Reid Hoffman | Talking Politics: When, How and Why CEOs Should Speak Out

Hi, I'm Chris Yeh, the co author of Blitzscaling and I'm here with my co author and old friend Reid Hoffman, co founder of LinkedIn and investor at Greylock Partners. Here in the summer of 2020, we're dealing with an increasingly politicized pandemic, the US presidential election cycle and a major social movement all at the same time. Not only do these events challenge us as individuals, they are especially challenging for business leaders. Back in the 1990s, basketball star Michael Jordan refused to endorse a Democratic candidate for governor of his home state of North Carolina, saying Republicans buy shoes too. In contrast, this year, Jordan and his Jordan brand released the Black Lives Matter. This isn't a controversial statement. Until the ingrained racism that allows our country's institutions to fail in is completely eradicated, we will all remain committed to protecting and improving the lives of black people. As Bob Dylan once sang, the times they are a changing now Reid taking all this as backdrop, let's get personal and make it real for our listeners. When was the first time that you decided to make a political statement? Where were you in your career and what factors did you weigh to decide it was worth speaking up?

Well, there's actually two parts to this. My father and mother were demonstrating against the Vietnam War at Berkeley when I was young. So the family has been politically active for as long as I remember. And so I've always had a belief, a value and instinct that we are citizens first, we owe it. The rights of citizenship are not just, oh well, look, we benefit from the system, but we also have the responsibilities. It's not just entitlement, it's obligations and duties. And so being politically active, giving money, having a point of view, being informed, voting, you know, that's from my very earliest days as a child. And so I would have opinions, you know, back even when I was a kid on Reagan and the Star wars defense and all these things and be informed about them and understand the nuances of the arguments. Now, the context obviously is within business because I would say that like many American business folks, I had internalized this notion that business should treat politics a little bit like its religion, which is it should be, as it were, multi denominational, kind of don't introduce anything that could possibly bring up any conflict, don't make any particular group feel uncomfortable, leave it at home, don't bring it into the workplace and be as inclusive as possible. And of course, part of the reason for this, which is legitimate and pluralist in a lot of senses, is the question of, well, you want to be open and inclusive to employees. Obviously you want to do that within race and gender and everything else. But part of that is the ideologies and value systems of religion and or politics, customers, investors. You get all of these dimensions where you say, look, we're just trying to provide a business or service to customers and to shareholders and we're trying to have an inclusive workplace environment. So be very careful about what you say there. And so literally until very recently, I was very careful about what I would say within the business environment. Now, that being said, I always think that we're citizens before we're business people or before we're consumers or before we're shareholders. And our responsibilities of being citizens always supersedes the responsibilities within a business environment. And so like, for example, I would, you know, back as far as I can remember, even, you know, kind of my first post university job at Apple, you know, we would be out to lunch and I would say things about what I thought about the dangers of certain warlike behaviors or, you know, why I thought certain kinds of policies, why I thought it was reasonable to have progressive taxes, because those people who are fortunate enough to be wealthier in the society have a disproportionate responsibility to supporting infrastructure and that actually, in fact, redistributive justice is an important component of a healthy society, not taken to its Harris and Bergeron extreme, but like, as a component. And so I was always active and not willing to shy away from a genuine discussion of values and so forth, but I still had this kind of separation between like, as it were, the ethical conduct of the workplace and the personal ethical conduct with regards to politics. And so I wouldn't actually do it at the office, I would do it at lunch and the topic would come up because of the news or something else versus that. And I think for me, the first really important time, and I could note it because I started getting in a conflict with people at the office about this was 2016 and it was 2016, because part of what was happening and by the way, the personal backdrop is we were making LinkedIn work and grow as normal. And then we had this backdrop conversation about would we sell to Microsoft or not. So it was intense in time. And Trump kind of came through the Republican primary never actually winning any of those primaries, only being a plural majority, but kind of the last man standing. And I was looking at his candidacy and I was going, well, no, this isn't Democrat versus Republican. And actually, in fact, there's a bunch of stuff about this which is actually horrific. And the criteria wasn't kind of like the classic issues. Do you believe in higher corporate taxes or lower live in gun control? What do you think about abortion? What do you think about the funding for public education? Do you believe in unions? A stack of these questions draw very legitimate political questions. And I have friends who argue intelligently on both sides of these. For me, this broken ranks with this traditional political dictum because I looked at Trump as someone who had never done a day of public service, clearly was very personally financially motivated, wasn't willing to do things. And some of the public statements were like an income tax challenge, like, I'll give $5 