Leadership Vs. Management – What It Means To Make A Difference: Seth Godin (Transcript)

Management

The first big idea is this. Leadership and management are different things. Leadership is not management, and vice versa.

Management dates back to Henry Ford, to scientific management, to Frederick Taylor, to the idea that if we could build a job where an obedient person can do it and create value, we could pay people a lot. Henry Ford was able to go to the workers in Detroit and give them a 10x raise in one day, because he said, if you come on the assembly line and do what I tell you to, I’ll pay you a lot of money. And that spread.

It spread to the idea that we could use it to make truffles and chocolates, because as long as we get the system working efficiently, we’re fine. And it went from there to another food business. This is one of my favorites. This is somewhere in India. They didn’t have enough room to put the place where the guy rolls next to the place where the guy cooks. And so this is brilliant management engineering, because one person took an innovation and then figured out how to make the system more efficient.

Efficiency in Big Organizations

You might not notice, because there’s no sound, but when he was about to throw it, he hits the rolling pin so the guy knows to get ready. Anyway, what we discovered then is that big factories are more efficient than little ones, big organizations where people are doing what they’re told work. The River Rouge plant that Ford built was so big, it took all day to get from one side to the other, that this idea that there’s a top-down method not only works for cars, it works for almost everything.

So this is an old slide, eight years ago, how far every person in the United States lives from a McDonald’s. Now, you can imagine that now it’s even more yellow and less dark. Because McDonald’s figured out that management works, that a McDonald’s manager is not supposed to innovate, not supposed to start selling spaghetti during the slow times to see what happens, that the job of people at McDonald’s is to crank it out, that cranking it out and doing what we’re told again and again, that works, until it doesn’t.

And when the world changes, we’re in trouble. When the world changes, management always fails, because we don’t understand how to go forward. And that’s fine, you say, I don’t live on Easter Island.

Changing World

It’s fine, I don’t have a book depository. Well, it’s not fine if, say, for example, you used to work in newspaper publishing, because you can see what happened. It’s not fine if you used to be a travel agent, because you can see what happened.

It’s not fine if you’re one of the four million people who drive a truck in the United States for a living, because self-driving cars. And it’s not fine if you live on the planet Earth and the weather changes. Because the thing is, the world is changing, whether you want it to or not. And it’s changing faster than ever before. So in the face of all of that change, we’re not going to be able to manage our way out of it. We’re going to have to lead.

Responsibility vs. Authority

And leadership is not the same as management. So the next idea is that responsibility and authority are different things. That managers need authority. They tell people what to do. But leaders need to take responsibility. So I’ll give you a little example.

If you do a Google search for “the great Arturo Toscanini,” you have to type in “the great Arturo Toscanini,” you get all these pictures of the maestro. He was the most famous and important music conductor of the 40s, 50s in the United States. He worked with Disney. He was the conductor of the NBC Orchestra. So when he recorded Beethoven’s Fifth, he could record it like this. It’s a dirge.

Beethoven’s Fifth

It’s slow. It’s a chance for the great man to show everyone that he knows exactly what he’s doing. And it became the standard. That’s the way it’s supposed to sound. Well, my friend Ben Zander, who is not the self-appointed great Ben Zander, who has no fancy job, who has no fancy orchestra, he recorded a version of Beethoven’s Fifth recently, and it sounded like this. And people say, “That’s wrong.

It’s too fast. How dare you?” Well, Ben can point out that’s the way Beethoven wrote it. But the thing is, the “How dare you?” part is really interesting. Because he has no authority. The key is he’s taking responsibility. He’s saying, “It’s on me.

Responsibility

I did the math. I did the research. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to follow.” But it’s on me. The great Viktor Frankl said that one of the problems with the United States is that we have a Statue of Liberty, but we don’t have a Statue of Responsibility. And this is the reason why people have trouble stopping being managers and starting to do leadership.

That managers say, “Do this because I said so.” And leaders are able to say, “Let’s go over there. Who wants to come?” That if you’ve got a special hat that says you’re the boss, you’re probably a manager. But that what leaders are able to do, what leaders are required to do, is not ask or demand authority, but insist on taking responsibility. So when we talk about lean, and we’ve been talking about it a lot, it’s sort of a failure parade today, the word lean actually means wrong.

