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uh let me just make sure my technology's
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working if my slides could go up
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somewhere perfect my microphone's on i'm
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in stockholm right today stockholm all
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right thanks for coming so
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i live in new york right near fjord
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like you live near a fjord fjord is a
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tidal estuary saltwater going one way
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and the other brackish day by day
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year by year millennia by millennia it
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carves a hole through rock
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and that's how we got taught to run our
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organizations
00:00:31
do it and then do it again and then do
00:00:34
it again and that hard work repeated
00:00:36
over time consistently can build you a
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really big fjord
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but i came today
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to talk about
00:00:46
bike racing in italy
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now here's a video actual footage of a
00:00:50
guy losing a bike race and he discovers
00:00:53
that doing the same thing over and over
00:00:55
again isn't really the best method and
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that perhaps
00:00:59
if he tried to use aerodynamics a little
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differently to play by a different set
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of rules
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he could figure out how on the downhill
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he could get ahead of everybody else and
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this idea that innovation might pay off
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now and then
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leads us to a whole bunch of thinking
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about management and what we ought to do
00:01:21
next thinking
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that's confusing so i came to talk about
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the confusion i came to talk about the
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fact that we got a whole bunch of it
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wrong
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and that it's possible
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and there's an imperative that we think
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about it differently so
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i've only given this talk once before so
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it's a little disjointed but i hope it's
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going to plant some seeds under your
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skin and make you think about it the
00:01:44
first big idea is this
00:01:46
leadership and management are different
00:01:48
things leadership is not management and
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vice versa management dates back to
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henry ford to scientific management to
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frederick taylor to the idea that if we
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could build a job where an obedient
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person can do it and create value we
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could pay people a lot henry ford was
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able to go to the workers of detroit and
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give them a 10x raise in one day because
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he said if you come on the assembly line
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and do what i tell you to
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i'll pay you a lot of money and that
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spread it spread to the idea that we
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could use it to make truffles and
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chocolates because as long as we get the
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system working efficiently we're fine
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right and it went from there to another
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food business this is one of my
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favorites this is uh somewhere in india
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they didn't have enough room to put the
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place where the guy rolls next to the
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place where the guy cooks and so this is
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brilliant management engineering because
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one person took an innovation and then
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figured out how to make the system more
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efficient
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you might not notice because there's no
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sound but when he click when he hits
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when he's about to throw it he hits the
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rolling pin so the guy knows to get
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ready anyway
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what we discovered then is that big
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factories
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are more efficient than little ones big
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organizations where people are doing
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what they're told work the river rouge
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plant that ford built was so big it took
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all day to get from one side to the
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other that this idea that there's a
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top-down method
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not only works for cars it works for
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almost everything so this is a old slide
