Leadership in the Era of AI | Full Conversation

Thank you so much, Simon. You know, I've read quite a bit about. I've read a lot of your books and I'm sure many of the audiences will keep a few questions at the end for Simon to talk about.

I like the name of your company, Optimism.

You know, I was reading your bio and 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 refugee 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 situation we are in.

Jamie Dimon actually said last week, Jamie Dimon actually, he spoke about multiple things. He said, AI will take two, three days a week. Then he said, we are living in the most dangerous time in the world in a few decades. Ray Dalio literally spoke on Monday and said, 50% chance that there's a World War III. I want to ask you, are you still an unshakable optimist?

Not anymore.

So I think we have to be clear what optimism is.

When I describe myself as an optimist, people's immediate reaction is that I'm naive or blind. Optimism is neither. It is not to be confused with blind positivity, everything's fine, everything's good, or the obsession with focusing on the things that are working and ignoring the things that are broken. In leadership, this is dangerous. There's a lot of leaders who think that they have to be positive all the time so that their teams will be 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 be positive in the day, and your leader comes in and is like, everything's great, it actually makes us feel worse because we think there's something wrong with us. Optimism is very realistic. It allows for frustration and sadness. It can allow for sadness, difficulty. But it's the undying belief that the future is bright. So an optimist would say we are in a dark tunnel. 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. And I still firmly believe that, that if we work together and we find ways through.

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 start to believe that, they will start to work together. But to get to the point for them to believe.

How do you get them to that point to believe that the world is. The future is going to be bright and therefore they should come together to fix it?

We have to remember that human animals are social animals. And one of the disadvantages, just as an aside, I believe the world is balanced. I don't believe in strengths or weaknesses, for example, so you can take companies or human beings when people are like, what are your strengths? What's your biggest weakness? That famous interview question. Well, I'm a perfectionist.

I work too hard.

I believe that there's no such thing as strengths and weaknesses. We have characteristics and we have attributes. And in some contexts there are advantages and strengths and in some contexts there are weaknesses and liabilities. And what you have to know is what your characteristics and attributes are. And you have to know the context in which they're either and avoid the ones where they're liabilities and try and put yourself in ones where they're strengths.

And I think the same is true here. We have to remember that human beings are social animals. And what makes us happy, what makes us live longer, what makes us healthier is human interaction. And over the course of the past couple of decades, with the rise of technology, we've seen a decline in the human skills we need for this.

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. But it actually takes a lot of work to be good at being human. And we aren't doing that work. And we can see it. Just take a look at what's happening.

With the crisis in Israel and Gaza right now.

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 and or sit in our sadness. And our friend could hold space for 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? And then what's happening is people are reacting to our reactions.

And do you think the connectedness is kind of anti force to getting out of the pessimism to an optimistic world?

I mean, 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 leaders see you as a human being, the more at peace you feel. And the more open you are to allowing.

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 forget that we are legacy animals living 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, 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. But is AI a threat to the human connection?

Again, I'll go back to what I said before. It is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It depends on what we do with it, how we deploy it, and how responsible we are with it. Can it be a threat to the human condition? Of course. I think we've seen that. If you saw the movie her, 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?

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.

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.

But it's level place. Everybody is having fake.

If everybody has fake relationships, at some point, it's going to collapse. 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.

We only know what we know. And what we don't know is way vaster. And we are pretty junk at making predictions. I mean, let's be honest, all the predictions of what the Internet would be. I remember they were saying the death of bricks and mortar. Meanwhile, Amazon's opening stores and.

Not Pret a Porter. What's the one you rent? Clothes. What's that one? Rent the Runway. Rent the Runway. They're opening stores. They have stores. Because we're forgetting the very human nature which is we like gathering and hunting, we like browsing. We actually enjoy it. 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.

People in retail know this.

So I think we always forget the humanness of things. And at the end of the day, we. We crave relationship. We need relationship.

I'm going to switch topics a little bit.

You know, trust in public institutions has fallen.

