Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek
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Speaker 1: news as it happens. Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer
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Speaker 2: It is Bloomberg Business Week, Carol. One of the most
Speaker 2: read stories on the Bloomberg terminal. Here's the headline. Taylor
Speaker 2: Swift brings two hundred and eighty three million fans to
Speaker 2: raise her thin twenty twenty four election. The world's biggest
Speaker 2: pop star through her support behind the Democratic ticket, energizing
Speaker 2: millions of her loyal fans. Yes, the campaign has started
Speaker 2: taking pre orders for the Harris Walls friendship bracelets.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 2: I'm serious. Wow, I don't I'm I saw a headline
Speaker 2: somewhere that they're selling pretty well. Oh my god, they
Speaker 2: might not even be available anymore. Speaking of friendship brace
Speaker 2: it's Taylor Swift. She's a cultural phenomenon. Totally think sold
Speaker 2: out concerts all over the world, her high profile relationship,
Speaker 2: what her presence has brought to the NFL. Perhaps that's
Speaker 2: why Democrats had for months speculated about Swift actually backing
Speaker 2: their ticket. Well, Natalie Trann is the co founder of
Speaker 2: I Am a Voter. It's a non partisan organization that
Speaker 2: works to, in its words, quote, create a cultural shift
Speaker 2: around voting and civic engagement. Natalie joins us from Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Kind of perfect timing for you to come on our program, Natalie,
Speaker 2: because I feel like if there were somebody who could
Speaker 2: create a cultural shift in a razor thin margin race,
Speaker 2: it is none other than Taylor Swift. What are your
Speaker 2: thoughts on that.
Speaker 3: She did it?
Speaker 4: I'd had that post was pretty phenomenal, and I love
Speaker 4: that she signed it off as a childless cat lady.
Speaker 2: We're showing her right now on her screen for those
Speaker 2: people watching on YouTube and Bloomberg Originals.
Speaker 5: And she said, I will be casting my vote for
Speaker 5: Kamala Harris and Tim Walls in the twenty twenty four
Speaker 5: presidential election. I'm voting for at Kamala Harris.
Speaker 6: Kamala Harris because she fights for the rights and causes
Speaker 6: I believe need a warrior to champion them.
Speaker 5: I mean, it was pretty wild, and the timing, you
Speaker 5: know what was it less than a half an hour
Speaker 5: after the end of the debate, tell us about I
Speaker 5: want to take a step back your organization. You know,
Speaker 5: we said, in your words, create a cultural shift around
Speaker 5: voting in civic engagement. What does that mean, because some
Speaker 5: would say in terms of civics, we need to actually educate.
Speaker 6: A fair amount of people about kind of how government works.
Speaker 6: But talk to us a.
Speaker 2: Little bit about media literacy, Like, yeah.
Speaker 5: Right, that's exactly what we talked about with David Weston.
Speaker 5: Tell us exactly what you guys are doing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks so much for having me and for the opportunity.
Speaker 4: You know, for us that I am a voter, We
Speaker 4: really wanted to make sure that we were building an
Speaker 4: organization that was going to be culturally relevant. We know
Speaker 4: that millennials and Gen Z will be the majority of
Speaker 4: potential voters in twenty twenty eight, and we know how
Speaker 4: much time we're all spending on our phones and on
Speaker 4: social media. That we wanted to make sure that we
Speaker 4: were building a voting organization that was going to meet
Speaker 4: our new voters where they're going to be and where
Speaker 4: they're going to be at and how do we find
Speaker 4: a way to really leverage some of the biggest cultural phenomenons,
Speaker 4: Whether it's Taylor Swift or sports teams and digital influencers
Speaker 4: also getting them engaged so that way when there is
Speaker 4: a presidential election or any election, we have all the
Speaker 4: tools and resources at the ready. And so that was
Speaker 4: really the genesis behind I am a voter, and I'm
Speaker 4: really excited to tell you more about some of the
Speaker 4: great partnerships we've been having and some of our impact.
Speaker 2: I definitely want to hear about some of those. I
Speaker 2: want to start with impact, though, and just get an
Speaker 2: understanding of the baseline here and sort of where you're
Speaker 2: starting to what extent do we understand how millennials show
Speaker 2: up to vote in presidential elections? And I know we
Speaker 2: have less data on gen Z, but how have they
Speaker 2: shown up?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I think it's that really is the key question.
Speaker 4: And I will say I think that sometimes millennials and
Speaker 4: gen Z get a bad rap, but they're really actually
Speaker 4: so active.
Speaker 6: They're just showing up in.
Speaker 4: Different ways than generations before them. We know that for
Speaker 4: this election cycle and many moving forward, youth vote will
Speaker 4: be the key vote, which is why so many campaigns
Speaker 4: are trying to figure out how they can really get
Speaker 4: in front of them and break.
