WEBVTT - GOP House Conflicts and San Francisco in Crisis 0:00:01.280 --> 0:00:05.119 You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast count US Saturdays 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:08.280 at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, 0:00:08.320 --> 0:00:11.479 the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen 0:00:11.520 --> 0:00:13.760 on demand wherever you get your podcasts. 0:00:15.600 --> 0:00:19.440 Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion I Amy Morris. Meetings take up 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:22.200 a lot of time, maybe more than you'd like. In 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:25.920 a Microsoft report from earlier this year, workers said inefficient 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:29.440 meetings were the primary barrier to getting stuff done, and 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:32.120 now there's one company that is resorting to putting a 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:35.400 price on those meetings. Then we'll be taking you to 0:00:35.440 --> 0:00:37.960 San Francisco, which is having a rough go of it 0:00:38.000 --> 0:00:41.839 as its population shrinks, its real estate values are dropping, 0:00:42.159 --> 0:00:46.040 and downtown activity has fallen off a cliff. Can San 0:00:46.080 --> 0:00:50.559 Francisco avoid the fate that has befallen Detroit? And then 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:53.000 we'll look at the weather and climate and the heat 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:57.520 and how Maine, Minnesota, and Michigan are replacing Florida and 0:00:57.600 --> 0:01:02.080 Arizona as retirement destinations. But we begin with a partisan 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:05.240 fight on Capitol Hill in the House of Representatives over 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:08.560 a bill that normally would be an easy vote. Far 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:12.280 right Republicans loaded up the National Defense Authorization Act with 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:16.839 dozens of amendments on issues like abortion, book banning, renaming 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:20.679 military bases, and more. Some of those amendments pushed by 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:25.000 GOP Senator Tommy Tubberville of Alabama. White House Press Secretary 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:27.440 Caree Jean Pierre responded. 0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:31.600 Senator Tubberville is hijacking what has traditionally been a bipartisan process, 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:36.559 the National Defense Authorization Act. He's also delaying the confirmation 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:40.920 of hundreds of qualified and capable military nominees, depriving our 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:43.880 armed forces of leadership it needs. 0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:45.680 Okay, let's get a closer look. 0:01:45.720 --> 0:01:45.880 Now. 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:49.680 Blueberg opinion columnist Jonathan Bernstein covers politics and policy, and 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:52.280 he joins me. Now and Jonathan, the odds that those 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:54.800 provisions that were tacked on to the Defense bill are 0:01:54.800 --> 0:01:57.280 going to be stripped off anyway. And if that's the case, 0:01:57.320 --> 0:02:00.280 what's the big deal. Why are we worried about this thing? 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:02.760 It's not clear when we're going to actually get a 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:06.840 Defense Authorization Bill, which is needed for various policies to 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:11.440 take effect. It needs to pass every year because policies 0:02:11.520 --> 0:02:15.040 change and have to be updated. So that's one piece 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:18.160 of it. It's also telling us a lot about what's 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:21.280 going on in the House generally, and what is going 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:25.160 to happen with appropriations bills is the basic spending bills 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:29.280 that fund the rest of the government, which are due 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:32.160 at the end of September, and which we very well 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:36.200 may not get until after a government shutdown. 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:39.440 In your call on you say that this could foreshadow 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:43.120 a potential government shutdown, and I thought, wait, what, But 0:02:43.360 --> 0:02:47.480 this the National Defense Authorization Act that's supposed to be 0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:49.840 the easy one, and it doesn't seem to be working 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:51.720 that way with the easy one. So I'm worried about 0:02:51.720 --> 0:02:52.679 the hard ones now too. 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:55.320 And this is again the dynamic within the House of 0:02:55.360 --> 0:03:00.120 Representatives is that Republicans have a very narrow majority. They 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:03.160 can only afford to lose four or five votes if 0:03:03.160 --> 0:03:06.320 they want to pass something by a party line vote. 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:12.600 And because of the rules about speaker elections, the House 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:18.320 Freedom Caucus and other radical Republicans are constantly threatening to 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:22.160 revolt against Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and they can force a 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:25.680 vote to kick him out basically at any point. And 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:30.080 he's reacted to this by appeasing them constantly, by trying 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:33.480 to stay on their good side. The result is what 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:35.480 they're trying to do is they keep trying to pass 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:39.280 these things by a party line vote. And the problem 0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:42.880 with that is that the House is not the entire government. 