Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg business Week inside from the reporters and
Speaker 1: editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus
Speaker 1: global business, finance and tech news. The Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: Podcast with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend Podcast.
Speaker 2: Well another packed week, the first and maybe only debate
Speaker 2: between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: We also got an uptick in jobless claims and two
Speaker 2: reads on US inflation supporting a quarter point cut. As
Speaker 2: we count down to this coming week's FED meeting, we
Speaker 2: are certainly setting up for a busy September and Fall,
Speaker 2: a theme this past week as the campaign's sprint to
Speaker 2: the finish leadership. On that, a couple of conversations about leadership,
Speaker 2: including one this hour with the former CEO of Dow Chemical, plus.
Speaker 3: The next new iPhone super cycle or a Bit of
Speaker 3: a Miss, and the Bloomberg Bag take on our world's
Speaker 3: largest market cap company. Yeah, we're still talking about Apple,
Speaker 3: how it came to rule the world.
Speaker 2: All of that to come, and we begin with a
Speaker 2: look toward the November presidental election. On Tuesday night, Donald
Speaker 2: Trump and Kamala Harris sparred through their first debate. The
Speaker 2: former president and current vice president traded barb's over abortion rights,
Speaker 2: foreign policy January sixth, and of course the economy. Although
Speaker 2: I got to say, Tim, I think while it was
Speaker 2: touched upon, a lot of people think there was not
Speaker 2: enough information about it, especially when it comes to specific policies.
Speaker 3: What do you think, based on other debates in recent years,
Speaker 3: doesn't surprise me at all? Yeah, these have never, at
Speaker 3: least in recent memory, been filled with lots of policy.
Speaker 3: But I think that's what a lot of voters want
Speaker 3: to see. I mean, especially from Harris, who they don't
Speaker 3: know as well according to polls, as they know Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I do feel like debates have become especially for Harris,
Speaker 2: who's playing catchup in a big way right about who
Speaker 2: I am as a leader, where I stand on policies.
Speaker 2: Is she just Biden two point zero? I mean there's
Speaker 2: a lot of questions out there.
Speaker 3: I think that's why you still have folks out there
Speaker 3: saying she's got to do more interviews.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, So we'll see that if that comes. We'll
Speaker 2: also see if we get more debates. There's been a
Speaker 2: lot of back and forth about whether or not. We'll
Speaker 2: certainly see that well.
Speaker 3: For more on the campaigns in the aftermath of the debate,
Speaker 3: we turned to Stefan sea League. He worked in leadership
Speaker 3: roles in both the private and public sectors, including a
Speaker 3: nearly thirty year career on Wall Street. He's former Undersecretary
Speaker 3: of Commerce for International Trade at the US Department of
Speaker 3: Commerce during the Obama administration, also headed the International Trade Administration.
Speaker 3: Stefan also menaging partner and founder of Bridge Park Advisors.
Speaker 2: Last time he was on with US, said that President
Speaker 2: Biden would step down from the race. So, first of all,
Speaker 2: congratulations and will you buy me a lottery ticket? Why
Speaker 2: did you think that so much? Because he had no choice,
Speaker 2: remind us? And why you were thinking about that because
Speaker 2: it was before he did it obviously.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean, if you recall, Carol, this was right after
Speaker 5: the former president was shot, and I thought that, you know,
Speaker 5: that opportunity for him to look so presidential was going
Speaker 5: to give him a real bump, and I thought it
Speaker 5: was going to force President Biden's hand. And fundamentally, what
Speaker 5: I told you is when I believe that when he
Speaker 5: was convinced and his closest advisors and confidence was were
Speaker 5: convinced that he was going to lose. He was going
Speaker 5: to do the right thing and be a patriot and
Speaker 5: do the right thing for the country and for the party,
Speaker 5: and that's ended up being that's what he did.
Speaker 2: So your thoughts on last night and what the race
Speaker 2: is now? Did we get enough when it comes to
Speaker 2: economics and policy and things that Americans care about?
Speaker 5: You know, I was actually surprised about how little of
Speaker 5: the debate actually covered economic topics. Where you look at
Speaker 5: all of the polling, it says economic issues are the
Speaker 5: most important things that are going to drive undecided voters
Speaker 5: votes in the election. One is the economy, and to
Speaker 5: his inflation, I'm not sure not part of the economy.
Speaker 5: But I think we got, you know, far less of
Speaker 5: a real substance of dialogue on those topics, and I
Speaker 5: would have hoped and expected. And I also thought that,
Speaker 5: you know, there was really very peripheral conversation around China,
Speaker 5: which I also might have expected given the important issues
Speaker 5: that our country faces with its greatest competitor.
Speaker 3: We did get some conversation on tariffs, and Donald Trump
Speaker 3: did push back on what we heard from Kamala Harris
Speaker 3: by saying that the Biden administration did leave intact some
Speaker 3: of the tariffs that the Trump administration had put on China.
Speaker 3: What are your thoughts around those types of protectionist trade policies.
Speaker 5: You know, it's interesting, Tim, Actually both parties are really
Speaker 5: largely aligned on tariffs and trade. Actually, there are, of
Speaker 5: course some nuances. Foreign President Trump is doubling down on
Speaker 5: his reasonably aggressive, you know, trade stance. What he said
Speaker 5: at least was he would implement tariffs of ten to
Speaker 5: twenty percent across the board and sixty percent of goods
Speaker 5: coming in from China with a broad brush. I don't
Speaker 5: think that's particularly effective.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: To be sure, tariffs have a important place to protect industry,
Speaker 5: US industry, where those industries are critical to our national
Speaker 5: security interests. But when you do it on a broad
Speaker 5: brushed basis, at least, it's my view that the light's
Speaker 5: not worth the candle because clearly it's inflationary. I think
Speaker 5: it actually costs you more jobs than it saves you,
Speaker 5: and costs get passed on to the consumer. And frankly,
Speaker 5: there are a lot of industries where we are just
Speaker 5: not competing effectively on a global basis, and as a result,
Speaker 5: taxing those goods coming in is just you know, bad
Speaker 5: for US consumers and is inflation.
Speaker 2: So it's not apples to apples in terms of what
Speaker 2: Donald Trump is proposing now stuff in terms of more
Speaker 2: Chinese goods that are coming in versus what we've seen
Speaker 2: during the Trump administration what continued into the Biden administration,
Speaker 2: specifically on high tech and chips in particular, So it's
Speaker 2: not the same thing.
Speaker 5: Well, the tariffs, I mean, let's separate. One of the
Speaker 5: things that Biden administration did was export controls as it
Speaker 5: relates to chips and critical technology, but specifically as it
Speaker 5: relates to tariffs. You know, this started with steel production
Speaker 5: and the issue around state owned enterprises in China, which
Speaker 5: controls steel production and now are by far the leading
Speaker 5: producer of steel around the world and have flooded the market.
Speaker 5: The fact is President Trump put on tariffs for imported
Speaker 5: steel from China. The fact is the Biden administration kept
Speaker 5: those tariffs. But the fact is China's behavior has not changed.
Speaker 5: And so the question always should become in these circumstances,
Speaker 5: was it effective and at least so far in changing
Speaker 5: Chinese behavior as it relates to steel, it hasn't been
Speaker 5: effective and in fact it's gotten in many ways worse
Speaker 5: because the Chinese economy has slowed and as a result,
Speaker 5: their domestic consumption of steel has gone down. And what's
Speaker 5: happened to all that steel that continues to be produce.
Speaker 5: It's being sent overseas, driving down prices and creating, you know,
Speaker 5: real global instability in that steel in the steel market.
Speaker 3: You did mention the economy and inflation, two things that
Speaker 3: we know things to pull after poller on the top
Speaker 3: of mind for voters. We learned a little bit more
Speaker 3: about Kamala Harris, but still, since she's relatively new as
Speaker 3: a candidate and it doesn't have a full policy position
Speaker 3: out there, we don't know everything about how she feels
Speaker 3: about this stuff. Some of her other policies that she's
Speaker 3: unveiled in recent weeks include not no taxing tips she's
Speaker 3: come out with that first time home buyers getting some
Speaker 3: sort of home buying credit, expansion of the child tax credit,
Speaker 3: supporting small businesses we learned in recent weeks with tax
Speaker 3: cuts there.
Speaker 5: But let's go through a couple of those tips.
Speaker 3: I want to talk specifically about the home.
Speaker 5: The home buying the home buying one to me is interesting,
Speaker 5: and you didn't mention, obviously the whole price gouging price
Speaker 5: issue that she raised, because you know, to me, these
Speaker 5: both reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of reasonably simple economics, right,
Speaker 5: which is, if you give somebody twenty five thousand dollars
Speaker 5: to go buy a first home, and there is frankly
Speaker 5: a not a demand issue, but a supply issue. Let
Speaker 5: me tell you what's going to happen That curve goes
Speaker 5: up and houses are going to cost twenty five thousand
Speaker 5: dollars more.
Speaker 3: Basic economics.
Speaker 7: Basic economics. So I just don't see.
Speaker 5: How that works and does what she wants to do,
Speaker 5: which is to actually assist new home buyers in affording
Speaker 5: their first terms. What it's going to do is just
Speaker 5: increase the prices of homes. And so to me, this
Speaker 5: is very similar with the whole price gouging issue which
Speaker 5: you talked about in groceries and in food retail. As
Speaker 5: we all know, when you don't let the market set prices,
Speaker 5: let that leads to inefficiencies and in this particular case,
Speaker 5: would lead to shortages in certain goods. You know, again
Speaker 5: a supply and demand as Carol suggested it sets prices,
Speaker 5: and when government artificially sets prices, you lose the signaling
Speaker 5: impact of what supply and demand leads to, and as
Speaker 5: a result, you get market inefficiencies, which is going to
Speaker 5: be bad ultimately for consumers because when they go by
Speaker 5: macaroni and cheese it it's not going to be on
Speaker 5: the shelf because companies aren't going to be able to
Speaker 5: make enough money. I would also observe that it's not
Speaker 5: like the food retailing industry is such a profitable business.
Speaker 5: I mean, at the height of the pandemic, the best
Speaker 5: grossers were making what five ish percent margins and so
Speaker 5: as a result of that, the notion that they're price
Speaker 5: gouging is a little bit of a head scratcher.
Speaker 2: One thing that's stuck with me, or stayed with me
Speaker 2: from our last conversation is, you know, the stock market
Speaker 2: isn't Main Street, right, and so there are a lot
Speaker 2: of Americans that are struggling. So I'm trying to understand
Speaker 2: because you know, this race is a close one no
Speaker 2: matter what, and these are two people who stand for
Speaker 2: very different things and a very different candidate. Why is
Speaker 2: it in such a rich country and in a market
Speaker 2: where companies seem to get richer and richer that we're
Speaker 2: not able to pass that wealth on to more workers.
Speaker 2: I know wages are starting to go up, but how
Speaker 2: do we fix that?
Speaker 5: Well, look, I mean they're that's a big one. That
Speaker 5: that is a big one, and it's you know, it
Speaker 5: relates at least in my view, to education to opportunity,
Speaker 5: which you know, which touches a whole host of policies.
Speaker 5: But I think very narrowly as it relates to what
Speaker 5: is causing the dissatisfaction with the economy today, it is
Speaker 5: because prices are elevated, and prices are elevated because of
Speaker 5: what happened in COVID and what's happened after where both
Speaker 5: administrations frankly, you know, have a lot to answer for
Speaker 5: because of the increase in the deficits, in the deficit
Speaker 5: that both parties policies caused, and until they tackle that,
Speaker 5: I think the conversation about the stock market is high,
Speaker 5: interest rates are low, inflation is under control. Is fine,
Speaker 5: But as your last guess or commentator suggested, inflation is interesting,
Speaker 5: but it's a point measure. It has nothing to do
Speaker 5: with prices.
Speaker 2: Prices are hot, right, right, and then come down with
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: The problem is Americans, who most of whom have not
Speaker 3: experienced inflation, don't understand that about inflation. They think of
Speaker 3: inflation as what they pay at the gas pump, and
Speaker 3: they see those prices fluctuate. So they do see gas
Speaker 3: prices come down, and maybe that's what they expect.
Speaker 5: Other times, gas prices are now at three or low.
Speaker 5: Former President Trump is very fixated on oil and gas
Speaker 5: and gas prices because he thinks there's a direct linkage
Speaker 5: between gas and prices in inflation. I don't get that
Speaker 5: economics either. In fact, you know, there is no more
Speaker 5: of a global commodity than you know, oil and gas,
Speaker 5: and those prices are not set narrowly based on US production.
Speaker 5: And so I think that's another example of especially given
Speaker 5: the importance of energy in Pennsylvania, another example of a
Speaker 5: pain rhetoric as opposed to you know, real economics and
Speaker 5: real math.