Speaker 6: Through the noise.
Speaker 4: I'll just share a quick stat which I find is
Speaker 4: really phenomenal is millennials are spending one hundred and fifty
Speaker 4: seven minutes to day on social media and gen Z
Speaker 4: is one hundred and eighty minutes. And when you look
Speaker 4: at when you look at traditional campaigns, most of those
Speaker 4: campaigns are still buying ads on television, which is important,
Speaker 4: but we have to recognize that there needs to be
Speaker 4: a shift to things like digital first platforms and then
Speaker 4: finding a way to really break through all of the
Speaker 4: noise that's out there, which is why the work that.
Speaker 2: We're doing, we're a little horrified buy these numbers here.
Speaker 2: I feel like the you know, Sunday morning, you wake
Speaker 2: up in a few hours after you wake up, you
Speaker 2: get that notification from that shows your screen.
Speaker 6: Where's the day did I do with the math?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 2: They're ticking and they're talking. I guess, Carol, is what
Speaker 2: the kids say, right, Elizabeth?
Speaker 4: I know what was When I first read that, I
Speaker 4: thought it was is that one hundred and fifty seven
Speaker 4: minutes a week? And I had to read it a
Speaker 4: couple of times.
Speaker 5: So no offense, but it makes me say, Okay, we've
Speaker 5: got a much more serious problem at hand.
Speaker 6: That's for a different conversation.
Speaker 5: So okay, but obviously you take that information and you've
Speaker 5: got to think about how do you reach those voters.
Speaker 5: I mean, is it as simple as just people under
Speaker 5: is it? Are they not registered? Do they not care?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 5: What is it that moves the needle in terms of
Speaker 5: this group, because I think for a long time it
Speaker 5: was like they're candidates I just can't even.
Speaker 4: Relate to, Right, There's definitely there's definitely a little bit
Speaker 4: of that. I think there's a lot of young people
Speaker 4: that don't necessarily see themselves reflect in the process and
Speaker 4: sort of what they've been hearing and seeing from the campaigns.
Speaker 4: You know, nearly nearly one in five young people have
Speaker 4: not yet been contacted by a campaign, So that just
Speaker 4: we just look at that as opportunity. Whereas you know,
Speaker 4: campaigns are also limited by capacity and funds and time,
Speaker 4: there's a great opportunity for non partisan organizations, grassroots efforts
Speaker 4: like I Am a Voter to reach the other four
Speaker 4: out of five young people and to really get them
Speaker 4: not only educated, but involved in the process. So whether
Speaker 4: that's getting them to register to vote or showing up
Speaker 4: at a local town hall, or maybe even themselves, inspiring them,
Speaker 4: inspiring them, and maybe they're a future elected candidate in
Speaker 4: their in their local towns or local cities where they
Speaker 4: sign up to be a pool worker. But we know
Speaker 4: that the very first step is to get them interested in,
Speaker 4: to get them involved. So what we really try and
Speaker 4: do is we want to just push out the facts.
Speaker 4: We're not trying to sway them one way or the other,
Speaker 4: because we know that they can figure that out for
Speaker 4: themselves if they have all the right information.
Speaker 6: But don't you feel like that's what go ahead?
Speaker 2: Well, I was just going to say, I'm looking at
Speaker 2: the Pew Research Center, given that they have some good
Speaker 2: data on the US House and how the Senate is
Speaker 2: looking the meeting age of voting House lawmakers. This is
Speaker 2: in the current term fifty seven point nine years, so
Speaker 2: fifty eight and then the Senate is even older. Pulling
Speaker 2: that the meeting age is about sixty five point three,
Speaker 2: So there's room for those younger candidates to get in there, right.
Speaker 6: You can understand.
Speaker 5: So based on what you are doing and what you're seeing,
Speaker 5: I mean, did the candidates last night, do you think
Speaker 5: they reached a younger voter?
Speaker 4: You know, I think I think We'll have to wait
Speaker 4: and see. I think that I think all campaigns are
Speaker 4: trying really hard to make sure that they are being heard.
Speaker 4: The majority of young people probably didn't watch the debates
Speaker 4: last night, and that's just not last you know, that's
Speaker 4: not about this election cycle. For most presidential debates, the
Speaker 4: average viewer is not of Gen Z or millennial age.
Speaker 4: And I think what most folks are probably seeing today,
Speaker 4: or young people are seeing today, is what is the
Speaker 4: after effect of that, and what are the short snippets
Speaker 4: that they're seeing on social and what are their friends posting,
Speaker 4: Which is why relational organizing is so important, because most
Speaker 4: folks are going to be hearing about the election from
Speaker 4: not just traditional news, but actually probably their neighbor or
Speaker 4: somebody that they follow on social.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean that's that's what's so amazing is sometimes
Speaker 2: people send me like screenshots from Instagram with news.
