 Excellent this is an inside Jerry's brain call on Wednesday January 23rd 2019 our second call of the day actually This one's about CEOs and trust. It's obviously a broad topic Motivated by an axios segment. They they have a really nice series of newsletters now In some of the daily news newsletter business By being by encouraging what they call smart brevity, which means they they they have an opinion they express it crisply and shortly and there you go and One of those came out about, you know CEOs are being Pressured to find purpose to do to fix things in the world to solve social problems to find meaning a whole series of things like that And I thought that is an awesome topic. So I figured we would dive in and The one thing that's happened recently that seemed like an interesting place to start was the Gillette ad And let me raise it properly the the best men can be which is Different from the best men can get which is what their old tagline was mr. Nelson. Nice to see you You're muted But that may be intentional We are just beginning our journey into the topic. So your timing is perfect. Glad to be here My Judy and here comes Ken and I'm going to share I'll share the screen where I was just looking There we go So I was just saying that our topic here is CEOs and trust or leadership and trust or Why can't companies fix some of the problems if they break and I thought an interesting place to start was this Gillette ad that ran very recently, which is part of their new campaign the best men can be which in their ad includes a little nod toward The sexism they engaged in before with their old tagline the best a man can get where they had these nice ads with Attractive woman looking at man-shaving self Etc. Etc. Etc. You know not necessarily helping Diffuse toxic masculinity, but I'm wondering you know what each of us thinks is is Gillette's effort Genuine functional worthwhile like just just just looking at what Gillette is trying to do here Is it credible? What's what's your take whoever wants to go first? My reaction is it's thin Really depends or meaning what else there what kind of thing do you do you mean feels superficial? Cosmetic rather than substantive That's just a left elbow reaction Watch the ad clip so I can't comment on the artistry of that Okay, so have you read a story about it, or what's what's the the level to which you followed it? well, I just kind of read a little bit about it and I mean first of all, I'm not someone who really likes Had this tagline before and we're going to change one word and it's going to change how we're perceived right as That's sort of disproportionate just in a time-weighted factor Which caused me to think that this was probably a quick fix But but I questioned whether there was really substantive attitudinal change behind it Jerry, this is Mike. I think actually it may be better to look at the Nike ad and the Cooper-nick campaign and because that's played itself out quite a bit and that that's a similar Opportunity for Nike to put itself on the right way of right side of a really big issue and to generate a lot of controversy and To get people talking about them and at the end of the day they generated a lot of a lot of sales There were people riding in and you know sending back their Nikes or filming YouTube videos with them burning their Nike shoes and a bonfire but they particularly overseas apparently it just was an incredible Way to increase visibility at the same time saying, you know, we support equality by the way I've been joined with my 21 year old daughter who's going to provide a viewpoint Yeah, excellent the new graduate actually she graduated seriously. Yeah, how did they let you out? Took a few took a summer class and worked my butt off for a three and a half year. What's your field of study? Huh, what is your field of study on neuroscience with minors in chemistry and leadership? Fantastic. Thank you. And she was inspired by Jerry years ago. So She's been in my brain a long time You are brain famous that and four dollars will get you a coffee at Starbucks Wow, oh my gosh, exactly So let's let's pick up where we were Ken or Bill any thoughts on and actually then back to you Lizzie if you want on the campaign on either Gillette's campaign or Nike's Keppernick campaign or anything like that. I Do have a couple thoughts Wanna I would like to just acknowledge and I've had this conversation in the last few days with people because I've been following What's some of the reaction on Facebook? I do there's good people inside the organization trying to do good things and they're also operating inside an ecosystem Where they're very constrained, you know, and so there's a lot of compromises to get made so I want to acknowledge that this probably had a genuine heart in it somewhere that got deluded as the advertising went on and you know, I look at TV2 in Denmark has a really fantastic commercial called all that we share where They bring together a number of people, you know, the people who have dwelt in the cities of our lives people from the country side People who've never seen chickens before that, you know, there's the people who are Denmark natives people who have been recently immigrated and The guys are standing there all in squares. They're like, you know And they started asking questions like who were the class clowns, you know And everybody kind of goes up and who were the bullies and who got bullied and They asked them these series of questions that if you've ever been involved in facilitation often This is like a trust thing where you name things to walk across the room, you know And at the end you see people coming together and I think there was real genuine heart in that of we want to try and help people See that the media can reflect the better parts of the country And I think Gillette would like to to reflect the better parts of masculinity after a long time of being on the toxic side So I really want to acknowledge that and then on the other side is that that sense of it's been as Judy says thin razor thin I might add, you know, it's been watered down it it it's smacks of of a kind of Patronizing to me, you know, like, okay, we can let's do something here that will look make us look good so that we can look good and yeah, to generate controversy but in advertising any type of Attention is generally considered good. So that'll drive more sales. So I think there's there's both Both elements are there's probably some others as well that I may not be able to name off the top of my head But I like to at least, you know, give them the benefit of the doubt and say they're trying even if they're up against a lot of nasty stuff That's my perspective on it. Mm-hmm. You just reminded me of and I think you were describing There were a couple different projects like this where they got people who are very different from each other to do things together In one of them, they had people stand in in squares in a large room They had people stand in rectangles according to their demographic. Basically, they were, you know, the younger The people of color women, etc. But then they said if you are ex step forward Right and if you've ever if you've ever not known where your next meal was going to come from Step forward and they'd go up against the wall and they'd look at each other and people would come out of each of the Rectangles and go go to the front of the room and then they take a portrait of those people and then everybody'd step back And they'd ask another question and the questions were quite quite deep, right? So I think those are those are in really interesting efforts to do something the funny thing about advertising and I'm not I'm no fan of advertising Is that it offers you almost no peek behind? The veneer of what the company's actually thinking what's how you know what anybody did to get there It's just it's just veneer right and so as much as they might actually tackle difficult issues and do something interesting It's hard to get the credibility behind it Which is why I think thinking of it as a campaign again This sort of sucks But so here's the this is the my the link in my brain that this is the YouTube link to the ad on YouTube But this is actually a website that they put up Around the best men can be so if we go to the website You'll see that there's there's sort of more to it than just an ad campaign And the interesting thing is that several people I've talked to oh Actually appears not to be happy coming up several people I've talked to there we go Had negative opinions of the ad but hadn't watched the ad and It's just an ad it's like at most a minute and a half two minutes long, right? But that's really interesting because it's not even the ad that reaches people But the thought of the ad or the title of the ad or a mention of the ad and so Companies must be sort of freaking out because they're like man We do something where we think we're putting our neck on the on the guillotine a little bit and We can't you know, we can't get people to walk in the door and come have that conversation which I think they'd be worried that way but it seems like a Like a natural concern given kind of where things are and and what's up. Oh good April Dennis Do we know which ad company produced the ad and whether it's the normal one that Gillette has worked with or did they break New ground hire somebody different. Do not know who did the campaign. Yeah, often when I find out those things if it shows up somewhere I I add that to my brain. I'll sort of put the ad company the ad agency above it in this case I did not I was thinking it would be fun to go out if I'd had time I would have gone and read the