Being Wrong

That what it means to manage, or lead, or organize, or do anything with lean is that you are willing to be wrong. That’s all it means. So you know those meetings you complain about all the time? Those ones where everyone has to wear color-coded clothes and sit there pretending that they are paying attention for hours in a row? Why do we have those meetings?

We have those meetings so that we can just wait out everybody else until someone else will finally take responsibility. Because if that’s not what we’re trying to do, why don’t we just send a memo? There’s nothing actually happening in the meeting other than people absolving themselves of responsibility. We got taught this, and a lot of other things about management, in school. Education is not the same as school.

Education vs. School

It used to be similar, but now that they are very different. That we go to school to take standardized tests, to get good grades, to get into a famous college, so we can go to the placement office, and get picked by a company to do a steady job, and go to those meetings, and absolve ourselves of responsibility, and then one day get authority so that we can be in charge. School was invented by industrialists, by the very people you work for.

It was invented 100 years ago, 150 years ago, because we didn’t have enough compliant factory workers. It’s too hard to get somebody who’s grown up, running through the woods, solving their own problems, figuring out interesting stuff. It’s too hard to get that person to come to work for nine hours a day in a dark room, doing the same thing over and over again.

So we invented school, so they’d be ready. But we don’t educate people. We don’t teach them to solve interesting problems.

Alternative to School

We don’t teach them to lead. And as a result, by the time you get to work, of course you’re surprised, disappointed, angry, and upset that you have to do that other stuff, because we forgot to help you understand something else is going on here. The alternative is to see what happens.

See what happens if you don’t see what happens if you do, when you think about being a leader. So that meeting, that meeting you hate, what if you just didn’t go? What if you just didn’t show up and did something important instead?

So those people that you’re constantly harassing with your marketing material, would they miss you if you were gone? What if you showed up as a human instead of a pawn in a giant corporate system? What if you figured out how to take responsibility?

This is the hard part, because you don’t want to be wrong. We taught you that in school. You don’t want to take responsibility.

Learning from Being Wrong

We taught you that in school. But what Eric has pointed out, what this whole lean thing is about, what innovation is, is the repeated process of being wrong, learning from it, taking responsibility, and doing it again. So I have a surprisingly large number of sports references in my talk.

I’m not exactly sure how they snuck in, but here’s one of them. They play this game in the United States football. This is the Army-Navy game from this year. And what you see here is Navy’s behind by one point. There’s a few seconds left in the game, and Bennett Moehring is the kicker. If he gets it in, they win. If he gets it wrong, they lose. Well, he missed it. And at the press conference afterward, Bennett Moehring did something stunning.

Taking Responsibility

He said, one, “It’s my fault, it’s not the weather, it’s not the center, it’s nothing, I just missed it.” And two, “I wish we had won, but I’m glad it happened, because I learned a lot from the process that we just went through.” Isn’t that what education’s supposed to do? We don’t have a trophy shortage.

We have a shortage of people who haven’t figured out how to learn from what happens. And that’s what we can teach our kids, and that’s what we can teach our co-workers, and yes, that’s what we can teach ourselves. OK, veering a little bit to the side here, the next thing that we get wrong is this idea of what quality is and what to do about it.

The first thing I’ll do is help you understand that quality actually means something. It doesn’t mean deluxeness. It doesn’t mean fanciness.

Definition of Quality

It doesn’t mean expensive. Quality means meeting spec, doing what it’s supposed to do, exactly what it’s supposed to do. That’s what managers do. Managers make sure we meet spec. And I got to tell you, quality is now the easy part. You’re holding in your hand an $800 device that’s impossibly complicated, and it works every time.

Quality vs. Excellence

You get in your car, and you’re able to drive almost anywhere you want to go with no fear of it breaking down. That you get on an airplane, and you know it’s not going to crash, that we’ve solved so much of what used to be a giant issue that we’ve built management around. You can thank this guy, Edwards Deming.