Speaker 6: Well, and you know, I was thinking that it was
Speaker 6: sound like.
Speaker 2: Sound like I'm so out of it, But but I
Speaker 2: was also.
Speaker 5: Thinking like, I don't know, I think you watched all
Speaker 5: of it, most of.
Speaker 2: It, Yeah, the debate, Yeah, yeah, I watched.
Speaker 6: All of it.
Speaker 5: And I know this is our job, but it's interesting,
Speaker 5: how many? But like, yeah, I know, I just I
Speaker 5: wait until everybody snips it and like I just read
Speaker 5: the clip.
Speaker 2: Well, you can also kind of follow real time on
Speaker 2: Twitter slash acts and see what kind of is resonating
Speaker 2: with people, like with Mitt Romney's you know, Binders full
Speaker 2: of Women comment from twenty twelve, right, right, but that
Speaker 2: was huge.
Speaker 5: Sometimes you watch all of it to get a better
Speaker 5: feel of I don't know, it's just interesting, like when we're.
Speaker 2: Just yeah, that's a good point. News snippets versus the
Speaker 2: whole thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, are the high points, Natalie, Interesting stuff.
Speaker 5: Natalie Trent, co founder viam a voter joining us from
Speaker 5: LA This is Bloopberg BusinessWeek.
Speaker 2: Well, our next guest has thirty years of experience at
Speaker 2: McKinsey and Company, focusing on projects related to organizational change
Speaker 2: in companies that range from high tech to banking, healthcare, industrial,
Speaker 2: and more. He's a senior partner in McKenzie and senior
Speaker 2: partner at mckenzen Company codean of the CEO leadership program
Speaker 2: the Bower Forum. He's also got a brand new book out.
Speaker 2: It's called The Journey of Leadership, How CEOs Learned to
Speaker 2: Lead from the inside out rameshing of Austin. Welcome to
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Business Week. How are you.
Speaker 3: I'm good, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: It's good to have you with us. My first question
Speaker 2: is very basic. There's four co authors on this book.
Speaker 2: How do you write a book with three other people?
Speaker 3: It's actually a fantastic experience.
Speaker 7: I've learned a lot from my co authors, Dana, ham,
Speaker 7: Swanna and Kirk and you know, obviously some of us
Speaker 7: took the lead on different chapters, but bringing the different
Speaker 7: perspectives together was a fantastic learning experiences.
Speaker 6: All right, So which chapters did you write?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 7: I wrote the chapter on humility, that's one of our
Speaker 7: first chapters. I wrote the chapter on vulnerability. I wrote
Speaker 7: the chapter on control. There's an illusion. Happy to talk
Speaker 7: about that. But I'm also as codean of the Power Forum.
Speaker 7: I've been in the journey of many many CEOs have
Speaker 7: gone through the program. More than five hundred CEOs have
Speaker 7: gone through it. So I have a good view of
Speaker 7: all the chapters.
Speaker 5: How many leaders come to you, guys, and they're not
Speaker 5: great leaders to begin like.
Speaker 2: By the time you become a leader in that sense,
Speaker 2: and you're like a leader enough to hire McKinsey. You've
Speaker 2: obviously done somethings right.
Speaker 7: You have done somethings right, and I think you've got
Speaker 7: a good achievement orientation.
Speaker 3: You've accomplished something, but yet you want to learn.
Speaker 7: So people come to the Bower Forum, people come to
Speaker 7: our leadership programs because they at least have that initial
Speaker 7: sense of wanting to learn.
Speaker 3: So there is some self selection in that process.
Speaker 2: Okay, So talk a little bit about just the experience
Speaker 2: of sort of understanding how what makes a leader successful.
Speaker 2: Oftentimes we talk to CEOs of companies, especially honestly, especially
Speaker 2: this time of year because it's like book season. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so we're talking to like we spoke to Anchow yesterday,
Speaker 2: former CEO of AT and T business. Like these these
Speaker 2: CEOs they spent three decades at a company with Andrew
Speaker 2: Liveris earlier this week from he spent years at DOW.
Speaker 2: He was at doll for more than thirty years. He
Speaker 2: wrote a book about leadership as well. Oftentimes, you know,
Speaker 2: the folks who are writing books about leadership are the
Speaker 2: ones who are are retired from leading these companies, not
Speaker 2: necessarily day to day working with other CEOs. So talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about bringing that perspective.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, we have stories of both CEOs have
Speaker 7: retired and we have stories of CEOs are still active.
Speaker 7: And I think what we found is, and this is
Speaker 7: the concept of inside out leadership that we've described in
Speaker 7: the book.
Speaker 3: Successful leaders, especially in a world that is changing so fast.
Speaker 7: With complex geopolitics and technology disruptions, they think a lot.