article in advertising age about the campaign Exactly, it's fascinating to see how they think about these things and you know the the metrics they use to quantify success so Maybe I can do that while we sit here. Yeah, and and historically benetton, for example Was famous for its ads that were breaking taboos and you know pushing on race issues and Priests kissing and a whole bunch of other things. They were sort of noted for Campaigns that tried to push the the boundaries, but at some point that sort of just became their signature Yeah, a little bit like Madonna who was doing exactly the same thing Madonna was sort of like benetton with a with a with a tap with a song attached I don't know Lizzie, how have you reacted to these things? I actually haven't seen this commercial. So I've been reading up I'm not very well versed in commercials as of late, but I would I would be interested Maybe you can clarify this for me since you've seen the commercial of how they're relating this Social justice move this concept to their actual product because I tend to find that very interesting like the failure That was the Pepsi commercial with Kylie Jenner was that it not only yeah, not only was it improperly using a very emotionally wrought Social movement, but it had nothing to do with Pepsi had nothing to do with their message. So that's That to me would be Very interesting to see that how they're correlating their own message as a brand to this movement because that would that would speak to me whether or not this is mainly for Selling product or if it was actually an attempt to Bring up a bigger discussion because that's that's what I tend to see is a lot of like Nike I like they did it really well with Kaepernick is that they're their motto is just do it work hard Be an all-or-nothing athlete and that's what Kaepernick was so that fit very well. I think that's why it was such a success And why the Pepsi one failed so? kind of struck catastrophically Yeah, it's really interesting also because Nike was Tiger Woods sponsor Was slow to release its grip on Tiger, right despite Tiger's absolute shitshow And and so they have to sort of tread carefully also because the world and the country appear to be split 50-50 or 30-30 or something. I mean, there's a middle that doesn't doesn't care but there's a bunch of people at each end who were pretty upset about things and And when you do something that takes a stand, you're going to piss off the people who are at the other end of the dumbbell Which which which sucks, but that's that's sort of where we are socially Yeah So Jerry just a data point from advertising age The director of the spot is Kim Garrick who was selected via Proctoring gambles partnership with free the bid It's a program that launched 2016 that aims to get more female directors on ad and PG&E P&G has been involved with the effort since last year and they mentioned that some other similar ads have come out from just for men from Unilever's acts and from Shik the the other razor company Pocket But anyway, it is interesting that they they did bring in a new director a new team to do this ad and I guess it shows doesn't it I'm really glad that We have a young woman on the program because I'm of a vintage that came through Coincidentally handling the professional field right around the time of the equal opportunity law and It dramatically changed initial response from prospective employers Sorry Apologies, I should have shut my phone off. That's all right How many people have watched the ad I mean I didn't have a time to so everybody else has okay and I guess I just think that that the The movement has come through to an extent has had recidivism is making a second surge in terms of gender issues and There's some additional, you know, it was more compliance initially and very Spartan and You you got benefits that the guys had already had because they've been getting favoritism for decades and now there's a different level playing field, but it's not exactly level and There's some more authenticity at times But it's still a very open question because of all the polarities That are going on in society right now and the points of view about appropriate roles So I think coming at this multi generationally would be interesting also I think Jerry's topic for today is particularly good because there are a lot of CEOs over in Davos right now and There's a lot of discussion about creating the right culture in the workplace if you I mean, this is sounds like a plug But there was a panel this morning Very early East Coast time on women in the new workplace and Our co-founder Michelle Zatlin was on that panel and all five panelists or the moderator and the four panelists all really good and talking about, you know, how important it is to Ask the question, you know, where is the woman's perspective here? Why are there eight people in the room and seven of them are men and but also just how do you structure the workplace so that? Your very best people will stay in your company whether they're women or men And it really is there's a lot of if you look at the the the play Look at the program this year. It just seems like a lot more cultural issues and a lot less speculation about finance because I think everyone's giving up on projecting what the economic economy is gonna do So Lizzie just watch the video you can ask her opinion now. Okay You're our focus group Lizzie, what do you think? I Stand by my old opinion or my old thoughts, which I don't think they really I think they're just taking a social stand as opposed to actually Relying it to a product. I would have been much more interested if they had incorporated this movement with the concept of male beauty and self-care standards. So there's a movement of Toxic masculinity when it comes to male self-care male self-care and shaving I think that would have been far more flawless and far more interesting Well, this just feels like a powerful film that you post to YouTube and don't make it a commercial This makes no sense to me as a commercial. I think it's great miss the mark That's what I think in a lot of these cases the companies are thinking Let's generate controversy or let's show we're on the right side of the issue and the issue has very very little or Nothing to do with their business So the fact that something doesn't really matter that much Yeah, yeah, so to bump the conversation maybe up a sphere on orbit, let's say for me Gillette The this sort of the skeleton in Gillette's closet has to do with intellectual property over protection And if you read the book Rembrandt's in the attic, which is all about IP you will learn that Gillette is a patent master and They have patents on the multi-headed razor, etc. But they also have patents on a camera they invented to film how the blade is going over your skin Etc etc and their masters are creating what's called a patent wall because patents expire after 17 years So what you do is you modify some aspect of the patent and then you and you patent that So you basically keep patenting the thing and you lock out competition from being able to do pretty much anything So part of the reason until the Dollar Shave Club We've had more or less some monopoly and razors is thank you so much Gillette, right, which is why P&G probably bought them So that to me like like I Think toxic mask masculinity is a huge issue and I like that they took a bite out of it But if they were to turn around and go, you know what we've been kind of slime balls on the IP side And here's how and I don't know that they did that illegally, but it's restraint of trade using whatever Methods, you know using lawyers is I actually think of that as a form of dark innovation I have a whole presentation. I did a decade ago on dark innovation Which is we think of innovation as an unalloyed good like oh innovations must be good. Heck no There's a ton of brains and treasure being spent to protect defend defeat Puncture do whatever and really smart people are you know on that job So so to me Gillette kind of okay fine I'm I kind of like the ad more than most of you guys seem to I haven't heard yet from Bill or April But But you know, there's plenty of skeletons to sort of bring out and I think the conversation also is you're a CEO You want to find purpose and do something meaningful in the world? Which one of these battles do you actually pick? Yeah, right because some of these battles will put your company under yeah, if Disney if Disney incorporated Decides tomorrow. It's going to stop trying to extend copyright every 20 years because the mouse is gonna fall into the public domain It's stock value will probably be cut in half tomorrow If they come out and confess to what the hell they did and what effects it's had on the world and what's going on But they could yeah, and my first real part-time job was that Disney and Anaheim in the park shooting You know hippos with a nickel plated Smith and less than 38 Well cap Cloudflare has gone the other way, you know, we we decided that we thought the patent system was being abused And so we stood up and said we're gonna go after these people who are suing companies because They have some vaguely written patent and they're over applying it and we really Gathered some other people behind us. We started crowdsourcing Previous Patents and you know Invalidating a lot of the patents that these patent rolls were using and and again This is right core to the IT industry and it made sense for us to make a big deal about it And as a result a lot of people paid attention even though we were a small company with only 400 people and Again, I think that's that's when It makes sense for the CEO to