Leadership in the Era of AI | Full Conversation

Thank you very much Simon, you know? I've read a lot of I've read a lot of your books and I'm sure a lot of us in the audience will have some questions at the end for Simon to talk about. I like the name of your company, optimism, you know I was reading your bio and it talks about how you are an unwavering optimist and that you believe in building the world together in the context of everything that is happening around us, a refuge crisis in everything the world, depending on who you ask, they would tell you that we are in a recession or we are not in a recession Energy prices Food prices International trade Diplomatic relations are at their lowest point.

I mean, you know who goes to war over this kind of situation we find ourselves in. m Jamie Diamond actually said last week Jamie Diamond actually talked about several things, he said AI will take three days a week and then he said we're living in the most dangerous time in the world in a few decades. R Delio spoke literally on Monday and said: 50% chance there will be a Second World War. I want to ask you: are you still an unwavering optimist? Not anymore. So I think we have to be clear about what optimism is. And I and I when I describe myself as an optimist.

The immediate reaction is that I'm naïve or that blind optimism isn't me, not to be confused with blind positivity, everything's fine, everything's fine, you know, or the obsession with focusing on the things that work and ignoring the things that are. broken.

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, this is dangerous, there are many leaders who think that they have to be positive all the time so that their teams are POS positive even when things around them are difficult and to be honest that is counterproductive because when people are struggling and people We find it difficult to be positive during the day and your leader comes and says everything is great.

It actually makes us feel worse because we think there is something wrong with us. Um optimism. It's very realistic. Allow frustration and sadness. allow sadness uh uh difficulty like but it's the eternal belief that the future is bright so an optimist would say we're in a dark tunnel um I don't know how long we'll be here and it'll be difficult but one thing I'm sure if we work together and we take care of each other, we will get through this and we will come out of this stronger than we were and I still firmly believe that if we work together and find ways to get through this. uh we're going to come out of this stronger than we came in and I think the future is bright, but how can you make people believe that?

I mean, if they start to believe that they will start working together but to get to the point. for them to believe, how can you get them to that point to believe that the world is the future is going to be bright and therefore they should come together to fix it? We have to remember that human animals are social animals and one of the disadvantages you know, I just as an aside um I believe, I believe that the world is balanced um I don't believe in strengths or weaknesses, for example um, so you can bring company or human beings when people like what your strengths are, you know what your biggest weakness from that famous interview question, uh uh, well, I'm a perfectionist, you know, um, uh, I work too hard, um, uh , I believe that there are no strengths and weaknesses, we have characteristics and attributes, and in some contexts there are advantages and strengths. in some contexts there are weaknesses and responsibilities and what you have to know is what your characteristics and attributes are and you have to know the context in which they are found and avoid those in which they have their responsibilities and try to put yourself in those in which uh where your strengths um uh uh and I think the same is true here we have to remember that human beings are social animals and what makes us happy what makes us live longer what makes us healthier is human interaction and in the Over the past couple of decades, with the rise of technology, we have seen a decline in the human skills we need for this.

You know, there's an irony in this: cats don't have to work very hard to be cats, they're just good. In that, uh, but it actually takes a lot of work to be good as a human being and we're not doing that work, um, uh, and we can see it, just take a look at what's happening with the crisis in Israel and Gaza. right now used to be a time where when we read the news, the horrible news, we would call a friend and vent our anger or sit in our sadness and our friend could hug us, our friend could hug us. space for ourselves as we go through this process right now what is happening is that we watch the news and then we go online and vent our anger or express our sadness openly for the world to see well, and then what is happening is that the people are reacting. to our reactions and do you think that connection is something anti to get out of pessimism to an optimistic world?

I mean, yeah, the more you feel like someone has your back, the more you feel in the relationship, the more you feel for your colleagues. your coworkers your leaders see you as a human being the more at peace you feel and the more open you are to allowing uh uh uh the more at peace you feel like someone will be there for you and that's what creates optimism. the quality of relationships and for all the benefits of technology and I love technology, we can't forget that we are inherited animals that live in a modern world and we have to do the work to foster relationships and big companies do what they do the big companies. that Simon in the, you know, addressing the topic of human connection, you talked about human connection in the age of AI and I actually think it's more important now than before, but is AI a threat to human connection? again?