Speaker 3: About who they are, what is their purpose.
Speaker 7: And use that to inspire their teams, inspire organizations. So
Speaker 7: our big learning was the model of the imperial CEO
Speaker 7: no longer exists. And these leaders, and Androw is a
Speaker 7: great example, think a lot more about their purpose and
Speaker 7: use that to consciously inspire their teams and their institutions
Speaker 7: they're leading.
Speaker 5: What about inspiring just by paying really good wages and
Speaker 5: giving benefits and making you know, I just think about
Speaker 5: for workers. You know, it's interesting coming off the debate, right,
Speaker 5: It's like the economy, the economy, the economy, and even
Speaker 5: though wages have gone up, there are workers out there
Speaker 5: who don't feel like they are participating, especially when it
Speaker 5: comes to publicly held companies in the fortunes of those companies.
Speaker 5: So what about something as simple as that. I understand
Speaker 5: they're like kind of raw raw, you know, inspiring your team,
Speaker 5: but it's hard. I think for some folks who say, okay, great,
Speaker 5: I've got to inspiring leader, but I'm having trouble because
Speaker 5: my wages haven't gone up as much.
Speaker 3: You're absolutely right. I think these leaders think about.
Speaker 7: Stakeholders and have to think about all stakeholders, their employees,
Speaker 7: their team, society, more broadly, their customers. I'll give you
Speaker 7: an example of Frank Desuza, who was, you know, one
Speaker 7: of the co founders of Cognizant, you know, Indian It
Speaker 7: and BPO company, taught a lot about even if a
Speaker 7: frontline software programmer reached out to him, he would always,
Speaker 7: you know, connect with them, respond to them. And so
Speaker 7: in many of these sectors, especially the knowledge economy, thinking
Speaker 7: about all employees is quite critical.
Speaker 3: So completely agree with you.
Speaker 7: Even in the manufacturing I'm with you. I think the
Speaker 7: successful companies are thinking about creating value, you know, not
Speaker 7: just for shareholders, but for employees as well. I see
Speaker 7: this even in private equity companies are thinking much more
Speaker 7: about broader participation in creating value.
Speaker 2: How do they justify that from a cost perspective.
Speaker 7: I think all our research at McKinsey shows that deeper
Speaker 7: engagement investing in employees taking care of them, benefits well being.
Speaker 7: That absolutely leads that deeper engagement leads to better productivity,
Speaker 7: better performance, better financial returns.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of research that confirms.
Speaker 5: That you do talk to CEOs, and you mentioned the
Speaker 5: head of Cognizance, but I'm just curious talk to us
Speaker 5: about some of the CEOs that you did talk to
Speaker 5: for the book and what you wanted to get from them,
Speaker 5: and include.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Frank is actually in the book, but beyond Frank,
Speaker 7: you know a couple of other CEOs.
Speaker 3: Tefan Bansal of Moderna.
Speaker 7: You know, when he wanted to you know, he had
Speaker 7: the aspiration of developing the vaccine. They'd never manufactured a
Speaker 7: vaccine before, so he told his head of manufacturing, tell.
Speaker 3: Me what support you need to make a billion.
Speaker 7: Those are the vaccines and and you know, the head
Speaker 7: of manufacturing almost fell off the chair. But they also
Speaker 7: realized that, you know, Stefan normally sped an aggressive ambition,
Speaker 7: but was there to support them, roll off his sleeves,
Speaker 7: talk problem with them. Another is Wendy Copp of Teach
Speaker 7: for America and Teach for All. You know, when she
Speaker 7: took teach for America, so now in sixty countries. She
Speaker 7: realized the value of the importance of understanding the context,
Speaker 7: understanding the entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs in these geographies, and has
Speaker 7: come up with this model of collaborative leadership where the
Speaker 7: fundamental idea.
Speaker 3: Of education equity is the same.
Speaker 7: But she's had to tailor the model and inspire these
Speaker 7: leaders to have the kind of impact in these sixty
Speaker 7: countries that she never thought was possible fifteen twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: A lot of your own work has focused on organizational change.
Speaker 2: As I mentioned in the introduction, this is just another
Speaker 2: way to describe how companies organize themselves from a human
Speaker 2: capital perspective. And I'm wondering over your three decade career
Speaker 2: at McKinsey, what the biggest shift in how organizations have
Speaker 2: realized how they can be more efficient. What is that shift?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 7: I think the biggest shift is the notion of purpose.
Speaker 7: So we often talk about people purpose performance. I think
Speaker 7: these institutions have realized that they need to figure out
Speaker 7: what is their purpose and how do they help the
Speaker 7: people in the organization reflect on what gives them meaning,
Speaker 7: whether it be their own development, their teams, their bosses.
Speaker 3: The communities around them, and how do they tie that
Speaker 3: purpose back to the individual.
