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Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg business Week Daily reporting from the magazine
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Speaker 3: Hi everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend Podcast.
Speaker 3: Happy holidays everyone. With the year nearly over, we think
Speaker 3: it's time for reflection and anticipation. In this hour, we
Speaker 3: sit down with the editor of Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine to
Speaker 3: lay out what twenty twenty six could have in store,
Speaker 3: from big ideas to looming risks.
Speaker 4: Plus a guide to the best places to travel in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty six, because yes, it's kind of a flex.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me to start planning early. Yeah, like I'm going
Speaker 3: so and so Like me, twenty months is like.
Speaker 1: Right around the corner, so it is all right.
Speaker 4: We're going to wrap up too with a look back
Speaker 4: at the year that was for one of the most
Speaker 4: unpredictable figures in business, tech, and politics. We're talking about Elon.
Speaker 3: And in the spirit of the holiday season and mid
Speaker 3: taking time off while playing in the snow or basking
Speaker 3: in the sun, and spending time with friends and family,
Speaker 3: you may also find yourself with time on your hands.
Speaker 3: So with that in mind, in our second hour, we're
Speaker 3: going to lay out some of our team's winter reading list,
Speaker 3: courtesy of authors and books featured on Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 3: from the last six months, everything from regulating digital empires,
Speaker 3: to what it means to unlock collective genius, and to
Speaker 3: the CEO of Jamba Juice with tips on how he
Speaker 3: built an organization with purpose.
Speaker 4: All of that ahead first, though, twenty twenty five, I
Speaker 4: am having trouble believing this year is even over, and
Speaker 4: also having trouble believing all that's happened, the ups, the downs,
Speaker 4: No doubt, it's been a long year and one that's
Speaker 4: gone by I think for a lot of people too
Speaker 4: really fast.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 3: Covering it all the major themes players from Wall Street
Speaker 3: to Main Street to Washington and more is Bloomberg BusinessWeek Magazine.
Speaker 3: Bradstone is the editor of Bloomberg Business Week Magazine. He
Speaker 3: joined Bloomberg's Alexis, Christopherus and Me on the year that
Speaker 3: was and what to expect in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 6: I'll start with the principle, which is that we are
Speaker 6: in the business of covering the icons and business, politics
Speaker 6: and culture, the companies that are transforming the world, and
Speaker 6: the technologies and the trends that are changing our lives.
Speaker 6: And so when we look back at the year, and
Speaker 6: we look back at so the December issue, Keisha Steelman
Speaker 6: from Alta Beauty, the package on the beauty industry Gap,
Speaker 6: Richard Dixon to Turnaround at the Gap, Doug McMillan, Walmart. Okay,
Speaker 6: these are classic Business Week stories, corpor profiles, narratives of
Speaker 6: companies coming back from the brink.
Speaker 3: We have actually, you know, a shore. There are some
Speaker 3: of your covers. You mentioned Alta, I mean Gavin Newsome.
Speaker 6: Will be more specific about this year though, Okay, because
Speaker 6: I think this year there were two stories that really
Speaker 6: the impacted all of us and are transforming the world
Speaker 6: in front of our eyes. And one is AI right
Speaker 6: in the massive bet on data centers and GPUs and
Speaker 6: the way that it's transforming companies. And so we put
Speaker 6: Sam Altman on the cover. In February, we have China's
Speaker 6: AI the AI issue in June. But that the other
Speaker 6: story is clearly and maybe this is the biggest one,
Speaker 6: is Donald Trump and what has really been the pursuit
Speaker 6: of kind of an executive presidency, the accumulation of power.
Speaker 6: And so Scott Bessentt on the cover in September, Elon
Speaker 6: and Doge on the cover in August, Trump's trade war,
Speaker 6: after Liberation Day in May. I mean, these are all
Speaker 6: ways we tried to cover that story, and you know,
Speaker 6: it's massive, it's still developing. But it's not just the covers.
Speaker 6: It's in the issues every month, and we're trying to
Speaker 6: tell the story about a destruction of norms in Washington,
Speaker 6: d C. That's radiating out into the business world and
Speaker 6: across all our lives.
Speaker 7: I'm curious if there was one story and I know
Speaker 7: this is a lot right coming because you're looking at
Speaker 7: the whole year in review, really, but was there one
Speaker 7: story that particularly resonated with readers this year?
