Simon Sinek | Building Optimism | Talks at Google

Hello. Hello, Googlers. Good to see you. My name is Alex Rushin. I'm a cloud engineering manager based here in the Seattle area. I'm excited to introduce today's speaker, Simon Sinek. Simon may be best known for popularizing the concept of why described in his first TED talk in 2009, and his interview on Millennials in the Workplace, which broke the Internet in 2016 and led to Simon being YouTube's fifth most searched term in the year 2017. Described as a visionary thinker with a rare intellect, Simon has devoted his professional life to help advance a vision for the world that does not yet exist. A world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired and feeling safe wherever they are, to end a day fulfilled by the work that they do. Apologize. I'm a little nervous, I'm not gonna lie. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Simon is an unshakable optimist who believes in the bright future and our ability to build it together. So Google, please help me welcome Simon Sinek. Thank you for being here, Simon. Well, sun, we are so glad to have you here. Thank you for spending time with us today.

Oh, thanks for having me.

Absolutely. To get us kicked off, I'd like to ask you about your first ted talk in 2009. Start with why. That was 15 years ago. Start with how great leaders can inspire action. Can you walk us a little bit about what that was like? What was that journey, getting to that TED Talk to deliver that message?

So people ask me, like, how long did it take you to write the talk? Or how long did it take take me to write the book? And my answer is every day of my life up until that day. My work is semi autobiographical, and the journey of the why is entirely based in my own personal journey of completely losing my passion for my own work. I had a good job. I made an okay living. I had great clients. But I fell out of love with my own work, and I kept it to myself, mainly because I was embarrassed. And if you've ever been in a dark place and if you don't tell anybody about it, turns out it gets darker. And that's exactly what happened to me way back when. And it wasn't until a very, very dear friend of mine came to me and said, something's wrong. And I came clean and admitted what I was going through. And it was a huge weight off my shoulders. And so the journey I went on was to try and reclaim my passion. And that's when I discovered there was a confluence of events. But the short version is I discovered that I knew what I did and I knew how I did it, but I didn't know why. And it's based on the biology of human decision making. So I had to know why I do what I do. And making money is not a getting promoted is not a why. Those are results. And so I went on this journey to find my why. But more important, I learned how to help other people find theirs. And I helped my friends find their whys. And they found renewed love for their own work. Some of them started their own businesses. Then they would invite me to share it with their friends, and I would help people find their why for 100 bucks on the side. And then word just sort of kind of spread. Everything was organic until I got an invitation to do the TEDx talk up here in Puget Sound.

Yeah, absolutely. That's awesome. Thank you for sharing that with me. In your work, you emphasize the importance of knowing one's why. And you just mentioned that you'd gone through this yourself. How can individuals discover or in most cases, rediscover their own purpose, especially during periods of change or uncertainty?

Yeah. So one of the we only have one why. We are the products of our upbringing. You and I are. Who we are is based on how we were raised. Experiences we had as kids, our parents, our teachers. Right. That's made us those things, made us who we are. And there's no changing who you are. And the rest of our lives offer us opportunities to make decisions that are either consistent with who we truly are or not. We call it authentic. We know what it feels like when we make those decisions. We have inspiration. We have passion. We have flow. We also know what it feels like to be out of balance. I've done this a hundred times. Why am I not enjoying it anymore? And so one way you can. There's many ways to do it. I wrote a book called Find you'd why we offer tools on our website. But I'll tell you one fun way to do it. It's called a friends exercise. And anyone can do this. Find a friend you love and who loves you. Do not do this with a spouse. Do not do this with a sibling. Do not do this with a parent. Those relationships are too close. Do it with a best friend. Somebody who you could call at 3 o' clock in the morning. You know, they take your call or they call you at 3 o' clock in the morning. You would definitely take their call and ask them this simple. Why are we friends? And they're going to look at you like you're insane. Because the part of the brain that controls feelings like love and loyalty doesn't control language. We struggle to put our feelings into language. I mean, this is an age old human problem. And they're going to look at you like you're insane. And then you actually stop asking the question why? And you say, come on, what specifically is it about me that I know you'd be there for me no matter what. And they're going to hem and haw. They're going to like, I don't know, I can count on you. You're always there for me. And you have to play devil's advocate.

Good.

That's the definition of a friend. What specifically is it about me that I know you'd be there for me no matter what. And you're going to go through a few rounds of this. They're going to hate you, don't help them, don't let anybody else help them. And eventually they'll give up. And eventually they'll start describing themselves. And this is what my friend said to me. My friend said, look, Simon, I don't know. All I know is I can sit in a room with you, I don't even have to talk to you. And I feel inspired. And I got goosebumps. In fact, I'm getting them right now. Because what they do is they articulate the value you have in their lives, which is your why. And it's the thing you give to the world. That's why you had the emotional response, because it tapped something deep inside you. And that's when you know you're there, which is you'll either get goosebumps or you'll well up with tears or whatever it is. You'll have an emotional response to something they describe in themselves. And if you do this with multiple friends, which I did, they'll say very similar, if not the exact same thing. Because the thing you give to the world, your why, is the value that people take from you.

Absolutely. You know, and start with why. You often mentioned that you don't do business with people who can just give you something or serve a particular need. You do business who believe in what you believe in. And I feel like you're describing the same thing with friendships and interpersonal relationships. If you've got.

When they work.

Yeah. Or why they don't work sometimes. Right. On paper this should make sense, but it just doesn't feel right, as you often would say.

Right, that's exactly right.

