have to lead we have to show empathy that doesn’t mean agree that doesn’t mean that we can’t hold them accountable but we have to learn to try and understand the life that they have grown up in which is different than the life we grew up in and that affects their worldview and their behavior so I think when you talk about the millennial video yes there was some people who were a little pissed off and they would say things like I know many Millennials who aren’t like that of course um, uh, but what I found was the opposite which is the huge huge number of young people who came to me and said thank you you’re helping me understand why I’m struggling that there are other that there are other circumstances in the world that are affecting me um, in other words what it was was an expression of empathy which is let me try and understand why you why people keep asking me why you’re impossible to lead because that’s where that that that video was born from 100% of the meetings I had 100% of the speeches that I gave invariably the first question was I’m struggling to lead my Millennials why are they such an unleadable generation and so I just went on the journey absolutely I think that was that was so well said I mean uh knowing what the Millennials need and setting up an environment for supporting them and therefore get getting the best out of them I think was was important you know just on the topic of uh uh knowing them you know one of the

Importance of Vulnerability in Organizational Culture

Vulnerability is not a weakness, things I’m personally very passionate about is um, asking for help, vulnerability is not a, is not a weakness it is a strength, um, it is, you know in some ways it’s easier for me as a CEO of a company to be vulnerable because I have no insecurity but to build a culture of vulnerability where everybody can ask for help yeah, uh, I think is a huge strength tell us how organizations can build culture to thrive in vulnerability I mean it is such a unique opportunity for Enterprises to take a lead yeah, and make vulnerability a virtue, a strength and um, asking help is a strength and not a weakness yeah, well Amen to that um uh I think there’s a few things number one we have to define the term you know I think the word vulnerability scares a lot of people especially in business business uh nobody wants to be vulnerable nobody wants to share their weaknesses why would I do that it’ll hurt my promotability I I don’t want to be humiliated you know um so I think first and foremost we have to Define what it means this is why I like terms like psychological safety or circle of safety that we have to build circus of safety and I don’t need to use the word vulnerable because then I end up having a semantic debate with someone um so when we talk about being in a circle of safety or feeling psychological safety uh or being vulnerable what that means is and I think we have to be declarative about what it means uh by the way of example what it means is that I can raise my hand and say I made a mistake or I don’t understand or I don’t think I have enough training to do the job you’re asking me to do or I need help without any fear of humiliation or retribution in fact I can say these things with absolute confidence um that someone will rush in to support me whether it’s my colleagues or my leader and we’ve all been on a team where we had that unfortunately we’ve also all been on a team where you’ll never admit a mistake you’ll never admit any Gap in intelligence or something you don’t know you’ll never admit

Societal Impact of AI and Social Mobility

Inspired about the new discontinuity coming out with AI is, you know. Technologies of the past have created a divide. I mean, look at the United States, uh, we have 8 million open jobs, there are only 5 million humans available for those jobs, and there are 4 million people every month leaving jobs because they don’t see upward social mobility in the jobs. Uh, these are people who are doing 20 plus dollars an hour job all their life, so they’re fed up, they don’t see the American dream so they just walk, they just walk away from one job to the other, so these are the 4 million 4 million jobs a month, is one-third of the US Workforce, they just leave jobs. I think we have this biggest discontinuity of AI coming into picture, it will take away jobs of the past, it will create upward social mobility in jobs because you can take the path up because, uh, those jobs would be done by machines so somebody doesn’t need to do it, so I’m very, very optimistic about the fact that upward social Mobility is a lifetime opportunity for us. I don’t know whether you had any comment on it, and I think the societal divide which was, you know, in many ways done by digital Technologies including our education system. I mean, you know, education is the biggest barrier for good jobs and education has become so expensive. I mean it’s 200% increase in education cost of Education in the last 20 years so I’m very, very hopeful that, um, we’re going to see this opportunity a unique opportunity to bridge that divide. I don’t know whether you had any comments, um.