Speaker 2: Every time we wrap up with you, I'm like, wait,
Speaker 2: I have a million more questions, so you have to
Speaker 2: come back again.
Speaker 5: Always happy to join.
Speaker 2: You guys, So we so much appreciate it. I'm Stefan Sealik,
Speaker 2: thank you so much, Managing partner over at Bridge Park Advisors,
Speaker 2: as we say, former Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade
Speaker 2: at the US Department of Commerce that was during the
Speaker 2: Obama administration, but really looks at things from, as we say,
Speaker 2: the public and private sectors. All right, folks, you are
Speaker 2: listening and watching Bloomberg Business Week.
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Speaker 2: Apple on Monday unveil the latest version of its flagship device,
Speaker 2: the iPhone sixteen, along with updated versions of its Apple
Speaker 2: Watch and AirPods. The company is betting it can entice
Speaker 2: consumers with modest hardware upgrades and AI technology that's still
Speaker 2: on the horizon.
Speaker 3: It's a gambit for the tech Titan, which has been
Speaker 3: racing to develop a suite of tools called Apple Intelligence.
Speaker 3: Though Apple has been touting the tech since it's developers
Speaker 3: conference back in June, the software will not be included
Speaker 3: in the initial versions of the new iPhones, perhaps not
Speaker 3: great for investors who hope that the new iPhone infused
Speaker 3: with AI capabilities would lead to a so called super cycle.
Speaker 3: For more, Katie Greifeld and I spoke to our Apple expert,
Speaker 3: Bloomberg News Chief technology correspondent Mark German.
Speaker 8: I don't think that this is an upgrade design to
Speaker 8: gather people from a fifteen pro Promax. I think this
Speaker 8: is an update designed to get people on much older hardware.
Speaker 8: Are people in other smartphone ecosystems like Android right, because
Speaker 8: the ear of your hardware improvements are essentially negligible. It's
Speaker 8: one of the smallest I think annual hardware improvements that
Speaker 8: I've seen from Apple in a long time. Maybe a
Speaker 8: little bit more significant than going from the twelve to
Speaker 8: the thirteen. But yeah, this is pretty bleak. And then
Speaker 8: the artificial intelligence stuff is really cool, but that's not
Speaker 8: coming for quite a while, and it's going to be
Speaker 8: pretty much a phased rollout. So I think we're going
Speaker 8: for they're going for people that are coming from older phones.
Speaker 9: Well, yeah, that's that's interesting because I feel like at
Speaker 9: this point, like you KT and me, Yeah, but because
Speaker 9: when you think about, you know, switching from Android to Apple,
Speaker 9: I feel like Mark, there's like this cult of personality
Speaker 9: that has developed among each phones. I mean, if you
Speaker 9: have an Android in the year of Our Lord twenty
Speaker 9: twenty four, are you going to switch to an iPhone?
Speaker 9: I mean that seems like that would sort of go
Speaker 9: against what you believe in at this point.
Speaker 8: Well, if your friends and family force you to because
Speaker 8: they're tired of you not being able to be in
Speaker 8: the group chat because you're a green bubble versus their
Speaker 8: bloom bubbles, right, you know a lot of times it's
Speaker 8: friends and family pushing people to make that switch. So
Speaker 8: you know, you want your photos to be and sync
Speaker 8: with everyone else, you want your subscriptions to be in
Speaker 8: sync with everyone else. So I think that's a component there.
Speaker 8: I mean, there's some people who are never going to
Speaker 8: switch from Android, and there's a lot of people who
Speaker 8: are never going to switch from Apple to Android. But
Speaker 8: I think that they're constantly pushing the needle in terms
Speaker 8: of how they can bring more people from the Android ecosystem.
Speaker 8: They've made iOS far more customizable to be more like Android.
Speaker 8: You can now tint your icons to different colors, put
Speaker 8: your icons anywhere, you don't have to fit within that
Speaker 8: homescreen grid, there's a lot more customizability for the lock
Speaker 8: screen and control center. So I certainly think that there
Speaker 8: is a movement going on from Apple to try to
Speaker 8: make the iPhone more appealing to people coming from the
Speaker 8: Android world.
Speaker 10: Network effects him very important.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there are case studies for business school
Speaker 3: written about Apples network effects. Well, Mark, I do, I
Speaker 3: do want to. I mean you bring up, Mark, the
Speaker 3: idea of people going out and buying iPhones or like,
Speaker 3: you know, getting their family to do it. Didn't Tim
Speaker 3: Cook a few years ago kind of rib somebody and
Speaker 3: told told him to go buy an iPhone for his
Speaker 3: mom or his grammar or something.
Speaker 8: Well, if you think about it from a from a
Speaker 8: financial standpoint and from a fiduciary duty standpoint, he probably
Speaker 8: didn't need to say that. But you know, his number
Speaker 8: one priority is to make as much of a return
Speaker 8: as he can for shareholders, and what drives that return
Speaker 8: is revenue. And so him telling that person in that audience,
Speaker 8: I was actually there when he said. I was a
Speaker 8: little shocked that he said that that he should buy
Speaker 8: an iPhone from his mom. While that was maybe a
Speaker 8: rude or snarkyar funny comment, the reality is is that's
Speaker 8: what he has to say. But that was in response
Speaker 8: to a question about RCS specifically. Now that I guess
Speaker 8: the good news for that person in the crowd, if
Speaker 8: they have not bought their mom and iPhones at this point,
Speaker 8: is that RCS is coming to the iPhone, and it's
Speaker 8: coming as part of iOS eighteen. It's already embedded in there, right.
Speaker 8: I've been using RCS for for a couple months down so.
Speaker 11: Well.
Speaker 8: RCS it's Rich Communication Services. It's basically a next generation
Speaker 8: version of SMS. It's what Android is using. It takes
Speaker 8: a lot of the features like Wi Fi texting, read receipts,
Speaker 8: delivered notifications, high resolution image transfers for both group chats
Speaker 8: and one to one chats, brings them to the Android world.
Speaker 8: And now if you're on an iPhone, you'll be able
Speaker 8: to use RCS to communicate with people on the Android ecosystem.
Speaker 8: So you'll start green bubble texting with people who don't
Speaker 8: have an iPhone when you get this iosateen MP today
Speaker 8: and you'll see you'll start getting read receipts, You'll the
Speaker 8: images are coming in a little bit more clearly. So
Speaker 8: that isn't that is a nice upgrade to make things
Speaker 8: more interoperable. At the time, obviously this is not something
Speaker 8: Apple wanted to do, but they sort of threw this
Speaker 8: out as a as a peace offering, right, or as
Speaker 8: an olive branch to the different regulatory you know, institutions
Speaker 8: globally saying we're going to do this, you know, maybe
Speaker 8: go a little bit easier on us.
Speaker 3: Hey, Mark, we have a couple more minutes left with you.
Speaker 3: I want to talk a little more about what we
Speaker 3: learned from the company with regards to AI. You said
Speaker 3: it's sort of this incremental rollout. What's the promise that
Speaker 3: that Apple has to its customers when it comes to AI.
Speaker 8: Well, the promise they have to their customers is that
Speaker 8: it's going to launch in October, a month after it
Speaker 8: launches after the new iPhones go on sale. And they've
Speaker 8: basically promised a roadmap of features that are going to
Speaker 8: launch over the next several months. But you know, their
Speaker 8: big differentiator there is their privacy standpoint. Right. They've been
Speaker 8: talking about their private cloud compute, which basically uses Apple
Speaker 8: chips in the cloud to store and process the information
Speaker 8: using artificial intelligence. And that's a little bit different in
Speaker 8: the competition because they're promising to keep your data absolutely secure.
Speaker 8: There have been other companies that use AI to create
Speaker 8: data and profiles on users, whereas Apple is not doing that,
Speaker 8: So that is a bit of a differentiator there. At
Speaker 8: the same time, the functionality is not as broad and
Speaker 8: as powerful, I would argue as AI on the Google
Speaker 8: Pixel and the Samsung and some of the other films.
Speaker 8: At the outset, you're talking about summarizing notification, notifications of
Speaker 8: incoming messages, incoming emails, slacks, etc. You're talking about prioritizing notifications.
Speaker 8: Once we get into December, we're starting to get into
Speaker 8: the image generation class of products, right, talking about gen Moji,
Speaker 8: which you can use text to create your own emoji.
Speaker 8: There's an example of you can type in when pigs
Speaker 8: fly and it'll create a flying pig to send back
Speaker 8: to your friend and a text message. Right, and so
Speaker 8: that's going to be cool and fun and all. But
Speaker 8: you know, we'll see if this is stuff that catches
Speaker 8: on me personally. I don't think only nine percent of
Speaker 8: consumers care about AI. They've heard of it, maybe they
Speaker 8: don't know what it is, but I don't think they
Speaker 8: care enough to influence purchasing decisions. In larger numbers.
Speaker 3: That was Bloomberg News Chief technology correspondent Mark German.
Speaker 2: Speaking of Apple. The company's worth around three point four
Speaker 2: trillion dollars, more than any other company in the world.
Speaker 2: It's twenty twenty three revenue of nearly four hundred billion
Speaker 2: dollars makes it about as big as the entire economy
Speaker 2: of Denmark. Are the Philippines, and though most of the
Speaker 2: business revolves around selling iPhones, it is definitely much more
Speaker 2: than just the iPhone.
Speaker 3: Last quarter, for example, Apples sales just from digital services
Speaker 3: reach twenty four point two billion dollars. That's more than
Speaker 3: the combined revenue of Adobe, Airbnb, Netflix, Palentteer, Spotify, Zoom
Speaker 3: and x from Elon Musk. Investors seem to have no
Speaker 3: problem with this kind of dominance. Apple's soaring stock price
Speaker 3: over the past decade makes that clear. Regulators, on the
Speaker 3: other hand, well they've got some questions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they definitely do. Bloomberg News technology reporter Austin Krr
Speaker 2: and bluebe Our BusinessWeek columnist Max Chafkin wrote all about
Speaker 2: it in this week's Big Take about how Apple has
Speaker 2: come to rule the world. Austin joined Tim and Katie Greifeld.
Speaker 12: The controversy comes down to how much Apple controls its ecosystem,
Speaker 12: what they will let into. It's so called wald garden,
Speaker 12: the sort of confines of its platform, and the truth
Speaker 12: is they don't let a whole a lot in that
Speaker 12: they don't regulate review and also charge certain commissions and
Speaker 12: fees on, which is what a lot of developers are
Speaker 12: taking issues with. If you want to see where the
Speaker 12: market is seeing a little bit of change, it's actually
Speaker 12: in Europe with the DMA, the Digital Markets App with
Speaker 12: the European Union has put Apple on under some pressure
Speaker 12: to actually change its ways and open up that Apple Guard,
Speaker 12: that wld garden effect. So actually there you're seeing some
Speaker 12: pretty novel differences with how you have an iPhone in
Speaker 12: the US. Just for example, they're opening up alternative marketplaces
Speaker 12: in Europe, so you can actually download a different app
Speaker 12: store if you want a different set of experience from
Speaker 12: different software makers, like Epic Games or another called Alt Store.
Speaker 12: In fact, over in the EU, you can actually delete
Speaker 12: Apple native apps, like soon you'll be able to delete
Speaker 12: the browser Safari, the camera app, and even the app
Speaker 12: store itself, which is opening up a sort of fundamentally
Speaker 12: different experience that's a little bit more flexible and open
Speaker 12: than what we have in the rest of the world.
Speaker 12: So that's actually a good preview of what you might
Speaker 12: see on the horizon depending on how regulation shapes up
Speaker 12: in the US.
Speaker 9: And it's interesting because you can trust that with investors.
Speaker 9: This feels like for potentially a case where regulators and
Speaker 9: investors are at odds here because I don't know, Austin,
Speaker 9: do you see any signs that investors are uneasy with
Speaker 9: just how dominant Apple is?
Speaker 12: No, I mean, I think that lock in effect is
Speaker 12: actually what ironically makes it so enticing for investors and
Speaker 12: also such a beloved company for consumers. I mean, look,
Speaker 12: the tough thing for the DOJ here in the US,
Speaker 12: which filed its anti trust complaint earlier in March, is
Speaker 12: that what they take issue with, the way that Apple
Speaker 12: controls its ecosystem, integrates its hardware, software and services is
Speaker 12: usually what consumers really love about it. You know, we
Speaker 12: like that it works really together if you have a MacBook,
Speaker 12: an Apple Watch, AirPods, and an iPhone at.
Speaker 3: The same time.
Speaker 12: We don't really quite grasp that because of that integrated experience,
Speaker 12: what it's locking out it can be a detriment to
Speaker 12: the experience itself. Even if we like the apple of
Speaker 12: day to day incremental updates. They didn't really release any
Speaker 12: new AI features that they hadn't already previewed. They're not
Speaker 12: actually going to come for a few months. That's one
Speaker 12: example of the ways that perhaps they're not incentivized to
Speaker 12: move as fast and as risky and as innovatively as
Speaker 12: they had to in years past, because there's not a
Speaker 12: lot of risk that I as an iPhone user and
Speaker 12: going to leave to a different ecosystem.