stand up and say we're gonna do something I mean Starbucks had this example where they had some very racist behavior by some of their staff in Philadelphia, I believe and You know, they took it head-on and said, you know, we're gonna take a day and we're gonna close down Our coffee shops for several hours and we're gonna make sure everybody gets An understanding of why that was wrong and why it's not gonna happen again You know, that was a crisis response but it was also core to their mission to provide a Friendly comfortable community gathering point Bill, did you want to jump in? Yeah, as you know from one of our previous Conversations I've been doing a lot of research on relationship issues primarily couple the issues etc. Which to a large extent these days is focusing around patriarchal psychology in other words the pathology that the real talks again You've got people like Terrence real who are deeply embedded in that trying to teach Psychologists across the United States about that problem and how to deal with it because even in essence what's what the patriarchal Psychology is done is basically demonized the feminine aspect of dealing with issues emotional issues etc. Which he basically has found has demonized the therapist because the therapist inevitably comes in and tries them to get the guy to Open up to just be willing to listen to this idea that there's something emotional that's valuable in a interrelationship etc I raised that because to me this is a deep cultural long-term problem that isn't going away with one or two or three ads and It's very interesting to sort of listen to Lindsay's approach as a young female Because she's really trying to express that which has been demonized and I think the Gillette was probably sort of Realizing that if it was going to get through to anybody it's got to open the door on the man's side first before he's going to listen to a more Sensitive approach to the product or the the issue etc. I mean it's really so deep there's a Dr. Gabor Mate out of Vancouver Right who's written a lot on addiction therapy and everything but his next book he's he's been talking about it's going to be called called toxic culture And it's all written. It's all going to be organized around this whole issue of of how for ages we have really structured a an enforcement of men being Almost literally pathologically focused on production. In other words making things happen To the demise of any kind of feminine sensitivity to how it's affecting Whether it's the ecology or the family or their their kids or health care, you know, I mean it's it's all about dominating things And it's it's really I mean I really at one point I came across some some information about a study that was apparently done by the national institute of health back in 1970-71 where for some reason somebody came up with the idea of testing doing a worldwide analysis of the correlation between western methods of childbirth You know, in other words, which is if you stop and think of it. It's basically a male dominated Let me tell you how to do it, you know woman, even though you've been doing it for a million years But at the end of the day they wanted to test. What did this have to do? And and they for for some reason focused specifically on violence in the society In other words the degree to which there's more western form of of childbirth and violence and they found a direct correlation worldwide the more the western method of of childbirth is used The more violence in the society Now I mentioned that because this is where I'm I'm trying to get systemic about this all relationship issue Where is it coming from? You know, what what's the core aspect that's that's driving this? And I think the Gillette has put their finger on it from the point of view of those men's, you know standing there triumphantly demonstrating their manhood And and and not being open to listening to anything else That that that's that's so deep. It's going to take generations to to dig it out and rebalance it It's it's both an old and a recurring phenomenon, I think Um because my husband was a psychiatrist and he had a period of time when he was practicing Rural community mental health on the Iron Range of Minnesota, which is rather like Appalachia and culture Um lots of people with very different perspectives And he couldn't use normal approaches to dealing with domestic violence because The normative behavior in the culture Validated domestic violence on the part of the man right and so the woman's reaction to it was well, I couldn't consider that I mean just couldn't work and so it required a a more creative approach to Talking more about how the relationship worked than about specific behaviors and what you would accept or not accept with things like that It's just a single data point, but it was a community based one that I thought was very interesting at the time If I could give a pitch for what I consider to be sort of like a fundamental Shift that is coming from research of Dr. Sue Johnson That's something called emotionally focused therapy EFT. It's not the same EFT is tapping It's her own sort of wording for this but but to me the value of that is that As you're sort of touching on Judith the there's there's an issue of how do you structure this? How do you restructure the conversation the home etc as it relates to this product process because What she's basically divined is that this attachment theory that John Bowlby came up with back in the 70s Really was something that could be applied to The family environment, but it required almost a structural understanding of what's needed in the relationship in other words a commitment to what they call a secure base And the ability to have a safe haven Which are sort of like conflicting things in other words the the person is trying to be safe But you also have to have an environment that's safe And in in essence they get into the she gets into the the way that you accomplish that But my point there is that If the the family environment is aware that they have to create a safe haven for both of them within which they can sort of huddled together and Organize these emotional issues in such a way that they they create a secure base In other words, I can go out there and explore which is basically the thing that Bowlby raised about kids Kids basically come into the world with two Sort of paradoxical challenges One is to find safety. There was where am I going to get fed We're cared for and the other is to explore and the exploring basically gets Hampered by not having a secure base In other words, they can't feel comfortable. What's fascinating to me is that We're deep into Sorry, Bill We're deep into human psychology right now or sort of going down that path Which makes a ton of sense and I'm realizing. Oh, right So psychology has been used in business for a really long time to do advertising And Eddie Bernays is the guy who popularized Sigmund Freud for use in business to convince everybody Using Freud's theories of the edible complex and you know, you name it To talk us into buying more shit So so it's not that business has been unaware of these principles or not touching them. We're not using them they've just been using them basically to make us buy more crap and In many cases to make us insecure and incomplete so that we would need to get more stuff to become complete Right. Um, what we need Exactly and and and to wean us off the notion that we are enough That we are worthy that we are all those kinds of things because once you feel you have enough or are enough You might stop buying a whole lot of stuff And and maybe I'm painting too dark a picture of of sort of the traffickers of commerce Tom, am I going am I going too dark here or? Um, you're darker than I experienced at 3m, which is a pretty big company But I know yeah, exactly typical either in some ways And that's why I ended up at that particular company and not several others where I interviewed Where what I viewed as a moderately progressive position would have been viewed as far left in their culture And I think the the notion just to give just a little bit about 3m I mean the the heritage is that you can't have creativity if you don't have people Who are free to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes and investigate new ideas Those are underpinnings of the corporate culture that are 100 years old now But they get reinforced and passed on so there's a lot more Permission to be who you are having said that there were very clearly stereotypes that I bumped into all the way through I mean as one of A dozen phd equivalent women in the early 70s When there were 6,000 technical employees and there were 14 of us So it there was a different mode But there was some openness to changing over the years and it has made progress but more slowly than I would have hoped On a job front by the way, I was interested in reading One factor that sort of mentioned that more and more of the jobs in the future are going to be What was characterized as nurturing requirement? In other words like in the hospital industry nursing and stuff like this psychologists, etc And that the challenge that they were finding in that particular area was that they couldn't get men to take the job And so some of this restructuring or the words pulling the toxicity out of it Is in essence going to be driven by that need to get a job You know, you've got to learn this stuff guys I think there's a piece though of what was at the very beginning of the call that I'm really interested in exploring Which is is kind of this invitation or demand Of action by senior executives to demonstrate a more complete leadership