Significantly over the last few years, but the trust in business in comparison to other public institutions is still the highest. I mean, there is something called the Edelman Trust Barometer, which kind of measures this. And business is the only institution viewed both competent and ethical. And everybody has actually put their own employer as the highest trust institution they believe in.

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. And I think we have to be careful with trust parameters because they're relatively. You know, just because we don't trust in government doesn't mean we love corporations. Right? It's a relative scale. All it means is our trust in government and public institutions is so low.

We feel good about the business that.

I can't believe that corporations are number one.

So it is ironic 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 by the way, this also puts pressure on companies, which is, if you go back a few decades, our lives were sort of distributed and where we got all of our needs. So, for example.

You got your sense of community from the bowling league. You got your sense of sort of purpose from church. We had neighbors that we actually had barbecues with our neighbors on the weekends. And work was a place that 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 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. But we would give our lives. 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 church attendance decline. And what we're now asking our companies to do, we're 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. It's not a good thing or a bad thing, it is a thing. 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 positive sides.

So do you see that flipping at some point of time where 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 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 wax and wane over the course of time.

Simon, I'm going to switch gear to a.

Very different topic.

You wrote about Circle of Safety 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.

If you had written that book now, would you write it differently on Circle of Safety? And do you think it's very different now than what it was then?

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 that. I mean, maybe I'll use different examples, but it would be the same conclusion. Because I wasn't trying to describe 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. And I went back 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, to feel psychological safety in the places we live and work is a basic biological constant.

It hasn't changed, and it won't change.

You know, another book you wrote about is.

Start with a why. Yep.

Don't tell the date of that one. That'll make me feel even older.

And that was a fascinating book. It's about how you want to start with a why. 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 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 an endeavor of humans and machines, which means the feedback loop with humans has to check the responsibility of the why, even if the machine takes decision on your behalf.

In that context, doing responsible AI, I almost think the who plays an important role on which task is done by who and how do you create the feedback loop.

To make sure that you validate the why?

So who is already built into the system? Why is that underlying purpose cause or belief? Why you get out of bed 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 advertising, your public, anything I can see, touch or feel, even your metrics. 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 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. 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 exactly what's supposed to happen. 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 cause and your values, those decisions should run through that filter first. And if AI can help with that filter, then great.

You know, Simon, thank you for that.

One of the things the workplaces are grappling with is four generations of workforce.

And it has never happened before in the last Hundred years that you had four generations of workforce working at the same time.

Yeah.

You wrote about millennials. I mean, it was a YouTube video.

Did it have like 14, 15 million hits?

It had 80 million in the first week, which was 80.

80 million in the first.

I remember going. It did. Caught me by surprise. I didn't expect it. I went out for dinner once with a guy, this is unrelated, obviously. And 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?

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. But, yeah, it went very well.

It was a controversial video. What was that? It was a little controversial as well.

And that's the reason why.

It also had, I think, a few millennials whose nerves I touched got a little.

Yeah, that's all.

I think everybody else is fine with it.

All the people in the world who are between 27 and 40, 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.

And they're up for.

That's how they've been described.

And up for entitlement.

But you equally spoke about very interesting four characteristics. You said parenting, technology, impatience.

And environment.

Tell us a little bit about how organizations can.

That's a sizable part of organizational workforce. In fact. Now the Zen Z, I don't know what your view is. Are they different to the millennials? I actually believe they're different to the millennials.

Tell us a little bit about how do organizations handle and create an environment for them to thrive? Both Gen Zs and millennials.

Sure. So generational differences are not new. We always accuse the older generations of being stuck in the mud and not willing to change. And we always accuse the young generations who want to break everything and that they think they know more. That's old.

What's new is the entitlement thing. That seems to be relatively new. And there's some interesting reasons for it. 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. But if you think when we started our careers, we were, I think, objectively speaking, idiots, you know, like, we came into the workforce actually knowing nothing, 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 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 it produces sometimes a warped sense of value when I show up on day one for work, which is, I don't think you realize what you're getting here.