Speaker 7: That's when they can unleash the most from the people
Speaker 7: and deliver sustainable performance. Again, moderna is a great example,
Speaker 7: and in healthcare. It's probably easier when you're doing work
Speaker 7: in life sciences or healthcare, but helping people see the
Speaker 7: value of what they're doing can then unleash their fullest potential.
Speaker 5: I thought it was interesting there was a chapter, chapter ten,
Speaker 5: everyone keeps things from the Boss, and it talks about
Speaker 5: as somebody becomes the CEO, they really no longer have
Speaker 5: peers who might.
Speaker 6: You know, inform them, keep.
Speaker 2: Them, say to them, say no to them, or I
Speaker 2: know a lot of instances of that that I've seen
Speaker 2: play out over the last few years. It's so free.
Speaker 2: Why is this nobody's saying no around this guy?
Speaker 6: You can tell right, or say that's a great idea.
Speaker 2: That's a great idea of boss.
Speaker 5: So you know, you get in this vacuum, and you know,
Speaker 5: I think there's a lot of either founder led companies
Speaker 5: or founder created companies that ultimately get into a problem
Speaker 5: where nobody wants to tell them don't do anything.
Speaker 6: Yeah, don't tweet that exactly.
Speaker 5: No, I just think about you know, here we're go
Speaker 5: looking at companies like Starbucks and Chapotle went through period,
Speaker 5: you know, like these companies so identified with their founders
Speaker 5: for a long time and went through some tough times.
Speaker 5: I don't know, what do you what do you tell
Speaker 5: the leaders to make sure they don't get in that predicament?
Speaker 6: How do they not get in that predicament?
Speaker 7: You're absolutely And by the way, this is issue is
Speaker 7: not just in founder led companies. It's actually many companies
Speaker 7: and not just the CEO. Even as you're getting more
Speaker 7: senior people will start holding back and don't share the
Speaker 7: truth with folks. So I think we had the story
Speaker 7: in that chapter about the media company CEO who surrounded
Speaker 7: himself with truth tellers, and these truth tellers were people
Speaker 7: at all levels. He selected people who were not afraid
Speaker 7: of speaking the truth, but also created an environment where
Speaker 7: he set that expectation with them so that they would
Speaker 7: come and tell him what was really happening, what customers
Speaker 7: were telling them, how they were feeling, how their peers
Speaker 7: were feeling.
Speaker 3: And he used that knowledge to.
Speaker 7: Set the strategy, inspire people, and direct his own team.
Speaker 2: Hey, how has the organizational structure at Mackenzy changed in
Speaker 2: your career.
Speaker 7: I think McKinsey, our mission and values have stayed the
Speaker 7: same in these thirty years. Obviously, the scope of work
Speaker 7: we do, the geographies we are in that has expanded
Speaker 7: quite a bit in response to our clients are asking
Speaker 7: and you know, we're we are in a waiting we're experimenting.
Speaker 7: We've invested a lot in technology, and then we remembered
Speaker 7: that purpose into what we do. That's become much more
Speaker 7: important for us now. So those are some of the
Speaker 7: shifts that I've seen in these studies.
Speaker 5: Listen, we want to get back to our guest thirty
Speaker 5: years at mackenzie and Company. Senior partner at mackenzie Codine
Speaker 5: of the CEO Leadership program the Bauer Forum.
Speaker 6: He's the co author of a new book.
Speaker 5: We've been talking about the Journey of leadership, how CEOs
Speaker 5: learned to lead from the inside out. We are still
Speaker 5: talking with Ramesh Shinavasan. Hey, Ramesh, one thing I want
Speaker 5: to ask you, and I think it's safe to say
Speaker 5: we've done a lot of reporting a lot of other
Speaker 5: folks about the consulting industry. Overall, McKenzie and others kind
Speaker 5: of going through a bit of a rethink, a redesign McKenzie.
Speaker 5: We talked about earlier this year Bloomberg reported out, you know,
Speaker 5: cutting some jobs. They talked about a slowdown in demand
Speaker 5: for services, and more broadly, the consult industry has really
Speaker 5: been going through kind of been under the microscope, if
Speaker 5: you will, and McKinsey in particular in terms of the
Speaker 5: influence of the firm, and you know, it's reputation, it's involvement,
Speaker 5: and I wonder a couple of things. One, how is
Speaker 5: the consulting industry going, What kind of demand are you
Speaker 5: seeing for your services?
Speaker 6: And secondly, is it tough.
Speaker 5: Sometimes when McKinsey has been under the microscope to kind
Speaker 5: of give advice to other companies, And how does that
Speaker 5: make it kind of interesting the conversations.
Speaker 7: You know, I've been in the industry for thirty years,
Speaker 7: and I think the industry goes through its own cycles.
Speaker 3: But I see robust demand. You know, I talked about changing.