Importance of Narrative in AI Communication

So I think one of the problems that the industry has is narrative and it’s very common when Engineers or scientists or mathematicians are responsible for messaging, um, they’re not good at it and we probably going to now have more Anthropologist sociologists you and I spoke yesterday in the mix of AI because if machines are going to do the problem-solving the new human endeavor is going to be finding new problems sure which will be which will need a different cognitive diversity for sure but we’re still agreed um but there’s still some somebody who needs to be responsible for the storytelling and the marketing of whatever it is and you just you know um climate change is a good one one of the mistakes of climate change is we allowed the scientists to do the messaging and they called it global warming and people like global warming this is the coldest winter we’ve ever had you know and we screwed up the messaging for so long that it created um uh so so created conflict it created conflict um another one that’s had a complete failure of messaging is crypto and and and and the blockchain like most people have no idea what you’re talking about and all it does and and when people don’t understand fear is always the reaction um and I think AI is now

Messaging Empathy and Cultural Transformation

I think there’s an underlying messaging problem and there’s a lack of empathy in how we’re messaging that, you know, all these jobs can be replaced. Like just as an analogy, you know, it’s like well-intended, uh, climate change people who come into a town in Ohio and say, “Okay, all you coal miners, this needs to be solar.” And what they’re forgetting is that this coal miner, his father was a coal miner and his father’s father was a coal miner and all I know is coal mining and that’s how I raise my family and that’s how I pay my bills. And you’re coming in and telling me that I have to, that you’re replacing it so that I can have more upward Mobility or something like that, and what I all I can hear is what am I going to do? And I think that all of the purveyors of good technology and good intent have to be empathetic for the people in the receiving end of these messages and understanding the situations they’re in, and then you’ll have less pushback. But I, you know, um, it’s all fine and good to talk about the Bright Futures but we have to consider the people who are on the receiving end of it, so well.

Culture of Growth and Performance Evaluation

So let me open it up for any of you to ask questions to Simon. There’s one here, yeah, go ahead, I can shout out the question. Sure, go ahead. I think, thank you, this has been going around ways saying that we should do it, we should not do it, but I’ll, can we bring the house lights up, please? That’s possible, better? Yeah, no, no, I can see it, thank you, yeah. Now, so my point is that why don’t we talk about the culture of growth, growth in a year rather than performance as an individual? We always talk about how you did in your job but if we say hey what’s your journey you’re going to work in your life for 30 40 20 years how where do you want to be at the end of retirement are you adding any value to your journey and measure that as one of the Ved in performing because if you’re not doing right by yourself you can’t do right by companies right so you’re I think philosophically you’re 100% right. I think one of the challenges is that most companies and we’ve seen this over the course of the past few decades most companies don’t have the patience for their people to grow right so uh this is going this is Jack Welch Milton Milton Friedman nonsense which is companies that become shorter term more quarterly driven or at best annually driven um and I don’t have patience for to wait and help you on your growth journey I need my growth and you did my my numbers um uh it reminds me Gary uh uh Ridge he used to be the CEO of uh um WD40 also a relatively Local Company um he was on an analyst call and the analyst said Gary you missed your numbers and he goes no my numbers are fine I missed your numbers um uh but to Gary’s credit he has a company that invests in like if you’re on a leadership track they they teach you how to be a coach they teach you coaching and they’ve invested in their people and they understand that people’s performances don’t always match the arbitrary numbers of the arbitrary dates of running our companies and he has the institutional patience to allow someone to go on a growth Journey with their ups and downs even if it means that he has to suffer short term because he recognizes that over the long term he will benefit which by the way they have it’s a very very high performing organization so I think not until the incentive structures and the intentions of the company align with the desire for our people to actually grow um because we you mean we talk about uh reviews we don’t this is the problem with annual reviews right I’m not actually reviewing your year I’m reviewing the past two months that I can remember and the past two months sucked even though the P the previous 10 months were amazing right and so this is why I like quarterly or at least semiannual reviews at least then I can see growth and I will reward growth more than absolute so somebody who’s High performer High performer High performer is actually less valuable to me than somebody who’s demonstrating some sort of growth because you may be a high performer but I but everybody hates working with you right so are you demonstrating some sort of growth somewhere even if it’s not at a performance and companies aren’t equipped nor are they patient for it I would love to see it yes yes yes more of that think I think we but I think it starts.