Speaker 9: Right, Well, let's talk about that a little bit more,
Speaker 9: because we're talking about regulators. Then we talked about investors,
Speaker 9: and you bring up the end user, of course, the customer,
Speaker 9: the person who is buying into this walled garden. I mean,
Speaker 9: what is the sense there are users getting frustrated with
Speaker 9: the fact that you do have to buy.
Speaker 10: Into an ecosystem.
Speaker 9: You can't really I just a product one off and
Speaker 9: then integrate it with other products from other companies.
Speaker 12: The thing is that this isn't an overnight switch. This
Speaker 12: is something that they've essentially been building out from when
Speaker 12: Steve Jobs came back and released the iMac than the iPod,
Speaker 12: and so on. You started building up that ecosystem over
Speaker 12: the course of decades where if you have an iPhone,
Speaker 12: remember that device came out before there was an app store,
Speaker 12: and then they introduced the App store a year later.
Speaker 12: Then they introduced a lot of companion devices like the iPad,
Speaker 12: like the Apple Watch, like air pods, and then on
Speaker 12: top of that, part of what makes CEO Tim Cook's
Speaker 12: era so monumental has been this push into services. So
Speaker 12: you subscribe to iCloud, you subscribe to TV Plus, fitness subscriptions,
Speaker 12: things like that, and so these are all things that
Speaker 12: add on to the experience and make it just that
Speaker 12: much easier to add a new Apple device or a
Speaker 12: new Apple subscription because that's your default, that's what you're
Speaker 12: going to want to add to now. That also makes
Speaker 12: it easier to escape that ecosystem. You know, once you've
Speaker 12: invested thousands of dollars in the app Apple ecosystem, you're
Speaker 12: not going to suddenly overnight switch to a Windows PC
Speaker 12: or a Google Pixel phone just because they add a
Speaker 12: new AI feature. It makes that sort of mote that
Speaker 12: Apple has all the wider because it is very difficult
Speaker 12: to people not just to switch one device, but to
Speaker 12: switch their entire portfolio of hardware and software. And I
Speaker 12: think that's why shareholders really love Apple stock, because its
Speaker 12: mode is so wide. It's walled garden barriers are so tall.
Speaker 3: Austin, you and Max, I love the way you start
Speaker 3: the piece that iconic nineteen eighty four Apple ad the
Speaker 3: sort of David versus Golias, you know, and where Apple
Speaker 3: has come since then and from then. I wonder, just
Speaker 3: in the last thirty seconds that we have with you,
Speaker 3: what the biggest threat to Apple is right now moving forward?
Speaker 12: I mean, I think it is sort of a feeling
Speaker 12: of incrementalism of you know, things aren't seemingly disruptive until
Speaker 12: they are being able to disrupt, until they are disrupted.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 12: I think when chat ChiPT came along in late twenty
Speaker 12: twenty two, that shocked a lot of people. No one
Speaker 12: had ever seen anything like that. And here we are
Speaker 12: two years later and Apple's just getting around to rolling
Speaker 12: out its AI features, maybe if which won't roll out
Speaker 12: to twenty twenty five. Now, did that disrupt you know,
Speaker 12: sales of the iPhone going for work. No, there's not
Speaker 12: really a chat Schipt phone that's out there, but you
Speaker 12: can see the risks of sort of slowly introducing some
Speaker 12: of this this innovation. You know, it has downsides for consumers.
Speaker 12: At what point are they going to say, you know what,
Speaker 12: I want something a little bit sooner. I want something
Speaker 12: a little bit faster and cooler.
Speaker 3: Austin Carr one half of the team that did today's
Speaker 3: at Bloomberg Big Take. Check it out at Bloomberg dot com,
Speaker 3: Slash the Big Take, and of course, on the terminal.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live
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Speaker 11: Well.
Speaker 3: Our next guest is the former chairman and CEO of
Speaker 3: the Dow Chemical Companies, also former executive chairman of DuPont.
Speaker 3: He spent more than forty years at the company. He
Speaker 3: worked in engineering, he worked in manufacturing, management, sales, marketing,
Speaker 3: and more. Andrew Liveris is also the author of the
Speaker 3: book Leading Through Disruption, a change Maker's Guide to twenty
Speaker 3: first century Leadership. The book came out last year. We're
Speaker 3: happy to have you here in our Bloomberg studio. How
Speaker 3: are you? I'm good, tim thank you, welcome. More than
Speaker 3: forty years at a single company, it's not something that well,
Speaker 3: I mean, I was going to say, it's not something
Speaker 3: you see in that like in our generation. But Katie's
Speaker 3: actually born here. Yeah, you've been here your whole life.
Speaker 10: Never left the building up.
Speaker 3: I'll take I take that back. But in all seriousness,
Speaker 3: you don't see the tenure of somebody spending their entire
Speaker 3: career at a company. Was that detrimental to a career.
Speaker 7: I think you can have many many careers in one career.
Speaker 7: And I had many geographies. I was had in Australia,
Speaker 7: worked in Hong Kong, spent a lot of time in China, Korea, Thailand,
Speaker 7: brought to Louisiana, called out a different country sometimes, and
Speaker 7: then you know, back to Ashaw. So they moved me around.
Speaker 7: So as a young person, I ever thought I'd be
Speaker 7: a global nomad. I became one. And then to the book,
Speaker 7: I became a global citizen, which I don't think there's
Speaker 7: a lot of us around, and I think big American
Speaker 7: global companies do that to people. They expose us to
Speaker 7: these different risks and uncertainties and make you, as a
Speaker 7: young person, have experiences that you otherwise will not get
Speaker 7: in sort of a singular career. So I didn't consider
Speaker 7: it one career nor forty years. But every time someone
Speaker 7: says that to me, I say, really, did that long?
Speaker 3: It doesn't feel like it?
Speaker 7: No, No, A second lightning second.
Speaker 10: Wow, Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 9: I mean, do you think that's important experience to have
Speaker 9: this idea of being a global citizen? When you take
Speaker 9: a look at corporate leadership today, do you view that
Speaker 9: as a prerequisite.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think the world has gone tribal. We're retreating
Speaker 7: to our tribes. We're not understanding each other. And the
Speaker 7: vacuum from political leadership is huge. As we're noticing everywhere
Speaker 7: in the world, democracy and capitalism is going through a divorce,
Speaker 7: and so the distribution of wealth has been uneven and
Speaker 7: now we've seen decades of it. And those of us
Speaker 7: who are lucky to be born in the right place
Speaker 7: with the right parents, yeah, we're good. But that's a
Speaker 7: small percentage of us. So then how do we bring
Speaker 7: these tribes together? In the twenty first century, the digital
Speaker 7: assault on all of.
Speaker 6: Us is known.
Speaker 7: You know, we are clearly getting assaulted with information that
Speaker 7: we can't make sense of. Young people are seeing wars
Speaker 7: around the place. They're seeing what's going on with the
Speaker 7: environment and social injustices, these tectonic shifts. All of us
Speaker 7: are retreating to our tribes. So the term global citizen
Speaker 7: and how to bring these tribes together in this new
Speaker 7: world of ours twenty first century is really what the
Speaker 7: book speaks to. My observation is that everything still is
Speaker 7: community based. We like neighbors, we like being in person
Speaker 7: and having you know, a beer or a barbecue with
Speaker 7: our neighbors. We're going to create that feeling on a
Speaker 7: global level, and to do that, you've got to get
Speaker 7: the right type of leader in place.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you brought this up because I've been referring
Speaker 3: to this article that Simone Foxman wrote at the end
Speaker 3: of last month quite a bit, because we've seen this
Speaker 3: backlash of DEI at companies. So I'll read from it.
Speaker 3: Lowe's Harley Davidson, Tractor Supplied, Deer Brown, Foreman, and most recently,
Speaker 3: among most recently Ford, the latest in a string of
Speaker 3: high profile companies they've pulled back on pledges to commit
Speaker 3: to diversity, equity and inclusion programs, many of them that
Speaker 3: were made in the wake of George Floyd's death back
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty. How do you see the role of
Speaker 3: a corporation or a company in a world where there's
Speaker 3: so much pushback when a company comes out and speaks
Speaker 3: for something. Should companies even be speaking out for or
Speaker 3: against this stuff?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 7: I'm very big on purpose based leadership. Purpose based leadership
Speaker 7: being values based. Society's are demanding that we earn the
Speaker 7: licensed to operate as enterprises. Societies evolved from one hundred
Speaker 7: years ago, fifty years ago, twenty years ago. DEI came
Speaker 7: a fad and became something that I think the term
Speaker 7: workism was born. That's when it's at its worse, because
Speaker 7: if it's a quota based system or a prescription or
Speaker 7: a rule in some financial capital allocation process, that's not DEI.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 7: DEI is absolutely putting in place human systems that respect
Speaker 7: each other and have integrity and treat each other fairly,
Speaker 7: and that those systems are transparent. And I happen to
Speaker 7: believe that global corporations like Dow do that and do
Speaker 7: that well. I'm on the board of IBM We do
Speaker 7: that very well there, but to do that across cultures,
Speaker 7: we're finding that actually we're not taking time to walk
Speaker 7: in each other's shoes. And then if we're looking within
Speaker 7: the country to take the United States, we are divided
Speaker 7: because we're not taking time to understand each other. Who
Speaker 7: should take the responsibility for that clearly government, But government
Speaker 7: is spending all of its time trying to get elected.
Speaker 7: It's very short term, so we say what's popular, So
Speaker 7: populism anti dei or prodi is the wrong prescription. What
Speaker 7: you've got to figure out is how to actually put
Speaker 7: in place long term measures to allow access to the
Speaker 7: two things that matter in human involved society, education and health.
Speaker 3: And you think you can do that without a company
Speaker 3: coming out and looking.
Speaker 7: Quote absolutely absolutely I mean DOW. I mean we had
Speaker 7: our own healthcare system for our employees. We absolutely totally
Speaker 7: hire with equality and social justice in mind. We go
Speaker 7: to all the schools where we can get diversity of talent.
Speaker 7: Look at me, I'm an Australian of Greek origins from
Speaker 7: northern out back Australia. How did I ever become CEO
Speaker 7: of DOW? I mean, so I was given opportunity companies
Speaker 7: can do that. I think the answer today is don't
Speaker 7: look to the political body, look to the enterprise that
Speaker 7: is purpose based, and don't make it a fad that
Speaker 7: comes and goes.
Speaker 9: Well, this conversation reminds me of sort of the backlash
Speaker 9: we've also seen against ESG, of course, especially when you
Speaker 9: think about the governance part of ESG. And I mean
Speaker 9: one of the rallying cries for sort of the anti
Speaker 9: ESG folks was that why are you not focusing on
Speaker 9: me making money?
Speaker 10: Basically?
Speaker 9: And they would say that there's a tension there between
Speaker 9: that values based leadership and actually.
Speaker 10: Making a profit making money. I mean, how would you
Speaker 10: answer that?
Speaker 7: Yeah, the first chapter of the book is on that topic.
Speaker 7: And the first thing I say is can we get
Speaker 7: away with these acronyms? Stop them, stop them please? They
Speaker 7: don't mean anything. ESG meant nothing to nobody. So then
Speaker 7: people started attacking it on the money making thing. So
Speaker 7: I divide it into its three very important subjects, environmental stewardship,
Speaker 7: social stewardship, and governance with a big G and a
Speaker 7: little G. And then I take all those subjects and
Speaker 7: I look at them from the point of view of
Speaker 7: what's my long term cost of ownership. If I put
Speaker 7: all those things in place, and by the way, if
Speaker 7: I do things right, by the long term, I set
Speaker 7: a standard so high that if governments regulate and regulate correctly,
Speaker 7: then absolutely I can make a profit when no one
Speaker 7: else can. In other words, it's not the ninety day
Speaker 7: return I'm looking for with EESG. It's actually the return
Speaker 7: over ten years, which is in essence, what you do
Speaker 7: when you build a building, what you build a factory.
Speaker 7: You look at what the impact is on the human
Speaker 7: system and the environment, and then you become the steward
Speaker 7: of what is E S and G. And I divide
Speaker 7: the subject as a business subject. At dow sustainabily wasn't
Speaker 7: an initiative, it was absolutely a business subject.
Speaker 3: What about politics? Everyone loves talking politics.
Speaker 7: Let's go there's a lot of around lately.
Speaker 3: What should the role of a leader be, a leader
Speaker 3: of a corporation be in a highly charged political environment?