Absolutely. I'm gonna move on real quick. In what ways has your own why evolved over the last couple of years or been tested in period of times of change in your life or career?

Yeah. So evolution, not a thing. It's a permanent fixture. I might tweak the words, but the evolution is how I choose to bring it to life. But itself is a foundation. That's why people are reliable. Because when your why is fixed, you will always be who I know you will be. And if you make decisions inconsistent with your why, then people say to you, it's like, I don't know who you are anymore. So the why hasn't evolved at all. How I've chosen to bring it to life, that's where the fun is. I can change what I do, but I can't change who I am. I can't change why I do what I do. So it's, I mean, it's taken many twists and turns, you know, in all the ways I bring it to life, whether it's speaking or writing books, doing the online thing, you know, when social media showed up, like, none of those things scared me. None of those things AI. None of that stuff feels threatening to me. It's like I'm always looking to thread a needle. And I think this is one of the big mistakes people make when they manage a career, right? Which is people plan routes, but they don't have a sense of destination. Right. Their sense of destination is abstract. To be senior one day, to make millions of dollars one day, whatever, you know, to run something like, sure. So they plan routes like I'm gonna do, you know, work at this company for this many years. I'm gonna. And it's the same. It's kind of the equivalent of like leaving your house and you see your neighbor packing up their car and you say, where are you going? And they say, vacation. You go, oh cool, where are you going? They said, vacation. They're like, no, no, no, I know, but where are you going? They said, I told you, vacation. Well, how are you going to get there? And they say, well, I'm going to take 95, I'm going to drive 150 miles a day. So they tell you the route, but they don't know where they're going. And that's how a lot of us manage our careers. We plan routes and then we create back plans for whatever those short term goals are. But the problem is, what are those roadworks? What if there is some sort of closure? What do you do? You freak out usually. And now your metrics are destroyed and you're panicking Right. I'm the complete opposite. I have no idea what route I'm going to take. But I know that if I'm starting in New York and I want to get to California, that's it. That's all I know. Except my California is way abstract. It's not that abstract. It's just unrealizable. It's just idealistic. It's not abstract at all, actually. You said it. To create a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are, and the day fulfilled by the work that they do. That's my California. Right. And the thing is, I'll start on 95 and I'll try and drive 150 miles a day. That sounds great. But then if there's road works, I'd be like, oh, I'll go this way. And this is a slow road. So people think that I'm off, but they can't see my twisty road. But it's very, very focused. And if somebody comes to me and says I have a plane, I'm like, great, but which direction are you going? And I think that's one of the problems, which is we jump at jobs that offer us more money but we don't know, actually fulfills our values and helps us advance our cause. And so then we end up somewhere where we're highly paid and unhappy, then it's not worth it. So I think having a clear sense of very, very distant and idealistic destination and then being agnostic as to the route that we take, I think at least from my experience, is a happier way to advance.

Yeah, absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. You and I were speaking a little bit earlier today. For Google and those of us who work in the technology industry, the last couple of years have been there's been lightning fast improvements in technology and changes in, I won't say the values, but the methods by which a lot of us are being told to achieve our goals and do our jobs. And I think you bring up a good point that for each of us individually, it shouldn't matter which route we're on or if we have to divert our path, as long as we know where we're trying to get to as an end goal. And I feel like I know for myself that's something that I've had to recalibrate. And I think a lot of us have been going through something very similar in terms of are we still doing the work that we enjoy and is it moving us closer to what we want to achieve? Even if it's not the way we wanted to achieve it.

I mean, you're touching on two things there. You know, it's still stressful. You know what I'm talking about is not the absence of stress. It's just clarity as you go through that stress. And sometimes that stress is a little. It feels a little more passionate. But I think what's very important and I think often forgotten in these difficult and uncertain, because uncertainty is the worst part. Like, human beings can deal with bad news, we can deal with tragedy, we can deal with something sudden and bad, but it's the slow drip of uncertainty that is actually much more insidious. But in any time of high stress or uncertainty, the most important thing we have to do is double down on relationships, double down on friendships. And this is the thing we forget, which is human beings, you know, we're not designed to survive in nature by ourselves. We're not very strong and we're not very smart by ourselves. But in groups, we're remarkable. There's nothing that was ever achieved of any kind of significance in this world by one person. It was always teams of people every single time. And so I think that to know how to develop the skill set of friendship is perhaps the single best thing we can do. I'll give you a couple of examples. So if you think about it, sort of, we have an entire industry to help us be better leaders. We have an entire industry to help us be better parents, an entire industry to teach us how to eat better, how to exercise better, how to sleep better. And yet there's precious little on how to be a good friend, right? And if you look at the rising rates of anxiety and depression and sometimes suicide, even the obsession with longevity, friendship fixes all those things. Friendship is the ultimate biohacker, right? And if you. If you ask most people, are you a good friend? Most people say yes. But if you peel the onion just a little bit, you know, would you cancel on a friend for a meeting? Would you cancel a meeting for a friend? Oh, but my friends would understand. Turns out we're actually pretty crap friends. And if you. If you. If you look at people's relationships, like, think about the marriages or personal romantic relationships that, that you look to be like, that's what I want. That's the kind of relationship I want. If you ask all those people, what's your secret? They all say the same thing, which is, it's hard work, and we do the work. Now, how many people would describe their close friendships as hard work? But we do the work, we take it for granted. They happen by default. Like, making friends is the easy part. Staying friends is hard. And sometimes we stay in friendships simply because time is the bond. Right? I've been friends for 15 years, but I get nothing from this. How can you end a friendship after 15 years? A friend of mine did this recently where her friendship was faltering with someone. You know what she did? Genius. She demanded that she and her friend get therapy together.