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:46.600 We have divided government with a Democratic majority in the 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:49.720 Senate and with the Democratic president. So if you pass 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:53.680 something by a party line vote in the House with 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:56.560 no Democrats, well you're going to get no Democrats in 0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:58.960 the Senate. You're not going to get a presidential signature. 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:01.360 So you're gonna get you know, the bill's going to 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:05.640 go nowhere. And the House is repeatedly, you know, taking 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:11.040 these votes on things which can't get anywhere, and because 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:14.160 this radical group is insisting on it, and because McCarthy 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:14.800 is a piece of them. 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:18.240 Let's look a little bit at the House Speaker McCarthy then, 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:20.839 because it sounds like all of this goes back to 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:25.839 that speaker position. And let's remember when he ran to 0:04:25.960 --> 0:04:29.000 become House Speaker, there were a lot of votes that 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:32.520 were taken before he actually was able to land the position. 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:35.680 Did that maybe paint the picture? Did that sort of 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:38.560 set the table for what we are seeing now where 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.880 he has to keep everybody happy, which is impossible to do. 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:43.440 I don't care who you are or where you work, 0:04:43.600 --> 0:04:45.919 You're not going to keep everybody happy. But that's the 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:48.240 position he may be in now, to be. 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:50.480 Fear of McCarthy. This is something that goes back well 0:04:50.520 --> 0:04:53.960 before him, and the last two were public speakers before this. 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:57.880 Paul Ryan and John Bayner both basically threw up their 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:02.200 hands and left cause they had to deal with they, 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:05.600 you know, because there's this group of by now it's 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:11.000 thirty forty fifty Republicans whose whole sort of goal in 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:13.760 life is to prove that they're the true conservatives as 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:16.760 opposed to the rest of the party. And by now 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:20.520 we've got some some of them who are particularly sort 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:24.200 of off the wall, you know, and and and that 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:27.560 group seems to get larger every year. There's no way 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:30.760 to appease them. They're not going to Eventually, you have 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:32.920 to pass these bills. You have to pass the defense 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:36.040 aviization bill, you have to pass spending bills, you have 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:38.919 to pass, as we saw back in the spring, the 0:05:38.960 --> 0:05:42.160 debt limit. And so eventually you're gonna have to make 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:46.360 a compromise with the Democrats, and this whole group they 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:52.719 exist to denounce compromise, you know, the compromise, feeling the 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:56.360 compromise you know is there is there number one principle 0:05:56.760 --> 0:06:00.200 and you can't you know, there's no solution for the 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:04.160 speaker to get over this. Now McCarthy is particularly bad 0:06:04.200 --> 0:06:07.680 at it because what he's his tactic seems to be 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:11.240 get through today, don't worry about tomorrow. What that winds 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:14.240 up doing is at the end he has to cut 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:16.920 a deal because the bills have to eventually pass. They 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:20.320 may pass after a debt Liamic crisis, as we saw 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:23.400 the first time. They may pass after a government shutdown, 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:25.880 but no matter. You know, the government can shut down 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:30.160 for a week, for six weeks, for ten weeks. Eventually 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:32.440 they're going to have to cut a deal on spending bills. 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:36.560 That bill, that compromise is going to be denounced by 0:06:37.440 --> 0:06:41.000 the House Freedom Caucus as the Delimit deal was denounced 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:44.800 by them, because that's their whole point. That's you know, 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:47.719 we know they're going to denounce whatever deal is reached, 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:51.560 and they're going to say that McCarthy sold them out. 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:54.839 But McCarthy sort of figures, well, i'll put I'll deal 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:57.039 with that later instead of you know, what he could 0:06:57.040 --> 0:06:59.000 have done is he could have said, look, we'll pass 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:02.240 this thing. It'll pass with a bipartisan majority. The bill, 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:06.599 the Defense Authorization Bill, passed out of the MIDI with 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:10.680 a fifty four to one vote bipartisan almost unanimous vote. 0:07:10.760 --> 0:07:14.160 They could have passed that same bill, you know, with minor, 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:17.160 non controversial amendments. They could have passed that bill on 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:19.480 the House floor. But you know, with four hundred votes 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:22.120 losing thirty votes or maybe three hundred and eighty votes 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:23.800 something like that. There's four hundred and thirty five in 0:07:23.840 --> 0:07:25.760 the House. They could have passed it with an overwhelming 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:29.440 bipartisan majority. That would have, you know, given them negotiating 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:31.880 position against the Senate. They might have passed a bill 0:07:31.920 --> 0:07:36.040 that was more in tune with some Republican priorities than 0:07:36.040 --> 0:07:37.520 the Senate bill. They would have kind of deal, they 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:40.520 would have gone halfway. You know, things would have worked out. Okay. 