Speaker 7: So the extreme of politics is what we're living with,
Speaker 7: whether it's in Europe or I said, democracy and capitalism
Speaker 7: going through divorce mostly because of short termism and the
Speaker 7: disease of short termism. Politicians are trying to get elected.
Speaker 3: And we should know. You were a leader of President
Speaker 3: Trump's Manufacturing Council.
Speaker 7: Right, and also President Obama's and also advised President Bush.
Speaker 3: So you've been you've been doing President Biden.
Speaker 7: On infrastructure, okay, and I've just been given a request
Speaker 7: from a Harris campaign to help out. So all of
Speaker 7: that to tell you, I'm not afraid of politics because
Speaker 7: what I do as a corporate leader is embrace policy.
Speaker 7: And policy is where the word politics comes from. And
Speaker 7: if I embrace policy that is fair and balance, it
Speaker 7: doesn't become extreme because you have to compromise. Us politics
Speaker 7: used to understand the art of compromise between the Houses
Speaker 7: and the executive branch. Lost that. Probably the last administration
Speaker 7: that had compromised in its mix was the Plinton one.
Speaker 7: And so we've gone to these extremes were left wing
Speaker 7: policies and right being policy. So who's going to fill
Speaker 7: the vacuum? I think enterprises and corporate leaders should Why
Speaker 7: because they run ecosystems around all communities. A doow one
Speaker 7: hundred and sixty countries, pretty much half the states of America.
Speaker 7: We listen to communities. This is what politics are stopped doing.
Speaker 3: One policy that I know is of interest to our
Speaker 3: listeners and our viewers, because one just got in touch
Speaker 3: with me to ask you about tariffs. Yeah, one of
Speaker 3: our listeners want to know about what tariffs mean to
Speaker 3: you through the lands of a CEO who created things?
Speaker 3: And do you see retaliatory behavior globally as a result
Speaker 3: of tariffs.
Speaker 7: Believe it or not. This is my second book. My
Speaker 7: first book, Making in America, was written in twenty eleven
Speaker 7: after my observation that China and a lot of the
Speaker 7: countries in the Faris in particular, were my competitors. They
Speaker 7: weren't companies, they were countries. American global companies competed against
Speaker 7: countries who subsidized oka their industries solar renewables win evs. Lately,
Speaker 7: that type of subsidy is not fair market practice. So
Speaker 7: how do you collaborate unfair market practice? What you put
Speaker 7: in place rules standards? In other words, what's the standard
Speaker 7: for selling a product in my country? And then non
Speaker 7: tariff tariff barriers. In essence, that basically means you have
Speaker 7: to meet my regulations and then if they all fail,
Speaker 7: then you have to resort to tarif. I'm not a
Speaker 7: fan of tariff's, but you've got to provide a runway
Speaker 7: for competitive advantage. A competitive advantage comes from your ability
Speaker 7: to not be subsidized and to actually do it based
Speaker 7: on human talent. Capital is no longer a differentiator an innovation.
Speaker 7: America has still got the best innovators on the planet.
Speaker 7: They don't need to be subsidized. But do they need
Speaker 7: a runway where to actually scale and make money so
Speaker 7: they can afford to build an innovator. The answer is yes.
Speaker 7: Tariff's aid best is a temporary fix, not a long
Speaker 7: term fix.
Speaker 3: More than forty years at one company, you saw a lot.
Speaker 3: I'm going to ask you about some of the challenging
Speaker 3: times that you saw at the company. How do you
Speaker 3: deal with that challenging legacy?
Speaker 7: You know, the decades before I joined ow that DEO
Speaker 7: was you know, Doll was eighteen ninety seven. So in
Speaker 7: the many decades of learning how to work with government
Speaker 7: and agencies, as America progressed and obviously understood science and
Speaker 7: chemistry and its effects on human ecosystems, environment, it meant
Speaker 7: that the first of the birth of the EPA, and
Speaker 7: then I talked about the five d's. The first D
Speaker 7: is defiance. They don't know what they're talking about. The
Speaker 7: second is denial, that's not us. The third is they're
Speaker 7: not going away, Let's have a debate. And then the
Speaker 7: fourth D is Okay, the debate's not leading anywhere. Let's
Speaker 7: have a discussion about how to fix something. Those four d's,
Speaker 7: I'll get to the fifth and a second is what
Speaker 7: we learned in terms of how to work with government
Speaker 7: on the regulatory side. So by the time I became CEO,
Speaker 7: I actually learned that the most powerful combination of words,
Speaker 7: as it relates to what you just asked about chemistry
Speaker 7: and the environment, chemistry and human systems was regulation. That
Speaker 7: was smart. Smart regulation meant the regular t now had
Speaker 7: to work with the government body and actually helped come
Speaker 7: up with the better REGs. Why because science changes. We
Speaker 7: can measure things in parts petrillion today whereas thirty years
Speaker 7: ago parts per million, and ability to do that needs
Speaker 7: to be shared and made available. So that's what I
Speaker 7: did it Now, I made it all that available so
Speaker 7: that governments could work closely with us. I spent more
Speaker 7: time in Washington than any other former CEO because of that.
Speaker 7: In other words, I've got to help them help us.
Speaker 7: The fifty is do let's do something about it. Let's
Speaker 7: not just talk and so putting it into an action.
Speaker 7: If you're running one hundred year old company, it's not
Speaker 7: a startup, right. I mean, you've got to create an
Speaker 7: entrepreneurial culture that got us got us there in the
Speaker 7: first place. Everyone had to be small once. When you
Speaker 7: become big, you've got to remember what made you good
Speaker 7: when you were small. And so I got our PhDs
Speaker 7: and our scientists with our customers to come up with
Speaker 7: the better answer and that sort of mindset around science
Speaker 7: and chemistry. I talk about it in the book. We've
Speaker 7: got to absolutely humanize science. We've got to make our
Speaker 7: scientists as heroes, as our sports stars on with the
Speaker 7: Olympics these days, or our celebrities. We've got to look
Speaker 7: at as young people. We're going to look at science
Speaker 7: and say these are the problems and trying to change
Speaker 7: that attitude. I changed the company's culture, and that type
Speaker 7: of company then has the right to operate in the
Speaker 7: twenty first century. And of course I digitized, I made
Speaker 7: it sustainable all those things now. To do that, I
Speaker 7: had a fifteen year tenure. Most CEOs don't last that long.
Speaker 7: I had to see through what I said I would do,
Speaker 7: and I happened to think I was an entrepreneur from
Speaker 7: a young age twenty one. I just didn't know it.
Speaker 6: Today I would.
Speaker 7: Say I was a corporate entrepreneur, and I think we
Speaker 7: need that type of leader in charge to be flexible, agile, resilient, patient,
Speaker 7: but of course collaborative, to absolutely totally get the other
Speaker 7: side of the conversation to the table.
Speaker 9: And you bring up the Olympics. You did my segue
Speaker 9: a little bit for me in talking about the five days.
Speaker 9: You bring up the Olympics. You know you want to
Speaker 9: make your scientists as famous as revered as Olympians. Let's
Speaker 9: actually talk about Olympia and stuff, because.
Speaker 10: This is really interesting.
Speaker 9: You are involved in planning the twenty thirty two Olympics
Speaker 9: in Brisbane, your native Australia. I actually was in Paris,
Speaker 9: I heard during the commercial.
Speaker 3: Breakdown as a viewer athlete.
Speaker 9: Not as an athlete. We are training super hard for
Speaker 9: twenty twenty eight. Not sure I'm going to get there,
Speaker 9: but let's talk about twenty thirty two because Paris did.
Speaker 10: A beautiful job.
Speaker 9: I know that you spent several weeks in Paris as well.
Speaker 9: What experience is what takeaways can you take from Paris.
Speaker 9: As you look to the future, as you look to
Speaker 9: twenty thirty two, the.
Speaker 7: Olympics of the twenty first century, you use the keyword experience.
Speaker 7: I think humanity is actually buying experiences and actually I'm
Speaker 7: going to use the word fun, but it actually likes.
Speaker 7: Humanity likes to be with each other. And Paris was
Speaker 7: the first Olympics really since Rio. Yeah, when everyone was together.
Speaker 7: Remember Tokyo had the COVID delay, that opportunity for the
Speaker 7: Parisians to put on the best of their culture, which
Speaker 7: they did, but to make it fun, to make it
Speaker 7: to a bane. If you've got a chance to go to
Speaker 7: the urban park where they had the five urban sports
Speaker 7: and field yeah, well track and field was for normal
Speaker 7: started a France, but the Parisian crowds turned up for
Speaker 7: these newer sports, skateboarding, breakdancing.
Speaker 6: You know, everybody was talking by Australian Regan.
Speaker 7: I know what she did, so certainly got it in fact.
Speaker 7: But the fun and the experience is what stood out
Speaker 7: in Paris that humanity basically went back to the ancient Greeks.
Speaker 7: I'm a Greek descent and said, let's put down all
Speaker 7: of our ills, all of our woes and let's enjoy
Speaker 7: each other. Paris did that in space the sensational games,
Speaker 7: not just the Olympics, but the Paralympics. Actually, I enjoyed
Speaker 7: the Paralympics as much as the Olympics because I saw
Speaker 7: humans with disabilities not think of themselves that way. They
Speaker 7: saw themselves as high performance athletes doing amazing things. And
Speaker 7: you know what, they're right and they've had to overcome.
Speaker 7: Each of them has the story and a narrative. Spent
Speaker 7: a lot of time with them talking about that. It
Speaker 7: was for me it raised the bar for Brisbane. As
Speaker 7: you just said, Lucky for me, I've got La in
Speaker 7: the middle. Although La, I think is going to do
Speaker 7: a pretty good job too.
Speaker 10: Pretty excited for that one.
Speaker 9: Yeah it's not exactly a gorgeous European city.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 10: Maybe they'll transform it well who knows.
Speaker 7: But they definitely have Hollywood and celebrities and venues.
Speaker 10: That's a glitz.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's a glitz. Let's a glitz. I have nature,
Speaker 7: I have Australia. I have a warm, friendly society. I
Speaker 7: have and a bit of leader to actually use oceans
Speaker 7: and rivers and forests and reefs and put on a
Speaker 7: spectacle where the Olympics meets nature and the other way around.
Speaker 7: Our motto already is shine brightest period together.
Speaker 10: I love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course I'm.
Speaker 4: Going to go.
Speaker 10: After I looks at Paris.
Speaker 9: Person was my some of the Olympics. I want to
Speaker 9: go every four years. I want to make it a priority.
Speaker 3: You got time twenty thirty two.
Speaker 10: Okay, it's on the calendar.
Speaker 3: All right, Katie's there. A big thank you. Andrew. Andrew
Speaker 3: liveris his book Leading Through Disruption, A change Maker's Guide
Speaker 3: to twenty first century leadership. Former CEO of the Dow
Speaker 3: Chemical Company, former executive chair of Dow DuPont. He's on
Speaker 3: the boards of Lucid Group, Sadi Raby Oil, IBM, and
Speaker 3: he's working hard on the Olympics. This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
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Speaker 2: Plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition
Speaker 2: of Bloomberg Business Week, including bringing back the Sport and
Speaker 2: sportswear Helen Tuckett teamed up with baseball legend and investor
Speaker 2: Derek Jeter with the goal of creating the next great
Speaker 2: athletic brand.
Speaker 3: Plus pulling back the curtain and digging deeper on what
Speaker 3: it takes for world class CEOs to reinvent themselves. The
Speaker 3: author of the Journey of Leadership joins us later on.
Speaker 2: First Up This Hour. It's been pretty slow progress, but
Speaker 2: the gap between women and men in leadership roles at
Speaker 2: US business schools has been shrinking, especially as more women
Speaker 2: are promoted to positions that are stepping stones to deanships.
Speaker 3: According to research by the Association to Advanced Collegiate Schools
Speaker 3: of Business in twenty twenty three to this year, women
Speaker 3: deans at three hundred and sixty eight US business schools
Speaker 3: represented thirty percent of the total. It's an increase from
Speaker 3: seventeen percent in two thousand and seventy two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3: What's more, the AACSB found women now account for forty
Speaker 3: three percent of associate business school deans. It's a position
Speaker 3: that often leads to a deanship, thirty four percent currently
Speaker 3: in that role. We're once associate B school deans.
Speaker 2: All right, So sound like the trend is a good one.
Speaker 2: Even though the gap is shrinking, women still make up
Speaker 2: only a third of all business school deans. One of
Speaker 2: those deans is when now she is dean of the
Speaker 2: Villanova School of Business. She joined Tim, Katie Greyfield and
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News Senior editor Dimitra Cassani's.
Speaker 3: Demeter, I want to start with you. I want you
Speaker 3: to set the scene for us, because each year you
Speaker 3: spend a lot of time focusing on business schools for
Speaker 3: Bloomberg Business Week. Take us into the gender gap when
Speaker 3: it comes to leadership at these schools.