million to veteran organizations if he reveals his income taxes. Because that kind of transparency, you know, should be ingrained in what it is to be a leader of the public, a public leader, so that people know where you have financial interest or they may misalign with your public leadership, or you may be trying to cash in and take money. Because this is what distinguishes us from other countries and some other democracies. There's other very great democracies, but like in a high integrity and rule of law leaders. And Trump was already in his campaign breaking those things. So I was willing to go out and say, look, this isn't a Republican versus Democrat thing, which I have, you know, I tend to align more on the Democratic side, but I have like great Republican friends. And there's points where the traditional Republican Party has points of belief in the importance of business and business, the os of society and the growth of wealth and the creation of incentives to do that. Now I think it needs to be racially just and other kinds of things which put me solidly within the Democratic camp in those things. But, you know, those sorts of things. And that, that was always traditionally part of it. And here I was like, no, that's not this. And so this traditional dictum, because you go, you're a citizen first, you believe in your society first, you know, I was drawing criticism from a number of my friends, from a number of people in LinkedIn, saying that it was making them uncomfortable, that I was making a. What they would call, they make a partisan comment that I was speaking out on behalf of, of one political candidate against another, that I was doing so in unequivocal terms. And I wasn't kind of trying to soften my statements for like, well, you know, these are great issues and I happen to believe this one. I was like, no, this is actually in fact kind of a moral test of our time and that, you know, Part of the reason why you should vote against Trump isn't so much that you should vote for Hillary and be a Democrat and so forth, but actually, in fact, Trump's winning is a collapse of American values, a collapse of democracy. And I'm willing to argue with someone and I don't think I'm having a Democrat versus Republican argument. Not surprising. The vast majority of my Republican friends have become never Trumpers, doing things like the Lincoln Project today and things like where they go, look, we believe in Republicanism, but we don't believe in corruption. We don't believe in lying to the public. We don't believe in trying to get the kind of coronavirus data suppressed so the American public doesn't actually know what's happening with the spread of the disease, so that people are informed, that kind of thing. And all of that was actually very present in 2016. So I started speaking up. I went on television during the summer, you know, did a number of different, one on Trevor Noah on the Daily show, did a number of different areas. And I wouldn't constrain myself the way I had done previously to saying, well, this is my personal opinion and you know, and make a real effort. I even, you know, was willing to share some things on LinkedIn and got criticism from it, you know, from somebody who said this is a business environment, not a political environment and it should be only business. And I thought about it and I said, okay, well I agree that it's the best progress of business. Individual businesses and so forth is part of that almost American ideal behind LinkedIn. And so I will constrain my political speech on LinkedIn to the things that are better for business. Right, which included some anti Trump comments because of course, Trump is such a disaster as a business person. You know, he's the guy who can make a casino go bankrupt where literally it's just like you just take a percentage of vig off the top of money. It's like, how do you make a casino go bankrupt? It's just like, look, I will make the comments that are about business only, like politics only as to as it pertains to business and as the, the elevation of business. And that's how I use LinkedIn. And those were the early days and it was uncomfortable. I think people would be surprised because they tend to think these Silicon Valley tech companies like LinkedIn are generally much more progressive. And so they think, well, those are democratic institutions. And, and actually, in fact, I think the people are motivated by the better society. And part of it is historically to Go, well, you shouldn't be political in the business context. And so they'd be surprised. Like, you know, people who I think went out and voted for Hillary were being critical of my willingness to speak, to use my voice, to use my position, including, you know, people were following me on LinkedIn and to do that, to express it. And it was like, look, this is. If I felt I was just arguing partisan politics, I would agree with the criticism, but actually, I think I'm arguing the fundamental of democracy and our ethical compass as citizens and as a society. And so I am speaking to that. And that's where I think it's different.

Well, this is really interesting because I see some parallels between this and some of the things we wrote about in terms of being a responsible blitzscaler in blitzscaling. So you had taken the position before of you always had political beliefs, you were always active, but you constrained that you were active at lunchtime, you were active outside of the office. You were careful in what you said because you were following this traditional approach that said, well, we largely keep these things separate. But it feels like what happened is you made an evaluation of the situation in 2016. You said, this is a systemic risk. This is no longer something that is constrained to the normal bounds of politics, but this is a systemic risk that actually threatens the stability of our entire system. And because of that, that meant that it made sense to go beyond the normal bounds of what you would do because of the magnitude and nature of the threat. Does that sound like roughly what happened for you?