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:44.800 As it is, they've got all these off the wall amendments. 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:46.920 Senate it's not interested in any of that. Senate's going 0:07:46.960 --> 0:07:51.160 to pass the Senate version of a bipartisan bill. It's 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:54.760 probably going to pass with ninety votes maybe more, out 0:07:54.800 --> 0:07:57.240 of the one hundred votes in the Senate, and they're 0:07:57.280 --> 0:07:59.040 going to tell the House take it or leave it. 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:01.600 And the same thing is going to happen with spending bills. 0:08:01.720 --> 0:08:04.520 Okay, we are talking with Bloomberg opinion column is Jonathan 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:09.360 Bernstein on the future of the upcoming congressional agenda. Jonathan, 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:11.720 I want to look farther into the future now. You 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:13.880 say in your column, and you just said in that 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:17.280 answer that they're more concerned about proving that they're the 0:08:17.360 --> 0:08:22.000 true conservatives rather than nudging the public policy in their direction. 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:28.120 Is the GOP fundamentally changing, is it turning away from 0:08:28.120 --> 0:08:31.720 its traditional conservative roots? And if so, what is a 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:32.520 true conservative? 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:37.240 You know, a true conservative seems to be what anybody 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:41.960 who claims to be conservative and is taken seriously within 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:45.400 the party and especially within the most important people in 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:49.760 the party, which is the Republican Onliine media, Fox News, 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:54.280 the talk shows, the podcasts. You know, if you can, 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:58.880 if they certify you as conservative, then your conservative. It 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:03.199 has nothing to do with public policy. Sometimes it has 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:05.920 to do with how much you support Donald Trump these days. 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:08.240 Sometimes it has to do with whether you're in favor 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:12.520 of a government default back in the spring, or how 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:15.280 much you were in favor of a shutdown, a government 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:20.240 shutdown and against the eventual compromise. So yeah, I mean, 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:26.000 it's not values about size of government or particular programs, 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:29.360 although you know there's still conservatives who have preferences about 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:33.840 those things. It's about these ideas of never compromising, going 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:38.320 hard after Democrats, going hard after liberals, supporting Donald Trump, 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:42.959 supporting other controversial Republicans, and it's not about policy, and 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:45.400 therefore when they lose over policy, which they're going to 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:47.600 do as a result of all this, that deadly count 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:47.920 for them. 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:50.959 So you do see the GOP changing in the Republican Party, 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:54.240 turning away from what we would consider the traditional sort 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:58.320 of Reaganesque Republican reagan Esque conservativism. Is there any way 0:09:58.320 --> 0:09:59.760 the pendulum is going to swing back. 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:03.400 That's the million dollar question about US politics. In a 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:08.160 lot of ways, political scientists tend to think that parties 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:10.400 will care about elections enough that if they lose a 0:10:10.440 --> 0:10:15.760 bunch of elections they moderate. We'll see Republicans certainly have 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:19.319 not moderated after the twenty twenty election. Part of the 0:10:19.360 --> 0:10:23.280 problem for the Republican Party is that because Republican aligned 0:10:23.320 --> 0:10:27.200 media is so central within the party, and because Fox 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:30.840 News isn't damaged when Republicans lose elections, they in fact 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:33.920 probably do better. Republican books sell better for the Democrat 0:10:33.960 --> 0:10:36.559 in the White House, you know. So there's a real 0:10:36.679 --> 0:10:42.520 breakdown where it's not entirely clear that the electoral incentive, 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:45.480 which is the big thing that causes parties to try 0:10:45.520 --> 0:10:48.080 to reach to the center, to reach to as many 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:51.359 people as they can, whether that's still working for Republicans. 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:52.760 And that's scary stuff. 0:10:52.800 --> 0:10:57.600 Bloomberg Opinion columnist Jonathan Bernstein also covers politics in policy. Now, 0:10:57.600 --> 0:10:58.920 coming up, we're going to take a look at what 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:03.439 one company is doing to discourage meetings. You're listening to 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:04.400 Bloomberg Opinion. 