And sometimes blinds them to the fact that though those things are true, I also need you to learn all these things and you have no life experience yet. And so I think that the way we interpret that is entitlement. But what we also see is that when you bring that young people are bringing the sense of apparent self confidence to the workforce, learning very quickly that 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.

And you'll find that a lot of the self confidence that they.

Show is actually false. And it's actually a very insecure generation that struggles with coping mechanisms. And we're seeing that in rises of anxiety, depression, and unfortunately, suicides as well, 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, 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, more 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.

But what I found was the opposite, which is the 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 circumstances in the world that are affecting me. In other words, what it was was an expression of empathy, which is. Let me try and understand why people keep asking me why you're impossible to lead, because that's where 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 so well said. I mean.

Knowing what the millennials need and setting up an environment for supporting them and therefore getting the best out of them, I think was. Was important. You know, just on the topic of.

Knowing them, you know, one of the things I'm personally very passionate about is.

Asking for help. Vulnerability is not a. Is not a weakness. It is a strength.

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, 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 and make vulnerability a virtue is strength. And asking help is a strength and not a weakness. Yeah.

Well, amen to that. 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. Nobody wants to be vulnerable. Nobody wants to share their weaknesses. Why would I do that? It'll hurt my promotability. I don't want to be humiliated, you know, 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 circles of safety. And I don't need to use the word vulnerable, because then I end up having a semantic debate with someone. So when we talk about being in a circle of safety or feeling psychological safety or being vulnerable, what that means is. And I think we have to be declarative about what it means. 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 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, an intelligence or something. You don't know, you'll never admit you don't have enough training, you'll never ask for help because it will get you humiliated or affect your promotability.

And so if we can talk about the fact that we've all built like that and we'd rather work in situations like this, then we have to reward that behavior. One we have to set as an example. So to your point, you know, when you express that you don't know something or ask for help, that's a good thing. Also, I think people make a big mistake where expressing vulnerability is not the same as being vulnerable. Expressing weakness is not the same as being weak. So for example, if you sat in a meeting and you went.

I don't understand this.

I need somebody to explain this to me. I don't know this. There's no way you're inspiring confidence in your company, but if you simply own it, like, hey, I don't understand a single word of this deck. If somebody can please just explain it to me because I'm the complete idiot and I don't understand any of this tech stuff, that would be really helpful. And if you just say it with confidence, if you own it, it's the confidence that's inspiring, not the expression of the weakness. So I think if you're confident in your weakness and you serve as that example, it allows others to do the same, also rewarding the behavior. In other words, when somebody asks for help, recognize, point it out and, and say yes, more of that please. Because I think the incentive structures and word structures affect people's behavior as well.

You know, I'm going to ask you a question which kind of just came into my mind, and I've never found a good answer for this, and I'm hoping you can. Performance appraisal systems in every company I worked for and every client I've spoken to have been the most controversial and the most debated topic. And they never put vulnerability on the top. If you write, these are the things I don't know, your performance appraisal is.

Going to be the lowest.

Tell us what you believe would be the best performance appraisal system. Just a philosophy in an enterprise. I mean, it wasn't on my script. I was just trying to Think about building something extraordinary for Cognizant. And I've never found one. And I'm quite sure many in the audience will agree that it was. It's a. It's the most talked topic.

Yeah.

The person you are appraising always thinks that they've done better than what you think.

Yeah.

And you never agree.

A small percentage agree with you because.

You'Ve rated them high.

Sure.

I mean, you're not wrong.

Tell us, is there a philosophy you believe the world is not tested, which somebody like you should?

So I think what we. The failing is we're looking for silver bullet. We're looking for the evaluation that gets everything. And the reality is there's multiple things we're evaluating. Usually what we're evaluating is the stuff that's easy to measure. Metrics.

Right.

We measure someone's output just because it's easy to measure. And just as an aside, this influenced heavily my thinking on the topic the Navy SEALs, which are not far from here in Coronado.