Then the traditional business only business first for the best of the stockholder and the company And to engage in the question of larger issues and I'd be interested Those of you who interface with a lot of different companies or have different experiences to share thoughts On the extent to which that happens. Are there circumstances that Provoke the behavior in a positive way? are there I don't know just how to frame that Because I think that's where there is an opportunity where there's cohesive culture in a work setting To become part of a social movement that's consistent with the values of the organization And I don't know if that's where you wanted this to go Jerry, but it's a it's a dimension of of that question of Expectations of CEOs and how they choose to respond But it's more than just the ceo because it's really the boardroom and it's the C level of the company That set the tone and either support or discourage behaviors of certain types and all of the above boardroom ceo And c-suite are underrepresented in women people of color pretty much everywhere across the board except in a couple industries Which may be stereotypically feminine Tom I wanted to come back to you for a second just for your reflections on on whether i'm overstating the the narrative there uh, I would reword some of this stuff you did on the advertising, but Overall what i'm hearing from everybody is not overstated, but there's so many different ways Just briefly first on the advertising So so many people get their sense of self identity from their masculine And being a macho man is very much who they want to be and who they see themselves as and who they want to be And who their mates want to be So products that are marketed to them to reinforce that identity Are not trying to change them, but simply trying to exploit an opportunity that's already there You know, you have the larger should a company be doing that or should they be trying to change that or trying to change masculinity Those are all different conversations. The point is these people are trying to sell Products and as they realize people want to be macho You end up with pick-up trucks getting bigger and bigger and bigger and all the advertising showing that this is how Barely will be if you drink this beer so I I don't put it in so It's perhaps Somewhat not so much immoral, but just simply amoral But then when it comes to the leadership when the leadership you're talking about how should a leader behave in these situations Uh, as you know, my company's called macro forces, so I started the real high level and This is where a book that I've your Jerry. I've brought up with you several times and others We have heard about it. Um, but if there's this concept of economy has really overtaken Almost every domain of thought now we have this sense that The economy is what should be motivating every decision. That's why we decided it was a good idea to elect a businessman to be The head of a government, you know governance is not business. These are very very different And so we've got this sort of poisoning of almost every other domain of thought by a business domain And then when it comes to the motivations of the CEO We do tend to breathe the likes he gets like right? We we promote those who tend to we see as great people and we look for people who look like us to be seen as great people So you get these macho men in power and they are going to be promoting other macho men But I also look at uh things such as ronda ronda grouhard's book about financialization makers and takers Where talks about the financial incentive that once you've made it to the C tweet You have often made it there because you're motivated by your own enrichment and when you get there your opportunities for your own enriching are extreme and so there's this This system of rewards that we set up that is is really broken And uh, that's why you get situations like when apple decided to Borrow money even though they were cash rich they borrowed extra billions of dollars to do a stock buyback Because they could write off the interest they were paying on the money that they borrowed Which meant the top taxpayers were really subsidizing the stock buyback And when you do a stock buyback the people who benefit the most are the large stockholders Which tend to be a lot of the people like the ceo and others that are high up in the company So we have to not only look at personal incentives, right? How are how are individuals psychologically motivated? But also look at the incentive structure in that uh, but their company is sped it within Thank you, tom. I total I I totally agree Everyone see the amazing statistic released by oxfam adavos The 20 people in the world have more wealth than the poorest 50 percent of the world's population Every year that number gets smaller two years ago 41 Oxfam is we is releasing this every year right before dovels, but that thing is a great idea they're trying to you know, take the conversation in that direction And really what is the conversation that needs to be had is this idea that the economy has overtaken all of the domains of human society And the immorality of the house and the have not too It's a very difficult conversation But I find it somewhat ironic that novice is the venue that they choose to bring that up And because that's where you really do have a lot of the riches of the rich And you have the people who are heading up the large corporations that frankly are Really being they're set up to benefit the most from the system. We already have so they are the least incentivized people to try to change And at coca-cola, I've been working there for quite a while and I tried to Help them understand that a corporation is a human invention. It's a tool to technology The corporation can do what we've designed it to do What is a corporation is designed to do is to concentrate wealth And you can spend it like is it creating wealth or this extracting wealth But really what it is is a tool that causes wealth to come together at one place for the benefit of The people at the company and then once you've got the money there Then you have to decide how to allocate it and that's where the allocation towards shareholders has gotten out of hand But it's not so much that the tools are bad But how we are using these two corporations are needed But we can modify how the money they create is distributed And perhaps even cause the rules for what monies they are allowed to extract um Is coca-cola doing the right thing when it's extracting, you know 25 cents to be sent at a time Money from people who are so poor that to buy a coca-cola is something that can oftentimes be equivalent to, you know, half a day's wage I like where we've gotten we've got a sort of a whole bunch of things on the table. I'm wondering If you were made CEO of some large enterprise tomorrow, what would any but any of us in the room do? Like how do you how do you tackle us? What what do you do? pre-existing company or our own Uh an pre-existing company you can even pick one if you want To me I I had posted the reference to that 15 commitments of conscious leadership There's a very simple four step diagram in the book that in my mind it makes it Possible to bring up all the issues that we've been talking about with a very simple Focus on the fact that most leadership structure most hierarchical structure is folks focused around victim mentality It is 100 if there's a problem. Who did it and who are we going to blame so that we can fix That person or that department That's 100 victim mentality And and if you can Get people to understand that that's not healthy Then they start looking. Well, what else is? And you move closer and closer to that sense of relationship building And and healing the the sense of victimizing and blaming as opposed to reinforcing it So that would be my start and it's interesting that the group that's that wrote that Is getting some headway with some very large companies that are that are picking up on this and realizing it I I would want to add on to that And say I would probably agree and that I wouldn't want to pick us already successful company I'd want to pick a Failing company because like you said, I think one of the biggest issues is That the communication structure that is not just the victim blaming but the overall communication structure And a lot of big companies is just truly failed In one of my Classes in my leadership minor. We discussed something called the LMX theory Of leadership communication, which is it basically details How how effective leadership or a form of effective leadership Is done within large companies um, and how There it's kind of like a pyramid out But I think one of the big issues is that there's there's not not is not even that there isn't Open communication But there's not multiple branches of open communication There's often just the ceo has one or two members and they have one or two and then it vastly it's a more of an exponential pyramid than equilateral Well-balanced pyramid So I would say on top of just not blaming but having that that decentralized centralized But far more open transparent and well balanced form of communication in a company would be Highly effective because that's from what I've seen in my studies one of the Ultimate failures of any company is just the ceo or the head is so isolated that nothing can fully be Determined or solved Good I just wanted to Lady, I don't know anything about this element But I was wondering if it also spoke to communication that goes not just top down But side view horizontally and also allowing employees to communicate backwards Yeah, it mentions that