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eight years ago
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how far every person in the united
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states lives from a mcdonald's
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now you can imagine that now it's even
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more yellow and less dark because
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mcdonald's figured out that management
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works then a mcdonald's manager is not
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supposed to innovate not supposed to
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start selling spaghetti during the slow
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times to see what happens that the job
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of people at mcdonald's is to crank it
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out that cranking it out and doing what
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we're told again and again
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that works
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until it doesn't
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and when the world changes
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we're in trouble
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when the world changes management always
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fails because we don't understand how to
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go forward and that's fine you say i
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don't live on easter island it's fine i
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don't have a book depository well it's
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not fine if say for example
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you used to work in newspaper publishing
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because you can see what happened it's
00:04:13
not fine if you used to be a travel
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agent because you can see what happened
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it's not fine if you're one of the four
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million people who drive a truck in the
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united states for a living because
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self-driving cars and it's not fine if
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you live on the planet earth and the
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weather changes
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because the thing is the world is
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changing whether you want it to or not
00:04:30
and it's changing faster than ever
00:04:33
before
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so in the face of all of that change
00:04:37
we're not going to be able to manage our
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way out of it
00:04:41
we're gonna have to lead and leadership
00:04:43
is not the same as management okay so
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the next idea
00:04:48
is that
00:04:49
responsibility and authority are
00:04:52
different things that managers need
00:04:54
authority they tell people what to do
00:04:57
but leaders
00:04:59
leaders need to take
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responsibility so i'll give you a little
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example
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if you do a google search for the great
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arturo toscanini you have to type in the
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great arturo toscanini you get all these
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pictures of the maestro he was the most
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famous and important music conductor uh
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of the 40s 50s in the united states he
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worked with disney he was the conductor
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of the nbc orchestra so when he recorded
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beethoven's fifth
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he could record it like this
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it's a dirge it's slow it's a chance for
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the great man to show everyone that he
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knows exactly what he's doing and it
00:05:40
became the standard that's the way it's
00:05:42
supposed to sound
00:05:44
well my friend ben zander who is not
00:05:47
the self-appointed great ben zander who
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has no fancy job who has no fancy
00:05:52
orchestra he recorded a version of
00:05:54
beethoven's fifth recently and it
00:05:55
sounded like this
00:06:00
and people say that's wrong
00:06:01
it's too fast how dare you
00:06:04
well ben can point out that's the way
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beethoven wrote it
00:06:07
but the thing is the how dare you part
00:06:10
is really interesting because he has no
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authority
00:06:14
the key is he's taking responsibility
00:06:17
he's saying
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it's on me i did the math i did the
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research if you don't like it you don't
00:06:23
have to follow but it's on me
00:06:27
the great victor frankel said that one
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of the problems with the united states
00:06:30
is that we have a statue of liberty but
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we don't have a statue of responsibility
00:06:37
and this is the reason
00:06:38
why people have trouble
00:06:40
stopping being managers and starting to
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do leadership
00:06:46
that managers say do this because i said
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so
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and leaders are able to say let's go
00:06:52
over there who wants to come
00:06:55
that if you've got a special hat
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that says you're the boss
00:06:59
you're probably a manager
00:07:01
but that what leaders are able to do
00:07:03
what leaders are required to do is not
00:07:05
ask or demand authority
00:07:08
but insist on taking responsibility
00:07:11
so when we talk about lean and we've
00:07:12
been talking about it a lot it's sort of
00:07:14
a failure parade today the word lean
00:07:17
actually means wrong
00:07:19
that what it means
00:07:21