The Navy SEALs. Within the Navy Seals is a more elite group called SEAL Team 6, which many of us are familiar with. And I had the opportunity to spend some time with the head of training for Seal Team 6. And I asked him a very simple question, which is, how do you choose from the Navy Seals who goes to be on Seal Team 6? Because they're all amazing. And he drew a chart, he drew a graph, XY axis, and on the vertical axis he wrote the word performance. And on the horizontal axis he wrote the word trust. And the way they define those terms, performance is defined as how good are you at your job? So I think most of us are familiar with that. And trust is defined, what kind of person are you? What's your character? Clearly nobody wants this person, a low performer of low trust, on their team. Obviously, clearly everybody wants this person, the high performer of high trust, on their team. What they discovered is that this person over here, the high performer of low trust, is a toxic team member, and they would rather have a medium performer of high trust, sometimes even a low performer of high trust. It's a relative scale over the high performer of low trust.

Right.

Now, if you look at it in a corporate context, we have a million metrics to measure someone's output to measure performance. And we have negligible to no metrics to measure someone's character or trustworthiness. And so what we have is a lot of toxic team members whose output is so strong that we end up promoting them into being toxic leaders. Right. And so it's not that measuring the performance of the output is wrong. That's totally fine. It's that it's unbalanced. We need something to balance it off. So what are we adding to that? I'm a huge fan of 360s, quite frankly. I think the way we do 360s is usually flawed, though. The way we do 360s is we don't put them in anybody's file and we don't use them as a gauge of promotion. We use it as a learning tool. And I want to see that your 360 improves over time. It's the growth that. That I want to see. And by the way, if you're growing, your teammates like you more and your output is better, as is the team's output. The way we do it. And it's a way. It's not the way, but we've tinkered with it and we like it is you take the group of people you work with. So your core team. So it has nothing to do with just engineers or just marketing. Like, if you have regular interaction, your team and each person fills out a form, very simple. What are your three biggest weaknesses? What are three specific examples of your biggest weaknesses or areas that you believe you need the most improvement? You have to write three specific things, and then what are the three specific examples of the areas that you've grown the most? Or your natural strengths? And you put three specific examples. We collate them, we give them around, and then we sit in a meeting, and each person, one by one, has to read out their weaknesses. And the rest of us get to add to the list. And you don't get to say anything other than thank you. And we give a little preamble that starts off that says these feedback sessions are to benefit you, we care about you. We want to see you grow as a human being. We want to see you grow as a team member. And the people in this room would rather not do this exercise because the stuff they want to tell you is really uncomfortable for them to tell you, but they're going to muster the courage to do it because they care about you. So say thank you. If you disagree with something, then just put it aside and brush it away. It's fine if it triggers you, if it makes you angry, it's probably true.

And so the only person who's allowed to record it is the person who's getting feedback. So if they want it for note taking later. And you do your biggest.

You do this in your form.

You said we do these. Yeah. You do your Three weaknesses. And then anybody can add to the list and you can just say thank you. And if you go thank you, we shut that down pretty quickly.

And then the cool part is you do your three strengths and anyone can add to that list. And what you discover is that you do have blind spots, but you also discover that you have a positive impact in people's lives that you didn't even realize you had. And it's pretty magical. The tears that happen usually happen with the positive stuff. It's really hard to do it the first time because it is a vulnerable environment. But over the course of time it gets easier and people start really enjoying them. And there's variations depending on time. We've also changed it where you do it and then you invite three people to come and do it with you. Just make scheduling easier. But yeah, we really like those. So we're constantly looking for ways to keep the quantitative and the qualitative a little more balanced.

Simon, I'm going to add one quick comment or ask you to comment on it. I'm going to say something which is again, an area where I've worked deeply on, but then I'm going to open it up for Q and A. You know.

One of the things I always feel 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. 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. 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 away from one job to the other. So these are the 4 million. 4 million jobs a month is 1/3 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 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 we're going to see this opportunity, a unique opportunity to bridge that divide. I don't know whether you had any comments.

So I think one of the problems that the, that the industry has is narrative and it's very common when engineers or scientists or mathematicians are responsible for messaging.

They're not good at it.

But we're probably going to now have more anthropologists, 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.

Which will need a different cognitive diversity for sure.