Edwards went in the 40s and 50s to the car companies in the United States. And he said to them, “You have a huge quality problem. Your cars suck. And the reason they suck is that the tolerances are really poor. Everything barely fits together. And the reason for that is the way you make the cars. And I can help you.” And so Ford, and Chrysler, and GM said to him, “Go away.” So he went to Japan. And that’s why Toyota cars are the best cars in the world for the money.

Deming’s Quality Method

It’s why, in 1985, a Toyota Corolla was better than a Rolls Royce at quality, because it met spec. The highest award a manufacturer in Japan can win is the Edwards Deming Medal, because he figured out something really important. An idea that has been stolen by the lean management movement.

And the idea is pretty simple. The way it used to work is there’s 100 parts in the bin. The car’s coming down the assembly line. The worker grabs a part, screws it in. If it doesn’t fit, you know what he does with it? Throws it in the discard bin and grabs another part. Because don’t slow down the assembly line. Keep it moving.

Focus on Excellence

Deming said, “That’s wrong. Get rid of all the extra parts. There’s only one piece in the bin, maybe two. Every time the worker picks out a piece, the person from the factory next door that makes the piece runs over and puts another one in. So if the piece doesn’t fit, what happens? Got to turn off the assembly line. Stop the whole thing.”

That’s heresy in Detroit. Stop the whole thing. Here’s the question. How many times do you think they have to stop the whole assembly line before that part gets a lot better? Takes about a day. And now the parts fit perfectly.

And so management got really good at this quality thing. But we don’t need to be really good at it anymore, because we have AI, because we have robots, because we have low-paid labor. And the fact is that never again are the Nordic countries going to win, because you’re better at quality than everybody else.

Excellence in Leadership

It’s not going to happen. You can’t manage your way there. No, the alternative is excellence. And excellence is different than quality. My friend Tom Peters coined it, of course, in In Search of Excellence. Excellence is this.

If a human who cared were here, what would she do? In this customer service setting, in this setting where we’re making a decision, in this setting where we have a choice, what would someone who cares do? Because you’ve met a receptionist who cares. And you’ve met a clerk who cares. And you’ve met a CEO who cares in that moment. So excellence is about leadership.

It’s not about management. Leadership is solving interesting problems, seeking them out, and deciding to solve them, even if they’re not on your agenda. Because managers are the ones who are slaves to their agenda.

Teacher’s Story

An education story for you. Guy gets a job as a teacher. He’s assigned to a really, really poor neighborhood in Florida. He shows up, and most of the kids who are 10 or 12 years old don’t know how to read. They hate the textbook. It’s vaguely racist.

It’s completely irrelevant. He says to the students, “Give me back the textbooks.” And he takes them away. Not on his agenda, not even his problem. He then buys a bunch of cheap black and white cameras and sends the kids home and says, “Take pictures of your life.” They come back with the film.

Solving Interesting Problems

And he gets them in the darkroom, teaches them how to develop the film. And then they take the pictures. And he says to them, “Write these stories. Write down these stories.” And the kids say to him, “We don’t know how to write.” And so they learn, because they want to.

The idea of writing our own story without an agenda, being the designers of what happens next, not being a pawn in the system, that’s part of what it means to be lean. Because first you take responsibility. Then you find the interesting problem. And then you’re willing to fail on the way to do it. So the other thing that’s going on in the Nordic countries is you understand design.

Design

I mean, just drinking out of this glass is better than drinking out of a typical glass. But to understand what it is to do design, it’s not about being pretty. You can design software. You can design pricing. You can design a system. It’s to ask two questions.

Who’s it for and what’s it for? Because who’s it for, the answer is never everyone. If it’s for everyone, you have already failed. And the what’s it for, what change are you seeking to make, this journey you want the customer to go on, whether the customer is a co-worker or someone who’s buying from you or a student. Who’s it for and what’s it for?

Picking Who It’s For

And now that we live in a world where there are 7 billion people and 2 billion of them are connected to you by a click, you get to pick who it’s for. And the more specific you are, the better you are. And the more specific you are and the change you seek to make, the more likely it is that people will find you.