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:15.800 You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast counts Saturdays at 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:18.920 one in seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:22.120 iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen on 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:24.280 demand wherever you get your podcasts. 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:29.200 You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. Have you 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:32.720 ever been to a meeting? Could have actually been an email? 0:11:33.080 --> 0:11:35.920 Evidently the folks that shopify have, and the company is 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:39.440 putting a price on meeting creep. The way meetings tend 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:41.360 to take up so much time you can't get any 0:11:41.360 --> 0:11:44.600 work done. Bloomberg Opinion editor Sarah Green Carmichael looked at 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:47.560 this and joins us now with some insights, what is 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:49.959 the new Shopify practice when it comes to meetings. 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:53.559 So, the new Shopify practice is that when you go 0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:57.120 into your calendar, they have now added a calendar add 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:01.400 on that when you schedule the meetings the average salaries 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:04.200 of the people that you've invited and the length of 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:06.520 the meeting, and it gives you a little red price 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:09.600 tag saying, hey, this meeting is costing US seven hundred 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:12.760 dollars or seventeen hundred dollars, or even if you've invited 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:15.840 a senior executive, probably over two thousand dollars for a 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:19.200 thirty minute meeting. So they are hoping that this will 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:23.280 work with the other meeting practices they've already implemented, like 0:12:24.320 --> 0:12:27.480 banning meetings, standing meetings with more than three people, can't 0:12:27.480 --> 0:12:30.240 have a regular meeting with that many people, and trying 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:33.319 to keep Wednesday's meeting free. So they're hoping that together 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:35.680 this will all help cut down on meeting creep. 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:39.400 So that the motivation of this meeting creep were they 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:43.480 discovering that the productivity was dropping, or were they hearing 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:47.880 complaints from employees or even middle managers or managers saying 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:50.720 all these meetings are keeping me from actually doing my 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:51.240 real job. 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:55.240 Shopify seems to have really diagnosed too many meetings as 0:12:55.280 --> 0:12:59.040 a serious problem for them. I think what's unusual about 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:02.480 them is that, you know, such complaints are very common 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:05.319 at companies, you know, and if you look at employee surveys, 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:10.400 you know, microsofted one earlier this year. They across companies 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:13.080 and found that meetings excessive meetings with a number one 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:16.920 productivity killer identified by employees. A lot of companies say, 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:19.319 you know, we have too many meetings. They're scattered throughout 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:21.319 the day. I can't get anything done that's meeting. Good 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:23.880 of been an email. But Shopify actually seems to be 0:13:23.920 --> 0:13:27.960 taking some serious measures publicly to try and really curtail 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:30.160 that problem. So that's really what's unusual. It's not that 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:32.880 Shopify has some crazy meeting problem, it's that they're actually 0:13:32.920 --> 0:13:33.640 trying to solve it. 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:36.800 Is there a chance or risk that this could somehow backfire? 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:38.000 Oh definitely. 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:38.320 So. 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.520 I think a couple of things about that. One is 0:13:41.520 --> 0:13:43.760 that when you convince people that time is money, they 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:47.040 actually become less helpful there's some really interesting research on 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:49.960 this out of Harvard Business School where they you know, 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:53.760 prime subjects to think of money and time as sort 0:13:53.800 --> 0:13:56.440 of fungible, and when people think that way, they become 0:13:56.520 --> 0:14:00.640 more stressed, they become less likely to help one another. 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:03.080 So if what you're trying to do is kind of 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:07.640 promote collaboration, this could actually backfire by making people less 0:14:08.000 --> 0:14:11.719 likely to collaborate. There could also be you know, challenges, 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:15.480 uh with how this interacts with other aspects of their culture. 0:14:15.520 --> 0:14:20.440 You know, at companies that have very consensus driven leadership styles, 0:14:20.480 --> 0:14:22.360 often you need to have a meeting to make a 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:26.440 decision because you know, otherwise how do you get all 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:28.920 the stakeholders to send off on it. So if you 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:31.920 just ban meetings but you don't address something like, oh, 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:34.920 you know, we have an overly consensus driven culture, then 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:37.320 you've sort of set yourself up for a conflict. 