A short Remarkable People podcast clip (October 12, 2020) in which Dr. Vivek Murthy, former U.S. Surgeon General, describes Vice President Joe Biden’s approach to COVID-19 as focused on the "practical" and the "personal," emphasizing attention to how policies affect everyday people and a results-oriented mindset when reopening schools and supporting communities.
This is Guy Kawasaki of the Remarkable People podcast. On Monday, October 12, I interviewed Dr. Vivek Murthy. He is the former Surgeon General of the United States. This is part of that interview. I just want you to hear what he said about Vice President Joe Biden as you make your voting decision.
I spend time briefing the Vice President on a regular basis on COVID 19. We talk about the plans that. That he wants to develop. And what has struck me about him is that he's really focused on the practical and the personal. I would say those are two sort of themes that guide him. And when I say the personal, what I mean is he grasps numbers with great dexterity. He understands key concepts, he knows what the big drivers are of spread, et cetera. He knows a lot of that stuff. But he's anchored in the personal sense that he always wants to know, how is this affecting an everyday mom or dad? How is this affecting small businesses on the street? If I'm a child who is in high school, how is this going to actually affect my learning experience if I go back to school in the midst of COVID Like, he's very focused on the personal, but the practical is also at the heart of how he thinks. At the end of the day, he cares less about labels and titles and structures. He cares about getting results and getting the job done. And so he's always pushing us in these sessions that we have these briefings to say, okay, practically, how are we going to solve that problem if we're talking in a given day about. About the challenge of reopening schools? He wants to know, okay, what's the. What are the steps to solving that, to getting schools the resources they need to ensuring that the guidance is really clear to schools. I can think of a few other times where it's been more important to have a focus on the personal and the practical, because we just. We gotta get results. But we also have to make sure that we're letting the stories of individuals really guide us and that we're not just trying to get the numbers right. We're not just trying to sharpen the parameters on a dashboard, so to speak. But our success is gauged by did we make the lives of moms and dads and boys and girls better in the United States of America? And if the answer is yes, then we will have succeeded in their COVID 19 response.
I urge you to vote like your life depends on it, because it does. This is Guy Kawasaki of the Remarkable People podcast.