So this is George Heilmeier. He invented the LCD screen. And he was the head of DARPA. And he put together this list years ago that I’ll share with you, and you can take a quick picture if you want to look at it later. Here are questions you can ask yourself as a designer. We get to do it with intention.

We get to do it on purpose. If we want to, we can make change happen. And the only reason you’re not making more change happen is because you’re afraid.

Fear and Responsibility

And you’re afraid because you don’t want to take responsibility. And that can lead to writer’s block. Writer’s block, of course, is just a variation of leader’s block. “I don’t have any good ideas. I don’t know what to do next. I don’t have a voice inside of me. I don’t know.”

Well, I’ve got to tell you a little bit of the background of writer’s block. Some of you have heard of Percy Shelley, sort of a hack poet, not very good poet, who lived about 150 years ago. Percy Shelley had a wife. Her name was Mary. She was an amazing writer.

The Myth of Writer’s Block

Mary Shelley gave us Frankenstein, which lives on to this day. But back to Percy. Percy invented writer’s block. He wrote a poem about sometimes the fact that the muse doesn’t speak to you. So it’s not up to the poet to write poetry. It’s up to the gods to speak to the poet.

And maybe he’ll write some poetry. This is a stupid idea, and it spread from Percy to other poets who were looking for a way to hide. And then it spread to novelists, and then it spread to surfers and everybody else in the world. And this idea of writer’s block is insane, because plumbers don’t get plumber’s block. You know how to talk. Write down what you want to say.

Leadership is a Choice

You’re done. There’s no such thing as talker’s block, so there’s no such thing as writer’s block. And when it comes to being a leader, what you need to understand is it’s not something you’re born with. It’s something you choose to do. So why is everyone so afraid of Jeff Bezos and the next thing he’s going to do and the next thing he’s going to do and the next thing he’s going to do? It’s simple.

He doesn’t have leader’s block. He figured out a cycle, and he just does it over and over and over again. And the same thing’s true for the career of Steve Jobs. He just decided to do it. He moved forward past the fear and did it. And I understand this is hard.

Choosing Risk

This is a real sign. “Who else’s risk are you supposed to play at?” Exactly. So this is the only picture of me in the presentation. I’ll let you guess which one’s me. I’m the least happy person who’s ever played hockey in my life in the history of the world. So I had hair.

The thing is, there are two things you need to know about hockey. The first one is, to be good at hockey, you need to know what to do next. You need to figure out where the puck is going. You need to be smart. I confess, I was sort of good at that. But the second thing, much to my dad’s chagrin, he was a coach, the second thing is, you’ve got to be willing to get hit.

Being Willing to Get Hit

That hockey doesn’t work if every time someone else is going for the puck, you run away. That was me. The point is, leadership is similar. That’s why I began with this idea of being wrong and leading, of taking responsibility, because you’re going to get hit. If you don’t care enough to get hit, you can’t be a leader. Management, on the other hand, has constantly drilled into you three emotions, because that’s how it controls you, beginning in first grade.

Fear, shame, and anger. That managers use fear, shame, and anger to get you to do what they want you to do. And we don’t have to live that way anymore. We’ve been brainwashed to live that way, but it’s not required, and in fact, it’s essential for the future of this nation, this economy, this world, that we figure out how to lead instead. So I said brainwashed.

The Myth of Icarus

I don’t take it lightly. How many of you heard the story of Icarus and Daedalus? Everyone, right? You’re banished to a desert island by the gods to live out their lives, but Daedalus is an inventor. He gets a bunch of feathers. He fashions them into wings.

He puts them on the back of Icarus with wax. He says, “My son, we’re flying out of here, but don’t fly too high, don’t disobey your father, do what you are told, because if you fly too high, the wax will melt, and you will surely perish.” And we all know the punchline. Icarus gets uppity. Icarus has hubris. Icarus disobeys management, flies too high, and dies.