Yeah, definitely. This phrase it's just business has been borrowed from the Godfather, and I've actually commented on this before, because the fact that it's just business and it should be separate is in a mafioso sociopathic context, because you should actually always be human first, you should actually always be moral and ethical first, you should always be compassionate first, and you should never let it's just business get in the way of those things. Now, part of it is you have a deeply American virtue, hopefully will survive its multi years of unresolved of pluralism and diversity in terms of, okay, let's confront hard truths, let's talk about it, let's try to fix, let's try to improve. And in that context, the previous status of saying, look, let's try to make room for many political points of view, let's try to make room for many religions, not so great, although improving in gender and race, but, you know, improving certainly better than the 50s, right? But a long way still to go. Let's try to be inclusive in those regards, I think is a good thing. And that's the reason why I was a believer. Now the question you have to hold is when you say, well, but when that's under challenge itself, you have to think of yourself as a citizen first. You have to think of yourself as a person with a deep ethical compass first. And you can't give yourself the excuse of it's just business. And exactly the parallels, as you're saying, you know, in what we were trying to derive, say, look, the technology businesses of the future, which will be more and more businesses will be technology businesses will be built with blitzscaling techniques. Say, well, you can't abdicate responsibility, so which forms of risk or which forms of responsibility I should lose rather than cross, Right? And it's the same kind of thing which gets the kind of the systemic risk. And part of it is, for example, the virtue of truth telling. The virtue of we're in a democracy, the virtue of public service is for the public, not for the individual, not for private, not for self enrichment. And so those things we should hold to the rule of law, we should hold to the accountability in law and responsive to subpoenas and responsive to legal process and due process. Those things are part of where, you know, in the decades of having built a better, a great American society, those are the key elements of it. Those are the things we want to do. And so it brings to mind it's too easy to collapse into the trope of hey, it's just business. This is the culture business. So we should, we should put all this out aside. And it's like, yeah, but you actually have to make an evaluation a little bit more Calendar is this two intelligent people with rational, different perspectives, even though you very much disagree with the other perspective. Right. And it's like, great in this context, we are collaborative and doesn't matter, we disagree. You know, you believe in lower personal and corporate taxes and I believe in higher personal corporate taxes. Great. You know, that's, that's context. However, if it's a moral issue for society, then I think no longer do you have the it's actually, in fact, you're doing an immoral act by staying silent.

And what I take away from this is that when you're a leader, it is not enough to take the it's just business, purely shareholder value point of view. You believe that there are ethics and morals that apply to leadership in business just as everywhere else that you need to evaluate, as we have laid out in blitzscaling. Things like the severity of impact, the scope, the systemic nature of the potential danger, and based on that, take action accordingly with that action, including speaking out. Even though, as you point out, it would make people feel uncomfortable. And I think that's a very interesting question because you decided you were going to take on the additional risk of speaking out to do things differently than you had done before, and you got some blowback. People in your own organization said they felt uncomfortable. What do you think the risk is that someone takes on when they do actually speak out? And because we always know that risk and reward are two sides of the same coin, what are the potential advantages of actually speaking out? And. And how do these factors get magnified or otherwise altered during an election year?