Going back to what I said before, it is neither good nor bad, it depends on what we do with it, how we implement it and how responsible we are with it, can it be a threat to the human condition of course? I think we've seen that, I mean, if you saw the movie she, I mean, that's becoming a real thing where people will have relationships with an AI robot, but the problem is that the AI ​​robot has simultaneous relationships. with millions of people, then how? special you are um can but can make you feel special we already have words for this we saw it on Facebook it's called a parasocial relationship where you have all the feelings of like oh my god I'm in love with this person he cares about me but on the other side it's not nothing, um, but at least the ones who don't have those relationships will feel good because at least they have someone to, except for the fact that it's fake, a little minor detail, um, but the level of play that everyone has. false, if everyone has false relationships, at some point this is going to collapse, you know, I think there is an arrogance that human beings have, which is that we think that we are above nature, we forget that we are part of it and in the end, day um, we only know what we know and what we don't know is much broader and we're pretty bad at making predictions.

I mean, let's be honest, all the predictions of what the Internet would be. I remember them saying that. the death of bricks and mortar meanwhile you know Amazon opening stores and you know uh uh pred not predor which one is that you rent clothes which one is that Rent the Runway are opening stores they have stores you know because we're forgetting how very human nature, which is what we like, we like, gathering and hunting, like we like to browse, we actually enjoy it, anyone who is in retail knows this, that's why they keep moving things in the store, things never they're exactly where they used to be, they move them because we like to go get um uh people in retail know this um uh so I think we always forget the humanity of things um and at the end of the day we crave a relationship, we need a relationship.

I'm going to change the subject a little bit, um, you know. Trust in public institutions has fallen significantly in recent years, but trust in businesses compared to other public institutions remains the highest. Yeah, I mean, there's something called the Edlen Trust Barometer that measures this and businesses are the only institution. seen as both competent and ethical, and everyone has put their own employer as the most trusted institution to believe in, yes you think that will fade a bit with machines and artificial intelligence in the mix and of course , now the most important question is how is trust built in the age of AI?

So let's start with I'm a cynical bastard and I think we have to be careful with trust barometers because they're relative, you know, just because we don't trust the government. It doesn't mean we love corporations, right, it's a relative scale, yeah, all it means is that our trust in government and public institutions is so low that we feel good about business that I can't believe corporations are Number one, then, it's ironic that people trust business more, but I think again, I think we have to take it in context. I also think we have to consider how we view companies these days and by the way, this also puts pressure on companies, which is um.

If you go back a few decades, our lives were spread out and we had all our needs, so for example, um uh, you got your sense of community from bowling, the bowling league, you got your sense of uh uh guy. of purpose of the church that you had we had neighbors that we actually had a bar with our neighbors on the weekends um and work was a place where um uh you were loyal to the work and the work was loyal to you and you worked until you got your gold watch and aside, I will be on stage and I will ask a group of people like you, who know what I am, you don't know what I'm talking about when I talk about the gold watch and, like all young hands, I have no idea what I'm talking about, literally that metaphor is lost on an entire Generation Um, but we would give our lives and by the way, there was trust both ways, the company would take care of us and we would take care of them now.

Over time, we've seen bowling leagues disappear, we've seen church attendance decline, and what we're now asking our businesses to do and our work to do is we want them to fill the gaps that we need them to do now. . Offer me a sense of purpose, we need you to offer me a sense of community, now we need you to also agree with my politics and with this massive pressure on companies to meet all these human needs, which is neither good nor bad. It's a thing, um, and companies have to respond, so I think the fact that people encounter a lot of those things at work probably increases the level of trust, so that's one of the positive sides.

I see it changing at some point where institutions that are public in nature should be more trusted than businesses. I would love to believe that we should trust the government more. I mean, I guess I'm an idealist. I think you know these things are cyclical. I think world events will affect them, you know, after 9/11 we saw that the public trusted Skyrocket, so I mean, I don't think it's fixed, I think it will wax and wane as time goes on, Simon. I'm going to switch gears to a very different topic that you wrote about the circle of safety in your book Leaders Eat Last and that was back in 2013 and I actually think organizational behavior has changed in the last 10 years, if you had written that book.

Now, would you write it differently in Circle of Safety and do you think it's very different now than it was then? uh no, I think it's the same book because the book is the same. What I'm saying is, if you have to write it now, yes, yes. Yeah, it would be the, I mean, maybe I'll use the different examples, but it would be the same conclusion because I wasn't trying to describe what trust looks like at the time I was trying to understand where trust comes from. it's trust and when you ask a question like that you necessarily have to go back and I went back, you know, to the beginning of humanity and anthropology and how we lived and overlapped the biology of human decision making and human trust and the anthropological needs of Trust in a corporate environment, and therefore our need to feel safe, to feel psychological security in the places where we live and work, is a basic biological constant, it has not changed and will not change.