Balancing Chaos and Structure in Organizations

With us as individual Leaders right if we create that culture and a pod if we hold our leaders responsible to grow their team members it would work better for the companies it of course yes human beings are responsible for setting the cultures of organization Simon Yesa okay I was told it’s my turn yes yes yes it’s all good all right what I’ve learned is if you have the microphone I have the microphone so I have I get to ask the question so first up big fan of yours thank so I get your daily notes to inspire and I’m read one of those um says chaos is needed for Innovation yes structure makes those

Leading with Empathy and Nurturing Growth

I think there’s an underlying messaging problem and there’s a lack of empathy in how we’re messaging that, you know, all these jobs can be replaced. Like just as an analogy, you know, it’s like well-intended, uh, climate change people who come into a town in Ohio and say, “Okay, all you coal miners, this needs to be solar.” And what they’re forgetting is that this coal miner, his father was a coal miner and his father’s father was a coal miner and all I know is coal mining and that’s how I raise my family and that’s how I pay my bills. And you’re coming in and telling me that I have to, that you’re replacing it so that I can have more upward Mobility or something like that, and what I all I can hear is what am I going to do? And I think that all of the purveyors of good technology and good intent have to be empathetic for the people in the receiving end of these messages and understanding the situations they’re in, and then you’ll have less pushback. But I, you know, um, it’s all fine and good to talk about the Bright Futures but we have to consider the people who are on the receiving end of it, so well.

So let me open it up for any of you to ask questions to Simon. There’s one here, yeah, go ahead, I can shout out the question. Sure, go ahead. I think, thank you, this has been going around ways saying that we should do it, we should not do it, but I’ll, can we bring the house lights up, please? That’s possible, better? Yeah, no, no, I can see it, thank you, yeah. Now, so my point is that why don’t we talk about the culture of growth, growth in a year rather than performance as an individual? We always talk about how you did in your job but if we say hey what’s your journey you’re going to work in your life for 30 40 20 years how where do you want to be at the end of retirement are you adding any value to your journey and measure that as one of the Ved in performing because if you’re not doing right by yourself you can’t do right by companies right so you’re I think philosophically you’re 100% right. I think one of the challenges is that most companies and we’ve seen this over the course of the past few decades most companies don’t have the patience for their people to grow right so uh this is going this is Jack Welch Milton Milton Friedman nonsense which is companies that become shorter term more quarterly driven or at best annually driven um and I don’t have patience for to wait and help you on your growth journey I need my growth and you did my my numbers um uh it reminds me Gary uh uh Ridge he used to be the CEO of uh um WD40 also a relatively Local Company um he was on an analyst call and the analyst said Gary you missed your numbers and he goes no my numbers are fine I missed your numbers um uh but to Gary’s credit he has a company that invests in like if you’re on a leadership track they they teach you how to be a coach they teach you coaching and they’ve invested in their people and they understand that people’s performances don’t always match the arbitrary numbers of the arbitrary dates of running our companies and he has the institutional patience to allow someone to go on a growth Journey with their ups and downs even if it means that he has to suffer short term because he recognizes that over the long term he will benefit which by the way they have it’s a very very high performing organization so I think not until the incentive structures and the intentions of the company align with the desire for our people to actually grow um because we you mean we talk about uh reviews we don’t this is the problem with annual reviews right I’m not actually reviewing your year I’m reviewing the past two months that I can remember and the past two months sucked even though the P the previous 10 months were amazing right and so this is why I like quarterly or at least semiannual reviews at least then I can see growth and I will reward growth more than absolute so somebody who’s High performer High performer High performer is actually less valuable to me than somebody who’s demonstrating some sort of growth because you may be a high performer but I but everybody hates working with you right so are you demonstrating some sort of growth somewhere even if it’s not at a performance and companies aren’t equipped nor are they patient for it I would love to see it yes yes yes more of that think I think we but I think it starts.