Well, the risks are fairly obvious, which is you get criticized as you venture more into the realm of politics. If wishes were fishes, I wish we'd have a actual discussion on values of policy and principle and use facts for it and not the emotions and ad hominem and so forth. I obviously would prefer that kind of a civil society. There's an excellent organization called Village Square down in Florida that I've done work with and supported. I think they're excellent. Trying to figure out how to be just pragmatic and build a relationship and work together on things, I think is very important. But you step into it and you get all that. And it's all downside. And it's downside from people who disagree with you, downside from even people who agree with you thinking you're doing the wrong thing. So you land all that. And by the way, it's kind of hard because you have to actually make these not easy decisions on, well, which side of the line is this on? And one of the things that anyone who studies psychology and else realizes that if you don't set a firm line and really recognize it, it always creeps back. There were leaders of society, business leaders, who were saying that and saying, you don't really need to respond to this because of it, you know, and now we have a president who's saying, well, the election's only going to be legitimate if I win. If it doesn't win, it's illegitimate. Right? And that the vote by mail, which every single major election that has had vote by mail and has studied it, all of the official sources say vote by mail is secure. And by the way, right now, in a pandemic, it's a public health thing to be saying, go, no go. Vote by mail. It's important. Like, no, no, I want you to Go to the polling station, potentially catch COVID because I'm worried that vote by mail might vote me out. And so I want to call the election illegitimate. Where does this cross the line? Right now, for me, I've clearly made that decision. This crosses the line and that this is a attack on democracy, not an attack on Democrats. And so. But you end up in all of that thing. And once you're in a fuzzy thing, it's very easy for people to criticize you. A lot of the criticisms can be ad hominem as well as. As everything else. And you have to. You have to navigate that. Now, look, I think there's at least two areas of virtue and opportunity in it, and you could be a little bit more pragmatic. Maybe there's a third. Look, the first one is, I think that there's a number of us of which I'm only one, who really want to see our leadership populated with more people who have deep ethical compasses, who are taking ethics as a primary thing in what they're doing, and so should be like, speaking ethically, leading ethically, being clear about their ethics. I think it's a good thing to have that be more of kind of a leadership canon. I think that there's a number of people who appreciate that. I think also it helps have folks kind of realize that leadership is in many forms. Like, leadership is not just the. I'm in the hierarchy, I'm the CEO, I'm the executive. But leadership is cultural leadership, Leadership is vision leadership. Leadership is ethics leadership. Now you have to learn how to do that in constructive ways. So you're not trying to say, hey, we're speaking out on these ethical issues as a witch hunt. Kind of a little bit like Monty Python, let's go find the witch. It's actually, in fact, you're trying to bring people along with you. You couldn't be more delighted to find people you're learning from in terms of these. These things. And I think that all helps now and then pragmatically, you know, this kind of third thing, which it can play into is I think that can really help with, you know, who you attract for employees, you know, what kinds of, like, the values that you have in a mission can really help with what kind of product you establish. And so I think all of those things you really matter.

What's interesting in what you're saying is it seems to me that it's all about alignment, right? By being more explicit about what you believe in, what values you hold dear. When you believe that the system is under attack. You are making it easier for everyone around you to understand whether or not they're aligned with your beliefs. And there are some people whose beliefs are not aligned with yours, and you may lose some of their support. But the advantage is the people whose beliefs really align with yours, they're going to be more attracted to your cause, your company, what you're trying to do. And so, yes, you could go through this world saying as little as possible, leaving everyone in doubt as to what your beliefs are, but that's not the way that you get the best people to really work with. You get the best people because they join with a mission that really aligns with their particular values.

Exactly.

Now, one of the things that has happened is a lot of companies have tried to express these values. I remember that after the police killing of George Floyd, many companies and their social media teams responded and joined in Blackout Tuesday. They tweeted or Instagrammed either a blank black square or a message of support. But many of those efforts ended up being criticized. People said, well, it's fine that you posted a black square, but how about some real change? How about some commitments of resources? So how do you ensure that what you say politically lands sincerely and doesn't appear to be either opportunistic or to use a term that I feel has already been horribly contaminated by partisan connotation, virtue signaling.