to manage or lead or organize or do
00:07:25
anything with lean is that you are
00:07:27
willing to be wrong that's all it means
00:07:30
so you know those meetings you complain
00:07:31
about all the time the ones where
00:07:33
everyone has to wear color-coded clothes
00:07:35
and sit there pretending that they are
00:07:36
paying attention for hours in a row why
00:07:39
do we have those meetings we have those
00:07:41
meetings
00:07:43
so that we can just wait out everybody
00:07:45
else until someone else will finally
00:07:47
take responsibility because if that's
00:07:49
not what we're trying to do why don't we
00:07:50
just send a memo
00:07:52
there's nothing actually happening in
00:07:54
the meeting other than
00:07:56
people absolving themselves
00:07:58
of responsibility
00:08:00
we got taught this and a lot of other
00:08:02
things about management in school
00:08:05
education is not the same as school
00:08:09
it used to be similar but now that they
00:08:11
are very different right that we go
00:08:13
to school
00:08:15
to take standardized tests to get good
00:08:17
grades to get into a famous college so
00:08:20
we can go to the placement office and
00:08:21
get picked by a company to do a steady
00:08:24
job and go to those meetings and absolve
00:08:26
ourselves of responsibility and then one
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day get authority so that we can be in
00:08:30
charge
00:08:32
school was invented by industrialists by
00:08:35
the very people you work for it was
00:08:37
invented
00:08:39
a 100 years ago 150 years ago because we
00:08:41
didn't have enough compliant factory
00:08:44
workers it's too hard
00:08:46
to get somebody who's grown up running
00:08:49
through the woods solving their own
00:08:51
problems figuring out interesting stuff
00:08:52
it's too hard to get that person to come
00:08:54
to work for nine hours a day in a dark
00:08:56
room doing the same thing over and over
00:08:57
again so we invented school
00:09:00
so they'd be ready
00:09:02
but we don't educate people
00:09:05
we don't teach them to solve interesting
00:09:07
problems we don't teach them to lead
00:09:10
and as a result by the time you get to
00:09:12
work of course
00:09:14
you're surprised disappointed angry and
00:09:17
upset
00:09:18
that you have to do that other stuff
00:09:21
because we forgot
00:09:23
to help you understand something else is
00:09:25
going on here
00:09:26
the alternative is to see what happens
00:09:28
see what happens if you don't
00:09:31
see what happens if you do when you
00:09:33
think about being leaders so that
00:09:34
meeting that meeting you hate what if
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you just didn't go
00:09:38
what if you just didn't show up and did
00:09:40
something important instead
00:09:42
so those people that you're constantly
00:09:44
harassing with your marketing material
00:09:47
would they miss you if you were gone
00:09:49
what if you showed up as a human
00:09:51
instead of a pawn in a giant corporate
00:09:54
system what if you figured out how to
00:09:56
take responsibility this is the hard
00:09:59
part
00:10:00
because you don't want to be wrong we
00:10:03
taught you that in school you don't want
00:10:05
to take responsibility we taught you
00:10:07
that in school but what eric has pointed
00:10:09
out what this whole lean thing is about
00:10:11
what innovation is
00:10:14
is the repeated process of being wrong
00:10:16
learning from it taking responsibility
00:10:19
and doing it again
00:10:21
so
00:10:22
i have a surprisingly large number of
00:10:23
sports references in my talk i'm not
00:10:25
exactly sure how they snuck in but
00:10:26
here's one of them they play this game
00:10:28
in the united states football this is
00:10:30
the army navy game from this year and
00:10:33
what you see here is uh navy's behind by
00:10:36
one point there's a few seconds left in
00:10:38
the game and bennett mooring is the
00:10:40
kicker if he gets it in
00:10:42
they win if he gets it
00:10:44
wrong they lose well he missed it
00:10:47
and at the press conference afterwards
00:10:50
bennett mooring did something stunning
00:10:52
he said
00:10:53
one it's my fault it's not the weather
00:10:56
it's not the center it's nothing i just
00:10:58
missed it and two
00:11:01
i wish we had won but i'm glad it
00:11:02
happened because i learned a lot
00:11:06
from the process
00:11:07
that we just went through
00:11:09
isn't that what education's supposed to
00:11:11
do we don't have a trophy shortage we
00:11:13
have a shortage of people who haven't
00:11:15
figured out how to learn from what
00:11:18
happens
00:11:19
and that's what we can teach our kids
00:11:21
and that's what we can teach our
00:11:22
co-workers and yes that's what we can
00:11:24
teach ourselves
00:11:25
okay veering a little bit to the side
00:11:27
here
00:11:28
the next thing that we make get wrong is
00:11:31
this idea of what quality is
00:11:34
and what to do about it
00:11:36
the first thing i'll do is help you
00:11:38
understand that quality actually means
00:11:39
something it doesn't mean deluxeness it
00:11:42
doesn't mean fanciness it doesn't mean
00:11:44
expensive
00:11:45
quality means meeting spec
00:11:48
doing what it's supposed to do exactly
00:11:50
what it's supposed to do that's what
00:11:51
managers do
00:11:53
managers make sure we meet spec
00:11:56
and i gotta tell you quality is now the
00:11:58
easy part
00:12:00
you're holding in your hand a eight
00:12:02
hundred dollar device
00:12:04
that's impossibly complicated and it
00:12:06
works every time you get in your car and
00:12:09
you're able to drive almost anywhere you
00:12:11
want to go with no fear of it breaking
00:12:14
down that you get on an airplane and you
00:12:16
know it's not going to crash that we've
00:12:19
solved so much of what used to be a
00:12:21
giant issue that we built management
00:12:23
around
00:12:24
you can thank this guy edwards deming
00:12:27
edwards went in the 40s and 50s to the
00:12:29
car companies in the united states and
00:12:31
he said to them you have a huge quality
00:12:33
problem your cars suck and the reason
00:12:36
they suck is that the tolerances are
00:12:38
really poor everything barely fits
00:12:39
together
00:12:41
and the reason for that is the way you
00:12:43
make the cars and i can help you
00:12:45
and so ford and chrysler and gm said to
00:12:48
him
00:12:49
go away
00:12:51
so he went to japan
00:12:53
and that's why toyota cars are the best
00:12:56
cars in the world for the money it's why
00:12:58
in 1985 a toyota corolla was better than
00:13:02
a rolls royce at quality
00:13:04
because it met spec the highest award a
00:13:07
manufacturer in japan can win is the
00:13:08
edwards deming medal
00:13:10
because he figured out something really
00:13:12
important an idea that has been stolen
00:13:14
by the lean management
00:13:15
movement and the idea is pretty simple
00:13:18
the way it used to work
00:13:20
is there's a hundred parts in the bin
00:13:23
the car's coming down the assembly line
00:13:25
the worker grabs a part
00:13:27
screws it in if it doesn't fit you know
00:13:29
what he does with it
00:13:31