Speaker 7: Geopolitics, technology disruptions, climate change. All of these are changes
Speaker 7: happening in the world, and our clients are looking for
Speaker 7: new creative ways.
Speaker 3: Of driving growth.
Speaker 7: Our vision is to help clients deliver sus thingable inclusive
Speaker 7: growth in the world. I think in that journey, we're
Speaker 7: seeing robust demand. We're also having to shift our own practices. Frankly,
Speaker 7: if anything, we're you know, when clients look at us
Speaker 7: and see some of the changes we're doing, see the
Speaker 7: way in which we're adjusting ourselves. You know, part of
Speaker 7: it is we're taking some of our own medicine. And
Speaker 7: I see demand continuing to be robust.
Speaker 3: I'm enjoying what I'm doing.
Speaker 7: You know, the book is getting great response from people,
Speaker 7: and that's what keeps me going.
Speaker 5: All Right, One thing we wanted to do, We've done
Speaker 5: this with some other folks that have written leadership books,
Speaker 5: is talk about some of the leaders that are out there.
Speaker 5: And I want to start with the two leaders that
Speaker 5: were up on stage in Pennsylvania last night, the debate stage,
Speaker 5: Kamala Harris, Donald Trump. How would you rank them as leaders?
Speaker 5: What advice would you give to them in terms of
Speaker 5: their leadership skills or lack thereof.
Speaker 7: You know, I'm not a political commentator, I'm not an expert.
Speaker 7: I'll leave it to other experts. I think our belief,
Speaker 7: like I said, is this concept of inside out leader
Speaker 7: leadership where we see successful leaders in business, in in
Speaker 7: social leadership, in all spheres thinking about their own purpose,
Speaker 7: who they are, and using.
Speaker 3: That to inspire teams, inspire the world.
Speaker 7: That's the model we see, we understand well, and that's
Speaker 7: what we're sharing with the world.
Speaker 5: Do you think that though these are two candidates, either
Speaker 5: of them, one of them, both of them that inspire
Speaker 5: like the electorate and citizens.
Speaker 7: They obviously have, like citizens, different parts of the world
Speaker 7: that they inspire, right, so you know they resonate with
Speaker 7: different parts of the world and different parts of America
Speaker 7: as well.
Speaker 5: All right, so maybe easier, let's pick a leader that
Speaker 5: we talk about. Where do you want to go, Tim,
Speaker 5: I want to talk.
Speaker 2: About Elon Musk. I mean, he's someone we talk about
Speaker 2: each and every day. He's got several companies including SpaceX,
Speaker 2: Tesla of course the boring company. He's got x formerly
Speaker 2: known as Twitter, Say Neuralink. Didn't say neuralink yet there
Speaker 2: you go, that's one of his companies x AI as well.
Speaker 2: When you look at Elon Musk, what do you see
Speaker 2: in terms of leadership?
Speaker 7: I mean, I see a leader who comes up with ideas,
Speaker 7: innovating bold, so many attributes that are interesting and useful
Speaker 7: to learn from.
Speaker 2: What about ways that you think he could be a
Speaker 2: better leader?
Speaker 7: Again, I have not studied Elon Musk, so again I'm
Speaker 7: not I don't think I'm an expert at at Elon
Speaker 7: Musk specifically.
Speaker 3: I'll go back to what we see leaders do.
Speaker 7: I think for us, our leadership model starts with leading
Speaker 7: styff who am I, you know, being more self aware,
Speaker 7: being aware of like what are my strengths, what are
Speaker 7: my areas?
Speaker 3: How can I improve?
Speaker 7: Like I said right at the beginning, that's why people
Speaker 7: come to the Barer Forum and other leadership programs we do,
Speaker 7: and then using that to lead teams, inspire teams. You
Speaker 7: know I already mentioned at least our belief is the
Speaker 7: model of the imperial CEO is no longer sustainable, and
Speaker 7: then using that to inspire institutions, inspire.
Speaker 3: Change in the world.
Speaker 7: That's the model of sustainable leadership we've seen, we've studied,
Speaker 7: and we share with leaders who.
Speaker 3: Come to us.
Speaker 2: Ramesh, what are some takeaways that folks who don't necessarily
Speaker 2: lead organizations at the top, but maybe managers who have
Speaker 2: small teams or who are early on in their careers,
Speaker 2: what are some takeaways that they can get from the
Speaker 2: leaders at the top of their game, who you've written about,
Speaker 2: you've studied, you've worked with.
Speaker 7: Yeah, our book is actually meant for a wide spectrum
Speaker 7: of leaders. Leaders frankly who are in schools today, Leaders
Speaker 7: who are early in their career, leaders who are more senior.
Speaker 7: My advice would be, you know, focused not just on
Speaker 7: academic success and achievement, but think about your own purpose.