So there's a couple of heuristics. I think that the important thing, if you are articulating something within the social political realm, you should be so serious about it that you're willing to put real resources, energy, sweat, blood behind what you're talking about. So that's part of what's kind of, I think, important to understand about the anti racism movement. It's like, it's not enough to be not a racist, you need to be an anti racist. And, and so being an anti racist and actively changing the structures, the patterns, the other kinds of things that lead to this kind of systemic racism is the thing you need to be. And by the way, that's not easy. Now, one of the principles that I use for myself is it says, well, if you don't feel it in the dollars that you're deploying and in the time you're deploying, ideally both, then you're not really investing. Right? So use a light political analogy. If you're fairly wealthy and you give, you know, 2,600 or 1500 bucks to a candidate, but that doesn't mean any difference to you, then you're not actually in fact, really doing something right. It's when you give a sum of money that you go, well, actually, in fact, there's other things I would have really liked to have done with that money. Like, I gave up on something that I otherwise I would have wanted to have, and that's an economic investment. Similarly, in terms of time, it's like, no, I'm putting enough time to this. I would have actually rather, you know, gone to the ballgame with my friends, or I would, I rather, you know, gone fishing or something. Like, those things matter to me, and I'm giving up that time in order to do this. And so when you're actually saying, look, I am articulating that I have this value and I am doing. I'm speaking to it. The way you distinguish between virtue signaling, which is, I'm just trying to tell everyone, hey, treat me like a good person. Because I'm saying it's versus I'm doing the work, I'm putting it in is that you're putting in the time you're putting in the money you're putting in. And you know that because you feel the difference of it. Now, it can be up to you to decide how much that is. Like, is it heavy and difficult, or is it modest? And, you know, you should be aware of what you're doing. And, you know, ideally, we're honest and truthful with each other, and so you're clear with other people about what you're doing. But that's one of the ways to do it, both as an individual and also as an organization. So if you say, hey, we as a business organization are committed to diversity inclusion. We're committed to Black Lives Matter. And you say, well, okay, so we put out a little black square on Instagram. Well, it's like, okay, that's great that you did so. But if you didn't, then back it up by saying, well, actually, in fact, we're doing the following things. To invest 2x3x in our recruiting, in our programs for Elevation, where we're doing dashboards, say, how are we doing on diversity inclusion? Are we doing equal pay? Are we making sure that the economic progress leads us to a more racially just society? And we're investing in it, right? Like, this is money. That could have been something. No, it's not like, oh, look, we put $1,000 there out of a large business. Like, okay, that doesn't matter. But, you know, it's a real program. It. It becomes part of your, you know, periodic drumbeat. You have a meeting every Week, every other week, you're holding yourself accountable to what you're doing. Right? So, for example, you know, one of the things that we. We decided we'd been working a lot on diversity at Greylock within gender. You know, at Greylock, we were doing this well before I wrote the Decency pledge. And it was one of the reasons why, of course, all the partners got behind it very quickly. It took them literally reading it and saying, yes, get it out there. It's really important because we were working on gender a lot. And then we realized, look, we should be putting at least as equal effort into racial diversity. And you focus and you work on it. And so we now have a group where there's eight of us who the whole firm is very firmly behind this. But in order to get work done, you task a number of people to work on it. And like, we each have missions. We're putting time, we're talking to people, we're interviewing, we're setting up programs, we're investing our time economics into doing it. And we're like, that's the kind of thing you need to do. And then let's just start going and doing the work. And then later we can articulate, as we've done the work, what we've done, as opposed to look at us. And so. But again, it's a context where you say, no, no, put your time in, put your money in. And if it's not of a level that, you know, you go, ooh, that's real work, then you're really not doing anything. And that's, I think, at least a good heuristic. Now, you also, of course, want to be measuring, you know, like good business people, you know, your okrs and your dashboards and your metrics, like, look, are we making a difference and are we getting a good return on capital? For, oh, if we do program X, it makes, you know, three units of difference. If we do program Y, it makes five units of difference. Okay, let's double down on program Y as much as we can. You know, again, you're doing the same thing because you're tracking not just the, look at me, I am doing something. It's like, no, we are moving the ball.

And I see a lot of parallels in this discussion with what we've talked about in the past about culture at organizations. And you can have values, but the only way you know those are truly your values is when you make decisions based on those values that are not in your own self economic interest. Right? The willingness to say, well, we believe in Diversity, because it's going to improve our financial results. Great. But does that mean that if there is something that is not going to improve your financial results, you're not going to do it? No. You have to actually do things based on the principle, even when it costs you, even when, as you put it, it hurts.

I think the reason why people frequently say, like, no, no, this isn't philanthropy, it's good business to invest, is because they're trying to make the point that it isn't a charity case to hire a high talented person of color. Right. Actually, in fact, that will add something, as you're doing it, that will add to your cognitive diversity, your problem solving, your understanding of the markets you're operating in, the health of your organization. All of which, as you know, is very true. And I'm only making that point because the reason why people keep beating the drum of, no, no, this isn't like, you know, I really like this line that I've heard from a number of my person of color friends, which is, it's not philanthropy, it's justice. Right. And then similarly, it's like, look, this is just like, it's a better world, not just ethically, but actually ultimately in terms of competence and how we're operating. Now, as you were saying, Chris, the ethics mandate it no matter what. So even if you say, well, but it's risky and it may take five to 10 years to pay back, and you're like, fine, right. Still worth doing.

Absolutely. Now, one of the challenges that a business leader in this environment faces is that not everyone in the organization holds the same beliefs. You encountered that yourself when you began to speak out. San Francisco is the most politically lopsided metro area in the United States. But even here, 13% of the votes go to Republican candidates. So you can never assume that, that there is this monolithic belief that is universal throughout your employee base. So what kind of a responsibility does a leader have to those employees who hold beliefs that she disagrees with?

I think another one is to say, look, is there like a lot of people who disagree with you that are, you know, compassionate, smart, informed, care about society, care about ethics? And so in which case that's a thing where intelligent people disagree. You have to make that kind of judgment, and you have to make it kind of as a kind of question of, look, what is my mission of the organization? What's my ethical responsibilities as a citizen? But you have to kind of make a judgment of, when do you go, no, this is where you throw down and you should be Very selective. And try not to have it as a whole list because if I've learned anything by studying history, it's look what we're constantly in. The thing of how do we improve our institutions?