0:14:37.720 --> 0:14:40.640 We've sort of established in this interview that useless meetings 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:44.200 maybe just this universal issue a problem for companies all 0:14:44.240 --> 0:14:48.520 over the world. So could other places adopt this? Is 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:50.880 that likely or is this too radical? 0:14:51.520 --> 0:14:54.640 I don't think it's too radical. In fact, you know, 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:58.480 I'm kind of surprised that There isn't already an app 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:01.200 that any of us could install, you know, in Microsoft 0:15:01.240 --> 0:15:04.480 Outlook or Google Calendar, whatever we're using that says, hey, 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:07.960 you know, this meeting probably costs about you know, xyz 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:12.160 amount based on the people you've invited. I think this 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:15.280 is something that companies have sort of talked about for 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:18.560 a long time. There have been some apps that you 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:21.240 could get if you went out of your way to 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:23.400 download it on your phone, but you have to be 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:26.080 really motivated ort to do that. So I'm a little 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.520 surprised that this is only just coming up now. I 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:32.360 think we've also seen other companies experiment with things like 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:38.000 meeting free days or Zoom free days. It's obviously been 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:41.440 difficult to implement, given that we are still talking about it, 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:45.080 but you know, even something like a half day free 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:47.280 of meetings can have real productivity benefits. 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:51.000 Where do all these meetings come from? Sarah, Oh, good question. 0:15:51.240 --> 0:15:53.680 I think one reason we seem to have so many 0:15:53.680 --> 0:15:56.600 meetings now is actually that we don't have offices anymore. 0:15:56.720 --> 0:15:59.080 You know, back in the days, people had private offices. 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:01.040 If you needed to have a quick word, you just 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:04.800 pull someone into your office. And now everything has to 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:07.160 be a meeting because you probably have to reserve a 0:16:07.200 --> 0:16:09.680 conference room, and that's what sort of makes something feel 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:11.600 like a meeting instead of a quick chat. So the 0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:15.320 loss of privacy and offices has actually increased the sense 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:19.080 where we need to have designated times and spaces known 0:16:19.080 --> 0:16:21.760 as meetings to talk to each other. And then there's 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:25.360 also sort of a shift in cultural norms. People don't 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:28.440 generally pick up the phone anymore and just call people 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:30.440 out of the blue. Usually you send an email or 0:16:30.440 --> 0:16:32.080 a text saying, hey, is this a good time to 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:36.040 chat for whatever reason? And I think a meeting is 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:38.480 kind of the same thing. You're kind of saying, Hey, 0:16:38.520 --> 0:16:40.800 could we all meet at this time? Maybe that's because 0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:42.800 we just feel so busy these days, but so there's 0:16:42.840 --> 0:16:45.720 definitely some other broader shifts that are helping to propel 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:47.680 meetings to become more common. 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:50.119 You know, I was going to ask if the pandemic 0:16:50.200 --> 0:16:52.520 and working from home had an impact on this, and 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:55.080 it sounds like it did. But what you just said 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:57.720 was something had not occurred to me, which was like 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:02.040 the open office space that really could have had more 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:04.800 of an impact than I even realized as we are 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:05.479 living through it. 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:08.560 Yeah, I think that the meeting problems long predate the 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:13.040 pandemic and are much more driven by things like office design. 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:16.480 But definitely the pandemic has had a compounding effect. You know, 0:17:16.520 --> 0:17:19.280 when people are in different locations, whether that's because some 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:21.600 are working from home or because you just are in 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:26.240 a company where employees are scattered among different offices, different cities, 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:30.280 that does mean that it takes more effort to collaborate. 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:33.360 You can't just sort of quickly have a spontaneous conversation. 0:17:33.400 --> 0:17:35.359 It has to take some planning, and that makes it 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:37.760 a meeting. And the other issue here is that I 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:41.560 think so much meeting scheduling software defaults to an hour 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:44.120 or even half an hour, when you probably just need 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:44.679 ten minutes. 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:48.720 I was working literally decades ago at a different company 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:52.239 where the employees would tend to take matters into their 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:54.080 own hands. I worked with one gentleman who, when he 0:17:54.160 --> 0:17:56.639 knew a meeting was coming, and he knew that this 0:17:56.800 --> 0:17:58.600 was one of those meetings where you could have just 0:17:58.680 --> 0:18:00.439 had it done an email, it does and have to 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:03.520 be a meeting. He would have the secretary at the 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:06.320 front desk, let's say, wait ten minutes and call my 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:09.600 cell phone, and then she'd call him and oh, I'll 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:11.639 be right there. I'm sorry, I have to leave the meeting. 