throws it in the discard bin and grabs
00:13:33
another part because don't slow down the
00:13:34
assembly line keep it moving
00:13:38
deming said that's wrong
00:13:40
get rid of all the extra parts there's
00:13:42
only one piece in the bin maybe two
00:13:45
every time the worker picks out a piece
00:13:48
the person from the factory next door
00:13:49
that makes the piece runs over and puts
00:13:51
another one in so if the piece doesn't
00:13:53
fit what happens
00:13:55
you got to turn off the assembly line
00:13:56
stop the whole thing that's heresy in
00:13:59
detroit stop the whole thing here's the
00:14:02
question how many times do you think
00:14:04
they have to stop the whole assembly
00:14:05
line before that part gets a lot better
00:14:08
it takes about a day
00:14:10
and now the parts fit perfectly
00:14:12
and so management got really good at
00:14:15
this quality thing
00:14:18
but we don't need to be really good at
00:14:19
anymore because we have ai because we
00:14:21
have robots because we have low paid
00:14:23
labor and the fact is that never again
00:14:25
are the nordic countries going to win
00:14:28
because you're better at quality than
00:14:30
everybody else it's not going to happen
00:14:32
you can't manage your way there no the
00:14:34
alternative is excellence
00:14:37
and excellence is different than quality
00:14:39
my friend tom peters coined it of course
00:14:40
and in search of excellence excellence
00:14:42
is this
00:14:44
if a human who cared
00:14:47
were here what would she do
00:14:50
in this customer service setting in this
00:14:52
setting where we're making a decision in
00:14:54
this setting where we have a choice
00:14:56
what would someone who cares do
00:14:59
because you've met a receptionist who
00:15:01
cares and you've met a clerk who cares
00:15:03
and you've met a ceo who cares in that
00:15:06
moment
00:15:07
so excellence is about leadership it's
00:15:10
not about management
00:15:11
leadership is solving interesting
00:15:13
problems seeking them out
00:15:15
and deciding to solve them even if
00:15:17
they're not on your agenda because
00:15:19
managers are the ones who are slaves to
00:15:22
their agenda
00:15:23
an education story for you guy gets a
00:15:26
job as a teacher he's assigned to a
00:15:29
really really poor neighborhood in
00:15:31
florida
00:15:32
he shows up and most of the kids who are
00:15:35
10 or 12 years old don't know how to
00:15:37
read
00:15:38
they hate the textbook it's vaguely
00:15:40
racist it's completely irrelevant
00:15:43
he says to the students
00:15:46
give me back the textbooks and he takes
00:15:47
them away not on his agenda not even his
00:15:50
problem
00:15:51
he then buys a bunch of cheap black and
00:15:54
white cameras and sends the kids home
00:15:56
and says take pictures of your life
00:15:58
they come back with the film
00:16:00
and he gets them in the dark room
00:16:01
teaches them how to develop the film and
00:16:03
then they take the pictures and he says
00:16:05
to them
00:16:06
write these stories write down these
00:16:08
stories
00:16:09
and the kids say to him we don't know
00:16:10
how to write
00:16:12
and so
00:16:13
they learn
00:16:14
because they want to the idea of writing
00:16:17
our own story without an agenda
00:16:20
being the designers of what happens next
00:16:23
not being a pawn in the system
00:16:26
that's part of what it means to be lean
00:16:28
because first you take responsibility
00:16:29
then you find the interesting problem
00:16:31
and then you are willing to fail on the
00:16:33
way to do it
00:16:34
so the other thing that's going on in
00:16:36
the nordic countries
00:16:37
is you understand design i mean just
00:16:39
drinking out of this glass is better
00:16:41
than drinking out of a typical glass
00:16:44
but to understand what it is to do
00:16:47
design it's not about being pretty you
00:16:49
can design software you can design
00:16:51
pricing you can design a system
00:16:54
is to ask two questions who's it for and
00:16:56
what's it for because who's it for the
00:16:58
answer is never everyone if it's for
00:17:01
everyone you have already failed and the
00:17:03
what's it for what change are you
00:17:05
seeking to make
00:17:07
this journey you want the customer to go
00:17:09
on whether the customer is a co-worker
00:17:11
or someone who's buying from you or a
00:17:12
student
00:17:14
who's it for and what's it for
00:17:17
and now that we live in a world where
00:17:18
there are seven billion people and two
00:17:20
billion of them are connected to you by
00:17:22
a click
00:17:23
you get to pick who it's for and the
00:17:25
more specific you are the better you are
00:17:27
and the more specific you are and the
00:17:29
change you seek to make the more likely
00:17:31
it is that people will find you
00:17:33
so this is george heilmeier he invented
00:17:36
the lcd screen and he was the head of
00:17:38
darpa and he put together this list
00:17:41
years ago that i'll share with you you
00:17:42
can take a quick picture if you want to
00:17:43
look at it later here are questions you
00:17:46
can ask yourself as a designer
00:17:48
right we get to do it with intention we
00:17:52
get to do it on purpose
00:17:54
if we want to
00:17:56
we can make change happen
00:17:58
and the only reason you're not making
00:18:00
more change happen is because you're
00:18:02
afraid and you're afraid because you
00:18:03
don't want to take responsibility
00:18:05
and that can lead to writer's block
00:18:08
writer's block of course is just a
00:18:09
variation of leader's block
00:18:12
i don't have any good ideas i don't know
00:18:14
what to do next i don't have a voice
00:18:16
inside of me i don't know
00:18:18
well i got to tell you a little bit of
00:18:20
the background of writer's block some of
00:18:23
you have heard of percy shelly sort of a
00:18:25
hack poet not very good poet who lived
00:18:27
about 150 years ago percy shelley had a
00:18:30
wife her name was mary she was an
00:18:33
amazing writer
00:18:35
mary shelley gave us frankenstein which
00:18:37
lives on to this day
00:18:39
but back to percy
00:18:41
percy invented writer's block he wrote a
00:18:43
poem about sometimes the fact that the
00:18:45
muse doesn't speak to you that it's not
00:18:47
up to the poet to write poetry it's up
00:18:49
to the gods to speak to the poet and
00:18:52
maybe he'll write some poetry this is a
00:18:54
stupid idea and it spread from percy to
00:18:56
other poets who were looking for a way
00:18:58
to hide and then it's spread to
00:18:59
novelists and then it's spread to
00:19:00
surfers and everybody else in the world
00:19:03
and this idea
00:19:05
of writer's block is insane because
00:19:06
plumbers don't get plumber's block
00:19:10
you know how to talk write down what you
00:19:12
want to say you're done there's no such
00:19:14
thing as talker's block so there's no
00:19:16
such thing as writer's block and when it
00:19:18
comes to being a leader
00:19:20
what you need to understand is it's not
00:19:22
something you're born with
00:19:24
it's something you choose to do so why
00:19:27
is everyone so afraid of jeff bezos and
00:19:28