What you want to do instead is you should just be very clearly articulating the principles that are important to you. And again, people can be discussing different political positions, but at the end of the day, boils down to your principles. What are the things that you hold dear and believe should be true. And if you can discuss principles even with somebody who disagrees with you on specific positions, even if they hold slightly different principles, that's part of a functioning pluralistic society.

And the thing I would add, I agree with the summary. Thank you, Chris. The thing I would add is part of how you can self check is it's worth going and talking to a bunch of your smart friends, people who would be critical of you and say, look, is this like I did that before I started speaking out on the Trump topic? Because look, this seems to me to be different. And like I would call a bunch of my Republican friends and some of them were defenders of Trump, you know, Peter Thiel, etc. But I'd call a bunch of them, I said, look, this is why I feel the way I feel. Criticize me. You know, give me the argument against it, give me a sense of it. Because by the way, when you're a truth seeker and you are focused on, look, what I'm trying to do is the best possible thing for society. I have a point of view. I have, it's an informed thinking theory. I think it's true. I am trying to find truth. That's when you can kind of figure out which are the issues and when should you throw down really.

And what you're doing in that case is you're sharpening the terrible swift sword of truth with the hopes that it will be able to have an impact, with the hopes that it'll be able to allow people to see with the best possible arguments why you believe what you believe.

Well, that too, but you're also self checking yourself. Look, a little bit of the when should you throw it out on a values question? Right? Is the earlier thing the heuristic is can you go have good conversations with people who disagree with you? Can you hear their point of view? Can you even articulate their point of view? Can you say it right and then you know it well enough to then be able to say, nope, but this is still an issue I need to throw down on. And this is the following reason is.

Why increasingly big technology companies and startups are experiencing a lot more employee activism. Employees are criticizing company policies calling for an end to business relationships with customers or business partners that they consider problematic, and even organizing walkouts. Although, of course, right now those walkouts are taking place virtually. So as a business leader, how can and should you productively engage with this activism, especially if you still disagree with them?

Well, I'm going to break your question in two parts. One is what the goods and the bads of the activism. And the second thing is business leader. So goods and the bads of the activism is. I do think it's important to have an ethical compass in a business. Right. We just talked about it. It's like, you know, it's just business is the wrong borrowing from the Godfather line. And having a mission that you're driving to and you're. That in some sense, like proud of what Jeff Weiner was, would say when he was recruiting people to work at LinkedIn is not come work for me, it's come work for the mission. Right? This is the impact we're trying to have in the world. This is what we're trying to do. And your mission, in a good defense way, is we'd rather lose or be smaller or not as successful and aligned with our mission versus be versus be bigger. Obviously, we hope our mission will make us big, but we're not like every available revenue dollar at all costs, at all behavioral costs. It's like, no, no, this is the way we play. So I think that's good. And I think it's good for employees to feel empowered and part of it and so forth. And I think it's better to have organizations that allow employee discussion and employee vote, you know, employee participation in these things. Broadly. I think those are better organized companies than others. On the other hand, the challenge that's happening with a lot of employee activism is it's playing to current politics. And so, as opposed to trying to say, hey, do we as a group cohere about this? Let's discuss this as a group. It's the. We're trying to make a political statement outside the group to try to pressure the company to act in a certain way.

And what I hear in your discussion of the role of the leader is an echo of your discussion in terms of the approach of the individual, which is to say, engage with people. Everyone should be willing to discuss the actual policies, the actual principles involved. You're engaging with people who are smart and people who are operating in good faith and at the end of the day you may still not agree. And if that lack of agreement means that that person needs to work somewhere else or that you need to work somewhere else, that is why this is a free country.

And actually I will add once again, great set of points, obviously agree with them. The thing I'd add is again the self measurement point. So how do you realize that you're actually a truth seeker, that you're actually doing this in a principled way, that you're trying to be a good pluralist is can you identify people who disagree with you pretty significantly? Who you respect them, they respect you, and that you have discussions on this. And if you can, then that probably puts you in a good place. And if you can't, you should move to that place. One of the unfortunate parts of political correctness that infects both the left and the right, it's usually used as an anti lefty term and it's a bad thing, but it happens both on the left and right is like, say, like anyone who doesn't believe this is evil and should be quiet and we should silence them. We should put duct tape over their mouth, you know, da, da, da. It's like, no, no, no, no, right? As truth seekers, like you may have to say, we need to really change these institutions. But like the value of the discourse is super important. And if you can't identify people who disagree with you that you can have a good discourse on, then you know you have a limitation.