Speaker 3: You know, what do you want to accomplis in.
Speaker 7: The world, What what service you want to provide to
Speaker 7: the community around you, and and bring that sense.
Speaker 3: Of purpose to the to the institutions you're part of.
Speaker 3: Ask a lot of questions.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 3: You know, when when.
Speaker 7: I meet a lot of younger colleagues who are coming
Speaker 7: into McKenzie, I tell them exercise the obligation to dissent.
Speaker 7: That's one of our key principles within mckensey. Ask a
Speaker 7: lot of questions, understand how things work, get invite a
Speaker 7: lot of feedback and coaching, and use that to improve
Speaker 7: and grow.
Speaker 3: That's what I advise younger leaders.
Speaker 6: Interesting stuff.
Speaker 5: I mean, listen, a lot of leaders right like looking
Speaker 5: for advice and trying to figure out in an environment
Speaker 5: where things can change a lot a lot thrown at you.
Speaker 6: Uh, and if you're publicly held.
Speaker 5: You can be out if the stock price isn't doing well, or.
Speaker 2: Maybe they keep paying you even if the stock is
Speaker 2: coming down. We've seen situations like that before too. We
Speaker 2: have seen that.
Speaker 6: Ramesh, Thank you so much.
Speaker 5: Ramesh Shrinavasen, who said senior partner at Mackenzie and Company.
Speaker 5: The book is called The Journey of Leadership, How CEOs
Speaker 5: Learned to Lead from the Inside app This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg BusinessWeek with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 1: Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio and Television.
Speaker 2: It is Bloomberg Business Week. Like I said, it's time
Speaker 2: to talk olive oil. I'm not talking posa olive oil.
Speaker 2: Olive oil, yeah, oil, olive oil, yeah, Popeye not Popeye.
Speaker 2: It's what Amanda Mole describes as the global olive oil lobby.
Speaker 2: We're gonna get to that in a minute. Today olive
Speaker 2: oil is in every kitchen. It's nearly a seven billion
Speaker 2: dollar market that's still growing significantly. But there's a little drama.
Speaker 2: It involves olive oil in a squeeze bottle. A animal
Speaker 2: is Bloomberg Business Week's senior reporter, and for BusinessWeek, she
Speaker 2: writes about the sixty million dollar idea of putting olive
Speaker 2: oil into a bottle. She joins us from Hawaii. You
Speaker 2: can read her story and more on the Bloomberg Ttermoline
Speaker 2: at Bloomberg dot com slash BusinessWeek. How do I get
Speaker 2: to go to Hawaii?
Speaker 6: That's what we really.
Speaker 3: Want to know.
Speaker 8: You get invited very luckily to a house here. In
Speaker 8: my experience, that's how you get here.
Speaker 2: Is that a real background or is that one of
Speaker 2: those fake zoom backgrounds?
Speaker 3: That is real?
Speaker 2: Oh wow, for those people who are not watching on
Speaker 2: youtubeer Bloomberg originals, it's the most iconic idyllic you know.
Speaker 2: It's the epitome of a background is showing out and
Speaker 2: enjoying the sun.
Speaker 3: Okay, come over.
Speaker 6: I thought it was gonna be an olive oil convention.
Speaker 2: It's not an olive oil convention. I think she's just
Speaker 2: having fun and she's taking some time to join us,
Speaker 2: which I really appreciate. Okay, can you talk a little
Speaker 2: bit because I tease this, this global olive oil lobby.
Speaker 2: We you know, everywhere every kitchen you go to, not commercial,
Speaker 2: not commercial kitchen, but every like home kitchen you go
Speaker 2: to has a bottle of olive oil in it. It
Speaker 2: wasn't always this way. Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 2: about what's happened over the last three decades or so, right?
Speaker 8: It recently has the nineteen nineties when when I was
Speaker 8: a kid informing my my own tastes in food, all
Speaker 8: the oil was sort of a gourmet ingredient. It was
Speaker 8: for people who had like a real interest in international cooking,
Speaker 8: or people who had lived overseas or had family from overseas,
Speaker 8: especially Southern Europe. But it was not like it was
Speaker 8: not something that just sat in every kitchen in America
Speaker 8: or in this case, over over half of kitchens in
Speaker 8: America now. And the olive oil growers of Southern Europe
Speaker 8: wanted to change that, so they started a series of
Speaker 8: these really luxurious junkets where they would bring American food
Speaker 8: world stars overseas and sort of wind them and dine
Speaker 8: them and teach them about the culinary food ways of
Speaker 8: the region, and front and center all the time was
Speaker 8: olive oil. And this worked really, really well. A lot
Speaker 8: of people at those junkets hosted cooking shows, wrote cookbooks
Speaker 8: and included this wonderful like heart healthy fat in their recommendations,
Speaker 8: and that's sort of where the Mediterranean diet came from.