Do you know another book you wrote? It's about starting with one and, yes, don't mention the date of that one that will make me feel even older. And that was a fascinating book. It's about how you want to start with one and why you know the purpose and the cause. and beliefs of a company and then you have a unique way of doing things and therefore you know how and of course we all know what a company does or what an organization does. I almost think it is necessary to add who to the mix of why, how and what, because anything you do in a company today could be done by humans or by machines and the effort of humans and machines, we are going to live in an effort of humans and machines, which means uh the feedback loop with the humans has to verify theresponsibility of the And, even if the machine makes decisions on your behalf, then in that context I mean making responsible AI.

I almost think that who plays an important role in what task is done by whom and how do you create the feedback loop to know how to make sure you validate the path? Who? Who is already integrated into the system? Why is that underlying purpose a cause of belief? Why does he leave B in the morning? Why does your organization exist? Should anyone care what the values ​​are like, the actions you take to bring your cause to life, and what the tangible manifestations of your actions are? your product for example your advertising your audience anything they can see touch or feel even your metrics um um and in combination those things make you who you are and when one of those things is out of balance it's like it doesn't know who you are anymore So if you are only driven by numbers and have no sense of purpose, people will lose your identity.

I don't know what you stand for, but if all you are is purpose and you can't get anything done, then you might as well be a hippie. commune that doesn't advance anything um and again I won't know what your purpose is because I can't see you doing anything in the world so if those three things are aligned, that's who you are, that's it, that's exactly what it is. It's supposed to happen, um, I think your point about who does the work is interesting and I would do it because that's tangible, like who's physically going to do that task.

I think that fits on the outside, so if you go back to your cause and your values, those decisions should go through that filter first and if AI can help with that filter, then great, you know, Simon, thanks for that, a of the things that workplaces are dealing with is four generations of workforce, um and it's never happened before in the last 100 years that you have four generations of workforce working at the same time. Yes, you wrote about Millennials. I mean, it was a YouTube video. It had like 14 or 15 million views? He had 80 million in the first one. week that was 80 80 million in the first week I remember going, it took me by surprise, I didn't expect it.

I went to dinner once with a guy, this is unrelated, obviously, uh and uh. I asked him what do you do. He says I make viral videos and I said, you mean you make viral videos and I hope they go viral? um uh, because that's what happened, I mean, it's like I didn't predict this and I remember going out to dinner and it had 25 million views and when I was done with dinner it had 30 million views it was crazy, um, but Yes, it was a very controversial video. What was it that was also a little controversial? um and and that's why it also had, I think, some I think some Millennials whose nerves I touched got a little bit, yeah, that's it.

I think everyone else is fine with all the people in the world who are between 27 and 40 years old. Yeah, you touch the, I mean, you said nice things, you said no. like instant gratification, they're lazy, they have low self-esteem, that's how they've been described and they're willing to be entitled, uh, but you still talked about four very interesting characteristics, you said, parenting technology, impatience, yeah, uh, and the environment, tell us a little. a little bit about how organizations, can you know that it is an important part of organizational work? In fact, you already know the zenzi.

I don't know what your point of view is, they are different from Millennials. In fact, I think they're different than Millennials, um, tell us. a little bit about how organizations manage and create an environment for both Zenzes and Millennials to thrive. Surely generational differences are not new. You know, we always accuse older generations of being stuck in the mud and you know we're not willing to change and we. I always accuse the younger generations of wanting to break everything they know and that they think they know more than that's old um uh the new thing is the issue of rights which seems to be relatively new um and there are some interesting reasons for it um one is a A very connected generation, obviously because of the Internet, and they're actually more aware of what's going on in the world and have access to unlimited amounts of information, obviously, but if you think that when we started our careers, we were, objectively speaking, idiots , you already know. like we came into the workforce not knowing anything right and so we had no choice but to defer to those who had more experience so we could learn to advance our careers because in reality we didn't know anything and we knew we didn't know anything this Young Generation that is to come.