Wow.

Just like a relationship. And I thought that was magical. I thought it was absolutely brilliant. And very few of us actually have the skills of how to be a friend. We're not very good at listening. When somebody's going through a difficult time, we want to fix them. We want to offer them advice. We're not very good at just sitting in mud with them and going, yeah, this sucks, and waiting for them to say, I think I'm ready to get out now, and making them feel not alone. And that's the core to friendship. And if we develop the skill set of being a friend to someone, it's actually helping them be a friend to us as well. A friend of mine was going through something hard, which I didn't know about. I went to her house for dinner, and we're just catching up. I'm like, what have you been up to? And she said, well, last week was really rough. And I was like, well, why didn't you call me? Like, I'm one of your best friends. Like, why didn't you call me? She says, I did. I'm like, you didn't. She goes, I did. I texted you multiple times. I'm like, no, you didn't. And I, like, pull up my phone to prove to her that she did. And the texts say, what up? What are you doing? Want to come over? I'm like, you mean these texts? How am I to be able to distinguish those texts as a cry to help? As opposed to every other text you've ever sent? And that's. She had read an article just previously that when somebody is struggling, all they need is eight minutes of attention from someone. To feel not alone doesn't mean you're gonna. You know. And so we came up with a code, which is, the text is, now, do you have eight minutes? Which that means I really need you. And anyone can leave a meeting for eight minutes to go. Just let somebody know that they're not alone. And I think this is when you're going through periods of stress, the opportunity to have somebody that you can simply go home to and say, I Don't know what's going on, and I'm stressed out and there's so much uncertainty and I don't know how to deal with it. And I'm so good at making decisions and I don't know what decision to make, and just have somebody who knows how to sit there and hear you and give you space. I'm telling you, that's 90% of it.

Yeah. That's amazing. You did mention earlier that it's easy to make friends. So I'm going to have to tell you about the Seattle Freeze after this event.

I think friends happen. Friends happen. At least that's how we treat it, you know.

Absolutely. Let me pivot a little bit.

Everybody has a friend, you know, even an imaginary one.

Let's talk a little bit about the infinite game mindset. What is this perspective between finite and infinite games, and how does that change the way you should move through the world and how you make decisions?

So this has profoundly changed my view of the world. It profoundly changed my whole approach to the world. In the mid-1980s, a philosopher and theologian by the name of James Kars articulated these two types of games, finite games and infinite games. A finite game is defined as known players, fixed rules and agreed upon objective. Football, baseball, a new business pitch. If there is a winner, necessarily, there has to be a loser or losers. But more important, there's always a beginning, a middle and an end. Always. Then you have infinite games. Infinite games are defined as known and unknown players, which means you don't necessarily know who all the players are. And new players can join at any time. The rules are changeable, which means every player can play however they want. And the objective is to perpetuate the game, to stay in the game as long as possible. We are players in infinite games every day of our lives, whether we know it or not. No one will ever win career. No one will ever be declared the winner of education or health or marriage. Nobody wins marriage. Right. If you're trying to be number one in your marriage, it's not going to work. There's no such thing as the winner of business. Right? But if you listen to the language of so many leaders, it becomes very clear that they actually don't know the game they're playing in. They talk about being number one, being the best, or beating their competition. Based on what? Based on what? Agreed upon metrics, objectives and time frames. You can choose those, whatever you want. And when you play with a finite mindset in an infinite game, when you play to win in a game that has no finish line. There are very predictable outcomes. Decline of trust, decline of cooperation, decline of innovation. I'll give you a real life experience that I had that really captures it. So I spoke at an education summit for Microsoft, and by sheer coincidence, a few months later, I spoke at an education summit for Apple. This is the Steve Ballmer days. That's important. At the Microsoft summit, every executive spent like, 80% of the executives spent about 80% of their PowerPoints talking about how they were going to beat Apple. At the Apple Summit, 100% of the executives spent 100% of their presentations talking about how they're going to help teachers teach and how they're going to help students learn. One was obsessed with their cause. One was obsessed with beating their competition. Guess who's having morale problems? At the end of my Microsoft talk, they gave me a gift. They gave me the new Zune when it was a thing. The Zune was Microsoft's response to the ipod. And Ballmer had been very public that he was going to make the best ipod and beat Apple and blah, blah, blah. And I got to tell you, this little piece of technology was pretty good. At the end of my Apple talk, I shared a taxi with a senior Apple executive, and I couldn't help myself. It's a personality flaw. I had to stir the pot. And so I turned to him. I go, you know, Microsoft gave me their new Zune. It is so much better than my ipod touch. And he looks at me and goes, I have no doubt. And the conversation was over.

That was it.

Because when you're playing with an infinite mindset, you're not actually competing against anybody else. You're competing against yourself. That's the only true competition. And where Microsoft was trying to beat Apple, Apple was simply trying to outdo itself. And you recognize when you play with an infinite mindset that sometimes you're ahead and sometimes you're behind. That's fine. That's just how the game goes. And it's worth noting that two years later or a year later, Apple introduced the iPhone. That rendered the Zune and the ipod obsolete. And that's what happens when you play with an infinite mindset. You outdo yourself and you destroy and change marketplaces. And I think too many organizations these days, for various reasons, which we can go into if you want, but too many organizations and too many leaders are playing with a finite mindset and infinite game. Like when Circuit City went bankrupt, Best Buy didn't win anything.