But we're still agreed, but there's still somebody who needs to be responsible for the storytelling and the marketing of whatever it is. And you just.

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 is the coldest winter we've ever had. You know, and we screwed up the messaging for so long that it created so, so well created conflict. It could create a conflict. Another one that's had a complete failure of messaging is crypto and the blockchain. Like most people have no idea what you're talking about. And all it does. And when people don't understand, fear is always the reaction. And I think AI is now the next one, which is, I think there's an underlying messaging problem and there's a lack of empathy in how we're messaging that all these jobs can be replaced. Just as an analogy, it's like well intended.

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 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 on the receiving end of these messages and understanding the situations they're in. And then you'll have less pushback. But.

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 said. 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 also, can we.

Bring the house lights up, please?

Is this possible?

Yeah, no, no, it's fine. I can see it. Thank you.

Yeah, no. 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 gonna 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 weighted 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 this is Jack Welch, Milton Friedman nonsense, which is companies have become shorter term, more quarterly driven, or at best, annually driven. And I don't have patience to wait and help you on your growth journey. I need my growth and my numbers. It reminds me, Gary Ridge, who used to be the CEO of WD40, also a relatively local company, 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.

But to Gary's credit, he has a company that invests in, like, if you're on a leadership track, 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, because we Talk about 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 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, see growth. And I will reward growth more than absolutes. And 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, I think, just to.

Like, I think it's. We always talk about companies, but I think it starts with us as individual leaders. Right. If we create that culture in a pod, if we hold our leaders responsible to grow their team members, it would work better for the companies.

Of course. Yes. Human beings are responsible for setting the cultures of organization.

Simon.

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 the. I get to ask the question. So first up, big fan of yours.

Thank you.

So I get your daily notes to inspire, and I'm going to read one of those 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 you 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, what are some of the success criteria doing that?

So they're not apples to apples. Meaning you can't live in chaos all the time. That would be unsustainable. But. But you can't live in strict structure all the time because what you get is government bureaucracy. And my definition of bureaucracy or a bureaucrat is someone who doesn't care.

And so you can't have that either because it'll kill innovation and status quo will thrive. 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? And you take it out of the bureaucracy and you allow them to play and break things. Also, I think we reward. Sometimes we want to reward behavior like initiative, but very often we only reward output, performance. I'll give you one simple example. 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 what was traditional is all the senior executives would do their 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 for when they get back so they can do the pitch, which basically means hang the research on the walls. That took an hour, and we still had a week. And so we decided to do the pitch ourselves, which is, we went through all the research, we combed 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. He was rewarding my behavior because he saw the initiative that I took and he wanted more of that. So I think that's 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 recognize, 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 that they are part of. How do you balance that as an organization?

Right. So this is so first and foremost, I think a lot of leaders don't know what their job is.

Right.

And I mean that seriously. 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 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.

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 of people 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. 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 way. I had to do my five years. 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 stab me in the back is because they see me offering that growth. They see me providing that circle of safety. They see me offering them an ear for them when they're struggling or when they need help. 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.

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 leaders who are going to stifle brilliant 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 need for connectedness and for humans to come together at work. And then the whole story about millennials and Gen Z acquiring that mentorship, the connectedness, 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 debate, we have the whole spectrum depending on companies, going from one extreme to the other extreme. In between, where do you stand and how do you see that kind of playing out?

Yeah. So I think of it a little differently. Most of these things, we think of these things selfishly. This is where I want to work and I think of all of these things, of acts of service. So first of all, 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 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 mealtime, 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. It's this that makes these events matter because there's not a single thing we're doing on the stage that you couldn't see online. So why'd 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 that when you go to an online workforce. 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 were 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 back to work. All the introverts are going, no, 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 act of 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. 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 as 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 there's something 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, which is something you have to constantly work on. And they're suffering serious mental fitness challenges.

Right.

And the anxiety 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 off sites, whatever it is, because I think 100% distributed work is bad for people.

So. So.

But I do think of it as an act 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. A round of applause for Simon. Thank you so much.

Really appreciate it. Thanks a lot.