The Real Icarus Story

Except that wasn’t the story in 1700, or 1500, or 1200, or for 1,000 years before that. They changed it. You can look it up. I’m not making this up. They changed it. The original story was just like that, and it had one more sentence at the end. “But more important, my son,” said Daedalus, “don’t fly too low. Because if you fly too low, the water and the mist will weigh down your wings, and you will surely perish.” And we are guilty of flying too low.

We are flying too low because we believe the managers. We believe the industrialists. We think it’s not our turn, and we are afraid.

Real Skills

We are afraid to bring our humanity and our excellence to work. So there’s this term, soft skills. I hate this term, because it diminishes them. They should be called real skills. That what we need when we are hiring people isn’t the fact that they can code 1% better, or that they can lift one more pound. We’re looking for something else.

So my late friend and teacher, Zig Ziglar, in 1970 postulated something that may sound familiar. Zig said, “I want you to imagine that there’s this computer somewhere, and you could type in it all the attributes you’re looking for in a new hire, for a new boss, for a new co-worker, for someone to work for you, even for a spouse. What attributes are you looking for?

If you type them into this magical computer, it could find somebody for you.” Yes, Zig Ziglar invented the internet and LinkedIn. So let’s try it.

Attributes of Ideal Coworkers

If you could come up with the attributes, what would you pick? I’ll give you a couple. Loyal, fearless, connected, engaged. Yell out a couple for me. Attributes you’re looking for in the perfect boss, co-worker, employee. Keep going.

Creative. Trustworthy. Keep going. Excellent. One more. Fantastic. So I got them all right there for you. And I’m sure we could come up with 40 more. And if we came up with all of them, I hope we could agree that if you could find someone like that, they’d be awesome. They’d be fabulous. Totally amazing. So here’s the question.

Gifts, Attitudes, or Skills?

This list, are those gifts, attitudes, or skills? Let’s look again. Gifts, attitudes, or skills? Gifts lets us off the hook. If you’re not born with it, you’re out of luck. Attitudes or skills?

Well, it turns out most of them are attitudes. Because you can just decide, which makes them a skill. Because it can be taught. So the question we’ve got to ask ourselves as we go forward to build these teams, as we go forward to become the leader we seek to be, is will you decide? Will you put in the effort to learn these skills, which are a lot easier to learn than Perl or PHP or Apache, right? That going forward, what’s going to differentiate a worker we want to hire versus a robot we’re going to get to work for us for free are these attitudes.

Decisions

These soft skills. They’re real skills. And they’re a choice. One of the skills we’re going to need is an understanding about decisions. Because that’s what leaders make. What we do all day, most of us don’t dig ditches.

Most of us don’t organize latrine duty. Most of us don’t peel potatoes. What we do is make decisions. So my friend Annie Duke, world’s greatest female poker player, made $4 million in one year, just came out with a book next month on decision making. Here’s the question she asks. Think really hard right now about a good decision you made in 2017.

Did you all make at least one good decision last year? Think about that decision. You don’t have to tell me what it is, but here’s the thing. That decision that you made, was it that you picked something that worked as opposed to picking something that didn’t work? That’s what almost everyone does. They don’t tell me a good decision.

They tell me a good outcome. But I didn’t ask you for a good outcome. I asked you for a good decision.

Good Decisions vs. Good Outcomes

And outcomes and decisions are unrelated. Odds are good decisions lead to good outcomes. But if you have a great outcome, that doesn’t mean it was a good decision. If you buy a lottery ticket and you make $50 million, that’s not a good decision. That was a stupid decision. Only idiots buy lottery tickets.

You got lucky. Congratulations. But don’t tell me you made a good decision because you didn’t. So that if you say, “Well, I bought Bitcoin there, not there,” you can say that was a good outcome. But it wasn’t a good decision. You had no new data.

Sunk Costs

You just got lucky. So going forward, we need to learn how to get better at making actual good decisions and not getting hung up on the idea that the outcome is the point. One thing that hangs us up is sunk costs. Sunk costs are our enemy because they weigh on us. They keep us from innovating. They keep us from going to the next thing.