Speaker 6: Okay, well, it's funny, Alexis, because after having laid out
Speaker 6: all these serious topics, I'll give you one that Pop's
Speaker 6: right to mind, which is we did the story about
Speaker 6: doodles and the doodal industrial complex. These these dogs and
Speaker 6: how doodle owners are battling with like the Purebread is
Speaker 6: it the Purebread Association, I can't quite remember, but this
Speaker 6: whole like the the AKC or something like that, and
Speaker 6: this battle over this you know, ridiculous but adorably cute
Speaker 6: muppet dog breed, and that of course went well gang
Speaker 6: in between people in their day exactly. You know. More seriously,
Speaker 6: we wrote the first profile of Russell Vote, the head
Speaker 6: of the Office of Management Budget, the real spiritual leader
Speaker 6: behind Doge, not even Musk, The account of you know,
Speaker 6: his blueprint Project twenty five. This is a Max Chafkin
Speaker 6: story and how it was transforming everything from you know,
Speaker 6: USAID to the whole federal bureaucracy, and so those kinds
Speaker 6: of stories. When we were early on this accumulation of
Speaker 6: an imperial presidency of power by Trump, that's where I
Speaker 6: think we really connected with our readers.
Speaker 3: You know, as someone who talks, you know, you think
Speaker 3: about kind of how this presidency was going to play
Speaker 3: out and how you wanted to cover it. I mean,
Speaker 3: were you anticipating all the twists and turns. I mean
Speaker 3: we had kind of a first version in his first.
Speaker 5: Term, but this has been a very different second term.
Speaker 6: I mean, I don't I don't know that anybody anticipated it.
Speaker 6: And look, you know, nobody has a crystal ball. I
Speaker 6: think that after Liberation Day, a lot of people automatically
Speaker 6: assumed that it could push the economy into recession and
Speaker 6: really hit consumer spending. What we see today is a
Speaker 6: very complex pick. Sure, people talk about the K shaped economy.
Speaker 6: It seems like part of this economy is doing very well.
Speaker 6: Black Friday, Cyber Monday shopping was strong. Consumer sentiment is good.
Speaker 6: But then there's another side of this economy where people
Speaker 6: are suffering and affordability is the word of the day.
Speaker 6: When we put Gavin news From on the cover of November,
Speaker 6: you know, he's hitting some of those notes. Gavin was
Speaker 6: not a story about twenty twenty eight. It was a
Speaker 6: story about today. And now he's managed to finally articulate
Speaker 6: for the Democratic Party a path forward and articulate an
Speaker 6: argument against the current administration. And so you know, we're
Speaker 6: trying to tell examine all dimensions, and you know, and
Speaker 6: I wrote a story in that issue about how California
Speaker 6: is a bit of a handicap right now. It's not
Speaker 6: an economic success story. So we try to interrogate all
Speaker 6: sides of the political divide.
Speaker 7: I do want to give a shout out though, to
Speaker 7: a cover story in January, So going way back to
Speaker 7: the beginning of the year, the Human Egg, which was
Speaker 7: an amazing investigative piece that actually on a Globe award.
Speaker 7: So I was wondering if that was one that particularly,
Speaker 7: you know, connected with folks.
Speaker 6: I mean, I love when BusinessWeek becomes the home for
Speaker 6: the most ambitious journalistic work inside the Bloomberg newsroom. And
Speaker 6: this came from our investigations team. It is this global
Speaker 6: investigation in how women are sometimes coersed into donating their
Speaker 6: eggs or sometimes in economic positions where they feel like
Speaker 6: they have to, and a whole industry that is in
Speaker 6: some cases deceiving them and in some cases harming their
Speaker 6: harming the donors. And it was sweeping, I mean from
Speaker 6: China to India to the United States, truly global, and
Speaker 6: we tracked in some cases our reporters traveled with these
Speaker 6: shipments of donated eggs, and yeah, it was wonderful. It
Speaker 6: did resonate with readers, and it's just the beginning of
Speaker 6: the kinds of journalism that we're doing.
Speaker 3: How do you think about twenty twenty six, especially as
Speaker 3: we get ready for midterms, and I think about how
Speaker 3: much you guys have spent focusing on politics, and it
Speaker 3: makes sense. How how are you beginning to think about it?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, I go back to I think our principles,
Speaker 6: which is iconic leaders in business, culture and and politics.
Speaker 6: You know, we're We're a business magazine, so there's a
Speaker 6: lot of business leaders and a lot of companies that
Speaker 6: I'm curious about. I think we've only begun to explore
Speaker 6: the the the China story, the transformation of the international
Speaker 6: dynamic with the withdrawal of the United States, and a
Speaker 6: lot of important you know, alla alliances, climate change, the
Speaker 6: role that China will now take as it is increasingly assertive.
Speaker 6: That's a topic that interests me. I mean, obviously, you
Speaker 6: know the midterms, but I think, like we did with
Speaker 6: Scott Besson, like we did with Gavin Newsom, we find,
Speaker 6: you know, we interviewed Donald Trump during the campaign, did
Speaker 6: a cover story in Kamala Harris during the campaign. We
Speaker 6: find our opportunities and those characters that always feel larger
Speaker 6: than life and also you know, impacting the business story,
Speaker 6: right and who you know who are telling an economic
Speaker 6: story that is interesting to our readers.