That's a really good point. Absolutely. Now, you've written about the importance of optimism. What's the difference between blind and informed optimism? And why is the latter essential for effective leadership?

Well, I don't think any optimism is blind. I think there's blind positivity, for sure. Not to make it a semantic debate. Yes, there's a blind positiveness and there's an aware positiveness. But the way I like to define it is a leader or someone who's constantly positive that is actually very unhealthy because for one, it's just not true. In very dark times, when our leader comes and goes, everything's great, guys. Look at all the good things that are happening. It's like, shut up. Right? And when you see somebody in very hard times who's always positive, it actually makes you feel worse about yourself because you're thinking, God, if they're always positive, there's going to be something wrong with me. So it's actually not helpful. And it does not breed esprit de corps and camaraderie. I understand why leaders do it. It's well intentioned. It just doesn't work. Optimism is the opposite. Optimism is not naive, nor is it blind. It is the undying belief that the future is bright. But we can sit in hell and darkness and struggle. Now, optimism allows for that. Optimism allows you to say, look, these are the darkest times we've ever been in. And I don't even know how long it's going to last. And I don't even know 100% how to get through it. But what I do know is that if we work together and take care of each other, we 100% will get through this and we will come out stronger than we went in. That's optimism. And that's what good leaders are able to do. They're able to help us work together in darkness, but not ignore the fact that it's dark.

Yeah, absolutely. One of my favorite phrases is it might get worse before it gets better, but the getting better is the important part, right? Yeah. So I agree with you.

It usually gets worse before for this.

Time after time. All right, let's talk about change a little bit. Change is often accompanied by fear and resistance. How can we shift our mindset to view change as an opportunity for growth and innovation? And what are some practical strategies we can use to cultivate a more optimistic outlook during times of change?

All right, that's a big one. Okay, so I love all these change management. I love all these change management PowerPoints that are always given. People fear change. No, they don't. People fear sudden change. Gradual change is not threatening. Evolution offends no one. And sometimes the results of that evolutionary change can be profound and there's no going back. People don't fear change. People don't want whatever's working for them to be disrupted. Right? So it's not that I fear the change, it's that this is working well for me. I don't want this to change. Like, and I look at that with uncertainty going, is it going to take away this? Then I don't want it. And usually when people are resistant to change, it's not the change they're resistant to. It's fear that someone younger will take over my job, someone less expensive will replace me. It's fear that whatever's been working for me that got me promoted time and time again will no longer work. It's almost 100% fear based. And so if you can just recognize that instead of giving people PowerPoints with rational explanations why change is good and you can look forward to this change, what you're attempting to do is address emotions with facts. You can never bring facts to an emotional gunfight. You have to meet people where they are. Emotion meets emotion. Facts meet facts. So the first thing to do is sit down and understand and listen to people. People, tell me what's going on, tell me what you fear. Do you fear anything? And they'll always project it's this that's broken if that doesn't work. But at the end of the day, and we have a rule at our company which is if the response is above a 5, it's about something else. Like when you leave your fridge open and your partner screams at you, like, why do you always leave the fridge open? It's like, it's not about the fridge, Right? And so usually when people are that resistant, it's usually not about whatever change you're proposing. And so a good leader will spend the time to go and make that person feel heard. That's the most important part. It doesn't mean that they're going to get what they want, but people want to feel heard, right? Like something like 70% of medical malpractice suits are because the doctor refused to apologize. Right? People want to be seen and people want to be heard. And if they feel validated and they feel like their points of view are considered, people don't always expect to get what they want. They just want to know that they've been seen and that they matter.

Yeah, absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. I mentioned briefly earlier, you know, I feel like we're going through a period of a lot of change now. And it is the suddenness of it usually that catches us so off guard in the technology industry. Sudden changes happen all the time. You mentioned earlier about the iPad or the iPhone. IPhone, I'm sorry, Rendering the ipod completely extinct and how that was fine for Apple. They were able to handle that because it aligned with their.

By the way, I think they should bring them back and give them to children so that they. Because my nephew's like, I'm listening to music on my iPhone. I'm like, sorry, though, anyway, but I digress.

Yeah, that's totally fine.

Bring back MP3 players.

All right, let's talk about the CliftonStrengths top five assessment, which I know that you have a partnership with. So as part of Gear up, the Google School is also making the CliftonStrengths top five assessments available to every Googler around the world. So take note of that. Go to the Go link. Why do you think it's important to lead with our strengths, to find them, recognize them, and then lead with them? And what have you learned by doing this for yourself?