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:14.600 To your point of this has been going on for 0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:18.359 a long time and finally now people are starting to 0:18:18.400 --> 0:18:19.040 pick up on it. 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:22.080 Yes, you know, And to your point about people taking 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:25.439 matters into their own hands, I was known also at 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:28.320 a previous company to put fake meetings on my calendar 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:30.560 just to get some breaks in the day from the 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:33.119 back to back meetings so that I could do other works, 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:35.280 so I could actually get my heads down work done. 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:37.480 And I learned that you can't block out like three 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:40.280 hours because everyone looks at your calendar and realizes that's 0:18:40.280 --> 0:18:43.160 a fake meeting. But if you put in that sort 0:18:43.200 --> 0:18:45.879 of three back to back hour long blocks, then you 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:50.040 could get yourself some thinking time, some worktime without really 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:52.920 people realizing that you're actually not in meetings all that time. 0:18:52.960 --> 0:18:55.600 But yeah, at companies where there's meeting creep is real, 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:59.119 employees have to resort to these sort of almost comical 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:02.440 or cough can ask kind of ways to fight back 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:04.640 because otherwise there's no time to do any of your 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:05.200 other work. 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:09.560 And to be fair, meetings are not inherently evil or wasteful. 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:11.800 It's just they're just so dug on many of them. 0:19:11.840 --> 0:19:13.240 What's the best use of meetings? 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:16.800 The best use of meetings is really for conversations that 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:19.840 would be difficult to have in other formats, so to 0:19:19.920 --> 0:19:23.600 talk about with it, to talk with employees, not at employees, 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:26.000 you know, to talk about, Hey, how's this project going, 0:19:26.119 --> 0:19:28.000 What are the obstacles in your way? Do we need 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:30.879 to reassign this work? Is there something going off the 0:19:30.960 --> 0:19:33.359 rails that we need to course correct? Those kinds of 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:36.280 conversations are really the highest and best use of meetings, 0:19:36.600 --> 0:19:41.120 And to your point, those meetings are really valuable. One 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:43.359 of the researchers I talked to for this column was 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:46.720 a gentleman named Ben Laker who's a professor in the UK, 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:48.879 and he had actually done a survey of companies that 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:52.760 tried to ban meetings, and companies without meetings really saw 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:58.120 productivity decline, engagement decline. It's not you need some meetings, 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:00.840 you can't go entirely without. So well, I guess we 0:20:00.920 --> 0:20:04.159 can just make sure that we're not throwing a baby 0:20:04.160 --> 0:20:05.000 out with the bathwater. 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:08.200 Everything in moderation. Sarah, thank you so much for taking 0:20:08.240 --> 0:20:09.199 the time with us. 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:10.600 Thanks for having me. 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:13.879 Bloomberg Opinion editor Sarah Green Carmichael with insight into the 0:20:14.160 --> 0:20:17.399 useless meeting phenomenon, and don't forget We're available as a 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:21.680 podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform. Coming up. 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:25.360 San Francisco not necessarily destined to be the next Detroit, 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:28.560 but how will it break out of its downward spiral? 0:20:28.840 --> 0:20:30.119 This is Bloomberg. 0:20:38.960 --> 0:20:42.800 You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast count Us Saturdays 0:20:42.800 --> 0:20:45.959 at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:49.160 the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen 0:20:49.200 --> 0:20:51.440 on demand wherever you get your podcasts. 0:20:53.640 --> 0:20:57.399 You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. San Francisco has been having 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:01.240 a rough year, well a rough decade really. Last year's 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:05.320 Census Bureau numbers show the estimated population of San Francisco 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:08.240 is down seven and a half percent from twenty twenty. 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:11.600 That's a lot. Downtown activity is dipped to sixty eight 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:15.760 percent below pre pandemic levels. Commercial real estate values have 0:21:15.840 --> 0:21:19.400 fallen as much as eighty percent. Conventional wisdom says San 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:21.600 Francisco may be on the fast track to be the 0:21:21.640 --> 0:21:25.639 next Detroit, But not so fast, says Bloomberg opinion columnist 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:29.240 Justin Fox. Justin covers economics and business and he joins 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:33.040 us now. Justin tell us the similarities between San Francisco 0:21:33.200 --> 0:21:33.880 and Detroit. 0:21:34.359 --> 0:21:37.399