Speaker 13: Well, it's just like the numbers that you just mentioned.
Speaker 13: I mean, there's been a substantial gender gap, but we
Speaker 13: see it narrowing and importantly so I think you see
Speaker 13: it to some degree in a way with our guests
Speaker 13: today with Dean Mao of Villanova. Women who've been at
Speaker 13: these institutions for a while, who've been growing in different
Speaker 13: positions and moving their way up. And as we see
Speaker 13: more and more of those women sort of stepping into
Speaker 13: these associate dean ships, you know they're primed for taking
Speaker 13: on these roles. I think it's just the generation and
Speaker 13: the time that we're in that it's all kind of
Speaker 13: coming together. There's still a gap, and even I think
Speaker 13: there's still a bit of a gap. I'm looking it
Speaker 13: up now and I'll know that in a minute when
Speaker 13: I put my finger on it, when it comes to
Speaker 13: salary and some other differences. But it is meaningful. It's
Speaker 13: meaningful in many ways. It's as we reported in our story,
Speaker 13: Dean mal was one of several deans that we reported
Speaker 13: on to the women in that institution in various roles,
Speaker 13: to the women who go to those institutions and study representation,
Speaker 13: as we know, matters, and I think it's a very
Speaker 13: meaningful change. Also, just given the way that these institutions
Speaker 13: are led, there are differences, and so I think that
Speaker 13: it's something that we're going to be happy to keep
Speaker 13: tracking in various ways.
Speaker 10: Well, Dean Mail come in on that point.
Speaker 9: Of course, you're dean of the Villanova School of Business.
Speaker 9: I actually went to school at harber For just two
Speaker 9: miles down the road.
Speaker 10: But you've been with Villanova in various roles since nineteen
Speaker 10: ninety six, I believe.
Speaker 9: So what was the path to finally becoming dean of
Speaker 9: the business school?
Speaker 14: Oh, it's pretty much my entire career. So I started
Speaker 14: as an assistant professor in the economics department really one
Speaker 14: year out of the graduate program, and then became tenured
Speaker 14: at the business school and then took on the department
Speaker 14: chair bro only because my colleagues wanted to hear me
Speaker 14: called chairman mouth. So they waited were for ten years
Speaker 14: for that to happen. When it finally happened, they're like, yeah,
Speaker 14: we want her. I never actually wanted because in academia,
Speaker 14: I think what drew us to this profession, at least
Speaker 14: most of us, I try not to overly generalize, is
Speaker 14: to a degree of freedom. You don't really have a boss.
Speaker 14: I mean, department chare really isn't a boss. It's really
Speaker 14: everybody is your boss. So and also like you're really
Speaker 14: not drawn to the salary, right, and so it's really
Speaker 14: that freedom, it's that purpose. It's that working with young
Speaker 14: people and research, right, those are the things that dow
Speaker 14: you there. So being an administrator isn't in most people's plan.
Speaker 3: So but yeah, dmail, I'm curious how the makeup of
Speaker 3: the school is representative or is not representative from a
Speaker 3: gender perspective of the actual administration.
Speaker 14: In terms of you know, the deans or yeah, in terms.
Speaker 3: Of the deans, for example, and I can only draw
Speaker 3: in my own experience, but when my dad, when my
Speaker 3: dad went to business school in seventies, it was almost
Speaker 3: all men. When I went to business school, you know what,
Speaker 3: eight or ten years ago, it was like fifty to fifty,
Speaker 3: But it didn't seem like the administration was fifty to
Speaker 3: fifty gender.
Speaker 14: Well yeah, so if you count department chairs and the
Speaker 14: deans and associate deans right now, say, out of the
Speaker 14: five department chairs, we only have one female, and she's
Speaker 14: actually the finance department chair, which has sixty percent of
Speaker 14: our students, so very very important job, and she's done
Speaker 14: a fantastic job at that. In terms of the dean's job,
Speaker 14: let's just soom out a little bit for the whole university.
Speaker 14: We have six colleges, right, so six deans, five are
Speaker 14: female at Villanova. So so that's impressive. But if you
Speaker 14: think about history, right, Dmitria is right that we have
Speaker 14: come a long way. It didn't just happen overnight. I'm
Speaker 14: looking at the hallway and see all the prior business
Speaker 14: school deans pictures and I think I'm the second female.
Speaker 14: The previous dean was the first female dean Enjoyce Russell
Speaker 14: and then prior to that all male and mostly priests,
Speaker 14: and so.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's.
Speaker 6: School.
Speaker 14: So it's certainly come a long way. But right now,
Speaker 14: for instance, I have two senior associate deans and one
Speaker 14: male one female.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so.
Speaker 11: There you go.
Speaker 10: And that's the Villanova make up there.
Speaker 9: And you mentioned and that it's not something that you
Speaker 9: necessarily get into for the salary. But Demetria, I want
Speaker 9: to come to you on that point. I mean, you
Speaker 9: think about the data that you have and what does
Speaker 9: that show when it comes to the salaries.
Speaker 13: Yeah, well, I mean we show we've collected data. Again
Speaker 13: it's from AACSB, the association that Tim mentioned, and there's
Speaker 13: still there's still a gap. I mean, the gap in
Speaker 13: salary has been somewhat consistent, it feels like over the
Speaker 13: last five to eight years, which is about women lagging
Speaker 13: men in the dean's roll five to six percent in salary.
Speaker 13: So you know, if you're looking at say an average
Speaker 13: salary for male deans today of about three hundred and
Speaker 13: twenty six thousand versus for females of three hundred and
Speaker 13: thirteen three hundred and fourteen thousand, you know it's not
Speaker 13: a Hugey's not huge, but it's a disparity. And these
Speaker 13: are people again, you know, coming up through the ranks
Speaker 13: long time, with the institution holding important roles. You know,
Speaker 13: sometimes you just scratch your head wonder why they.
Speaker 3: Hold on? Why is college and graduate school so expensive?
Speaker 3: What are the salaries?
Speaker 13: Well, those they are they are big salaries, but they're
Speaker 13: big jobs. Maybe I don't know, demail in.
Speaker 14: Terms of the cost that it's very interesting you asked that.
Speaker 14: I think inflation adjusted economists here confession, it didn't go
Speaker 14: up as much as the sort of headline price tag says,
Speaker 14: because you also have scholarships, right, and so the net
Speaker 14: cost of attending actually in recent years have gone down,
Speaker 14: did not go up. So so that's but if you
Speaker 14: see the price tag, it's like you go to the
Speaker 14: car dealership. No one actually pays that tag price, right,
Speaker 14: You kind of have discounts, and so most universities give
Speaker 14: out discounts based on these and because that information is
Speaker 14: very hard to obtain, so there isn't a transparency to
Speaker 14: how much the actual cost is for the students. So
Speaker 14: most universities, believe it or not, are being pressed squeezed
Speaker 14: right on one hand, you're giving all these discounts, so
Speaker 14: you're not bringing as much tuition, And on the other
Speaker 14: hand you have the rising costs with faculty salary and
Speaker 14: all that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wanted to get into some of the challenges
Speaker 3: that schools are facing right now, the effect of the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court decision back in the summer of twenty twenty
Speaker 3: three that bans affirmative action. How's this playing out at
Speaker 3: Villanova and at the Business School.
Speaker 14: Actually we have not finalized the numbers for this year yet,
Speaker 14: but preliminary data seemed to suggest the numbers pretty much stabilized.
Speaker 14: So it didn't have a big impact for a school
Speaker 14: like us, and maybe partly because we still have very
Speaker 14: strong outreach. And also, if you think about it, mit
Speaker 14: I think came out and said that. They came out
Speaker 14: and said that was a big story. The number did
Speaker 14: go down for them, right, And I was thinking, like
Speaker 14: just a few days ago, well, that has to have
Speaker 14: impact on the school right below, Right, So these students
Speaker 14: go somewhere, Where did they go?
Speaker 8: Right?
Speaker 14: Could they be coming to some school like us? And
Speaker 14: maybe that has an impact sort of the next year
Speaker 14: schools And then it trigg goes down to the following year.
Speaker 14: So that's maybe just a sort of an educated guess
Speaker 14: and for us maybe it's a wash.
Speaker 3: Demitra, as I mentioned, you spend a very good part
Speaker 3: of your year focused on the business schools. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to give anything away because I don't know anything,
Speaker 3: but I know this time of year is when the
Speaker 3: rankings usually come out. Can you give us any preview
Speaker 3: of of sort of how you're thinking about things this year?
Speaker 3: Just very briefly.
Speaker 13: I mean, we've been talking to deans at several schools
Speaker 13: and you know, going out there and taking a look
Speaker 13: at what's happening. The rankings come out next week the way.
Speaker 3: September Mark seventeenth.
Speaker 13: They will publish at twelve oh one am. These are
Speaker 13: global rankings. You know, a lot of the themes we've
Speaker 13: been seeing in recent years are picking up and just
Speaker 13: taking on greater importance.
Speaker 11: The AI.
Speaker 13: The theme of AI in both how it's being used
Speaker 13: in the classroom, how it's affecting so many aspects of
Speaker 13: the education, and also in the jobs that the graduates
Speaker 13: are seeking. And then jobs is a big one. This year,
Speaker 13: it's been a challenging year for NBA grads. All right, Well,
Speaker 13: we know that has continued.
Speaker 3: We know we'll get you back on as soon as
Speaker 3: that list does. Come out to meet you. Casinede's Bloomberg
Speaker 3: New Senior Editor when Mount Dean of the Villanova School
Speaker 3: of Business. Here in the studio.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Listen live
Speaker 1: each weekday starting at two pm Eastern down Applecar Play
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Speaker 2: From business to politics, there seems to be a growing
Speaker 2: power shift of women in more prominent positions of power,
Speaker 2: and that includes women of color.
Speaker 3: Okay, so remember just a few weeks ago, this is
Speaker 3: back in July agient history when we're talking to presidential
Speaker 3: election here. But that was the day that President Joe
Speaker 3: Biden said he would no longer run for president. That day,
Speaker 3: some of America's most prominent black women across politics, business
Speaker 3: and entertainment joined thousands of their peers to galvanize support
Speaker 3: for Vice President Kamala Harris. They raised one point five
Speaker 3: million dollars in just three hours for her take on
Speaker 3: what this means for Harris and women of color. More broadly,
Speaker 3: Emily Graffeo and I spoke to doctor Kerry Mitchell Brown.
Speaker 3: She's a cultural architect and equity strategist at KMB.
Speaker 15: Often in our space as equity practitioners, we hear that
Speaker 15: you have to give up something in order for other
Speaker 15: people to have space. Inclusive leadership looks exactly like what
Speaker 15: happened there. Joe Biden made an assessment that what's required
Speaker 15: right now, well, he could not provide in his leadership.
Speaker 15: So he transferred his leadership to a very capable black
Speaker 15: woman who has been in the trenches and demonstrated that
Speaker 15: she has a lived experience to lead in this moment
Speaker 15: and beyond and that's what is required. And he did
Speaker 15: that very very well, and it came off as very
Speaker 15: powerful and very transformative. And others can take up that
Speaker 15: practice in moving when their leadership no longer meets the moment.
Speaker 16: What is the next phase of this power shift towards women?
Speaker 16: I guess, how do we keep this momentum going because
Speaker 16: now we do have a black woman kind of front
Speaker 16: and center stage. How do we kind of keep that continuing?
Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean it is a sign for businesses. It
Speaker 15: does really highlight that equity is necessary all of our
Speaker 15: institutions and all of our workforces. Katanji Jackson Brown, I
Speaker 15: mean she's at the pinnacle in her career as well.
Speaker 15: We see Justice Supreme Court Justice. Absolutely, we saw a
Speaker 15: lot of that happening when she was finally confirmed as well.
Speaker 15: It is very very important for these leaders to represent
Speaker 15: our democracy, to represent and reflect what our country looks like.
Speaker 3: You know, I want to go back to Vice President
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris because one thing that we've seen her do,
Speaker 3: or one thing we've seen her not do, is make
Speaker 3: her racial identity part of her pitch to the American people,
Speaker 3: which I think is really interesting. She has not made
Speaker 3: that a big part of her campaign.
Speaker 15: No, she has not made that a big part of
Speaker 15: our campaign. And it's not her only identity either. She's American,
Speaker 15: she's a woman, she is multi racial, and you know,
Speaker 15: she is to represent. When she accepted her nomination speech,
Speaker 15: she represents all people and she talked about doing that
Speaker 15: for her entire career. Of the people right, and most
Speaker 15: women who lead organizations, who lead corporations, who lead labor unions,
Speaker 15: who lead think tanks, they don't lead as I'm a
Speaker 15: black woman president, I'm a black woman leader. We have
Speaker 15: two women currently who are black that lead Fortune five
Speaker 15: hundred companies. They don't lead with I am a black
Speaker 15: woman CEO. No, I am the CEO of the company.