So, yeah, I like the StrengthsFinder. And we did do it. We did do it as a whole company. Everybody did it. And it does a lot of things right. The frustration you have with somebody who they annoy you at work. And I don't mean their personality. I mean, like something's driving you nuts. It helps understand that they're actually in a position where they're struggling. They're not leaning into their natural strengths. So you're expecting everybody to be their strengths, to be your strengths. So it just helps you see people as people. And you're like, oh, that's why. And it becomes much easier to help people, like, sit in their strengths. It also, for people who are insecure or defensive, we all are at some point about what we're good and bad at. You look at it, be like, well, that's why I suck at that. And it sort of takes a weight off your own shoulders, you know, that I can't be good at everything. It also helps you understand teaming and it also helps you sort of just recognize and relate to each other. Like, futuristic is, I think, one of my big ones. Iterative, strategic. Those are sort of, I think, some of my big ones. And like, when you get to know me, you recognize that basically I live with my head in the clouds, you know, that's why, you know, my execution is like this big. I need other people around me to help me execute my ideas and if you and you, if you and. What I think Strength Finders does is it allows for something that I like to call confident ignorance, right? Which is we're always told in sort of leadership theory that you have to be vulnerable. You have to say what you, you know, say you don't know something. If you don't know something, you know and admit your shortcomings. And that's scary to a lot of people because nobody wants to be weak, but there's confident in it, right? So for example, if somebody's like, I need you to do this, you're like, I don't know how to do that, I'm definitely going to need help. Don't do that. That will freak people out, right? But if you say, oh, I suck at this, I have no idea how to do that, I'm definitely going to need help how to do that. Need help to execute that. If you just own it. That's the confident ignorance. Just be super confident in what you don't know. Be super confident in what your weaknesses are. It actually is quite inspiring. It actually gives people a clues as to where you need help, which means they'll help you, but also it helps them create a space so that they'll be honest back to you. So if you're in a leadership position especially and you're confident in the things you don't know, guess what the team will do. They'll be confident in things they don't know and then you can help them. But if you're lying and hiding and faking every day, pretending you know everything and you know all the answers, guess what your team's going to do? Pretend they know all the answers all the time. Because we generally follow our leaders.

Yeah, absolutely. Now, you touched on something that reminded me of a previous topic as well. In terms of competition versus worthy rivals. Right. And knowing your own strengths, the strengths of the people that you're not competing with, but operating within the same game within, and how you might be able to sharpen steel against steel. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? And viewing people as rivals you can learn and grow from versus people that you must defeat?

Sure. So in a finite game, you have competitors. You play to beat someone, right? They are your competition. In infinite game, there is no competition because there's no winning and losing. And yet the fact that we call other companies in our space or even our colleagues competitors is actually incorrect. They are other players and they are rivals. And some of those rivals are worthy of comparison. In other words, they're really Good at what they do. In fact, sometimes they're better at some things than we are. And so I believe in the concept of worthy rivalry, which is find another player who is as good or better than you in some things that their strengths reveal to you your weaknesses and use them as a foil. Be grateful for them. Now go work on those weaknesses. Right? So where. I have no problem with Microsoft making a great MP3 player, but start trying to beat Apple. Just use Apple as a foil and be like, oh my God, look how good their product is, guys, we need to do better, right? So. And we can do it at work too. You know, we pick people that we compete against at work, which. Think about that. Like when you hear somebody got a promotion and you get mad, right? Like you got mad at somebody else's success. Well, they don't deserve it. Maybe not. I mean, nobody said this was always fair, right? Think about all the promotions you got. Because I deserved all of my promotions over everybody else. Yeah. No, but having worthy rivals at work is totally fine. To be like, oh my God, that person, they're so good at public speaking. They're such a great engineer. They're so good at, like, the way they lead and other people just like, follow them, that if they quit, I knew that like 10 people are going to leave with them. Like, I want to be like that. Instead of hating them and trying to bring them down, use them to learn from them, watch them, study them. Use them as your worthy rival, your pacer, and maybe you'll outgrow them and they won't be your worthy rival anymore. That's fine too. But I think worthy rivalry is a much healthier way of viewing other players in the game.

Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. We're going to transition to some questions that came directly from Googlers, if that's all right. So our first one is from esam, and I apologize if I mispronounce any of your names. ESAM from Dublin. In a world increasingly Dublin. In a world increasingly driven by artificial intelligence and automation, how can individuals find and maintain a sense of purpose? And what role should leaders play in helping them do so?

So the great thing about technology and the great thing about technologists is they have great imaginations. And that's part of how the technology gets invented in advance, Right? Somebody dreams of something insane and they build a crappy version of it. Right? Like for those of you old enough to remember when the Internet showed up and people predicted the end of bricks and mortar, that there would be no more bricks and mortar stores, all shopping would be online. Well, that didn't happen. Turns out people like browsing and trying things on. Now, there are challenges to those bricks and mortars staying open from a strictly numbers standpoint, but we like going shopping. You know, we're hunter gatherers. And so those predictions were completely wrong, even though the technology would allow for it. And this is part of the problem with technologists and no disrespect to any of the engineers in the room, but technology doesn't solve human problems. Technology won't replace a friend. Right? Yes, it might be able to give you some advice in hard times, but at the end of the day, to be able to sit with somebody and if somebody's going through a hard time, to feel their hand on your shoulder and say, don't worry, I got your back, there's no technology that's ever going to replace that. And I think a lot of the promises of AI are just that they're promises and very few of any of them are being realized right now. It's fun, it's having. And algorithms are not a new thing. You know, we've had AI for a long time. It's becoming more sophisticated. Without a doubt, some of it's incredible, but I think a lot of the promises are yet to be realized. So I'm kind of in a wait and see mode. But I also, I'm also doubling down on humanity. You know, not to be cynical, but if we go back to the 70s and 80s where robotics started to show up in factories, for example, and robotics kind of did a lot of harm to the livelihoods of people in blue collar jobs. They were replaced by robots. Go to a car factory, it's a lot of robots and a few people. It used to be a lot of people with few robots. And when people in those jobs said, you're destroying our livelihoods, sort of the white collar world, Wall street and technologists said just reskill. Well, AI is going to do nothing to blue collar work. AI is not going to place the baggage handler at the airport. AI is not going to replace your plumber to fix your toilet. It's just not going to happen. Right. It's not going to build your house. Right. Blue collar work is about as strong as it can be in the AI world. Where it's going to affect is the knowledge economy. And it's kind of like, It's kind of like a balancing. And so yeah, there's going to be a lot of knowledge work that will be replaced by AI without a doubt. Will it completely decimate it no. Will there be new jobs created that we can't imagine? Of course. And by the way, I don't think prompter is one of them. And the reason is you need to have a prompter because right now the technology's not very sophisticated. And so you need to know how to ask it questions that'll be solved in a couple years where you can just speak like you and I are now, and be able to basically understand it. So that's a nonsense job for all.