What’s a sunk cost? A sunk cost is a gift from the you of yesterday to the you of today. And you don’t have to accept that gift if you don’t want to. So if 10 years ago you went to Harvard and you have a Harvard law degree, which costs you a lot of money and a lot of time, and now you don’t want to be a lawyer anymore, the fact that it costs you a lot of time and money is irrelevant. That costs the old you a lot of time and money. And the old you is giving you the degree today.

Choices vs. Decisions

And if you don’t want it, say no thank you. Because its purpose is to help you get to where you want to go. So these two clues, outcomes and sunk costs, I think help you understand that decisions are difficult and decisions are important.

So please don’t waste your time making decisions about things that don’t matter. There’s a big difference between a choice and a decision. Choices don’t really matter. Vanilla or chocolate, I don’t know. I don’t need to spend a lot of decision making time on that. It’s a choice.

If it makes you happy, make the choice. When you come to a fork in the road, you should take it for sure. But you shouldn’t get yourself all hung up on making decisions all day.

Important Decisions

The decisions you make, should you quit this job? Should you launch that product? Should you fire this person? Should you hire that person? These decisions about investments of time and money and effort and brand and trust, they matter a lot. And we’re ignoring them all, because we’re so busy deciding who to follow on Facebook instead.

That’s a choice, it’s not a decision. OK, next big idea that we miss a lot is quitting. Quitting is for winners, not losers. I wrote a book called The Dip a bunch of years ago. Here’s the quick summary. At the beginning, when we do a project, there’s a lot of excitement.

Pushing Through The Dip

We’re launching a new division. We’re doing this, we’re doing this. Everyone’s on board. It’s January, I join the gym. Yay. But then, inevitably, it starts to suck. It gets worse. Everyone quits the gym in March, right? Almost nobody’s left by April.

You’re pre-med, your parents take you out for dinner the first day, but then you’ve got to take organic chemistry. And it’s during organic chemistry that everyone quits. This is The Dip.

And if you make it through The Dip at the other end, then you can win. So there are two times you should quit. And there’s one time you should never quit.

The Right Time to Quit

You should never quit in The Dip. That’s for fools. You should either quit before you start, because you see the journey, and you say, “I don’t have the resources to do that.”

Or you should quit at the end, because you’ve made it through The Dip, and it wasn’t worth it. But too often, our organizations, oh, it’s 1995, let’s start an internet division. And they do it for a couple years, and then the bubble fades. So they stop. They quit in The Dip. Over, and over, and over again, that’s what we do in institutions.

Empathy

Next big idea. This is a marketing one, which is empathy. Empathy is the path to customer traction.

Here’s the deal. Everyone else doesn’t know what you know, doesn’t want what you want, doesn’t believe what you believe. That what we get the chance to do is not say, “If I were you, I would do blank,” because I’m not you. All you have to do is imagine what that other person needs. So J.K. Rowling is not 12 years old, but she figured out how to write the bestselling series of books of all time for 12-year-olds.

That John Wooden, most successful basketball coach of all time, was only 5’10”. And I guarantee you, if he went head to head with an NBA player, he’d die. But he understands how to coach a 20-year-old, or he understood.

Examples of Empathy

The person who designed legs, pantyhose, was a man. These are three examples of bringing a level of empathy to what we do. To be able to finally say, “I know what I need you to do, but you don’t care about me. I need to understand what you want to do. I need to understand the way you see the world, because it’s up to you to decide what to do next. And if I can’t be in your shoes enough to give you good choices, you’re not going to pick me. And therefore, I’m unable to lead.” So back to this idea of MVP and creating innovation. If failure is not an option, then neither is success.

The Process of Innovation

So what we need is a process. A process not about, “I know the right answer.” It’s this big arrow. It’s, “I know the right answer.” It’s a process. And the process, if I turn it enough times, will work. I just don’t know how. That what leaders do is find processes. What managers do is find roads.

And what you’re looking for is a process that you can do over and over again. And the fuel you need for that is possibility. Possibility helps us realize that we can get past, “I’m not responsible,” because if we can see in our head that it’s possible, it’s easier to own it.