Fostering a Culture of Collaboration and Support

With us as individual Leaders right if we create that culture and a pod if we hold our leaders responsible to grow their team members it would work better for the companies it of course yes human beings are responsible for setting the cultures of organization Simon Yesa okay I was told it’s my turn yes yes yes it’s all good all right what I’ve learned is if you have the microphone I have the microphone so I have I get to ask the question so first up big fan of yours thank so I get your daily notes to inspire and I’m read one of those

um says chaos is needed for Innovation yes structure makes those ideas useful true now in today’s you know age of AI Enterprises need a good balance of both yes chaos and structure yes very hard to do for large companies since youve you know work with many Global firms have you seen good examples of companies that are able to balance and Foster a culture of chaos and Innovation if so like what are some of the you know uh success criterias to doing that so they’re not Apples to Apples meaning you can’t live in chaos all the time right that would be in that would be unsustainable but you can’t live in uh strict structure all the time because what you get is government bureaucracy right which is and my definition of bureaucracy or a bureaucrat is someone who doesn’t care right um and so you can’t have that either because it’ll kill Innovation and Status Quo will will will Thrive um and so what you want is pockets of it and so you allow for spaces for chaos in other words whether it’s a project that you’re working on or if there’s something new happening you put it outside of the corporate structure right um and uh uh and you take it out of the bureaucracy and you allow them to play and break things also I think we reward sometimes we we want to reward Behavior like initiative but very often we only reward output performance I’ll give you one simple example um so I was young in my career I worked for a large Ad Agency a large marketing firm and we had a big new business pitch in the New Year this was December and uh what was traditional is all the senior Executives would do the business pitch but it was Christmas time so they all went on their vacations and me and one other Junior person were left back at the office and they told us prepare the War Room uh for when they get back so they can do the pitch which basically means hang the research on the walls Well that took an hour um and we still had a week and so we decided to do the pitch ourselves which is we went through all the research we went we comb through it we found some insights and we wrote the deck we wrote the pitch deck and when the executives came back we presented our work and they used Our Deck in the pitch which was amazing they actually used our strategy and we lost the business we didn’t win the pitch and I got a huge promotion my boss promoted me two levels up I skipped a level because he wasn’t rewarding my performance he was rewarding my.