They are coming to work from day one with an understanding of how technology works, how personal branding works, how social media works, and in fact, they are bringing a set of skills that sometimes those who are at work don't have, so I think that's what it does. sometimes it produces a twisted sense of value when I show up the first day to work, which is, I think, I don't think you realize what you're getting here and sometimes it blinds them to the fact that, although those things It's true, I also need you to learn all these things and you still have no experience in life.

So I think the way we interpret that is an entitlement, but what we also see is that when you bring that, young people bring the sense of apparent self-confidence, uh, into the workforce, learning very quickly that, um, work doesn't work the same way as school, it doesn't work the same way, your parents take care of everything for you, what you don't work, what doesn't work. In the same way that today we don't need those skills, we need other skills, what you find is that it can be quite traumatic, um, and you will find that a lot of the self-confidence that they show is actually false and is actually , a very insecure generation that has struggled with coping mechanisms, um, and we're seeing that in Rises of anxiety, depression, you know, uh, and unfortunately, also suicides, um uh, and they lack those human skills that We talked before, so necessary for people to feel.

Trust at work, so I think all that's required, frankly, is empathy and while it would be nice to demand that they feel empathy for us, we've actually been through a bit and seen some things in the world, that's less likely. make it happen and we're supposed to be the most experienced, so I think we have to lead, we have to show empathy, that doesn't mean agreeing, that doesn't mean we can't hold them accountable, but we have to learn to do it. Try to understand the life that they grew up in, which is different than the life that we grew up in and that affects their worldview and their behavior, so I think when you talk about the millennials video, yes, there were some people who were a little angry. and they said things like I know a lot of Millennials who aren't like that, of course, um uh, but what I found was the opposite, which is the enormous number of young people who came to me and said thank you, you're helping me understand. why I'm fighting, there are other circumstances in the world that are affecting me, in other words, what it was was an expression of empathy, which allowed me to try to understand why people keep asking me why.

It is impossible to lead because that video was born from there. 100% of the meetings I had, 100% of the speeches I gave invariably, the first question was: I'm struggling to lead my Millennials, why are they such an unruly generation? so I just absolutely went along for the ride. I think that was very well said. I mean, knowing what Millennials need and creating an environment to support them and therefore get the best out of them. I think it was important, you know. on the topic of getting to know them, you know, one of the things that I'm personally passionate about is asking for help, vulnerability is not a Str, it's not a weakness, it's a strength, you know, in some ways it's easier.

For me, as a CEO of a company, to be vulnerable because I'm not insecure, but to build a culture of vulnerability where everyone can ask for help. Yes, I think it is a great strength. Tell us how organizations can build a culture to thrive in vulnerability. It is a unique opportunity for companies to take the initiative, yes, and make vulnerability a virtue, a strength, and asking for help is a strength and not a weakness, yes, well. Amen, I think there are some number one things that we have to define. the term you know, I think the word vulnerability scares a lot of people, especially in business, no one wants to be vulnerable, no one wants to share their weaknesses, why would they do that?

It will hurt my ability to promote. I don't want to be humiliated. I know, so I think first and foremost we have to define what it means. That's why I like terms like psychological safety or circle of safety, we have to build a circus of safety and I don't need to use the word vulnerable because then we end up having a semantic debate with someone, so when we talk about being in a circle of safety or feeling Psychological safety, or being vulnerable, is what that means and I think we have to be declarative about what that means, as an example.

What it means is that I can raise my hand and say I made a mistake or I don't understand or I don't think I'm trained enough to do the job you're asking me to do or I need help without any fear of humiliation or retribution, I can actually say these things with absolute confidence that someone will rush to support me, whether it's my colleagues or my leader, and we've all been on a team that we've unfortunately been on too. on a team where you will never admit a mistake, you will never admit any gap in intelligence or something you don't know, you will never admit that you don't have enough training, you will never ask for help because you will get humiliated or it affected your promotability um uh and so if we can talk about the fact that we have all been built like this and would rather work in situations like this, so we have to reward that behavior that we have.

We have to use you as an example, so to your point, you know, when you express that you don't know something, you ask for help, that's good, I also think people make a big mistake when expressing vulnerability. expressing weakness is not the same as being weak so, for example, if you sat in a meeting and said uh, no, I don't understand this, um, I need someone to explain this to me, um, no. I understand. No, I don't know, there's no way you're inspiring confidence in your company, but if you just own it, hey, I don't understand a single word of this deck, if someone could explain it to me. because I'm a complete idiot and I don't understand anything in this text, that would be really helpful and if you say it with confidence, if you possess it, it's confidence that inspires, not the expression of weakness, so I think. if you are confident in your weakness, um, and if you set an example, it will allow others to do the same and also reward the behavior, in other words, when someone asks you for help, recognize it, point it out and say Yes, more of that please um, uh, because I think.