Of our prompt engineers in the crowd. Sorry, take note.

No, but it's good for now, just not forever. But I think there's going to be a rebalancing is what it's going to be. And there will be some new skill sets that we need to go build up. And yes, knowledge work is going to be the place that it's going to hurt, not blue collar work. It's just. That's how it went. But I do think that jobs will switch. So, for example, in my world, the writer is the king and the editor is like, meh, you know? And I think that'll completely flop. I think, you know, AI can write a shitty first draft of a press release, but you need a person to edit it. And so I think editors, people with good editorial eyes, are going to become heroes. Whereas the writer, who can write the shitty first draft and then give it to the editor that used to be treated like the hero and spend a week working on that, whatever that draft was, that's the job that's going to be decimated. But editors, editors of everything.

So prompt editor is what we Editor.

Exactly, Exactly. Because at the end of the day, AI is good at taking old work. I'm not afraid of AI. If you said, write a book in the style of Simon Sinek, it'll write a book based on what I've done, but has no idea what I'm thinking. It's not going to come up with the idea of like, I'm writing a book about friendship. AI would not conceive of that. Right. So I think new ideas and looking forwards. And this is why having why and having purpose and having cause matters, because I'm always looking way ahead, going like this. AI is behind. AI is looking backwards, asking where I came from. I don't care where I came from, I care where I'm going. And so I think the more that we can focus on where we're going and AI becomes a tool to help do that. But I don't think it's threatening if you're forward Focused.

Yeah. Absolutely. Awesome. Thank you. We have a second question here from Valentina in Boulder. Quite a long question, so I might cut it up a little bit. Simon, you often speak about the importance of finding purpose and meaning in our work and our lives. In a world facing increasing uncertainty and change, how can we cultivate genuine optimism without falling into the trap of toxic positivity which we touched on earlier? Or trying to force meaning onto events that feel overwhelming and beyond our control?

I like that second part, which is forcing meaning on things. I find that very interesting. And I have a friend. This is great. I have a friend who called me up and she's sort of woo woo. I just realized I'm saying that in one of the woo woo capitals of the world, Pacific Northwest. Anyway, she's woo woo. And I call her up to check in on her, and she's going through a hard time, and I'm like, how are you? She goes, it's difficult, but I'm supposed to be learning a lesson. I said, how are you? She goes, I'm struggling, but the universe is telling me that I need to up my game. I'm like, how do you feel? She goes, and this went on so many rounds, and I just kept saying, but how do you feel? How do you feel? And she just kept telling me that, you know, the universe is trying to teach her a lesson and she needs to look inside deep and all this stuff. And I just said, can you stop with all of this, please, and just tell me how you feel? And she says, I'm sad. And she started crying. I said, just sit in that, please. Like, don't worry about what you're supposed to learn. Don't worry about if it's a sign you're sad. Just be sad, you know? And I think our society has forgotten. Here's how I'll tell you. So, I love art. I buy a lot of art. And I bought this sketch, this beautiful sketch of a dead bird. And it showed up in the mail. And I opened it up and I was like, I had the biggest buyer's remorse. I was like, what the hell am I doing buying a picture of a dead bird? I'm not gonna hang a dead bird on my wall. And I was just like, you know, and by sheer dumb luck, I had a friend who was visiting, who was over at the time when it showed up in the mail, who was an artist. And she says to me. She says to me, a good art collection has a. What did she say? She says, a good art collection encaptures all the emotions. And I went, yeah. And then I had my dead bird framed and I hang it on the wall and I love my dead bird now because I have all the emotions in my art collection, not just the happy ones. And same is true for people, right? A healthy person has all the emotions. If you get stuck in sadness, that's a clinical problem. If you get stuck in happiness, that's not healthy either. Right. A good, well rounded human being has all the emotions and we should be okay with having emotions. In fact, we've made it that it's a bad thing to have emotions. Like, think about how we talk about mental health. We talk about mental health like it's a goal. You either have it or you don't. Right. Which is nonsense. I don't even like the term mental health. I like the term mental fitness. It's something you're constantly working on. Like, fitness is something that we're supposed to always be doing. Sometimes we fall off the wagon, sometimes we get back on, but it's a lifelong process. And mental fitness is the same thing. I should always be working on my mental fitness. Sometimes I'm ahead and sometimes I'm behind. But it's okay to be sad or confused or uncertain or depressed and just go through. And the most important thing for us to do is just say it. How are you? If I'm honest, a little sad. What's making you sad? Not really sure. Anything you want to talk about? No, no, I'm good. Well, I'm here for you. I appreciate that. And just knowing we're not alone, that's what makes us capable of managing our emotions and being in our emotions. My friend Rick, who's like a. He's a monk to all of us. You know, I asked him about loneliness and I said to. I said, rick, do you ever get lonely? And he said, never. I'm always with myself. And I've taken that on. Like, I've taken that on and I've taken on sort of being okay with my emotions. But I think I love what she says. Like trying to find meaning where there is none. Sometimes it's just a bad day. Sometimes you didn't get enough sleep. I mean, who knows what. Sometimes you just feel a little lonely, a little shitty. Okay. Just make sure you're okay with it and make sure maybe somebody knows. And that's it.