Speaker 3: That's a tiny number.
Speaker 15: It is so tiny, so tiny that is not representative
Speaker 15: of it is not representative of the US population at all.
Speaker 15: There is a lot of work that needs to be
Speaker 15: done there. But my example is still the same that
Speaker 15: they don't lead with. I am a black woman leader,
Speaker 15: I am a leader.
Speaker 16: What groups do you target in your work as a
Speaker 16: cultural architect an equity strategist. Do you kind of focus
Speaker 16: on people early in their careers and advancing them or
Speaker 16: is this more kind of targeting people in the mid
Speaker 16: and more senior levels.
Speaker 15: I really work with organizations who are committed to ensuring
Speaker 15: that they have the right environment for black women to thrive,
Speaker 15: for everyone to thrive, but particularly for black women to thrive.
Speaker 15: So if there is an organization who has an experience
Speaker 15: that they are not able to retain talented black women,
Speaker 15: well we have a conversation to see what's going wrong.
Speaker 15: Because it's not the black women who are leaving who
Speaker 15: are the challenge, what's happening in the environment, what's happening
Speaker 15: in the workplace, what's happening in the cultures, the policies
Speaker 15: or practices that create the conditions where black women do
Speaker 15: not want to stay.
Speaker 3: What are the challenges that these leaders are coming to
Speaker 3: you with when they hire you, when they bring you
Speaker 3: in to do this work. What are the problems they're
Speaker 3: trying to.
Speaker 15: Solve, the problems that they are trying to solve as
Speaker 15: they're trying to operationalize their commitment for racial equity, their
Speaker 15: commitments that they are making for diversity. We all know
Speaker 15: that companies with diverse teams are thirty five percent more
Speaker 15: productive in revenue, in impact in the bottom line overall
Speaker 15: than companies whose teams are not diverse.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I want to bring this up because in
Speaker 3: recent months, we've seen Low's, Harley Davidson, Tractor Supply, Dear
Speaker 3: Brown Foreman all come out and say they're pulling back
Speaker 3: from pledges to commit to diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Speaker 3: There's a real pushback to DEI right now.
Speaker 15: There is a tremendous pushback to d E and I
Speaker 15: right now. And one would think where they committed in
Speaker 15: the first place. After George Floyd twenty twenty, there was
Speaker 15: a lot of commitments. No company wanted to be on
Speaker 15: the wrong side of I'm not going to commit to this.
Speaker 15: We saw a lot of companies pulling back with this
Speaker 15: Supreme Court rulings coming out of the Fearless Fund and
Speaker 15: the risk of litigation. We have witnessed some organizations softening
Speaker 15: their language around their commitments on their website, but continuing
Speaker 15: to move forward, you know, with their programming, changing the
Speaker 15: words and you know, changing the actions, you know, the
Speaker 15: two separate things. But yeah, I will question where they
Speaker 15: serious about it in the first place.
Speaker 3: Ten seconds permanent shift?
Speaker 6: Is this it?
Speaker 3: Or these companies circle back in the coming years.
Speaker 15: They need to circle back. It's at their own peril
Speaker 15: if they don't.
Speaker 3: Doctor Kerry Mitchell Brown, thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: Thank you for protect and Equity Strategist joining us here
Speaker 3: in the Bloomberg's studio.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekday afternoons from two to five pm. Easter Listen
Speaker 1: on Apple card Play and then brought auto with a
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business act or wanted us live on YouTube?
Speaker 2: All right, let me throw out one metric. I guess
Speaker 2: I kind of got to do this. The global sportswear
Speaker 2: market size valued at nearly four hundred and thirteen billion
Speaker 2: dollars in twenty twenty two, estimated to reach nearly seven
Speaker 2: hundred forty nine billion by twenty thirty one. And listen,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of players in it and looking to
Speaker 2: take a share of it. Is a partnership. Our next
Speaker 2: two guests, both with brands that are very well known
Speaker 2: now with a combined brand known as Greatness Wins.
Speaker 3: So let's get to the interview with more joining us
Speaker 3: here in the studio. The founder of Vuntucket, who came
Speaker 3: up with the idea for his casual shirts while working
Speaker 3: at GE Healthcare. Chris Ricobono back with us, also with US,
Speaker 3: Hall of Fame shortstop and five time World Series champion
Speaker 3: with the New York Yankees. Also an e commerce investor
Speaker 3: to Derek Jeter, both here in the Bloomberg BusinessWeek studio. Okay, guys,
Speaker 3: first up, we want to know how you guys got together.
Speaker 3: How did this come together? Who called who, who had
Speaker 3: the idea for who to get involved? How did it
Speaker 3: come out?
Speaker 6: That's a good question. You start with super version comes out.
Speaker 17: I was going to say Derek reached out to me,
Speaker 17: but that's not how it worked. So I over the pandemic.
Speaker 17: I was looking to solve another problem in the fashion industry,
Speaker 17: and I thought about athletic apparel and it didn't exist
Speaker 17: for me. Something that had a great fit but also
Speaker 17: had performance first in mind. So I came up with
Speaker 17: this concept in this idea, but now I wanted a
Speaker 17: few athletes behind me. And at the time, I think
Speaker 17: Derek might have still had a contract with Nike or
Speaker 17: it was winding down, and I didn't think that I
Speaker 17: could get to him or.
Speaker 6: That he'd be interested.
Speaker 17: But after a year of bothering him and his agents,
Speaker 17: he actually called me and said, Chris, I'm just not
Speaker 17: that interested and excited in this. But I said, he
Speaker 17: can't get off say he can't get off the phone, Derek,
Speaker 17: how can I get you excited? So we talked for
Speaker 17: a while after that, and we kind of came together
Speaker 17: with both of our visions. You know, I'm apparel guy,
Speaker 17: that's the way I think about it. Derek's was a
Speaker 17: successful entrepreneur but also very successful, as you know, a
Speaker 17: Nike guy, So I knew that he had a lot
Speaker 17: of insight that I didn't have, and he shared it
Speaker 17: with me, and we launched a brand about he and
Speaker 17: a half ago and we're having great success.
Speaker 2: Okay, you weren't excited and then you became excited. How
Speaker 2: that happened? How did you make that turn?
Speaker 6: Well? I think you know, first and foremost getting to
Speaker 6: know Chris, we talked about the idea. I've had relationships
Speaker 6: with athletic brands throughout my career and great relationships and
Speaker 6: I still do today. And you know, when I was
Speaker 6: first speaking to Chris, I was like, well, first of all,
Speaker 6: you know, this is a crowded space. It's not as
Speaker 6: easy to attack this space, and it's going to take
Speaker 6: some time and it's going to take a lot of energy.
Speaker 6: And I wouldn't say I wasn't excited, but I when
Speaker 6: I do something, I'm all in and if I'm not
Speaker 6: all in, I'm just not going to do it. And
Speaker 6: at that point when we were having the discussion, I said,
Speaker 6: you know, I don't think now is the time. And
Speaker 6: then we actually got together, we had a chance to
Speaker 6: look and feel and touch the product, and that started
Speaker 6: getting me very very excited about it. So I guess
Speaker 6: that's the best way to put it. In our short
Speaker 6: period of time.
Speaker 3: You do, though, Derek, probably get a lot of investment pitches,
Speaker 3: not just in the apparel world, but yeah, no question,
Speaker 3: from lots of different entrepreneurs who want your involvement. What
Speaker 3: was it specifically about this one with Chris with Untucket
Speaker 3: that really caught your eye.
Speaker 6: I think it's you got to get to know the
Speaker 6: people any business that you're in the same thing, when
Speaker 6: you're on a team on the field, you have to
Speaker 6: have the right people on the side.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I was going to say that, but you didn't give
Speaker 6: me enough time say that. And you know, I just
Speaker 6: found Chris to be very very passionate about it. You
Speaker 6: can't fake passion. You either are you aren't. And you know,
Speaker 6: even when I told him that I wasn't interested, he
Speaker 6: kept calling and we kept having the conversation, and I
Speaker 6: knew when you're if you're going to be successful, you
Speaker 6: need those types of people on your side.
Speaker 2: I always think about that. I remember talking to a
Speaker 2: top m and a banker and he's like, the only
Speaker 2: way you get deals done is this. CEOs have to
Speaker 2: like each other, and that's how you get things come
Speaker 2: to the table. Would you say no to a great
Speaker 2: deal because you didn't like somebody.
Speaker 6: Oh, without a doubt.
Speaker 17: I mean you end up working a lot. It's funny
Speaker 17: when Derek said that he wanted to be more involved
Speaker 17: than he when he goes all in. I was thinking
Speaker 17: he was just doing that as an equity played to
Speaker 17: get some more equity. Yeah, that he actually wanted to
Speaker 17: be and Derek's liked. I mean, he wants to talk
Speaker 17: about everything every decision.
Speaker 2: And you want somebody who's I want.
Speaker 17: Someone that yes, because I don't know everything and I
Speaker 17: definitely don't know everything in the athletic apparel space. So
Speaker 17: it's been a this is.
Speaker 6: Recorded, right, I'm gonna play that. We're gonna play that back.
Speaker 6: You can do that, you can you can loop it, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Well, the same thing for you, I mean, Derek, when
Speaker 2: you get involved in something, how you know, we asked
Speaker 2: about what made this interesting, but in general, how involved
Speaker 2: do you want to be? I mean how much do
Speaker 2: you have to love the brand that you hook up with?
Speaker 6: You have to be involved. I mean otherwise you're just
Speaker 6: given your money and you're hoping someone else runs with
Speaker 6: it and makes you more. But when you're passionate about something,
Speaker 6: when you put in the time, you put in the effort.
Speaker 6: I think the best thing to say about us is
Speaker 6: we disagree probably more than we agree, and I think
Speaker 6: that's a good thing. I mean, you don't want people
Speaker 6: that always think the same as you, Otherwise you're never
Speaker 6: going to make improvements. You're never going to make progress.
Speaker 2: Is it hard to say no to?
Speaker 11: Derek?
Speaker 4: Though?
Speaker 2: We just talked with the leadership We are author of
Speaker 2: a leadership book, and they talked about CEOs who once
Speaker 2: they get to the top, they around themselves with people
Speaker 2: who say who don't say no.
Speaker 17: Listen, I rolled the dice right from the beginning, and
Speaker 17: we went after each other a little bit. But like
Speaker 17: you said it, it's the best way to go about it.
Speaker 17: Like you want to leave at the end of the
Speaker 17: day and have people go against your views, because if
Speaker 17: they're agreeing with you, you're not going to always do the
Speaker 17: right thing. So I thought that was a great I
Speaker 17: wondered if he was one to because sorry, if he
Speaker 17: was going to want to continue a relationship a few times,
Speaker 17: but it really came together and now now we're on
Speaker 17: the same page and things are going really well for us.
Speaker 2: Well I do wonder when does it get a little tricky,
Speaker 2: Like any partnership, whether it's a marriage, whether it's working relationships,
Speaker 2: whether it's business relationships, there's always tough times.
Speaker 3: What are some of those looking at me?
Speaker 6: Yeah? I was about to say, just keep going. You
Speaker 6: want to you answer that question?
Speaker 2: No, But I really do feel like a little bit
Speaker 2: of debate or a little bit of arguing, like gets
Speaker 2: you to a better place.
Speaker 6: I think it does. You have to have a difference
Speaker 6: of opinion, like I said, I do like you tim Otherwise,
Speaker 6: like I said, you're not going to make any any
Speaker 6: progress moving forward. And we probably we disagree more than
Speaker 6: we agree, but we do it respectfully. And you know,
Speaker 6: there are some things that I know he's an expert.
Speaker 6: It's impossible to be an expert everything, right. It surrounds
Speaker 6: your people that are much more intelligent in different fields.
Speaker 6: And you know, Chris obviously has a lot of experience
Speaker 6: in the retail space, especially I have experience when it
Speaker 6: comes to athletic brands. So it's okay for us to disagree.
Speaker 3: So Chris, let's go there because this is a really
Speaker 3: crowded space. You mentioned Nike, but I mean, if you
Speaker 3: think about upstarts like Viory Rhone. Then there are the
Speaker 3: big players like Nike, Adidas and the like. How do
Speaker 3: you carve out a place for you specifically?
Speaker 17: So it's funny, just like with on Tucket, I really
Speaker 17: needed this product. Then you might ask why. You know
Speaker 17: there's plenty of athletic brands and athlesier brands. For me,
Speaker 17: the athletic brands that existed, the quality wasn't there, the
Speaker 17: consistency of fit wasn't there. They were designed for performance,
Speaker 17: but they didn't have that modern fit. The athleisure brands
Speaker 17: have an incredible fit, very high quality fabrics, but not
Speaker 17: designed with performance first in mind. So I wanted a
Speaker 17: really high end athletic brand that had a great fit
Speaker 17: but also was meant to work out and would withstand
Speaker 17: being washed, not pilling. Something that all athletes, not just
Speaker 17: professional athletes, could use all the time, and it's not inexpensive,
Speaker 17: so you want it to last for a long time.