Speaker 8: That's where most of America's education on olive oil started.
Speaker 5: Then I gotta stay in my own home, like there
Speaker 5: was a transition from Crisco my parents, my mom would
Speaker 5: use for like making French fries or fried chicken and
Speaker 5: so on and so forth, or fried fish. And then
Speaker 5: it got to those big cans of I can't remember the.
Speaker 2: Olive oil, but it was olive oil. It wasn't like eventually,
Speaker 2: wasn't a vegetable oil.
Speaker 5: You went through some vegetable We went through all these
Speaker 5: different phases. But now I know my own home for
Speaker 5: the most part, it's all olive oil.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Crisco, fascinatingly also sort of an invention of convenience. It
Speaker 8: was an industrial by product, which is why it existed.
Speaker 8: We used a lot of that when I was a
Speaker 8: kid because I'm from Georgia, so there's a lot of
Speaker 8: Crisco available in my household. But now my mom cooks
Speaker 8: with olive oil. It was it was a very very
Speaker 8: effective set of junkets marketing effort.
Speaker 6: Basically, how big is the olive oil market.
Speaker 8: In the US it's seven billion dollars, but the US
Speaker 8: is still a minority player globally in the olive oil market.
Speaker 8: It is many many times that around the world per capita, Spain, Greece,
Speaker 8: Italy all eat, all consume like many many times what
Speaker 8: Americans consume. But we still are a big player because
Speaker 8: we import almost all of our olive oil. So for
Speaker 8: those countries, the American market is very very important.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, we got to talk about the next evolution
Speaker 2: of olive oil, which is what your story for Bloomberg
Speaker 2: BusinessWeek focus is on. It's the olive oil in a
Speaker 2: squeeze bottle. Talk to us about what's going on with
Speaker 2: Andrew Bennin and Graza.
Speaker 6: Sign me up man.
Speaker 8: Well, Gaza debut just a couple of years ago, and
Speaker 8: they make olive oil that is mostly from the Spanish
Speaker 8: picule olive, which is a very common varietal that is
Speaker 8: used in olive oil. And their real insight when they
Speaker 8: were developing this product was that olive oil packaging leaves
Speaker 8: a lot to be desired in the market. Up until
Speaker 8: this point, there had been plastic bottles that were like
Speaker 8: not squeezable, that were mostly just bulk hard plastic containers,
Speaker 8: the kind of thing that you would see at Costco
Speaker 8: often or there for sort of like nicer bottles. There
Speaker 8: were glass and glasses, heavy glasses on wheel be it
Speaker 8: gets very slippery when it gets oily, which it does
Speaker 8: because olive oil is all over the place and the
Speaker 8: you know, the the spouts that it comes out of,
Speaker 8: they're hard to control. You have to get your finger
Speaker 8: over it. And if you're using a big glass bottle,
Speaker 8: you know, there's a lot of opportunity for mishaps, for
Speaker 8: overdosing things like that of whatever recipe that you're that
Speaker 8: you're making. So they put their olive oil, which is
Speaker 8: sort of mid priced in into these like soft plastic
Speaker 8: squeeze bottles, the sort of ape what what line cooks
Speaker 8: use at restaurants. But you don't have to you don't
Speaker 8: have to buy the bulk olive oil and fill them
Speaker 8: yourself and buy the by the squeeze bottle separately. And
Speaker 8: they made it into varieties. One is called sizzle, one
Speaker 8: is called drizzle. So if you are a new cook,
Speaker 8: if you're a young cook, if you're just figuring out
Speaker 8: how to how to use basic ingredients for yourself, you
Speaker 8: know which one is the one intended to be heated
Speaker 8: up in which one is the sort of fancier one.
Speaker 8: It's intended to be put on salad dressing, to be
Speaker 8: used in salad dressing, put on bread, things like that.
Speaker 8: So they made a commodity product really really memorable and
Speaker 8: really useful for people who were just learning.
Speaker 2: All it took was putting it in a bottle throw So.
Speaker 5: Wait, is it just about the squeeze bottle or is
Speaker 5: it actually good ten seconds? I mean, is it a
Speaker 5: good stop or is it just because I can squeeze it?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 8: The all oil is pretty widely brid carded is good.
Speaker 8: The New York Times Wirecutter has it as their top pick.
Speaker 8: But the squeeze bottle is really important.
Speaker 2: What we go home and put I have a big,
Speaker 2: huge can from Costco of olive oil, and you go
Speaker 2: put it in a squeeze bottle like the chefs do,
Speaker 2: as Amanda writes about Amanda Mole love it when you
Speaker 2: join us, especially when you're like on vacation. This is
Speaker 2: so cool. Thanks. She's Bloomberg Business Week senior reporter writing
Speaker 2: about this
Speaker 1: For Business Week