the next thing he's going to do and the
00:19:29
next thing he's going to do and the next
00:19:30
thing he's going to do it's simple he
00:19:32
doesn't have leader's block
00:19:34
he figured out a cycle and he just does
00:19:37
it over and over and over again and the
00:19:40
same thing's true for the career of
00:19:42
steve jobs
00:19:43
he just decided to do it he moved
00:19:45
forward past the fear and did it and i
00:19:48
understand this is hard this is a real
00:19:51
sign who else's risk are you supposed to
00:19:53
play at exactly
00:19:58
so it's the only picture of me in the
00:19:59
presentation i'll let you guess which
00:20:00
one's me i'm the least happy person
00:20:03
who's ever played hockey in my life now
00:20:05
in in the history of the world so
00:20:08
i had hair the the thing is
00:20:12
there are two things you need to know
00:20:13
about hockey the first one is to be good
00:20:16
at hockey you need to know what to do
00:20:17
next you need to figure out where the
00:20:18
puck is going you need to be smart i
00:20:21
confess i was sort of good at that but
00:20:23
the second thing much to my dad chagrin
00:20:25
he was coach the second thing is you got
00:20:28
to be willing to get hit
00:20:30
that hockey doesn't work if every time
00:20:33
someone else is going for the puck you
00:20:34
run away i was that was me right the
00:20:37
point is
00:20:39
leadership is similar that's why i began
00:20:41
with this idea of being wrong
00:20:44
and leading of taking responsibility
00:20:46
because you're gonna get hit if you
00:20:48
don't care enough to get hit you can't
00:20:50
be a leader
00:20:53
management on the other hand has
00:20:55
constantly drilled into your three
00:20:56
emotions because that's how it controls
00:20:58
you beginning in first grade fear shame
00:21:02
and anger that managers use fear shame
00:21:05
and anger to get you to do what they
00:21:08
want you to do
00:21:10
and we don't have to live that way
00:21:13
anymore we've been brainwashed to live
00:21:15
that way but it's not required and in
00:21:16
fact it's essential
00:21:18
for the future of this nation this
00:21:20
economy this world
00:21:22
that we figure out
00:21:25
how to lead instead
00:21:27
so i said brainwashed i don't take it
00:21:29
lightly how many of you heard the story
00:21:31
of icarus and daedalus everyone right
00:21:33
you banished to a desert island by the
00:21:35
gods
00:21:36
to live out their lives but daedalus is
00:21:38
an inventor he gets a bunch of feathers
00:21:40
he fashions them into wings
00:21:42
he puts him on the back of icarus with
00:21:44
wax he says my son
00:21:46
we're flying out of here but don't fly
00:21:48
too high don't disobey your father do
00:21:51
what you are told because if you fly too
00:21:54
high
00:21:56
the wax will melt and you will surely
00:21:58
perish and we all know the punch line
00:22:00
icarus gets uppity icarus has hubris
00:22:03
icarus disobeys management flies too
00:22:06
high and dies
00:22:09
except that wasn't the story in 1700 or
00:22:12
1500 or 1200 or for a thousand years
00:22:15
before that they changed it
00:22:18
you can look it up i'm not making this
00:22:20
up
00:22:21
they changed it the original story was
00:22:23
just like that
00:22:24
and had one more sentence at the end
00:22:27
but more important my son
00:22:30
said daedalus
00:22:32
don't fly too low
00:22:34
because if you fly too low the water and
00:22:37
the mist will weigh down your wings and
00:22:40
you will surely perish
00:22:43
and we are guilty of flying too low
00:22:46
we are flying too low because we
00:22:48
believed the managers we believe the
00:22:51
industrialists we think it's not our
00:22:53
turn and we are afraid
00:22:56
we are afraid to bring our humanity and
00:22:58
our excellence to work
00:23:00
so there's this term soft skills i hate
00:23:02
this term because it diminishes them
00:23:04
they should be called real skills
00:23:07
that what we need when we are hiring
00:23:09
people
00:23:10
isn't the fact that they can code one
00:23:12
percent better or that they can lift one
00:23:14
more pound we're looking for something
00:23:16
else
00:23:17
so my late friend and teacher
00:23:20
zig ziglar in 1970 postulated something
00:23:24
that may sound familiar zig said
00:23:27
i want you to imagine that there's this
00:23:28
computer somewhere
00:23:30
and you could type in it all the
00:23:31
attributes you're looking for in a new
00:23:34
hire
00:23:35
for a new boss
00:23:36
for a new co-worker for someone to work
00:23:38
for you even for a spouse
00:23:40
what attributes you looking for if you
00:23:41
typed them into this magical computer it
00:23:44
could find somebody for you yes zig
00:23:46
ziglar invented the internet and
00:23:48
linkedin
00:23:50
so let's try it
00:23:52
if you could come up with the attributes
00:23:54
what would you pick i'll give you a
00:23:56
couple
00:23:58
loyal fearless connected engaged yell
00:24:00
out a couple for me
00:24:02
attributes you're looking for in the
00:24:03
perfect boss co-worker employee
00:24:08
keep going
00:24:09
creative
00:24:12
trustworthy
00:24:14
keep going
00:24:16
excellent one more
00:24:18
fantastic so i got them all right there
00:24:20
for you
00:24:24
and
00:24:25
i'm sure we could come up with 40 more
00:24:28
and if we came up with all of them
00:24:30
i hope we could agree that if you could
00:24:32
find someone like that
00:24:35
they'd be awesome
00:24:37
they'd be fabulous totally amazing
00:24:40
so here's the question
00:24:42
this list are those gifts attitudes or
00:24:45
skills let's look again
00:24:48
gifts attitudes or skills gifts lets us
00:24:50
off the hook if you're not born with it
00:24:52
you're out of luck
00:24:53
attitudes are skills
00:24:55
well it turns out most of them are
00:24:57
attitudes
00:24:59
because you can just decide
00:25:02
which makes them a skill
00:25:04
because it can be taught
00:25:06
and so the question we got to ask
00:25:08
ourselves
00:25:09
as we go forward to build these teams as
00:25:11
we go forward to become the leader we
00:25:12
seek to be is will you decide
00:25:15
will you put in the effort to learn
00:25:17
these skills which are a lot easier to
00:25:18
learn than pearl
00:25:20
or
00:25:20
php or apache right that going forward
00:25:26
what's going to differentiate a worker
00:25:28
we want to hire versus a robot we're
00:25:30
going to get to work for us for free
00:25:32
are these attitudes
00:25:33
these soft skills they're real skills
00:25:36
and they're a choice
00:25:39
one of the skills we're going to need
00:25:41
is an understanding about decisions
00:25:44
because that's what leaders make what we
00:25:47
do all day
00:25:48
most of us don't dig ditches most of us
00:25:51
don't organize latrine duty most of us
00:25:53
don't peel potatoes what we do
00:25:55
is make decisions
00:25:57
so my friend annie duke world's greatest
00:25:59
female poker player made four million
00:26:00
dollars in one year
00:26:02
just came out with a book next month on
00:26:04
decision making here's the question she
00:26:06
asks
00:26:07
think really hard right now
00:26:10
about a good decision you made in 2017.