Incentive structures and restructurings also affect people's behavior. You know, I'm going to ask you a question that just came to mind and I've never found a good answer for this and I hope you can. The performance appraisal systems at every company I've worked for and every client I've spoken to have been the most controversial, yes, and the most debated topic, yes, and they never put the vulnerable at the top, yes, ya You know, if you write, these are the things I don't do. I don't know that your performance rating will be the lowest, tell us what you think would be the best performance appraisal system, just a philosophy, yeah, in a company, I mean, you know it wasn't in my script, I was just trying to think about it. build something extraordinary for Cognizant and I have never encountered one and I am pretty sure many in the audience will agree that it was the most talked about topic, yes the person you are evaluating always thinks they have done better than what you think, yeah, and you never agree, a small percentage agree with you because you rated them highly, sure, I mean, you're not wrong, tell us, is there a philosophy?

You think the world is unproven, and yes, someone like you. If you know, I think what we are failing is that we are looking for Silver Bullet, we are looking for the evaluation that gets it all and the reality is that there are several things that we are evaluating, generally what we are evaluating are things. that's easy to measure metrics, right, we measure someone's production just because it's easy to measure and just as a side, you know, this influenced a lot of my thinking on the subject, the Navy Seals, uh, which are not far from here in Coronado, um, uh, Navy Seals Within the Navy Seals there is a more Elite group called SEAL Team Six that many of us are familiar with and I had the opportunity to spend some time with the head of training at Seal Te 6 and he I asked a very simple thing.

The question is how do you choose among the Navy Seals who is going to be on SEAL Team Six because they are all amazing and he drew a graph, he drew an xyx AIS graph and on the vertical axis he wrote the word performance and on the horizontal axis he wrote the word trust and the way they define those terms.Performance is defined as how good you are at your job, so I think most of us are familiar with that and confidence is defined. What kind of person you are? What is your character? Clearly, no one wants this person to have low performance and low trust in their team.

Obviously, clearly, everyone wants this person to be a high performer and high trust in their team. What they discovered is that this person here, the high performer and low trust one, is a toxic team member and they would rather be a high trust average performer, sometimes even a high trust low performer; It's a relative scale on high performance low confidence right now, if you look at it in a corporate context, we have a million metrics to measure someone's performance. We measure performance and have negligible or no metrics to measure someone's character or trustworthiness, so what we have is a lot of toxic team members whose performance is so strong that we end up promoting them to be toxic leaders, right?

It's not Measuring performance or output is wrong, that's totally fine, it's just unbalanced, we need something to balance it, so what are we adding to that? I'm a big fan of 360s, frankly, I think the way we do 360s is generally flawed, although the way we do 360s is that we don't put them in anyone's file and we don't use them as a promotional indicator, which We use it as a learning tool and I want to see that your 360 improves over time, it's growth that I want to see and by the way, if you are growing, your teammates like you more and your performance is better, as is performance. of the team, the way we do it and it's a way, it's not the way, but we've modified it and we like, um, you take the group of people that you work with, um, so, your core team, so It has nothing to do with you, just engineers or just the market, like you have regular interaction with your team. um and each person fills out a very simple form what are your three biggest weaknesses what are three specific examples of your biggest weaknesses or areas that you think need the most improvement you have to write three specific things and then what are the three specific examples of the areas in the ones you have grown the most or your natural strengths and you give three specific examples, we compare them, we give them to them and then we sit in a meeting and each person, one by one, has to read out loud their weaknesses and the rest. of us can add to the list and you can say nothing but thank you and we give you a little preamble that begins by saying: "these feedback sessions are for your benefit, we care about you, we want to see you grow." As a human being, we want to see you grow as a team member, and the people in this room would rather not do this exercise because the things they want to say to you are really uncomfortable for them, but they're going to come together. the courage to do it because they care about you so say thank you if you don't agree with something then put it aside and get rid of it it's okay if it provokes you if it makes you angry it's probably true uh and that's why he's the only person you you are allowed to record it is the person who receives feedback if you want to take notes later um and you do your three biggest you do this on your form you said we do this yeah, we do your three weaknesses and then anyone can add to the list and you can just say thank you uh and if you go, thank you, we'll close that out pretty quickly uh and then the nice thing is you do your three forces and anyone can add to that list and what you discover is that you have blind spots, but you also discover that you have an impact positive in the lives of people you didn't even know you had and it's quite magical, the tears that happen usually happen with positive things. um it's very difficult to do it the first time because it's a vulnerable environment, but as time goes on it gets easier and people start to really enjoy it and there are variations.