Yeah Lindsay just know that in systems theory, it's definitely veering toward Away from that hierarchical because the systems just won't support Hierarchy is slow. It's too wrong some of the solutions are There was one company that limited each part of their business to no more than 150 people because of the fact that when you Apparently one person can basically manage relationships with roughly seven people within a corporation. And so The multiplication of that Allows people like the ceo to actually know everybody in the organization up until about 150 people Yeah, so the minute that you go over that you have to get into more of that hierarchical restrictive You know, you know structured environments. So I think that the businesses are already learning You know in this internet age that they can't survive with the traditional Hierarch of organizational structure with respect to starting with a with a bad company though Warren Buffett once said Whenever he's looking at companies if he sees a company that's basically going downhill with bad management and everything He stays away from it because usually when there's a fight between success in other words a marketplace and bad management bad management always wins Yeah, okay, because they have a reason for it. Well, in other words, they have a reason for structuring their control Their way of doing it. This is the way that we always did it In other words, it's very difficult to get over that kind of thing. Yeah More wishful thinking than I guess Can I can I bring up a case that we Have you talked about the the google employees reaction to some of the recent decisions at google You haven't talked about it in other calls Um, we haven't brought that up much. No, because that's an amazing case study where management didn't anticipate how the employees would feel and how they might lose employees who Reconsidered their view of the company. They were working for based on one or two decisions But I I think that the the opportunity of employees to use the technology to mobilize and really change policy at their company and to and to make a stink It's powerful. Lizzie is signing off Just increased a bit here Thank you, Lizzie. Yeah, thank you. It was very educational Yeah, Mike had found that idea of a the google employee I really liked that because I think a lot of what's going on right now is that we just since they have to Rebalance the power structures in terms of different voices, you know without unions, you don't have the workers having that much of a voice one of the One of the uniqueness is about google is that Most google employees if they were to leave today could find a job almost immediately So they have a little bit more freedom to be expressive of those views I wish we could have an environment when in most companies Where the the will of the work the labor force Could somehow be grouped together and held in common Authority along with the senior leadership so that they can make joint decisions or at least have a bigger say into how decisions are made And some of the 38 year olds could probably retire at this point Right, right That's part of the problem is that if you pay everybody Recently well given what the company's making they they can walk they they don't they're not connected, you know addicted to you anymore Unless of course they're addicted to always needing more either competitively or you know personally But once once they have some degree of financial autonomy, they're much less afraid of just stepping up and saying hey, this is not so cool yeah so part of this I mean It feels it feels in some cases like we're sort of patching the current system because ironically for For america being such a great democracy Our school system and most of our corporations are as autocratic as pretty much anywhere But the schools are top down Companies are top down what management says, you know, what's your kpi? Stay in your lane Go crazy and there's a couple of companies out there And unfortunately the way I the way I trip across them is that they are exceptions to the rule That are highly democratic highly distributed where there's high trust down to the fingertips and the workers And these wind up becoming case studies. We tell the same stories over and over and over because they're sort of rare But your average company is incredibly autocratic so I think a piece of this is tackling the ownership structures and the management structures and loosening them up in some way and I For for big legacy companies that are used to the autocratic and have hired You know 90 staff that that sort of expects that is used to that and has been doing that for multiple decades Super hard to change that. I'm not even sure I know of that many cultures that have shifted dramatically I think Microsoft and IBM might be interesting Examples of cultures that have changed a lot judy go ahead Well, I was just going to say my experience at 3m while there were levels of this involved It was nothing like say when I interviewed at dupont or hercules or other big chemical companies Or even b asf, which is a more enlightened european but old historical chemical company and and what I thought was a very distinctively important part of the the structure in 3m work was The necessity with complex technology driven approaches to things to have high levels of communication between knowledge workers at all levels So there wasn't a silo. It was a really flat organization There were there were marketing silos in terms of who you sold types of products to But the technology base and the sharing of technology and manufacturing was company y and The intent was to take a new innovation in part a and spread it quickly to six other areas That could apply it constructively and in order for that flow of information between the technical employees And the innovators to occur They had a hundred years of working to create a permissive culture Where employees had a percentage of time to work on their own ideas and their management were not allowed to tamper with them And you know more damaging to criticize a mistake than to let a mistake happen It's a learning learning opportunity. There's all kinds of aphorisms that were an intrinsic part of the culture That were in some ways very much at odds with the scotch personality and history because they were pretty conservative But it worked in a kind of weird way And I came to realize that I was very fortunate to have landed there through the selection process because I would not have lasted at all at most of the other competitive companies where I had interviewed I just would have not fit in It's also important was the minnesota culture and the fact that people trust each other more Um, that's part of it. I think it was a kind of isolated upper midwest company Um, it had its own boundaries because it had a particular heritage bent Um, which had certain conservatism a total distrust of bankers always self funded I remember mcknight's quote was I don't want to bank her on my board They'll only give you money when you don't need it and they won't give it to you when you do So I want my own bank here And that sort of stubborn individualism was part of the culture too But when you have that as a cultural fit It creates an expectation of other employees to experience and practice that freedom for themselves and with other people Yeah My mom is from minnesota from rural minnesota. So I know a bit about the culture there and it's It's quite different and does shape the way organizations work Jerry a minute ago. You mentioned ibm and microsoft as places that they have had some change in culture I don't know that Having worked at ibm for almost 10 years and having worked for ib microsoft more recently I don't know that they've changed that much they they started in a better place. I think and again At ibm there was More trust. I think a lot of people at ibm Worked there for 20 30 even 40 years. Yeah, and there's this connectivity this Judy Judy mentioned the same kind of matrix where people are talking to each other and information is flowing There wasn't so much paranoia about one division Stealing away revenue from another In contrast at microsoft until recently They had their fiefdoms and people did not talk to each other and they wouldn't trust in another division to do something So they did everybody did their own thing their own way um, the new ceo, I think has Really changed that culture that but that's not fundamental to the culture I I don't know that they trust each other anymore But there is a sense that you're not going to get money to reinvent somebody something that somebody else has done already So it's a little bit more just as for instance Just i'm sorry to interrupt but it i'll remember to sentence. I got in the first couple months. I was there You know, there's a culture at 3 m. Judy that you need to know about if someone asks you for help You are required to help them first of all and if you can't help them you're required to find someone else who can Wow That's awesome. That's just an expectation and you will get Verbally slapped down If you don't do that if you say I don't have time or I don't know or I can't do something that's just not allowed um, and to get that walking powerful That's much better than those carefully crafted mission statements that everybody had even enron has Exactly two things uh, my zoom seems to have hung where I can't stop sharing which seems appropriate given You know the spirit of the call Um, so I can still move around the brain and I can still do stuff But when I hit stop share it does not undo the screen share Sorry about that I might have to drop off the call and come