00:26:13
did you all make at least one good
00:26:15
decision last year think about that
00:26:17
decision
00:26:18
you don't have to tell me what it is but
00:26:20
here's the thing that decision that you
00:26:21
made
00:26:23
was it that you picked something that
00:26:25
worked as opposed to picking something
00:26:27
that didn't work that's what almost
00:26:29
everyone does
00:26:30
they don't tell me a good decision they
00:26:32
tell me a good outcome
00:26:33
but i didn't ask you for a good outcome
00:26:35
i asked you for a good decision and
00:26:38
outcomes and decisions are unrelated
00:26:41
odds are
00:26:43
good decisions lead to good outcomes but
00:26:45
if you have a great outcome that doesn't
00:26:46
mean it was a good decision if you buy a
00:26:48
lottery ticket
00:26:49
and you make 50 million dollars that's
00:26:51
not a good decision that was a stupid
00:26:53
decision only idiots buy lottery tickets
00:26:57
you got lucky congratulations but don't
00:26:59
tell me you made a good decision because
00:27:01
you didn't
00:27:02
right so that if you say well i bought
00:27:05
bitcoin there not there you can say that
00:27:08
was a good outcome but it wasn't a good
00:27:11
decision you had no new data
00:27:13
you just got lucky
00:27:14
so going forward
00:27:17
we need to learn how to get better
00:27:19
at making actual good decisions and not
00:27:22
getting hung up on the idea that the
00:27:24
outcome is the point
00:27:26
one thing that hangs us up is sunk costs
00:27:28
sunk costs
00:27:30
are our enemy because they weigh on us
00:27:32
they keep us from innovating they keep
00:27:34
us from going to the next thing what's
00:27:35
the sunk cost a sunk cost is a gift from
00:27:38
the you of yesterday to the you of today
00:27:41
and you don't have to accept that gift
00:27:42
if you don't want to so if 10 years ago
00:27:45
you went to harvard and you have a
00:27:47
harvard law degree which talks cost you
00:27:48
a lot of money and a lot of time
00:27:51
and now you don't want to be a lawyer
00:27:53
anymore
00:27:55
the fact that it cost you a lot of time
00:27:56
and money is irrelevant
00:27:59
that costs the old you a lot of time and
00:28:01
money and the old you is giving you the
00:28:02
degree today and if you don't want it
00:28:04
say no thank you
00:28:06
because its purpose is to help you get
00:28:08
to where you want to go
00:28:11
so
00:28:12
these two clues
00:28:13
outcomes
00:28:15
and some costs i think help you
00:28:16
understand that decisions are difficult
00:28:18
and decisions are important so please
00:28:21
don't waste your time making decisions
00:28:23
about things that don't matter
00:28:24
there's a big difference between a
00:28:26
choice
00:28:27
and a decision
00:28:28
choices don't really matter vanilla or
00:28:30
chocolate i don't know i don't need to
00:28:32
spend a lot of decision making time on
00:28:33
that it's a choice
00:28:34
if it makes you happy make the choice
00:28:36
when you come to a fork in the road you
00:28:38
should take it for sure
00:28:40
but you shouldn't get yourself all hung
00:28:42
up
00:28:43
on making decisions all day
00:28:45
the decisions you make
00:28:47
should you quit this job should you
00:28:48
launch that product should you fire this
00:28:50
person should you hire that person these
00:28:52
decisions
00:28:54
about investments of time and money and
00:28:56
effort and brand and trust they matter a
00:28:58
lot and we're ignoring them all because
00:29:00
we're so busy deciding who to follow on
00:29:02
facebook instead that's a choice it's
00:29:04
not a decision
00:29:05
okay next big idea that we miss a lot is
00:29:07
quitting
00:29:09
quitting
00:29:10
is for winners not losers i wrote a book
00:29:12
called the dip a bunch of years ago
00:29:14
here's the quick summary
00:29:15
at the beginning when we do a project
00:29:17
there's a lot of excitement we're
00:29:19
launching a new division we're doing
00:29:20
this we're doing this everyone's on
00:29:22
board it's january i joined the gym
00:29:25
yay
00:29:27
but then inevitably
00:29:29
it starts to suck it gets worse everyone
00:29:32
quits the gym in march
00:29:34
right almost nobody's left by april
00:29:36
you're pre-med you get a your parents
00:29:39
take you out for dinner the first day
00:29:40
but then you got to take organic
00:29:41
chemistry and it's during organic
00:29:42
chemistry that everyone quits this is
00:29:44
the dip and if you make it through the
00:29:46
dip at the other end then you can win
00:29:50
so there are two times you should quit
00:29:52
and there's one time you should never
00:29:54
quit you should never quit in the dip
00:29:56
that's for fools
00:29:58
you should either quit before you start
00:30:01
because you see the journey and you say
00:30:03
i don't have the resources to do that
00:30:05
or you should quit at the end because
00:30:07
you've made it through the dip and it
00:30:08
wasn't worth it
00:30:10
but too often our organizations oh it's
00:30:13
1995. let's start an internet division
00:30:17
and they do it for a couple years and
00:30:19
then the bubble fades so they stop they
00:30:22
quit in the dip
00:30:23
over and over and over again that's what
00:30:25
we do in institutions
00:30:27
next big idea
00:30:29
this is a marketing one which is empathy
00:30:33
empathy
00:30:34
is the path to customer traction
00:30:37
here's the deal
00:30:39
everyone else
00:30:40
doesn't know what you know
00:30:42
doesn't want what you want doesn't
00:30:44
believe what you believe that what we
00:30:46
get the chance to do
00:30:49
is not say if i were you i would do
00:30:51
blank because i'm not you
00:30:54
all you have to do is imagine
00:30:56
what that other person needs so jk
00:30:59
rowling is not 12 years old but she
00:31:01
figured out how to write the
00:31:02
best-selling book series of books of all
00:31:04
time for 12 year olds that john wooden
00:31:07
most successful basketball coach of all
00:31:09
time
00:31:10
was only 5 10.