And that is such an important point because at the end of the day, the goal is to be able to reach out and test your ideas with the knowledge that in some cases you may want to change your mind. There's this famous Mark Twain story, the man who Corrupted Hadleyburg, in which a town is famous for its incorruptibility because their motto is lead us not into temptation. And what happens in the story is a stranger decides he's going to test the town and he engineers it so that it ends up that the people of the town begin to lie in order to win this prize. And at the end of it, of course, after much tragedy, they realize that the real way to be an incorruptible town is to be led into temptation and to resist it. So they change the motto of their town to lead us into temptation.

Very Augustine. Oh Lord, let me be pure, but not just yet.

So now we are faced with this situation as a business leader where you decide you're going to speak out and you've had these discussions with various friends and Various people you respect, you believe that this is something that you cannot remain silent about. What is the process you should follow as CEO to have this discussion with your employees, to have this discussion with your board or investors in terms of what you're going to do?

Well, the thing I think that it's important to do is to make it as a group decision. Now you may ultimately say, hey, if you're not comfortable with the decision, right? Because to be effective, these organizations are autocracies, not democracies. The only thing democratic about it is the board of directors has a set of votes about the CEO holding the position. But as a good leader, right, sometimes called servant leadership, definitely values leadership, et cetera. It's good to say, look, here is something new that we should consider. I think this is really important. Let's talk about it. Talk about with board, talk about with the execs, if you're an exec, you could talk about with the CEO, talk about with the other execs and say, hey, I think we should add this to our moral compass. And this is why then I think you need to work that through. And this kind of ad should not be something that's temporal, it should be permanent. And then to do it transparently, to do it clearly, because one of the things that's very important is I think basically all high functioning companies are clear about their missions, clear about their values, clear about their communications and so it can sort out and so to make that process happen. And one of the things I learned from talking to Dara at Uber on the Masters of Scale interview, he clearly went into Uber and he needed to make some changes because the thing that led to Dara being there was breakages within the Uber culture and the Uber employees and its social responsibilities, how it's engaging. And so I had naively thought that Dara would come in and say, there's a new sheriff in town because it's got a new leader and here are the new principles. You know, those people get on board, other people get off board. Dara was much clever and much better than that. And this is something, one of the things I like about doing master scales, I learned from him because I said, okay, what'd you do? And he said, look, what we did is we ran a like, okay, what are our set of Uber principles? And then we ran a process by which everyone kind of voted on which ones are most important. And we didn't promise them that we would do the top ones, but we would promise them transparency about it. And then when we articulated Our positions, we would articulate our position via that vote. So if we said, look, you guys all voted this up, but we put it here, and this is why, right? That I thought was great renovation leadership. That was great. Like, okay, here's how we are taking what was great about you. We're not saying, oh, you were all bad before, but what was great about you before, and now we're now reforging it to and now this is who we are. Because, like, let's go to our insider knowledge, outside critics and say, look, I'm working on this because that's a change. We're renovating the culture, we're renovating our institution, our values, what we do. And I thought that was a very clever way of doing it. But I think you should look at a change along the lines of the values of political spectrum that's so big that it's a thing to do cautiously, carefully, participatorily, and then like, drive the change management in a healthy, open and inclusive way.

So once you've driven this change throughout the organization, how does that play out with the individual employees themselves? Not just the CEO or founder or leaders, but the individual employees? What sort of policies should there be around their ability to speak out? Or should they simply have an absolute right to free speech in this case?