Acknowledging and Nurturing Diverse Talent

Behavior because he saw the initiative that I took and he wanted more of that so I think uh that’s a a large part of it as well if you want Innovation you have to reward the kinds of behavior that begets Innovation but if we only reward output all you’re going to get is people taking safe roads because they want the output so I think you have to you have to recognize the reward the kind of behaviors that you want thank you for taking my question there is a conflict in the organization where leaders who have been there have had their own path and acceleration of career and then you have these young employees who come in and perform better and their path to progression is much faster than the leaders yeah that they are part of how do you balance that as an organization right so um this is so first and foremost I think I think a lot of leaders don’t know their job is right um and I mean that seriously um when we’re very Junior in our careers our companies give us tons of training to do our jobs so that we’ll be good at our jobs obviously and some of us even get Advanced degrees so that we’ll be good at our jobs and if you’re good at your job you get promoted to a position where you’re now responsible for the people who do the job you used to do but we give you no education on how to lead so we just expect people to know how to lead and give them no education I I wouldn’t go see a doctor who’s had no education why would I follow a leader who’s had no education and so what happens is is um because you’ve given me no you haven’t even given me a definition of what a leader is you just told me I’m in charge well that just makes you an authority not a leader leadership is the awesome responsibility to see those around us rise your job is no longer to do the job your job is to see those around you be better at the job than you were based on all that amazing experience you had it’s a completely different skill set and so what you find is a lot people who are insecure so they’re going to either micromanage or tell you what to do because I actually do know how to do your job better it’s what got me promoted um and we’re very uncomfortable with the fact that somebody might not like I had to do it that way you’re going to have to do it that I had to do my five years you’re there’s no way you’re going to go faster if I’ve got somebody who’s smart and talented going faster than me I want to Foster that what makes me the leader is that I’m going to build the best team around me and the reason they’ll follow me and they’re not going to try and uh stab me in the back is because they see me offering that grow grow they see me providing that Circle of safety they see me offering them uh an ear for them when they’re when they’re struggling or when they need help they I’m regulating when to jump in and help and when to let them figure it out themselves and they know like a parent that I’m always there to support uh and we aren’t a telling leaders what their role is which is to lead people and two we’re not educating leaders how to lead and so we’re going to get we’re going to get leaders who are going to stifle br young minds because of our own insecurities we’re all guilty of it we’re all guilty of it various times we’re running out of time one last compelling question anybody has to some of my favorite leaders are the ones who be like dude these guys are so much smarter than me I don’t even understand this world but I’m going to do everything I can to see that every single one of them is a rock star you know those are my favorite I love those hey Simon as you had shared the you know the need for connectedness yeah and for humans to come together at work and then the whole story about Millennials and genz acquiring that you know mentorship the connectiveness the insecurity and now with AI as well taking away some of the lower end roles where people get training and how to work together this whole work from home and work from Office Tobit yeah um you know we have the whole Spectrum depending on companies going from one extreme to The Other Extreme and between where do you stand and how do you see that kind of playing out you know yeah so I think of it a little differently um most of these things we think of these things selfishly this is where I want to work right and I think of all of these things of Acts of service so first of all we we all know that the value of this event is not what’s ever happening on the stage as fun as it may be the values of of the event is this is that you’re seeing friends that you haven’t seen in a while you’re meeting new people you’re going to talk to people at at at meal time you’re going to stand next to them on the buffet and you’re going to create friendships where you can actually call people like hey I’m going through this thing what do you like it’s this that makes

these events match because there’s not a single thing we’re doing on the stage that you couldn’t see online so why’ you show up because you want this right and I’m a little I have a different point of view when I talk about it as an act of service so for example we know um that when you go to an online Workforce we for let me take a step back we know that in-person work really favored the extrovert we know that right and we know that a lot of introverts suffered at work and then when we all was sent home the introverts were like this is the best right and all the extroverts really suffered and so when we’re saying hey everybody come to back to work all the introverts are going nope no no I I work better at home right and the answer is great except for the fact that there’s other people here as well and you have to do it as an active service which is yes I do work better at home but I’m going to come to the office now and then because I know that it’s the right thing to do for those who work differently from me than me and the extroverts have to say I know that I want everybody to come back to work because I like it but I recognize that some people need space to get their work done separately and so I’m going to allow for flexibility at work and so I think an act of service to each other we all have to let go a little bit of what we want there’s the combined problem of young people who started their careers or early in their careers tasted work from home and they think it’s the world’s greatest thing except for the fact that they’re some they’re suffering serious mental fitness challenges I don’t use the term mental health I don’t like the term mental health because mental health sounds like a standard that you have to reach and most of us are feeling like you either have it or you don’t I believe in mental Fitness fness which is something you have to constantly work on and they’re suffering serious mental fitness challenges right and the anxiety is is getting worse they come to work they freak out and they say you see I can’t ever come to work not failing to recognize that it’s the being at home that’s creating the anxiety and so I do think that we have to find mechanisms to bring people back to work or spend time with each other do plenty of offsites whatever it is um because I think 100% distributed work um is bad for people um so but I do think of it as an active as an AC of service I think that we have to let go a little bit of what we want for the good of others and for the good of the team thank you so much Simon what a wonderful conversation Round of Applause for Simon thank you so much really appreciate thanks so much