Speaker 17: And I think that that's where we are differentiate from
Speaker 17: these other brands. We're not athleisure, We're not athletic. We're
Speaker 17: kind of a blend of both, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: I've got yoga pants on that are pilling a little bit,
Speaker 2: so I totally get you. What's the kind of what's
Speaker 2: the growth trajectory? Tell me what we can tell we're Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: We love numbers, you know that. What's the growth on this?
Speaker 6: Well, we need you to go buy some pants. We
Speaker 6: just said, so get right on it to help it's out.
Speaker 6: But I think for us, I'll let Chris follow up
Speaker 6: on it. I think what we want to show as
Speaker 6: a brand, this is only our second year. We want
Speaker 6: to show progress. You know sometimes when you when when
Speaker 6: you're building a company, a startup company, you want success
Speaker 6: right away to understand you're you're a startup company for
Speaker 6: I think they say ten years. I mean it's a
Speaker 6: long long time. So we want to show some steady progression.
Speaker 6: I'll let Chris get in the numbers.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wait, so will it be ten years before you really
Speaker 2: feel like it's there?
Speaker 6: No how much you buy?
Speaker 17: No, I mean there is so much competition. You want
Speaker 17: to just stay relevant. You want to make a great product.
Speaker 17: That's the first thing. You got to make a great product,
Speaker 17: you need your repeats to be there, which they are
Speaker 17: for us. The other thing that's really exciting with us
Speaker 17: is not just you have the e comm then eventually stores,
Speaker 17: which is what I did with on Tucket. We have
Speaker 17: a great wholesale business we're building at Greatness Wins. We
Speaker 17: have a golf business. We'll be in eighty clubs. We
Speaker 17: were in eighty clubs this spring. We have a bookstore business.
Speaker 17: Derek just wore a Michigan sweatshirt on his honore captain
Speaker 17: in Michigan this weekend. We have a new dance relationship
Speaker 17: with Misty Copeland, who's our women.
Speaker 2: Foundary, women who do a little bit of shopping.
Speaker 17: So we have something that will be announcing soon. That's exciting.
Speaker 17: So I'm very happy with earlier are. People love the product,
Speaker 17: they love the quality, and we're just getting going, but
Speaker 17: very excited for the future.
Speaker 2: All Right, We're going to just shift a little bit
Speaker 2: because I am curious, Derek, are you looking for any
Speaker 2: other investments, you know, in sports beyond baseball or maybe
Speaker 2: an MLB team or anything.
Speaker 6: No, I've been down that path. No, I'm going to
Speaker 6: take a break from that. I spent a lot of
Speaker 6: time with my four kids who are seven and under.
Speaker 6: So it's a full time job, especially when you're talking
Speaker 6: about Major League Baseball ownership. So at this particular point,
Speaker 6: I think I have my hands full.
Speaker 3: So you know whether, yeah, well when you say take
Speaker 3: a break, are you ruling it out for the future
Speaker 3: or do you want to get back?
Speaker 6: And I learned a long time ago never say never yeah,
Speaker 6: because you never know. I as just said it three
Speaker 6: times in a row. But you don't know where the
Speaker 6: future is going to lead you. But at this particular
Speaker 6: point now.
Speaker 2: I do also wonder the two of you, like when
Speaker 2: you think about either ath leisure or athletic appareled you know,
Speaker 2: companies that you look at that you admire or leaders
Speaker 2: you admire. Let me ask you, Chris first, like, is
Speaker 2: there somebody that you look at and say that's who
Speaker 2: I kind of get some cues from.
Speaker 17: Or I mean we always talk about Nike and the
Speaker 17: Jordan brand. Those are the greatest, you know, probably the
Speaker 17: greatest brand maybe ever, so well, you know, you want
Speaker 17: to be them, but if you're half half of what
Speaker 17: they become, you're very successful. And I think the ath
Speaker 17: leisure brands are great too. I mean I won't name
Speaker 17: them because you know, but I think there's a lot
Speaker 17: of eight brands these days, so we're just trying to differentiate.
Speaker 17: Give a reason you know why you might need our
Speaker 17: product versus those products, and yeah, hopefully it works.
Speaker 2: Leader you look at your smiling.
Speaker 6: No, there's there's a lot, you know, it's one that
Speaker 6: comes to mind, he said, Jordan Brand. You know MJ's
Speaker 6: been like a big brother than me. And I think
Speaker 6: you know, I have young kids now, and you want
Speaker 6: them to choose their career path and find someone that
Speaker 6: they can look up to. You want them to see
Speaker 6: someone who's been successful. And you know, you talk about
Speaker 6: Michael on what he was able to accomplish on the
Speaker 6: basketball court, but I think you look at athletes post
Speaker 6: playing career. He's up there at the top what he's
Speaker 6: been able to accomplish from a business standpoint. So he's
Speaker 6: someone that I look to and go to for advice.
Speaker 2: All Right, you're going to go there, you go world serious,
Speaker 2: I know I have to do this. I have to
Speaker 2: do this, all right. So you're going to be in
Speaker 2: the booth.
Speaker 6: Right I am? Yes? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Who do you can you think about? Who might be there?
Speaker 6: It depends, you know, I'm not trying to skirt the question.
Speaker 6: I'm really not. But a lot of it is matchups. Okay,
Speaker 6: in a couple of weeks because you know, some teams
Speaker 6: I know during my careers to play Anaheim Angels all
Speaker 6: the time, we just couldn't beat them. And you know,
Speaker 6: finally we broke through and we were able to win
Speaker 6: in two thousand and nine. But it all comes down
Speaker 6: to matchups. So there's some good teams out there.
Speaker 2: Chris, you talk baseball, and I'm curious what you might
Speaker 2: think for the World Series.
Speaker 6: This knows nothing about base are no do you know baseball?
Speaker 17: I mean I don't did a deal with I don't
Speaker 17: bother Derek with it, but I'm a Yankees fan. We'll
Speaker 17: see it's they don't seem to be able to perform
Speaker 17: in the playoffs for the last what is it fifteen
Speaker 17: years now.
Speaker 18: We'll discuss it on podcast quay listen, guys, got about
Speaker 18: forty seconds left here real quickly in I don't know,
Speaker 18: a year from now, what's the conversation around your company.
Speaker 17: I think we'll start to look at stores. I mean
Speaker 17: I love stores. Not many people do in retail. We
Speaker 17: have niney of them on Tucket and we're opening more.
Speaker 17: I think it's really important for the male shoppers. So
Speaker 17: I think we'll look at that and we'll look at
Speaker 17: continued growth in these different areas that we discuss, bookstores, golf,
Speaker 17: e commerce. So it's very exciting.
Speaker 2: Same thing for you, Derek, in terms of greatness, wins
Speaker 2: and a year from now, what are we gonna be
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 6: Oh, I think it's all awareness. You want people to
Speaker 6: be aware. You want to walk around the streets and
Speaker 6: see people wearing it. And I'm very confident in the
Speaker 6: fact that someone buys our product and they wear it,
Speaker 6: they'll be happy with it and they return.
Speaker 3: As a customer and no pilling.
Speaker 6: You promise, Well, you got to tell me I got.
Speaker 2: Derek j Derek Jeter, of course, Chris Ricobono, you guys
Speaker 2: got me FLLL mixed.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: Live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern Listen
Speaker 1: on Apple, car Play and and brout Auto with a
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Speaker 3: Well, our next guest has thirty years of experience at
Speaker 3: McKinsey and Company, focusing on projects related to organizational change
Speaker 3: in companies that range from high tech to banking, healthcare,
Speaker 3: industrial and more. He's a senior partner McKenzie and senior
Speaker 3: partner at McKinsey Company, Codean of the CEO leadership program
Speaker 3: the Bower Forum. He's also got a brand new book out.
Speaker 3: It's called The Journey of Leadership, How CEOs Learned to
Speaker 3: Lead from the Inside Out, Rameshering of Austin, Welcome to
Speaker 3: Bloomberg BusinessWeek. How are you.
Speaker 11: I'm good, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: It's good to have you with us. My first question
Speaker 3: is very basic. There's four co authors on this book.
Speaker 3: How do you write a book with three other people?
Speaker 11: It's actually a fantastic experience.
Speaker 4: I've learned a lot from my co authors, Dana, Ham,
Speaker 4: Swanna and Kirk and you know, obviously some of us
Speaker 4: took the lead on different chapters, but bringing the different
Speaker 4: perspectives together was a fantastic learning experience for us.
Speaker 2: All right, So which chapters did you write?
Speaker 7: So?
Speaker 4: I wrote the chapter on humility, that's one of our
Speaker 4: first chapters. I wrote the chapter on vulnerability. I wrote
Speaker 4: the chapter on control as an illusion. Happy to talk
Speaker 4: about that. But I'm also as Codean of the Bower Forum,
Speaker 4: I've been in the journey of many many CEOs have
Speaker 4: gone through the program, more than five hundred CEOs have
Speaker 4: gone through it, so I have a good view of
Speaker 4: all the chapters.
Speaker 2: How many leaders come to you, guys, and they're not
Speaker 2: great leaders to begin but.
Speaker 3: By the time you've become a leader in that sense
Speaker 3: and you're like a leader enough to hire McKinsey. Right,
Speaker 3: you've obviously done somethings right.
Speaker 4: You have done somethings right, and I think you've got
Speaker 4: a good achievement orientation. You've accomplished something, but yet you
Speaker 4: want to learn. So people come to the Bower Forum.
Speaker 4: People come to our leadership programs because they at least
Speaker 4: have that initial sense of wanting to learn.
Speaker 11: So there is some self selection in that process.
Speaker 3: Okay, So talk a little bit about just the experience
Speaker 3: of sort of understanding what makes a leader successful. Oftentimes
Speaker 3: we talk to CEOs of companies, especially honestly, especially this
Speaker 3: time of year because it's like book season. Yeah, the CEOs,
Speaker 3: they spend three decades at a company. Oftentimes, you know,
Speaker 3: the folks who are writing books about leadership are the
Speaker 3: ones who are are retired from leading these companies, not
Speaker 3: necessarily day to day working with other CEOs. So talk
Speaker 3: a little bit about bringing that perspective.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, we have stories of both CEOs of
Speaker 4: retired and we have stories of CEOs are still active.
Speaker 4: And I think what we found is, and this is
Speaker 4: the concept of inside out leadership that we've described in
Speaker 4: the book. Successful leaders, especially in a world that is
Speaker 4: changing so fast with complex geopolitics and technology disruptions, they
Speaker 4: think a lot about who they are, what is their purpose,
Speaker 4: and use that to inspire their teams, inspire organizations. So
Speaker 4: our big learning was that the model of the imperial
Speaker 4: CEO no longer exists and use that to consciously inspire
Speaker 4: their teams and their institutions they're leading.
Speaker 2: What about inspiring just by paying really good wages and
Speaker 2: giving benefits and making you know, I just think about
Speaker 2: for workers. You know, it's interesting coming off the debate, right,
Speaker 2: it's like the economy, the economy, the economy, and even
Speaker 2: though wages have gone up, there are workers out there
Speaker 2: who don't feel like they are participating, especially when it
Speaker 2: comes to publicly held companies, in the fortunes of those companies.
Speaker 2: So what about something as simple as that. I understand
Speaker 2: they're like kind of raw raw, you know, inspiring your team,
Speaker 2: But it's hard I think for some folks who say, okay, great,
Speaker 2: I've got to inspiring leader, but I'm having trouble because
Speaker 2: my wages haven't gone up as much.
Speaker 11: You're absolutely right.
Speaker 4: I think these leaders think about stakeholders and have to
Speaker 4: think about all stakeholders, their employees, their team, society, more broadly,
Speaker 4: their customers. I'll give you an example of Frank Desuza,
Speaker 4: who was, you know, one of the co founders of Cognizant,
Speaker 4: you know, Indian It and BPO company.
Speaker 11: Taught a lot.
Speaker 4: About even if a frontline software programmer reached out to him,
Speaker 4: he would always, you know, connect with them, respond to them.
Speaker 4: And so in many of these sectors, especially the knowledge
Speaker 4: of me thinking about all employees is quite critical.
Speaker 11: So completely agree with you. Even in the manufacturing I'm
Speaker 11: with you.
Speaker 4: I think the successful company thinking about creating value, you know,
Speaker 4: not just for shareholders, but for employees as well. I
Speaker 4: see this even in private equity companies are thinking much
Speaker 4: more about broader participation in creating value.