Look, I think broadly the right to free speech is so we discover truth. I think that's true politically too, as well. The rights to free speech are mostly political free speech, for example, we don't allow like lies and advertising and so forth. Actually, in fact, it isn't that complete freedom of speech, like the society freedom of speech is much wider than the company freedom of speech. So I think it's perfectly okay for a company to say, look, politically you can go and say something like, on average, X's are smarter than Y's, right? Like blacks are smarter than whites or women are smarter than men. You can say that if you like. Right. But if you say that in our company, you're out. Right? Because that kind of language creates division. It's frequently used in tools of oppression against minority groups. I obviously did the inversion and the. In the statements that I was making comes with historical context is like when, you know, like when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Look, no, no, that actually historical context is really important because it's kind of like the I'm threatening violence to you within a oppression and a circumstance language comes with a historical context. It is not independent of that. So you say, well, we don't have those kinds of things. In our company. So you can make those things very legitimately. You know, this is in, this is out. You should be clear about it. You shouldn't. You should try to not surprise people with it. You should, generally speaking, allow modest footfalls. Like if, you know someone does something that's kind of like, oh, that was kind of insensitive, maybe a little bit of counseling something else and say why it's important, and then great, if you can commit and participate, that's great. And so I think all of those things are important, but I think that the stricture of speech within a company is much lower. Now, one question you get to is, well, when should you speak? You carry the banner from the company out. And I think the answer is if you think the company is doing something immoral and specifically doing something immoral where it's hiding what it's doing from the world. Whistleblowers are part of what makes rule of law, part of what has made us proud of the history of America. Like, protecting whistleblowers is super important.

Well, this really feels like it echoes one of the famous sayings of the late, great congressman John Lewis, who described the importance of making good trouble.

Yes.

And clearly in situations where employees uncover something going on at their company, it is their moral duty to make that kind of good trouble.

Yes, but remember, it's this important thing about, like, is it hidden in a moral. Like, for example, you're working at a cigarette company, you go, oh, cigarettes are really bad for your health. Well, now, cigarette companies, previously you had a, you had a whistleblower duty. And there's great movies about this, right? Because, like, it was hard because the company was trying to squash it and they're trying to hide it. It's a perfect example of whistleblowing. But now if you're working at a cigarette company, you say, oh, wait a minute, this is bad for your health. These are bad company. You're like, well, okay, they're actually transparent about it. They have to put the pack, the thing on the packaging and so forth. I know it's not so clear that in that vector you're being a whistleblower.

Now, we've had a long discussion today, so it's probably time to bring it to a close. But before we leave, I want to ask just a little bit more clarification. We spent a lot of this time talking primarily about speech and freedom of speech and the speech that you make as a leader or CEO. What about things like making donations to a political campaign via an individual or via the organization what about different kinds of activity beyond speech? How should we think about those?

So, one, I think every business should acknowledge that its employees are citizens and should not restrict anything. That's a citizen. Right, right. A citizen obligation. You do donations, you do fundraisers, you know, you. All these things, like, you should all, as individuals be able to do that. And matter of fact, that should be the coal culture of it. And frequently I know too many CEOs who go, look, if I'm doing it, it's then reflected on the organization. And so I won't. Or I worry that. And it's like, no, no, actually, in fact, I think the culture should be. Is we're all citizens, right? I mean, I think one of our greatest embarrassments about American democracy is we're one of the democracies where the fewest percentage of people vote, right? And it's like, well, that's not a very healthy democracy. Like, people should participate, should have an opinion, should go vote. So I tend to think that you should generally have. And I think it's a little bit of a shame when the leaders go, oh, I can't. Because, by the way, it should be, of course, politically disclosed. We should not hide donations and that kind of stuff so that we make sure that we're not being corrupt, just like we should reveal our income taxes, et cetera. And so I think that part of it now, what the company should do, I think, is a much more tricky proposition. And whatever it does, I. I think it should be relatively open and transparent about. I think that they should be clear about it, and they should be clear about what they're doing, and they shouldn't try to run deceptive campaigning like, oh, I'm telling you that I'm pro climate, but I'm really trying to deregulate so I can do these following really possibly toxic or difficult things to your community and so forth. And so I think it's much more tricky on the company side, but, you know, nuance. So anyway, that's. Those are the beginnings of some principles. But as you say, Chris, this has been a relatively longer podcast, and so more detail, perhaps some other time.

And as we've heard, you have a framework that you've laid out today that allows people to figure out when they're dealing with the kind of situation or threat that justifies going beyond the normal boundaries of speech, whether it's the severity of impact, the broad scope of that impact, or the potential damage to the system. We've talked about the importance of alignment, being able to align your words your deeds with the principles that you hold dear and the importance of creating that alignment within the organization between the CEO and founders, the board of directors, the various employees. And ultimately, there is this wonderful theme I think you brought out about the importance importance of discourse, the willingness to check yourself, to not be so self righteous that you believe you are 100% correct, but to always be open to discussing with other intelligent people who are willing to engage in good faith. That concludes this episode of Gray Matter. You can subscribe to gray matter on soundcloud.com greylock partners. You can also find new episodes and blog posts on greylock.com you can follow Greylock on Twitter at greylockvc. I'm Chris Yeh and thanks for listening.

Thanks Chris.