Depending on the weather, we've also changed where you do it and then you invite three people to come and do it. You just make programming easier, but yeah, we really like them, so we're constantly looking for ways to keep the quantitative and qualitative a little more balanced. I'm going to add a quick comment, I ask you. Comment it. I'm going to say something that is again an area that I've worked deeply on, but then I'll open it up for questions and answers, you know, one of the things that always inspires me. new discontinuity that arises with AI, you know?

The technologies of the past have created a divide. I mean, look at the United States. We have 8 million open jobs, there are only 5 million humans available for those jobs, and there are 4 million people leaving every month. jobs because they don't see upward social mobility in jobs. uh these are people who work for over 20 bucks an hour their whole lives so they're fed up they don't see the American dream so they just walk they just walk. from one job to another, so these are the 4 million 4 million jobs a month is a third of the US workforce they just leave jobs.

I think we have this greater discontinuity of AI coming into the picture, it will eliminate jobs of the past. create upward social mobility in jobs because you can take the path up because those jobs would be done by machines so no one needs to do them so I'm very optimistic about the fact that that upward social mobility is a lifetime opportunity . For us, I don't know if you had any comments on that and I think the social division that, as you know, was caused in many ways by digital technologies, including our education system, I mean, you know education is the biggest barrier to get good jobs and education has to become so expensive, I mean, it's a 200% increase in the cost of education in the last 20 years, so I'm very hopeful that we'll see this opportunity, a unique opportunity to close that gap.

I don't know if you had any comments, so I think one of the problems the industry has is narrative and it is very common when engineers, scientists or mathematicians are responsible for sending messages, they are not good at it and we probably have more anthropologists now . You and I sociologists talked yesterday about the combination of AI because if machines are going to solve the problem, the new human effort will be to find new problems, surely which will need a different cognitive diversity, but we are still I agree, but there is still someone that you need to be responsible for the storytelling and the marketing of whatever and you, you just know, climate change is good.

One of the mistakes of climate change is that we let scientists do the messaging and they called it global warming and people like global warming, this is the coldest winter we've ever had, you know, and we messed up the messaging for so long that created a conflict, created a conflict, another one that has had. a complete failure of messaging is crypto and and and blockchain like most people have no idea what you're talking about and everything it does and and when people don't understand fear is always the reaction um and I think the AI is now the next thing is I think there's an underlying messaging problem and there's a lack of empathy in the way we message that you know all these jobs can be replaced, as an analogy, you know it's like people well. intentional about climate change to come to a town in Ohio and say, "Okay, all you coal miners, this has to be solar," and what you're forgetting is that this coal miner, his father was a coal miner and his father's father was a coal miner, and all I know is coal mining. and this is how I raise my family and this is how I pay my bills and you come and tell me I have to replace him so he can be more upwardly mobile or something and what I want what I can hear is what am I going to do and I think that all providers of good technology and good intentions have to be empathetic to the people who receive these messages and understand the situations they are in and then you will have less rejection, but I, you know, it's very good to talk about Bright Futures, but we have to consider the people who are on the receiving end of this, so well said, so let me open it up for any of you to ask questions to Simon, there's one here, yeah, go ahead, I can, I can shout out the question, sure. , forward.

I think thank you, this has been going around saying we should do it, we shouldn't do it, but I'll do it. let's turn on the lights in the house, please, that's possible, better, yes, no, no, I can see it, thank you, yes, now, so my point is why don't we talk about the culture of growth in a year rather than performance as an individual? We always talk. about how your job went, but if we say, hey, what's your trajectory? You're going to work in your life for 30, 40, 20 years, where do you want to be at the end of your retirement?

Are you adding any value to your career? measure that as one of the Ved in performance because if he's not doing well for himself, he can't do well for companies, so I think philosophically he's 100% right. I think one of the challenges is that most companies and we've seen this over the course of the last few decades, most companies don't have the patience to grow their people properly, so this is nonsense Jack Welch Milton Milton Friedman, which are companies that become more short-term. driven quarterly or at best annually and I have no patience to wait and help you on your growth journey.