00:31:11
and i guarantee you if he went head to
00:31:14
head with an nba player he'd die
00:31:16
but he understands how to coach a 20
00:31:19
year old or he understood the person who
00:31:21
designed legs pantyhose was a man
00:31:25
these are three examples
00:31:27
of bringing a level of empathy
00:31:30
to what we do to be able to finally say
00:31:33
i know what i need you to do
00:31:36
but you don't care about me
00:31:38
i need to understand what you want to do
00:31:41
i need to understand the way you see the
00:31:42
world because it's up to you to decide
00:31:45
what to do next and if i can't be in
00:31:47
your shoes enough to give you good
00:31:49
choices
00:31:50
you're not going to pick me and
00:31:52
therefore i'm unable to lead
00:31:55
so back to this idea of mvp and creating
00:31:59
innovation if failure is not an option
00:32:02
then neither is success so what we need
00:32:05
is a process a process not about i know
00:32:08
the right answer it's this big arrow
00:32:11
it's i know the right answer it's a
00:32:13
process and the process if i turn it
00:32:16
enough times will work
00:32:19
i just don't know how
00:32:21
that what leaders do is find processes
00:32:24
what managers do is find roads
00:32:26
and what you're looking for is a process
00:32:29
that you can do over and over again and
00:32:32
the fuel you need for that
00:32:34
is possibility
00:32:35
possibility helps us realize that we can
00:32:38
get past i'm not responsible because if
00:32:40
we can see
00:32:42
in our head that it's possible it's
00:32:44
easier to own it
00:32:47
so the extraordinary steve wozniak will
00:32:48
be on stage with me later
00:32:50
steve saw
00:32:52
the apple ii in his head
00:32:54
before he knew how to make it
00:32:57
once you can see it even if you're wrong
00:33:00
you can embrace the loops i want to give
00:33:03
you a specific computer example about
00:33:04
this that i learned about four weeks ago
00:33:07
this is the other father of computing
00:33:09
bill atkinson if you use a computer with
00:33:11
windows on it that's everybody
00:33:14
mac or pc
00:33:16
it exists because bill atkinson figured
00:33:19
out in a caffeine-fueled rage how to
00:33:22
make certain parts of the windows thing
00:33:24
work
00:33:25
here's the extraordinary story
00:33:28
most of you know that they developed a
00:33:30
lot of the graphical interface at a
00:33:32
place called xerox park and that some
00:33:35
people at apple got tours of xerox park
00:33:38
well bill atkinson got a 90-minute tour
00:33:40
of
00:33:41
this device
00:33:43
at xerox
00:33:45
he went back to apple and months later
00:33:47
he was tasked with writing the code
00:33:50
for making windows work
00:33:52
he remembered on his tour of xerox park
00:33:55
that he saw two overlapping windows
00:33:58
where the bottom window was computing
00:34:00
and re-formatting
00:34:01
behind the front window and since he had
00:34:04
seen it he knew it could be done
00:34:07
and weeks later he pulled it off and it
00:34:09
worked
00:34:11
you ready
00:34:13
he didn't see it
00:34:14
they couldn't do it at xerox he was
00:34:16
mistaken
00:34:18
he was wrong he thought he had seen it
00:34:20
but he hadn't
00:34:22
but because he thought he had seen it
00:34:25
he knew it was possible and because it
00:34:27
was possible he got it done
00:34:30
so we don't need people in the nordic
00:34:32
countries to be fast followers because
00:34:34
other places are going even faster
00:34:36
we need you to be leaders
00:34:38
we need you to figure out
00:34:40
what's going to happen next this is my
00:34:43
favorite slide of all the slides i'm
00:34:44
going to show you today this is the
00:34:45
solvay conference every three years
00:34:47
physicists come together to talk physics
00:34:49
this is the best one 1927. there are 29
00:34:52
people in this photo there's albert
00:34:54
einstein marie curie niels bohr it said
00:34:57
that heisenberg was there but it's not
00:34:59
certain but the key to the whole thing
00:35:04
is that 17 people in this photo won the
00:35:06
nobel prize in physics
00:35:08
and almost all of them won it after the
00:35:11
photo was taken
00:35:13
you
00:35:14
didn't win a nobel prize and then get
00:35:17
invited to solve a
00:35:19
you won the nobel prize because you got
00:35:21
invited to solve a
00:35:23
that you sat there and you looked to
00:35:24
your left and you looked your angle whoa
00:35:27
this is possible
00:35:29
and once it's possible then you can be
00:35:30
responsible and once you can be
00:35:32
responsible then you can build a process
00:35:36
so i'm asking for a level of mindfulness
00:35:38
a level of mindfulness to be able to say
00:35:40
yup that just happened not oh my god i'm
00:35:44
going to lose my job
00:35:45
that just happened that what
00:35:47
industrialists trained us to do is want
00:35:49
the world to be exactly one way they've
00:35:52
hypnotized us to go to spec to figure
00:35:55
out some level of perfect
00:35:58
this leads to a buddhist term called
00:36:00
dukkha which means
00:36:03
the suffering the suffering that happens
00:36:06
when the world doesn't turn out the way
00:36:08
we hoped when our story of how the world
00:36:11
is supposed to be doesn't match the way
00:36:13
the world is
00:36:14
so if you sign up for a process if you
00:36:17
sign up for understanding sometimes
00:36:19
there's going to be round holes and
00:36:20
square pegs
00:36:21
what should i do now
00:36:23
you get rid of all the drama and you can
00:36:26
go back to being a leader and as a
00:36:27
leader what you're seeking is enrollment
00:36:30
because sooner or later the people who
00:36:31
work for you the people who follow you
00:36:32
it's voluntary
00:36:35
in the wizard of oz
00:36:37
two wizard of oz references in one day
00:36:39
in the wizard of oz
00:36:41
when dorothy was talking to the lion and
00:36:42
the tin man she didn't say i command you
00:36:44
to come with me to oz
00:36:47
she got volunteers people to raise their
00:36:49
hand people to go for the ride
00:36:52
that what we're asking you for
00:36:55
aren't tactics tactics are easy managers
00:36:58
love tactics
00:36:59
we're asking you for goals and for
00:37:01
strategy
00:37:02