Yeah, that makes sense. Awesome. We have a question from Dennis in New York. In your view, what role does optimism play in driving innovation? How can Google employees use optimism to fuel creativity and breakthrough thinking? Especially in times of uncertainty, you have.

To have optimism for innovation. You have to have an infinite mindset for innovation. Otherwise it's features and benefits. Otherwise you just make the screen a little bigger and make it a little faster. That's all you ever get right. And that's usually where tech goes. It goes to features and benefits. Because. Because the pressures become greater, the risk tolerances become smaller in companies. The incentive structures no longer reward risk taking, they reward success. I remember when I was young in my career, I'll spare you the whole story, but basically I took part in something that failed and I got a huge promotion and they promoted me for my initiative. They rewarded the behavior, not the outcome. And great cultures will recognize the behaviors that they want repeated, not just the outcomes. Because if it's only outcome based, we're going to play it safe because we're more likely to get an outcome right. And so leaps, you know, the same year that Babe Ruth broke the record for home runs, he also broke the record for strikeouts. And I think it was Hank Aaron who broke his record. He broke the strikeout record as well. Right. So I think optimism plays a huge role. And that's where cause comes in, which is we're trying to advance something way bigger than ourselves. And the company and the leaders can easily describe the vision, the idealistic vision of the world we're trying to build. I have a dream. All men are created equal. Like these are visions of worlds that don't exist and never will, but they are strivings. And the joy and the sense of progress that we make every time we accomplish something that makes us feel like we're getting closer to that idealistic state. But idealism and the optimism that idealism breeds is essential. And I fear that it's been lost in our country, it's been lost from our national leaders. And by the way, it's not a political thing. It's been probably since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Like no Democrat or Republican has effectively articulated a vision for America that inspires all Americans. And I think we've lost it in business. If we look at our business leaders today and our biggest companies, they're more obsessed with their shareholder value than they are with the visions that they founded the companies with. They're more obsessed with short term incentive structures than they are with long term bets. And even if they fail a bunch of times, they fear Wall street, which is hilarious to me. How can you claim to be a leader when you do what a 27 year old analyst tells you to do? And it's all of these things. We keep replacing visionary CEOs with operators to run our companies. The number of CEOs that were the COO or CFO is amazing. And they have proven track records. No visionary has a proven track record because it's all nonsense, it's all madness. Right? But they inspire people to come and take the risks with them. And I don't blame any particular company or leader. I just think over the past 40 years, the way that capitalism has gone and the rise of Miltonian and Jack Welchian capitalism, we've seen one of the side effects is an eroding of optimism and idealism.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think we need it back and we need the leaders who will give it back to.

Now you bring up a good point about those companies who had started by visionaries and then eventually get taken over by operators. Can you tell me a little bit more about your assessment of some of those companies? And for some of them, there have been times where new visionaries are brought in who can recapture the original why the original cause, get a company back on top.

We saw it, we saw it. We saw Bill Gates get replaced by his operator, by Ballmer. And Ballmer is a very talented executive when he's working alongside a visionary. But we saw what happened at Microsoft, right? They became uninspiring, they became short term focused. They couldn't attract talent. The best talent left the place was, I mean, I visited during those days. I mean, nobody was having fun. You know, fear was the, was the overriding feeling at work. You know, watching your back was the overriding feeling. And when Bomber left, Satya came in and he restored some of that, that vision. You know, Mike Duke at Walmart, he was pure, pure operator who only cared about short term incentive structures. And he was replaced by Doug McMillan who brought back some of the magic. And you see morale and you see like people hated Walmart, now they like Walmart again. Like you can see what happens internally happens externally as well. Michael Dell replaced himself with his operator. He had to come back. Howard Schultz replaced himself with his operator twice. He had to come back. Right. And it's just this repeating pattern. And I know why we do it. When you talk to the visionary and you say who should replace you, they look at their CFO or COO and they say, I couldn't have done it without them. True. They know more about the workings of the business than I do. True. I trust them more than anybody else. True. The problem is they're not visionary. The problem is the wrong skill set for the job. And what makes great companies is the partnership of visionary and operator. Because visionaries by themselves just drool on themselves and have great ideas about how to change the world. But you know, they can't build the companies, right? At least not in the way that they need to be built. But it's this magical partnership that makes great companies. And operators will always do well in life because they know how to get things done. Visionaries really need the operators more. But it's the partnership. But the visionary needs to lead the vision and the operator needs to have the strength of ego to say, it's not my vision, but damn, I believe in it and I know how to build it. And it's the partnership that's so magical. And it's very hard to put the visionary in the subordinate position in a corporation that requires vision.

Yeah, absolutely.

We've lost even the definition of vision. Right? What's your vision? And they give us some financial number by some date.

That's what you mentioned earlier. Even outcomes like promotions and making money, those are results. Those are not actually causes. Right. Can you talk a little bit more about that? The what's that prove your. Why a little bit.