I need my growth and you made my numbers, um, reminds me of Gary, uh, uh, Ridge, he used to be the CEO. from uh um WD40 is also a relatively local company um I was on an analyst call and the analyst said Gary, you missed your numbers and he says no, my numbers are fine. I missed your numbers um uh, but you have to hand it to Gary that he has a company that invests in like if you're in a

leadership

career, they teach you how to coach, they teach you how to coach and they've invested in their people and they understand that performance of people does not always coincide with the arbitrary numbers of the arbitrary career dates. our companies and he has the institutional patience to allow someone to embark on a growth journey with its ups and downs, even if that means they have to suffer in the short term because he recognizes that in the long term they will benefit, which, by the way, they have .

It's a very, very high performing organization, so I think not until the incentive structures and the intentions of the company align with the desire for our people to really grow, because we mean we talk about reviews, no, this is the problem. annual reviews right, I'm not actually reviewing your year. I'm looking back at the last two months that I can remember and the last two months sucked even though the P of the previous 10 months were amazing right and that's why I like it quarterly or at least. At least semi-annual reviews, at least then I can see growth and I will reward more than absolute growth, so someone who is high performing, high performing, high performing is actually less valuable to me than someone who is demonstrating some kind of growth because you may be a high performer, but I but everyone hates working with you, are you demonstrating any kind of growth anywhere, even if it's not in a performance and companies are not equipped or patient for it?

I would love to see it yes, yes, more of that, I think, I think. us, but I think it starts with us as individual leaders, if we create that culture and a group, if we hold our leaders responsible for growing their team members, it would work better for companies, of course, yes, humans are responsible to establish cultures. from the Simon Yesa organization, okay, they told me it's my turn, yes, yes, everything is fine, what I have learned is that if you have the microphone, I have the microphone, so I have to ask the question, so First, big fan of yours.

Thanks, I get your daily notes for inspiration and I read one of those that says chaos is needed for innovation. Yes, structure makes those ideas useful. It's true now, in the current age of AI. Companies need a good balance between chaos and structure. Yes, it is very difficult to do for large companies as you know you work with many global companies. Have you seen good examples of companies that can balance and foster a culture of chaos and innovation? If so, what are some of the success criteria? making that so it's not apples to apples, which means you can't live in chaos all the time, right, that would be unsustainable, but you can't live in a strict structure all the time because what you get is government. bureaucracy, right, and my definition of bureaucracy or bureaucrat is someone who doesn't care, right, um, and you can't have that either because it will kill innovation and the status quo, it will prosper, um, and then what you want is In other In other words, whether you're working on a project or something new is happening, you put it outside the structurecorporate, um and uh uh, and you take it out of the bureaucracy and allow them to play around and break things too.

I think sometimes we reward, we want to reward behavior as an initiative, but very often we only reward output performance. I'll give you a simple example. So I was young in my career. I worked. for a big advertising agency, a big marketing company, and we had a big new business presentation on New Year's, it was December, and what was traditional is that all the senior executives did the business presentation, but it was Christmas, so everyone They went on vacation and me and another person Junior left us in the office and told us to prepare the War Room, uh, for when they come back, so they can do the presentation, which basically means hanging the research on the walls.

Well, that took an hour, um and we still had a week, so we decided to do the presentation ourselves, I mean, we went through all the research that we did, we reviewed it, we came up with some ideas and we wrote the presentation, we wrote the presentation and when the executives returned, we presented it. our work and they used Our Deck in the launch which was amazing, they actually used our strategy and we lost the business, we didn't win the launch and I got a big promotion, my boss promoted me two levels. I skipped a level because he didn't reward my performance, he was rewarding my behavior because he saw the initiative I took and wanted more of that, so I think that's a big part too, if you want innovation you have to reward the type of behavior that generate.

Innovation, but if we only reward performance, all we will get is people taking safe roads because they want the result, so I think you need to recognize the reward, the type of behavior you want, thanks for answering my question, there is a conflict in the organization where the leaders who have been there have had their own career path and acceleration and then you have these young employees who come in and perform better and their path to progression is much faster than that of the leaders, yes they are part of how you balance that as an organization, so, this is first and foremost, I think I think it's a Many leaders don't know that their job is the right one, and I mean this, when we're very young in our careers, our Companies give us tons of training to do our job, so that we are good at our job, obviously, and Some of us even get advanced degrees so that we are good at our job and if you are good at your job you get promoted to a position in the one where you are now responsible for people doing the work you used to do, but we don't give them education on how to lead, so we just expect people to know how to lead and we don't give them education.