where there is no manual where there is
00:37:04
no map
00:37:05
but there is a compass and that helps a
00:37:09
compass to help us get from here to
00:37:10
there a compass that says when we are
00:37:12
off track here is where the loop is
00:37:15
right i can't give you a map even a
00:37:17
fictional map because if i give you a
00:37:18
fictional map it's not going to help
00:37:21
your job as a leader is to draw the map
00:37:24
and then to find the volunteers you need
00:37:25
to build the tribe
00:37:27
tribes
00:37:28
pioneered by charlton heston 5 000 years
00:37:31
ago
00:37:32
are groups of people who are connected
00:37:34
by a culture by a way of being in the
00:37:37
world by a costume we had tribes for
00:37:40
spiritual reasons and tribes for work
00:37:41
reasons we had community tribes
00:37:44
the red hat ladies and hundreds of
00:37:46
cities the red hat guys who pay fifteen
00:37:48
thousand dollars to enter the triathlon
00:37:50
in hawaii even though they know they're
00:37:53
gonna lose
00:37:54
why do they go
00:37:56
because the other red hat guys are there
00:37:59
these red hat guys the white hat guys
00:38:01
the star trek guys
00:38:03
it's deep within us
00:38:05
so i'm going to time you let's see if
00:38:07
you can do better than they did which
00:38:09
they did really well in oslo go
00:38:16
okay stop that was excellent five
00:38:18
seconds they beat you by one second in
00:38:20
oslo but five seconds
00:38:22
every group claps at a different rhythm
00:38:24
you're slow clappers some groups are
00:38:26
fast clappers how did you know
00:38:28
i made no eye contact
00:38:30
turns out people like doing what other
00:38:31
people are doing
00:38:33
we like being in sync
00:38:35
so what's your job
00:38:37
your job as a leader is simple connect
00:38:39
us challenge us build a culture
00:38:41
communicate to us be clear about it
00:38:43
commit to where we are going you don't
00:38:46
have to invent these people the beatles
00:38:47
didn't invent teenagers they just showed
00:38:49
up to lead them bob marley did not
00:38:50
invent the rastafarians
00:38:52
he showed up to lead them
00:38:55
simple marketing advice people like us
00:38:59
do things like this
00:39:01
that's all that's all you need to
00:39:03
remember who's going to decide who the
00:39:06
people like us are what the things like
00:39:07
this are it's up to you
00:39:10
so every single one of you is prepared
00:39:12
i'm sure of it and none of you are ready
00:39:14
you can't be ready because ready means
00:39:16
you're sure it's going to work
00:39:17
and you can't be sure
00:39:19
so i didn't show you the end of that
00:39:21
video tape that we started with in italy
00:39:23
here we go
00:39:26
he's doing great he's in first place
00:39:31
keep it up manage that process baby it's
00:39:34
working super you're going to go to the
00:39:36
what do they call that the tour de
00:39:37
france except
00:39:41
someone copies you
00:39:45
and then you know what you got to do you
00:39:47
got to start all over again
00:39:50
that's what you're signing up for we
00:39:52
have no room for sheep here you're
00:39:54
signing up for a loop for a process for
00:39:56
vulnerability you may remember the great
00:39:59
movie singing in the rain this is the
00:40:01
key scene gene kelly dancing up a storm
00:40:04
what you didn't know until this moment
00:40:06
is he had an umbrella the whole time
00:40:10
but it's not called singing with an
00:40:12
umbrella
00:40:13
it's called singing in the rain the rain
00:40:15
is the point the vulnerability is the
00:40:17
point
00:40:18
leonard bernstein famously said
00:40:20
i don't know what the question is
00:40:23
but the answer is yes
00:40:26
so here we are in this world with all
00:40:28
these rules all these expectations
00:40:32
and now you see it
00:40:34
now you see that there's an alternative
00:40:36
some people you give them a mile and
00:40:38
they take an inch but that's not you
00:40:41
now that you see it you can do something
00:40:43
about it
00:40:44
so the last story i want to tell you
00:40:46
actually happened to me about five years
00:40:48
ago at an amazon event it was
00:40:49
extraordinary i was with my family
00:40:51
playwrights authors some really cool
00:40:54
folks friends
00:40:56
new mexico
00:40:58
five degrees outside celsius it's
00:41:00
freezing they give everyone a blanket we
00:41:03
go up on this mesa they build a big fire
00:41:05
as the sun is setting
00:41:08
standing at the campfire is neil
00:41:10
armstrong
00:41:12
neil armstrong's standing there telling
00:41:15
us the story of his epic journey
00:41:18
and as he's talking
00:41:20
the moon rises over his shoulder
00:41:23
and he turns
00:41:25
and he says
00:41:27
i've been there
00:41:30
ladies and gentlemen there are
00:41:31
footprints on the moon
00:41:34
there are footprints on the moon
00:41:38
we sent a ship up
00:41:39
with a computer so primitive to the one
00:41:41
that steve wozniak invented and we got
00:41:44
there and we came back
00:41:45
50 years ago footprints on the moon
00:41:48
so given what you've got the connection
00:41:52
to so many people the trust the
00:41:54
resources the fact that there's a roof
00:41:56
over your head and a safety net given
00:41:58
that you've got that
00:42:00
and there's this generation coming after
00:42:02
us
00:42:04
what are you going to do for them
00:42:06
where are you going to take them
00:42:08
do you care enough care enough
00:42:12
to lead us
00:42:13
where we need to go
00:42:16
so in a second i'm going to take your
00:42:18
questions either by device or for brave
00:42:20
people who want to speak up
00:42:22
but i just want to leave you with this
00:42:24
every time i come to the nordic
00:42:25
countries i am thrilled i'm thrilled at
00:42:28
the design i believe and love the
00:42:30
weather but mostly the people
00:42:32
the people here are so positive and are
00:42:35
so caring and connected
00:42:38
and what your audience is saying to you
00:42:40
what your people are saying to you what
00:42:42
your customers are saying to you is
00:42:43
simple
00:42:44
we need you to lead us
00:42:47
i hope you will thank you for your
00:42:48
attention
00:42:50
[Applause]
00:42:50
[Music]