Bill Atkinson’s Inspiration

So the extraordinary Steve Wozniak will be on stage with me later. Steve saw the Apple II in his head before he knew how to make it. Once you can see it, even if you’re wrong, you can embrace the loops.

I want to give you a specific computer example about this that I learned about four weeks ago. This is the other father of computing, Bill Atkinson. If you use a computer with Windows on it, that’s everybody. Mac or PC. It exists because Bill Atkinson figured out, in a caffeine-fueled rage, how to make certain parts of the Windows thing work. Here’s the extraordinary story.

Most of you know that they developed a lot of the graphical interface at a place called Xerox PARC. And that some people at Apple got tours of Xerox PARC. Well, Bill Atkinson got a 90-minute tour of this device at Xerox.

Power of Possibility

He went back to Apple. And months later, he was tasked with writing the code for making Windows work. He remembered, on his tour of Xerox PARC, that he saw two overlapping windows, where the bottom window was computing and reformatting behind the front window.

And since he had seen it, he knew it could be done. And weeks later, he pulled it off, and it worked. You ready? He didn’t see it. They couldn’t do it at Xerox. He was mistaken. He was wrong. He thought he had seen it, but he hadn’t. But because he thought he had seen it, he knew it was possible, and because it was possible, he got it done.

Need for Leadership

So we don’t need people in the Nordic countries to be fast followers, because other places are going even faster. We need you to be leaders. We need you to figure out what’s going to happen next.

This is my favorite slide of all the slides I’m going to show you today. This is the Solvay Conference. Every three years, physicists come together to talk physics. This is the best one, 1927. There are 29 people in this photo. There’s Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Niels Bohr.

It said that Heisenberg was there, but it’s not certain. But the key to the whole thing is that 17 people in this photo won the Nobel Prize in physics. And almost all of them won it after the photo was taken.

Mindfulness and Suffering

You didn’t win a Nobel Prize and then get invited to Solvay. You won the Nobel Prize because you got invited to Solvay. That you sat there, and you looked to your left, and you looked to your right, and you go, “Whoa, this is possible.”

And once it’s possible, then you can be responsible. And once you can be responsible, then you can build a process. So I’m asking for a level of mindfulness, a level of mindfulness to be able to say, “Yep, that just happened.” Not, “Oh my God, I’m going to lose my job.” That just happened. That what industrialists trained us to do is want the world to be exactly one way.

They’ve hypnotized us to go to spec, to figure out some level of perfect. This leads to a Buddhist term called dukkha, which means the suffering, the suffering that happens when the world doesn’t turn out the way we hoped. When our story of how the world is supposed to be doesn’t match the way the world is.

Enrollment and Tribes

So if you sign up for a process, if you sign up for understanding, sometimes there’s going to be round holes and square pegs. What should I do now? You get rid of all the drama, and you can go back to being a leader.

And as a leader, what you’re seeking is enrollment. Because sooner or later, the people who work for you, the people who follow you, it’s voluntary. In The Wizard of Oz, two Wizard of Oz references in one day.

In The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy was talking to the lion and the tin man, she didn’t say, “I command you to come with me to Oz.” She got volunteers, people to raise their hand, people to go for the ride. That what we’re asking you for aren’t tactics. Tactics are easy. Managers love tactics. We’re asking you for goals and for strategy, where there is no manual, where there is no map.

Finding Your Compass

But there is a compass, and that helps. A compass to help us get from here to there. A compass that says, when we are off track, here’s where the loop is.

I can’t give you a map, even a fictional map, because if I give you a fictional map, it’s not going to help. Your job as a leader is to draw the map, and then to find the volunteers you need, to build a tribe. Tribes, pioneered by Charlton Heston 5,000 years ago, are groups of people who are connected by a culture, by a way of being in the world, by a costume.

We had tribes for spiritual reasons, and tribes for work reasons. We had community tribes. The Red Hat ladies in hundreds of cities, the Red Hat guys who pay $15,000 to enter the triathlon in Hawaii, even though they know they’re going to lose. Why do they go? Because the other Red Hat guys are there. These Red Hat guys, the White Hat guys, the Star Trek guys.