I wouldn't go to see a doctor who is uneducated, why would I follow a leader who is uneducated? And then what happens? This is because you have given me no, you haven't even given me a definition of what a leader is, you just told me that I am in charge, well that makes you an authority, not a leader, leadership is an incredible responsibility. to see those around us get better at your job is no longer doing the job your job is to see that those around you are better at the job than you based on all that amazing experience you had, it's a completely different skill set and therefore, What you find is a There are a lot of people who are insecure, so they're going to micromanage you or tell you what to do because I actually know how to do your job better, that's what got me promoted and we were very uncomfortable with the fact that someone doesn't like it.

I had to do it that way, you're going to have to do it, what I had to do for my five years, there's no way you're going to go faster if I have someone smart and talented who goes faster than I want to encourage that which makes me the leader is that I am going to build the best team around me and the reason they will follow me and not try to stab me in the back is because they see me offering that grow grow, they see me offering that circle of safety, they see me offering them an ear when they're struggling or when they need help, I'm regulating when to step in and help and when to let them figure it out themselves and they know as a parent I'm always there to support uh and we don't tell the leaders what their role is, which is to lead the people and two, we are not educating leaders on how we lead and that is why we are going to get leaders who are going to stifle young minds because of our own insecurities we are all guilty of it we are all guilty of it several times we are running out of De Once in a while, one last compelling question anyone has for some of my favorite leaders is the ones who say: These guys are a lot smarter than me.

I don't even understand this world, but I will do my best to see it. every single one of them is a rock star you know those are my favorites I love them hey Simon since you shared you know the need for connection yeah and for humans to come together at work and then all the story about the takeover of millennials and genz. which you know, advising on connectivity, insecurity and now with AI, as well as removing some of the lower level roles where people are trained and how to work together, all this work from home and from Office Tobit, yeah, already You know, we have the whole spectrum. depending on the companies that go from one extreme to the other extreme and between what your position is and how you see that type of development, you know, yeah, so I think about it a little bit differently, um, most of these things we think about selfishly.

It's where I want to work well and I think about all this Acts of Service stuff, so first of all, we all know that the value of this event is not what happens on stage, as fun as the values ​​of the event are. that you're seeing friends you haven't seen in a long time, you're meeting new people, you're going to talk to people at mealtime, you're going to stand next to them at the buffet and you're going to create friendships where you can actually call people like, Hey, I'm going through this, what do you like? It's this that makes these events coincide because there isn't a single thing we're doing on stage that you couldn't see online, so why do you show up because you want this right?

And I am a little. I have a different point of view when I talk about it as an act of service, so, for example, we know that when you go. to an online workforce, let me take a step back, we know that in-person work really favored extroverts, we know this well and we know that many introverts suffered at work and then when we were all sent home, the introverts said This is the best right and all the extroverts really suffered, so when we say, "Hey everyone, go back to work," all the introverts say no, no, no, I work better at home, right? and the answer is great, except for the fact that there are other people here too and you have to do it as active duty, which yes, I work better at home, but I will go to the office from time to time because I know it's the right thing for those who work differently than me and extroverts to say.

I know I want everyone to go back to work because I like it, but I recognize that some people need space to do their work separately, so I'm going to allow flexibility at work, and so I think, as an act of mutual service, We all have to let go a little of what we want. There is the combined problem of young people who started their careers or who early in their careers tried working from home and think. It's the best thing in the world, except for the fact that some are suffering from serious mental fitness problems.

I don't use the term mental health. I don't like the term mental health because mental health sounds like a standard that you have. to achieve and most of us feel like you either have it or you don't. I believe in mental fitness which is something you have to constantly work on and they are suffering from serious mental fitness challenges and the anxiety is getting worse. They come to work, they get scared and they say: you see, I can never go to work without failing to recognize that it is being at home that creates the anxiety, so I think we have to find mechanisms to get people back to work or move on. time together, doing a lot of external sites, whatever it is, because I think 100% distributed work is bad for people, but I consider it active as a service CA, I think we have to leave it. go a little bit of what we want for the good of others and for the good of the team thank you very much Simon what a wonderful

conversation

A round of applause for Simon thank you very much I really appreciate it thank you very much