back in if I can And then I wanted to tell a little bit the story of bob LeBlanc whom I interviewed a very very long time ago Like around the year 2000 2001 He was a senior executive He was one of the people like john patrick and a couple others Who identified open source software is really important and before this period IBM is the fun company fear uncertainty and doubt they have A contention management is their management style They create completely intentionally competing teams and they force them to batter each other and keep secrets and Undermine each other just because they want the best thing to win They have five platforms none of which talk to each other And they've spent a lot of money in 10 years trying to get those platforms to talk to each other To shorten the story a little bit John patrick and a few other people say hey people We should go look at apache and then linux and then a couple other things They adopt these things and begin contributing their patents to open source I won't say that they're perfect open source players But there was a sea change of culture at IBM That I saw from the outside at that in that era at that time And it like the company went through a near-death experience because people like me I was a tech industry analyst We were pretty sure IBM wasn't going to be around in five years because sun microsystems Apollo and a bunch of others were busy selling cheap fast servers that were running unix And kill an IBM, you know all over the place And and so I saw IBM change dramatically now I don't know much about satya nadella But I do know that microsoft is somehow a very different company today than it was two years ago Like like some something he's done has been profound In the spirit of microsoft the people I've talked to sound different feel different and I'm shocked at how profound corporate cultures are over time Like like in different eras for different companies you can tell oh my god This person comes from digital equipment or this is a kodak person or whatever you could just like xerox They each of these had like this this ethos that was pushed pretty hard as it sounds like 3m was for you judy Where there's certain stories they tell about the culture A series of other things that that happened But these things degrade or migrate or break or maybe sometimes get stronger over time. So i'll stop there Yeah, I think what happened with at microsoft is They put an engineer's engineer in charge Layed out a very clear vision of where the company was going And he made clear that all the talk about breaking down silos was now reality And he put some incentives in place I I guess I don't know if that's changing the culture or not. I think it's just changing the incentive structure If everybody knows there's a vision They'll figure out how to be part of that vision And if everybody knows they're going to be penalized if they Don't work across boundaries they'll move but I I I I I don't know. I I still know a lot of people at microsoft and I I don't know that Um, I think they're all very excited about the vision and I think there is work that wasn't there before but uh But I I also I another point I was going to make is here in washington We have a lot of defense contractors and we have a lot of other tech companies where A lot of the key executives come out of the military And that imposes a particular culture and tends to reinforce hierarchy and need to know kind of thinking Exactly. Although, um, strangely I've I've had a lot of good encounters in the military and intelligence complex where I've been highly impressed by some of the people and some of the sharing capacity in there I mean, there was a period in the early days of wikis and all that where Um, uh, they were really trying hard to share information more than they could. This all turns into, um What should we call it the, uh Nice or not No, I'm not I'm not spelling it man. I'm not remembering any of the any of the chains back into it Basically the leaks the the wiki leaks and other kinds of things that, um came out Uh showing all of the different Uh, all the different problems That were out there. Yeah Who am I thinking of apologies? I need to leave the call, but I appreciate the conversation a lot Thank you very much. I need to leave Yep, thanks a lot Good So jerry just getting back to uh A big question that came up a while ago, which is if I were the CEO the the problem is I I don't know that Individuals in the system that we have right now can do much. Uh, certainly I'd like a lot. Oh, you're welcome. Hi jerry I see you back now. I see your video But To do something and do something good like, you know, I think there's a lot of stuff that's being done by Howard Schultz that I admire But the problem is the market will punish you if you do two things are too bold or too different or not to optimize share over value right, and um So what I what we have to do is perhaps look at leveling that playing field by saying What is what are the rules that need to be applied to all corporations? That would make it very difficult for the market to To punish anybody who does something say Raising the workers pay at mcdonald's to fifteen dollars an hour You know if they were to do that you can imagine that their prices their stock price would go down quite a bit um, so what are we going to do to cause them to Be able to do those things With more freedom of of that Then the other thing I've been reading about is the financialization of how corporations operate a lot of companies Whether you're tng or coca-cola mcdonald's On your balance sheet, you'll notice a lot of income comes from investments in other companies They're playing the stock market now a lot of companies are so cash rich. They're trying to figure out what to do with that money and taxing the income that comes from invested Versus money that's put back into your own company Could be an interesting thing or what kind of tax breaks? Could you give them by instead of throwing that into the marketplace to make more income for the shareholders? You are investing either r&d or in employees or in whatever it is that you need to do You know, but my overall point is simply this individual player is going to have a really hard time making headway And making the right decisions being vetted in the system that we have now Um, I was trying to find the long-term stock exchange while you're talking because I wanted to put it under long-term thinking And it wasn't there apparently but eric recent others are trying to create a market that doesn't reward short-term gain um Don't know how much how much success they're having or what kind of lift-off they have. I haven't heard about ltsc for a while Yeah, I can't remember. Is there somebody in the washington dc area that was trying to come up with a metric for investment agencies and investment companies Based on how sustainable a company is behaving Uh, so that they can build that into their long-term projections What was the attitude? Sustainable sustainable, okay Yeah, oh within sustainable. He had several different categories environmental sustainability community sustainability um, and he was doing it on an industry-wide basis and basically trying to help you Look at how a company is doing relative to its competitors on each of those metrics I'm realizing that I was just thinking of something that I thought was um, a company thing But it's actually a country score But saman and holt and some other people have created something called the good country Which you can join And it's five dollars a year basically as membership And the idea is they're rating countries through the good country index To show Which countries are doing the best for their citizens and the earth? You know are contributing the most good to the world and which ones are not as a way of Externalizing or making visible some of the stats some of the the progress or lack thereof that's happening And I I don't know how effective these things are but april and i are both good country citizens so to speak There are investment funds with the word sustainability in them the global sustainability index fund and Various ways to evaluate whether companies are Good for the planet. Yep. Here's a bunch of them. Yep Then there's sustainable investment ratings All over gender and so part of what happens is I'll go back to one of my favorite op-eds Um, this sort of predates on on giridara dust and winners take all Kind of taking over the conversation now But peter buffett son of warren buffett wrote this really nice op-ed in 2013 called the charitable industrial complex Yeah, but I pointed to a bunch and he shook things up and made a lot of enemies among philanthropists and others But he said look, uh when I was young my father didn't give us a lot of money But then he gave us a big hunk of change at some point and and that changed our role in the world of philanthropy so we started getting invited to things that we weren't invited to before And I began to realize that of the people sitting in the room Sometimes like the the right hand was trying to fix something the left hand had broken That mostly the corporations were engaging in behaviors that were requiring Nonprofits and others and government agencies to pick up the ball and fix stuff And if we fixed what companies do in the first place We might not need half of the nonprofit complex So here's here's the quote all are searching for answers to the right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left Right and one of my little sayings uh from this is philanthropy is not a karmic cleanser That a lot of corporate executives see their social responsible investing arm or