Speaker 3: How do they justify that from a cost perspective?
Speaker 4: I think all our research at McKinsey shows that deeper engagement,
Speaker 4: investing in employees, taking care of them, benefits well being.
Speaker 4: That absolutely leads that deeper engagement leads to better productivity,
Speaker 4: better performance.
Speaker 11: Better financial returns. There's a lot of research that confirms
Speaker 11: that you do.
Speaker 2: Talk to CEOs, and you mentioned the head of Cognizance,
Speaker 2: but I'm just curious talk to us about some of
Speaker 2: the CEOs that you did talk to for the book
Speaker 2: and what you wanted to get from them and include.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Frank is actually in the book, but beyond Frank,
Speaker 4: you know couple of other CEOs.
Speaker 11: Tepan Bansal of Moderna.
Speaker 4: You know, when he wanted to you know, he had
Speaker 4: the aspiration of developing the vaccine. They had never manufactured
Speaker 4: a vaccine before, so he told his head of manufacturing, tell.
Speaker 11: Me what support you need to make a billion?
Speaker 4: Those are the vaccines and and you know, the head
Speaker 4: of manufacturing almost fell off the chair.
Speaker 11: But they also realized that, you know, Stefan normally sped
Speaker 11: an aggressive ambition.
Speaker 4: But was there to support them, roll off his sleeves,
Speaker 4: taught problem with them. Another is Wendy Copp of Teach
Speaker 4: for America and then Teach for All.
Speaker 11: You know, when she took Teach for.
Speaker 4: Americas so now in sixty countries, she realized the value
Speaker 4: of the importance of understanding the context, understanding the entrepreneurs,
Speaker 4: social entrepreneurs in these geographies, and has come up with
Speaker 4: this model of collaborative leadership where the fundamental idea.
Speaker 11: Of education equity is the same, but she's had to tailor.
Speaker 4: The model and inspire these is to have the kind
Speaker 4: of impact in these sixty countries that she never thought
Speaker 4: was possible fifteen twenty years ago.
Speaker 3: A lot of your own work has focused on organizational change.
Speaker 3: As I mentioned in the introduction, this is just another
Speaker 3: way to describe how companies organize themselves from a human
Speaker 3: capital perspective. And I'm wondering over your three decade career
Speaker 3: at McKinsey, what the biggest shift in how organizations have
Speaker 3: realized how they can be more efficient. What has that
Speaker 3: shift been.
Speaker 4: I think the biggest shift is the notion of purpose.
Speaker 4: So we often talk about people purpose performance. I think
Speaker 4: these institutions have realized that they need to figure out
Speaker 4: what is their purpose and how do they help the
Speaker 4: people in the organization reflect on what gives them meaning,
Speaker 4: whether it be their own development, their teams, their bosses,
Speaker 4: the communities around them, and how do they tie that
Speaker 4: purpose back to the individual that's when they can unleash
Speaker 4: the most from the people and deliver sustainable performance.
Speaker 11: Again, Moderna is a great example, and in the healthcare.
Speaker 4: It's probably easier when you're doing work in life sciences
Speaker 4: or healthcare, but helping people see the value of what
Speaker 4: they're doing can then unleash their full less potential.
Speaker 2: I thought it was interesting. There's a chapter, chapter ten,
Speaker 2: everyone keeps things from the Boss, and it talks about
Speaker 2: its somebody becomes the CEO, they really no longer have
Speaker 2: peers who might you know, inform them, keep them, say
Speaker 2: to them, say no to them, or something.
Speaker 3: I know a lot of instances of that that I've
Speaker 3: seen play out over the last few years. So free,
Speaker 3: why is this nobody's saying no around this guy?
Speaker 2: You can tell right, or say that's a great idea.
Speaker 3: That's a great idea, boss.
Speaker 2: So you know, you get in this vacuum, and you know,
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of either founder led companies
Speaker 2: or founder created companies that ultimately get into a problem
Speaker 2: where nobody wants to tell them, don't do anything, don't
Speaker 2: tweet that exactly.
Speaker 11: No.
Speaker 2: I just think about you know, here we go look
Speaker 2: at companies like Starbucks and Chipotle went their period, you know,
Speaker 2: like these companies so identified with their founders for a
Speaker 2: long time and went through some tough times. I don't
Speaker 2: know what do you tell the leaders to make sure
Speaker 2: they don't get in that predicament? How do they not
Speaker 2: get in that predicament?
Speaker 4: You're absolutely right. And by the way, this is issue
Speaker 4: not just in founder lt company. It's actually many companies
Speaker 4: and not just the CEO. Even as you get more
Speaker 4: senior people start holding back and don't share the truth
Speaker 4: with folks. So I think we had the story in
Speaker 4: that chapter about the media company CEO who surrounded himself
Speaker 4: with truth tellers, and these truth tellers were people at
Speaker 4: all levels. He selected people who were not afraid of
Speaker 4: speaking the truth, but also created an environment where he
Speaker 4: set that expectation with them so that they would come
Speaker 4: and tell him what was really happening, what customers were
Speaker 4: telling them, how they were feeling, how their peers were feeling.
Speaker 4: And he used that knowledge to set the strategy, inspire people,
Speaker 4: and direct his own team.
Speaker 3: Hey, how has the organizational structure of McKinsey changed in
Speaker 3: your career.
Speaker 4: I think McKinsey our mission and values that have stayed
Speaker 4: the same in these thirty years. Obviously, the scope of
Speaker 4: work we do, the geographies we are in, that has
Speaker 4: expanded quite a bit in response to what our clients
Speaker 4: are asking.
Speaker 11: And you know, we're we are innovating, we're.
Speaker 4: Experimenting, we've invested a lot in technology, and then we've
Speaker 4: embed a purpose into what we do that's become much
Speaker 4: more important for us now. So those are some of
Speaker 4: the shifts that I've seen in these thirty years.
Speaker 2: Hey, Ramesh, one thing I want to ask you, and
Speaker 2: I think it's safe to say, we've done a lot
Speaker 2: of reporting a lot of other folks about the consulting
Speaker 2: industry overall, McKinsey and others kind of going through a
Speaker 2: bit of a rethink, a redesign. McKinsey we talked about
Speaker 2: earlier this year, Blueberg reported out, you know, cutting jobs,
Speaker 2: they talked about a slowdown in demand for services, and
Speaker 2: more broadly, the consulting industry has really been going through
Speaker 2: kind of been under the microscope, if you will, and
Speaker 2: McKinsey in particular in terms of the influence of the firm,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's reputation, it's involvement, and I wonder
Speaker 2: a couple of things. One how is the consulting industry going,
Speaker 2: what kind of demand are you seeing for your services?
Speaker 2: And secondly, is it tough sometimes when McKinsey has been
Speaker 2: under the microscope to kind of give advice to other
Speaker 2: companies and how does that make it kind of interesting
Speaker 2: the conversations.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm been in the industry for thirty years,
Speaker 4: and I think the industry goes through its own cycles.
Speaker 4: But I see robust demand. You know, I talked about
Speaker 4: changing geopolitics, technology disruptions, climate change. All of these are
Speaker 4: changes happening in the world, and our clients are looking
Speaker 4: for new creative ways of of driving growth. Our vision
Speaker 4: is to help clients deliver sustainable, inclusive growth in the world.
Speaker 4: I think in that journey, we're seeing robust demand. We're
Speaker 4: also having to shift our own practices. Frankly, if anything,
Speaker 4: we're you know, when clients look at us and see
Speaker 4: some of the changes we're doing, see the way in
Speaker 4: which we're adjusting ourselves.
Speaker 11: You know, part of it is we're taking some of
Speaker 11: our own medicine.
Speaker 4: And I see demand continuing to be robust, and that's
Speaker 4: what keeps me going.
Speaker 2: All Right, one thing we wanted to do, we've done
Speaker 2: this with some other folks that have written leadership books
Speaker 2: is talk about some of the leaders that are out there.
Speaker 2: And I want to start with the two leaders that
Speaker 2: were up on stage in Pennsylvania last night, the debate stage,
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris, Donald Trump. How would you rank them as leaders?
Speaker 2: What advice would you give to them in terms of
Speaker 2: their leadership skills or lack thereof.
Speaker 4: You know, I am not a political commentator, I'm not
Speaker 4: an expert.
Speaker 11: I'll leave it to other experts.
Speaker 4: I think our belief, like I said, is this concept
Speaker 4: of inside out leader leadership where we see successful leaders
Speaker 4: in business, in social leadership, in all spheres thinking about
Speaker 4: their own purpose, who they are, and using.
Speaker 11: That to inspire teams, inspire the world.
Speaker 4: That's the model we see, we understand well, and that's
Speaker 4: what we're sharing with the world.
Speaker 2: Do you think that though these are two candidates, either
Speaker 2: of them, one of them, both of them that inspire
Speaker 2: like the electorate and citizens.
Speaker 4: They obviously have, like citizens, different parts of the world
Speaker 4: that they inspire, right, so you know they resonate with
Speaker 4: different parts of the world and different parts of America
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 2: All right, So maybe easier, let's pick a leader that
Speaker 2: we talk about where do you want to go?
Speaker 11: Tim?
Speaker 3: I want to talk about Elon Musk. I mean he's
Speaker 3: someone we talk about each and every day. He's got
Speaker 3: several companies including SpaceX, Tesla of course the boring company
Speaker 3: he's got X formerly known as twin say Neuralink. Didn't
Speaker 3: say Neuralink yet there you go. That's one of the
Speaker 3: companies x AI as well a lot. When you look
Speaker 3: at Elon Musk, what do you see in terms of leadership?
Speaker 4: I mean I see a leader who comes up with ideas, innovating, bold,
Speaker 4: so many attributes that are interesting and useful to learn from.
Speaker 3: What about ways that you think he could be a
Speaker 3: better leader?
Speaker 4: Again, I have not studied Elon Musk, so again I'm
Speaker 4: not I don't think I'm an expert at at Elon
Speaker 4: Musk specifically.
Speaker 11: I'll go back to what we see leaders do.
Speaker 4: I think for us, our leadership model starts with leading staff.
Speaker 4: Who am I, you know, being more self aware, being
Speaker 4: aware of like what are my strengths, what are my areas?
Speaker 11: How can I improve? Like I said right at the beginning,
Speaker 11: that's why.
Speaker 4: People come to the Barer Forum and other leadership programs
Speaker 4: we do.
Speaker 11: And then using that to lead teams, inspire teams.
Speaker 4: You know, I already mentioned at least our belief is
Speaker 4: the model of the imperial CEO is no longer sustainable,
Speaker 4: and then using that to inspire institutions, inspire change in
Speaker 4: the world.
Speaker 11: That's the model of sustainable leadership we've seen, we've studied,
Speaker 11: and we share with leaders who come.
Speaker 3: To us, Ramesh, what are some takeaways that folks who
Speaker 3: don't necessarily lead organizations at the top, but maybe managers
Speaker 3: who have small teams or who are early on in
Speaker 3: their careers, what are some takeaways that they can get
Speaker 3: from the leaders at the top of their game, who
Speaker 3: you've written about, you've studied, you've worked with.
Speaker 4: Yeah, our book has actually meant for a wide spectrum
Speaker 4: of leaders. Leaders frankly, who are who are in schools today,
Speaker 4: Leaders who are early in their career, leaders who are
Speaker 4: more senior. My advice would be, you know, focused not
Speaker 4: just on academic success and achievement, but think about.
Speaker 11: Your own purpose. You know, what do you want to
Speaker 11: accomplish in the.
Speaker 4: World, What what service you want to provide to the
Speaker 4: community around you, and and bring that sense of purpose
Speaker 4: to the to the institution you're part of ask a
Speaker 4: lot of questions. You know, when I meet a lot
Speaker 4: of younger colleagues who are coming into McKenzie, I tell them.
Speaker 11: Exercise the obligation to dissent.
Speaker 4: That's one of our key principles within mckensey. Ask a
Speaker 4: lot of questions, understand how things work, get invite a
Speaker 4: lot of feedback and coaching, and use that to improve
Speaker 4: and grow.
Speaker 11: That's what I advise younger leaders.
Speaker 2: Interesting stuff, I mean, listen a lot of leaders right
Speaker 2: like looking for advice and trying to figure out in
Speaker 2: an environment where things can change a lot a lot
Speaker 2: thrown at you. And if you're publicly held, you can
Speaker 2: be out if the stock price isn't doing well.
Speaker 3: Or maybe they keep paying you even if the stock
Speaker 3: is coming down. We've seen situations like that before too.
Speaker 2: We have seen that, Ramesh. Thank you so much, Ramesh
Speaker 2: Shrinavasen As we said, Senior partner at McKenzie and Company.
Speaker 2: The book is called The Journey of Leadership, How CEOs
Speaker 2: Learn to Lead from the inside out. This is Bloomberg.
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