By the way, money's fine, but let's recognize the role that money plays inside a visionary organization. Right? Which is it's the fuel that makes the car go. So if the car is the company and the vision is the destination that you're trying to get to, money makes the car go. If you don't have money, the car doesn't go. No vision is accomplished. So money is an essential component, but it's not the reason to own a car. You don't own a car just so you can buy gas for the same reason you don't start a company just so you can make money. That's inconsistent. We buy a car to go places. We started the business to advance something, to move towards something, to change the way the world functions. And the money will get us there. And somewhere along the way, we take our eyes off the road and start looking obsessively at the gas tank. And I think it's gotten a little confused for a lot of companies. And you can tell a lot about what a company believes by looking at their products. I'll give you a little inside baseball. So when I was writing Start with why, I had all these theories about Apple, and I'd never really visited or met anybody at Apple. They were just theories. And I thought, before I publish a book, I should probably check. So we sent a Note to Apple requesting an interview with Steve Jobs. And I didn't know this at the time, but my publisher had published an unauthorized biography of Steve Jobs. And so because I was associated with that publisher, I was told to know. I was told, not only can I not interview Jobs, I can't interview anybody, and I may never visit campus. Oh, and by the way, all your ideas are wrong. So I had no inside access. The only thing that I had was the way that Apple talked about itself. So I looked at its packaging, I looked at its products, I looked at its store experience, I looked at its advertising, I looked at its pr, I read its legal type on a box. I just looked at everything that was public. And you can see a very clear pattern of who they are, who they were and what they stood for. And so I could easily assess what the why was, because what they did proved it. What they did was so consistent. Some of the what's made money, some of the what's didn't make money, but it didn't matter. The through line was there. And so I was able to accurately say this is what Apple stands for, stood for just by looking at what they put out there. So I think. And you asked me the question before, how do you use the why? The why is a filter. So Disney, for example, went off the rails at the later half of Michael Eisner's tenure because he became obsessed with world domination. When Bob Iger and Tom Staggs took.

Over.

They sat down with the portfolio and they divest of things that didn't make sense. So they got rid of the production company that made Pulp Fiction. They got rid of the music company that had bands and it called World War 3 that was named as one of the bands that did death metal. Not very Disney. And they were profitable, but they didn't prove the Disney ethos, so they just divested them. They Disney has never and will never go into casinos. Think about that. A Star wars and Marvel casino on the Vegas strip. Best casino ever.

Good.

It'll never happen because it doesn't fit the ethos. You'd scratch your head and say, that doesn't make sense. And so they're very disciplined about doing things. They don't just chase profit first. They say, should we be in this business now? How are we going to make a profit doing it? But there's a filter first. And I think what happens for a lot of companies, they chase the money before they run the filter. So using your why is that filter?

Absolutely. All right, we have a question from Miyoko in New York. It can feel easy to be an optimist when things are going well. What tips do you have for maintaining an optimistic mindset when things are tough, especially for an extended or uncertain period of time?

Yeah, so a couple things. It goes back to the answer I gave some moments ago, which is, the future is bright. And for an optimist to say this sucks. And what you double down on is relationships. You double down on taking care of each other. You double down on all of the principles of good leadership. And so how you make it work, whether you're in a position of formal leadership or not. And this is important, which is every one of us can be the leaders we wish we had, whether we have the formal rank or not. And you take responsibility for making sure that you good, you good, we're good. You take responsibility for saying hoax. I don't know how long this is going to be. I don't know. This sucks. This sucks. It sucks for you, it sucks for me. I don't like this either. This sucks. But I know that if we take care of each other, we will get through this stronger than we feel now. And what you find is the strength of those relationships. If somebody's laid off, they leave with this network. If people decide to quit, they take people with them because we follow people. And so what you're doing is relationships will always outlast everything else. There's nothing certain about anything at work. New technologies are disruptive, new leaders are sometimes disruptive. Corporate strategies are sometimes disruptive. And we can't rely that everybody makes the right decisions. People in leadership positions make stupid decisions. And sometimes we're the collateral damage of stupid decisions. It happens all the time. Doesn't mean they're bad people. It just means they made a stupid leadership decision and didn't consider the ripples. So the thing that we have to double down on is friendship. Is friendship. It is the thing. And that doesn't mean we're going to avoid struggle. I'll give you a perfect example. I had the opportunity to visit Kenya this year. And for those who haven't been, please go. And we went to rural Kenya, into the Mara, and we like poverty mud huts, all the tropes, right? And you start to realize that they're happy. They don't die of heart disease, they don't die of diabetes, they have a lot less cancer. And yes, they have struggle. They have struggle that we can't comprehend. Walking for hours to get water. Yes, all that is true. They absolutely have struggle. But they have each other in a way that we don't. And we look down on them because we have wealth and they don't have wealth. Our kids have lots of toys. Their kids have a stick and a tire, you know, but there's data that shows that children with too many toys, children with more toys, have a worse imagination than children with fewer toys. So, yeah, the kid's got a stick and a tire, and he's laughing and he's with his friends, you know, and you realize that kid's got an imagination. He's not playing with stick and tire. He's playing up here.

Yeah.

You know, and the way they talk about leadership and the way they talk about taking care of each other, and I started to realize, like, we're so addicted to money, we're so addicted to wealth that we feel sorry people for people who don't have wealth. Right. And so it's like a heroin addict feeling sorry for somebody who doesn't feel my high. And we're looking at the heroin addict going, yeah, I know you feel good, but you know, you're addicted to heroin. Right. And I realize, like. Like, I think we can double down on imagination. We can double down on having less. We can double down on community. We can double down on taking care of each other. We can double down on celebrating the success of others. We can double down on the joy of helping someone else achieve. And that's some of the people I met there. They were the most remarkable leaders, the most remarkable people I've ever met. And they have a pittance for what we have. And I think they. We may have wealth, but they're a lot wealthier than we are.

Absolutely. Well, thank you very, very much, Simon, for sharing all these thoughts with us. This conversation is giving me a lot to think about. I hope you all have enjoyed it as well. Thank you so much for being with us here today. This was a real pleasure. Really enjoyed it.

Thanks so much.