their CSR or their philanthropy their their foundation As the answer right we're just going to do well by taking some of our money and putting it over there And trying to fund something good. I don't I'm not a fan of that whatsoever Which then because we're inside jerry's brain right now a brief 30 second distraction Just to entertain you Prizes created to improve legacies right what did alfred novell invent? Dynamite Exactly. What did the joseph pullitzer basically sort of co-invent alongside william randall first Yellow journalism yellow journalism exactly and then Here's yellow journalists Here's yellow journalists pullitzer created the top prize in journalism Uh, and then what was sesal b roads all over? diamonds in rodigia He was an imperialist He created the road scholarships to make sure that the british empire would last forever and the sun would indeed never set on the british empire So this is historically what would come what wealthy individuals do To clean their reputations. I think it's almost fitting that we've ended up here at this point of the conversation, but Back to you guys Jerry are you I'm still just seeing this old screen. I don't know if you're if you're Oh, so you're not seeing you're not seeing anything. I've moved or changed I'm seeing from need to know to need to share 256 p.m. I don't know about anybody else. Are you I'm stuck there right there My apologies. So I thought that you guys are still seeing me move around because I have shown like 50 things since then Um, I don't know if I drop off the call whether it kills the call Um, active would it may may not I may be able to get out without doing that But I can't seem to regain control of zoom so I'll probably have to crash them Why don't you make someone else the host momentarily? Is that possible? I can't the controls are not giving me any feedback So I've I've basically lost control of zoom the pump won't work because the vandal stole the handle Okay, exactly. So why don't I crash my zoom? Restart it and come back into the room if you guys will stay or try to get back in it should work So let me let me go out And crash zoom before before you sign off. I wanted to point out that I posted a great cartoon of How different it companies are organized? Oh It's a beautiful example of How culture defines structure defines behavior Thank you. So let me crash it and come back in and see if that works So Mike it's been a long time since I've seen you. What are you up to these days? Well, I've been living in Cyprus for nine months So I was 10 hours 10 time zones away from Jerry's brain Which made it very hard for me to join Uh-huh But I'm still with cloud flare and uh still trying to save the future All right, should have done that a long time ago But actually I'm also I just come back and I'm redefining my role at cloud flare So I'm also looking at other opportunities That might be even more exciting. I selfishly I I've had seven dream jobs And I'm always looking for the eighth one Oh, wow So if you have ideas for a digital technology expert who's also very concerned about shaking the future, let me know No, we'll do Well, since I it's been a while since I've been joining these meetings and I thought myself I've moved. I'm now living in Denver And enjoying life. I imagine Quite a bit. It's beautiful out here We're having a windstorm today and it's it's rather nice to be inside a warm building while blustering outside with all that snow You're in Denver itself. You're not up in the mountains on the foot in the Good question. I'd say Denver, but it's really in one of the suburbs Yeah, I'm back and my brain is now sluggish. So I don't I'm gonna have to reboot when we're done with this call But I'm glad to be back But at least it looks like the lip moving. We haven't seen your lips move for 20 minutes Damn But we've heard just speak we're just kind of weird Well, I know it's important the audio is more important tell april. We miss her by the way We'll do well, she's apparently in a noisy place right now a cafe or something So can't really jump in easily. Is she in Davos this year? No, no, no, we're not neither of us went this year Um And sort of not that eager to go back at some point so Well cloud flare went in force. We have about 15 people there and we rented a house. There's actually the cloud flare house Oh, cool I guess that's what when people start asking if you're going to go ipo You go to Davos and start talking to people who want to help you go ipo. I don't make sense Does anyone know is there again this year? If who is holo the company that put out holo chain if they're going to Davos Yeah, they were there last year I don't know no idea. Haven't heard any piece of that How do you spell the name of the company? Uh, holo. Hello holo. Sorry Well, it's an interesting year for them. They it's they're they're more of the bud of Focus of a lot of criticism this year the forum is Yes Even more than past years Well, their inability to address all the issues that they they had a really interesting risk report that came out of you That's one of my favorite outputs from them. What do they see is the global risk? Yeah that are coming out And I haven't really noticed that it caused any change of action. You know, what are they doing? And with clearly the rich poor divide and inequality We're talking about oxen earlier being one of the things that In one way or another driving the whole authoritarianism movement and the populism movement around the world I think it's a great business model myself. I I was lucky enough to go three times when I was at the white house and um It Gets all these rich people to pay outrageous amounts just so they can show up in Davos for two or three days And rub elbows and think great thoughts And they are great thoughts Yeah, but the rest of the year The forum is producing some really interesting Thought pieces and sometimes doing really good data on competitiveness on corruption And they they have really got the discussion going on some of these big topics Uh a lot of focus on sustainability the digital economy cyber security so You know, if you if you get the money from the party and you use it to good cause Great. I mean I I I try to follow their reports pretty religiously. Yeah, look at I mean jerry. Yeah, you're you're You're a reader as well. I see Here's the one that people are pointing to these days. They're a recent future of jobs report It's getting some some press and some attention. Well, does it go into UBI and that type of thing I do not know on this one. I haven't because they're in my brain does not mean I've read all these reports And uh, this one seems like it's more about which jobs might be safe From automation things of that. I don't know if this is going into How are people going to stay alive if they don't have a job? Yeah, I've got a report somewhere that I think like three or four years ago came out a couple of economists looked at all the bureau of labor statistics job descriptions and they calculated based on things like Artificial intelligence and automation and cloud computing Robotics, etc, which jobs they thought would be the ones most endangered And they kind of ranked them off. Yeah, interesting I'd like to see if somebody's done a little bit deeper into that sense them But the issue is, you know, okay, what are you gonna do about that? And that's when I'm wondering if they're going into a solution such as ubi or other potential solutions Which kind of gets back to what our topic was about right if we were running companies, what would we be doing? yes, and It's the distribution of the monies that come into the company would be an interesting topic How do you you know, they're part of the conscious capitalism folks We're talking about having a 200 to one maximum for pay differential within a company, but also how do you pay for What is your responsibility to the communities you're you operate in Unilever is doing some interesting things other companies are doing some interesting things, but these are all by choice How do we help to change the system so that As the company thrives all the constituencies thrive at the same time Well to be radical, isn't the answer some kind of universal employee ownership I mean just to Really build a tax structure that rewards corporations that give their people shares, you know You're not going to fix this problem by redistributing income and by taxing the wealthiest and giving it to the poorest You're going to see this by paying people at the bottom more And government through the tax structure can help There's a lot of things that can be done that would Push companies to behave in a more equitable way So paul pulman who is now exiting unilever was trying to make unilever a for-benefit corporation With no success in in his long run And I think tom that goes to what you were saying is that sometimes these changes just don't stick that you know There's not They don't have to actually make the change happen Which is too bad because a company the size of unilever doing that would have been a big deal And I assume the board and the major shareholders, right? I'm assuming. Yeah, I don't you know don't have any inside stories on that But there are some people out there trying to trying to do these kinds of things which is great But at the end of the day since Milton Friedman rules and it's all about shareholder value You have to have an incentive that pushes the company to do the right thing and that's almost certainly tax code And you know, maybe even you know companies Announcing that they're only going to buy from benefit corporations or they're they're going to you know when they're doing a procurement