Coordinated Clapping

It’s deep within us. So I’m going to time you. Let’s see if you can do better than they did, which they did really well, in Oslo. Go. OK, stop. That was excellent.

Five seconds. They beat you by one second in Oslo, but five seconds. Every group claps at a different rhythm. You’re slow clappers. Some groups are fast clappers. How did you know?

Job as a Leader

I made no eye contact. Turns out people like doing what other people are doing. We like being in sync. So what’s your job? Your job as a leader is simple. Connect us.

Challenge us. Build a culture. Communicate to us. Be clear about it. Commit to where we are going. You don’t have to invent these people.

Leading Existing Tribes

The Beatles didn’t invent teenagers. They just showed up to lead them. Bob Marley did not invent the Rastafarians. He showed up to lead them. Simple marketing advice. People like us do things like this. That’s all. That’s all you need to remember. Who’s going to decide who the people like us are?

What the things like this are? It’s up to you. So every single one of you is prepared, I’m sure of it.

Accepting Vulnerability

And none of you are ready. You can’t be ready, because ready means you’re sure it’s going to work. And you can’t be sure. So I didn’t show you the end of that videotape that we started with in Italy. Here we go. He’s doing great. He’s in first place. Keep it up. Manage that process, baby.

It’s working super. You’re going to go to the, what do they call that, the Tour de France. Except someone copies you. And then you know what you’ve got to do? You’ve got to start all over again. That’s what you’re signing up for.

Singing in the Rain

We have no room for sheep here. You’re signing up for a loop, for a process, for vulnerability. You may remember the great movie, Singing in the Rain. This is the key scene, Gene Kelly dancing up a storm. What you didn’t know until this moment is he had an umbrella the whole time. But it’s not called singing with an umbrella.

It’s called singing in the rain. The rain is the point. The vulnerability is the point. Leonard Bernstein famously said, “I don’t know what the question is, but the answer is yes.” So here we are in this world with all these rules, all these expectations. And now you see it.

Footprints on the Moon

Now you see that there’s an alternative. Some people, you give them a mile and they take an inch. But that’s not you. Now that you see it, you can do something about it. So the last story I want to tell you actually happened to me about five years ago at an Amazon event. It was extraordinary.

It was with my family, playwrights, authors, some really cool folks, friends. New Mexico, five degrees outside, Celsius, it’s freezing. They give everyone a blanket. We go up on this mesa. They build a big fire as the sun is setting. Standing at the campfire is Neil Armstrong.

Your Turn to Lead

Neil Armstrong’s standing there telling us the story of his epic journey. And as he’s talking, the moon rises over his shoulder. And he turns and he says, “I’ve been there.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are footprints on the moon. There are footprints on the moon. We sent a ship up with a computer so primitive to the one that Steve Wozniak invented, and we got there and we came back 50 years ago.

There are footprints on the moon. So given what you’ve got, the connection to so many people, the trust, the resources, the fact that there’s a roof over your head and a safety net, given that you’ve got that and there’s this generation coming after us, what are you going to do for them? Where are you going to take them?

Do you care enough, care enough, to lead us where we need to go?” So in a second, I’m going to take your questions either by device or for brave people who want to speak up, but I just want to leave you with this. Every time I come to the Nordic countries, I’m thrilled.

Conclusion

I’m thrilled at the design. I live and love the weather, but mostly the people. The people here are so positive and are so caring and connected. And what your audience is saying to you, what your people are saying to you, what your customers are saying to you is simple. We need you to lead us. I hope you will.

Thank you for your attention.

Related Posts

• The Truth About Debt: Why 99% Rich Use It & Others Fear It – Dr. Anil Lamba (Transcript)
• Paulo Nogueira Batista: Decline of the IMF & Rise of the BRICS New Development Bank (Transcript)
• Ex-BlackRock Insider Reveals The Next 2008 Financial Crisis (Transcript)
• Transcript: CEA Dr V Anantha Nageswaran on Growwing India Podcast
• Transcript: Business Expert Natalie Dawson on DOAC Podcast