They're going to be willing to pay 10 percent more if it's to a company that treats their employees in an equitable way because they Make a value judgment and and have concluded that Companies that do that are more ethical in their business practices or some you know It's got to be some some way to say we're going to spend a little bit more We're going to distribute the money a little bit differently Because we can make more money that way Have any of you seen any data on Just a very big question of do we need shareholders anymore? When you have a lot of cash rich companies When you see a lot of silicon valley started playing we we actually don't want easy money, you know They're they're getting Financing in a lot of in so many different places now Uh, I I don't know what the role of an established large corporation I I didn't just because I'm not a financial person. I don't know maybe there's a huge role for them Um, I know that large corporations make money just by investing that extra cash flow that they have But that's not necessarily Um Creating wealth for the for the community. I mean, they're not they're not doing what they're paid together to do like making products For example, yeah, I just wondered if we had some way of ratcheting down The leverage that finance had in the whole system So in in 2015 april and i were at a conference in recubic Named point zero one of the other speakers was this guy simon dixon We did a talk about cryptocurrencies before cryptocurrencies had their big boom But he did a really interesting thing was he took the usual funding stages model for a startup, which is Your own pocket friends fools family seed round You know a round b round c round all the way to debt And then he started showing how crowd funding and other kinds of sourcing were starting to eat those things systematically one after the other And and how you might actually be able to sell fund through to pretty high stages Of capital coming in without going through the usual intermediaries the usual operatives who then would seek to control your company or whatever else It was it was really pretty interesting Um, also just kind of to take our conversation Um around full circle to where it started because we're getting close to our end here Anand Giri Dharadas is kind of a one of our heroes in the household these days And starting with the talk he did at the aspen ideas festival way back when but a bunch of other things And now he has a a new bestseller called winners take all I'll get to that in a second But he had a he was on an interview with paul polman Who I I just sort of said I'm kind of a fan of but they were sitting there and he said well You want to do something good for the world? Tell you what? Why don't you pull this product from india? and he basically I think he pulled out a Tube or a dispenser of fair and lovely fairness cream. Do you guys know what fairness creams are? Lighting lighters skin lightners because in india lighter is better And uh, there's a very big business selling people something to To lighten their skin color and polman basically ducked and dodged and you know Wouldn't wouldn't say of course we'll pull this, you know It's stupid that we're selling something that that reinforces the stupid prejudice But that's the kind of thing that would be pretty interesting Right Yeah I know we only have five minutes left gerry, but we haven't talked much about the digital CEO digital industry CEOs and I mean, maybe it's because we've already talked enough about zuckerberg and the the debate but Clearly we have a trust problem right now and the tech lash is Getting so extreme that it's really going to hurt the development of the next generation of digital companies Well, it's the whole thank you for bringing this up. I appreciate it mike. Um That's impressive very tech lash is what 57 different connections Yeah, pretty much So part of what I mean part of what happened was a bunch of us probably me included thought Hey, if we connect everybody so that at zero marginal cost they can actually share idea as good things will happen We ignored the fact that the way anybody was funding this was a business model that meant they were busy scooping up our data exhaust and selling it to the you know first comers and that they would then combine Combine and improve this data so that they got pretty good at it And that that data then got pretty valuable And then we wondered later why everybody got addicted and was having nonsense conversations around cute cat pictures Instead of fixing the problems of society voting better Getting to know each other better the kinds of stuff that those of us who are optimists about this We're hoping would happen And so I think one of the big issues one of the big things that that could happen Would be some of these companies deciding that it's not In their best interest to get us all addicted and here I think google is less guilty than facebook by far. I mean facebook is all you know google There's a whole separate conversation about what motivates whom and you know apple can take some moral high ground here Partly because you know apple world and a bunch of other things died off. They don't have You know apple link apple world a whole bunch of apple ventures to try to do these sorts of things just died on the vine So hey, they've got a retail business where they get paid up front So they have in some sense the luxury of saying we don't really do this so Why don't we use the last couple minutes? for What you guys think about the tech lash I agree with your ranking, you know Facebook being the bad actor google being suspect amazon probably being about the same level and then apple Taking you know Not on the scale of you know good to bad or you know or good to evil Apple seems to and sales force which was a enterprise for the most part. I think they're really well positioned Um Benny off has been saying a lot of very reasonable important things That if you look at you know the migration of those companies to the top of the fortune 500 You know the whether they're what do you call it? They're the information economy or they're the platform company These their business model has proven to be the one that has been by far the most Successful in that few years Um And you talked to you know, we have this ability to do micro payment some things You can't remember what it was always talking to alexa and I said hey alexa, but play some ambient sound To starting up like responding now. Yeah But then she came back and said oh by the way for next to 83 cents you can get the premium sound So what I was thinking is wow, what what what if there is a way? I mean obviously there's a way to measure the data flow from me to those companies Right And micro payments going the other way Um, I'm a contributor. I'm an oem right? I'm a provider of of raw material I'm just wondering we just haven't looked at how do you tax information or control information? alexa stop You're a you're a content providing slave, exactly in the near Yeah, but uh, yeah, exactly who owns the future is a interesting book on that You know, he he actually has a very simple solution, right? Don't pay for the damn thing How do you know all these free services? and what's interesting is um You can't buy your way off of Into a non stocky version of facebook because if facebook offered that Only the people who could afford it would do it and it would create this adverse selection problem with their ad pool, right? There was an amazing article that I put on facebook today On a guy who tried to avoid amazon He was he was going to try to avoid all the big players But it's entitled I tried to block amazon from my life and i'll post the link right now Thanks, he actually built a A tool that would check every time he was touching some service that was running on the amazon cloud or oh wow Buy something So he was trying to avoid the whole thing Oh total. Yeah, it did not wow Thank you. Hey, bitting up made the news three hours ago saying his industry is to blame for rampant inequality I wonder if he said that while he was at davos Almost certainly certain he did. He's yeah on the davos Peter schwarz Well, Peter's one of my actually Peter's there. I know he's one of my heroes. Everyone knows Peter schwarz, right? Yep. Yeah Yeah, the class on the future I teach is built around his book the art of the long view Cool Jerry i'm so glad I could join a full session. I typically was you know tuning in at 11 30 at night in Cyprus and catching a little bit of what you guys were doing, but this is much better And I was that's great. Thank you for letting lizzie crash the party. She wanted to say hello I was gonna say thank Thank you for bringing lizzie in she was great as usual you haven't seen her in probably four years, so Well, no, you guys came through portland. We had dinner to go. Oh, that's right. Yeah, of course in person But the and in human in human presence like it wasn't an avatar It was like at least for all intents and purposes I was well fooled that you were actually, you know sitting right there because we were drinking a beer This was right after the solar eclipse And it was not a poor through. Yes. I had just come back from from watching the eclipse with uh turtles cool well Thank you very much. Totally appreciate this. Um I think there's lots of earth to turn on this topic So maybe revisit it in a different structured way if If a structure occurs to you that would be really fruitful send me an email or post it on the inside jerry's brainless or something like that And we'll we'll structure around that Great. All right for now. Thank you all. Thanks much. Thanks guys. Bye. Bye guys