Speaker 7: We have to get in the Jealousy List because I
Speaker 7: love that you do this too. It's the best journalism
Speaker 7: in your eyes right or the the Business Week's eyes
Speaker 7: of twenty twenty five. But it's nothing we wrote, which
Speaker 7: I think is really cool. There was one thing on
Speaker 7: the Jealousy List that resonated with me. It was the
Speaker 7: spritzes and carbonaras that ate Italy and tourism. I think
Speaker 7: it was a New York Times artic cloud tourism has
Speaker 7: turned some Italian streets into monochromatic eating zones. They're actually
Speaker 7: stopping new restaurants from opening up in some parts of Italy.
Speaker 7: Now can you believe it?
Speaker 6: I mean, I love the Jealousy List. I basically send
Speaker 6: out an email to all of our contributors in the
Speaker 6: newsroom and I say, you know, what did what did
Speaker 6: our competitors do that you were a little jealous of
Speaker 6: over the last twelve months? And we get stories and
Speaker 6: some podcasts. In one case, we even got a series
Speaker 6: of tweets Derek Derek Guy, the fashion influencer. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 6: it's just and it turns out I think a lot
Speaker 6: of people open that up in bookmark stories and Yeah,
Speaker 6: we're we're being a little like benevolent here with our
Speaker 6: attention and calling calling attention to our competitors. But it's
Speaker 6: a ritual. We've done it, I think seven or eight
Speaker 6: years in a row.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 8: I've contributed to it.
Speaker 3: It's like it's it's a lot of fun and I
Speaker 3: always feel like what it reminds me of, like these
Speaker 3: are a bunch of things I want to read and
Speaker 3: then the same thing that Business Week doese throughout the year,
Speaker 3: whether it's movies, whether it's theater. You know, kind of
Speaker 3: the Pursuits group has done this, whether it's books to read,
Speaker 3: Like you guys are always tapping into all of this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, you know it's the curse of the journalists,
Speaker 6: Like we have to pay attention off to everything. We
Speaker 6: can't turn it off. We're news junkies, and so this is,
Speaker 6: I guess, a way of sharing the obsession.
Speaker 3: Brad, you talked about the doodle story and how much
Speaker 3: people responded to it. Is there any story though, that
Speaker 3: you guys have put out where people like.
Speaker 5: Are really fighting back against it and giving you guys.
Speaker 6: Oh, that's a good question.
Speaker 8: I just wonder.
Speaker 6: I mean, look, any politics story that probably any media outlet,
Speaker 6: and Bloomberg is no exception. Right, you hear it, You
Speaker 6: hear like. We do not have a monolithic audience. You know,
Speaker 6: there are there are plenty of our readers from all
Speaker 6: both sides of the political aisle, and they tell you
Speaker 6: when you don't get it right. So I think you
Speaker 6: know hear it too. Yeah, from the from our Gavin
Speaker 6: covered or Scott Bessent interview to our coverage of Doge
Speaker 6: and Elon, you know, you hear it. And something about
Speaker 6: the political discussion has shifted where you know, they if
Speaker 6: somebody doesn't like it, you don't get a you know, disciplined,
Speaker 6: civilized letter to the editor. They tweet, they tweet something
Speaker 6: and they whip up, you know. And so yeah, that
Speaker 6: that certainly happened for for a lot of what we write.
Speaker 6: And look, I mean, we wouldn't be doing our job
Speaker 6: if companies weren't regularly calling and lodging complaints of some kind.
Speaker 6: And I could list a couple, but maybe more more
Speaker 6: polite to just leave it at that. But part part
Speaker 6: of the job is you do get.
Speaker 3: Some pushback and people are reading and you're getting it
Speaker 3: from all sides.
Speaker 8: Great stuff. We love We love having.
Speaker 3: Everybody, all the members of your team and you stop by,
Speaker 3: so thank you so much.
Speaker 6: Good lucky.
Speaker 8: I know it's not twenty twenty six rush us.
Speaker 3: It just feels like, you know, it's all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: it's here.
Speaker 7: Can tease the cover for January?
Speaker 6: You know, I will say, alexis that annually we do
Speaker 6: a year ahead issue in January. So it's a guy
Speaker 6: that's your map to twenty twenty six and I've contributed
Speaker 6: a couple stories. The team has come together, so basically
Speaker 6: how to stay sane next year? Look for that in
Speaker 6: the January issue.
Speaker 8: Like copy good stuff as always.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Bradstone, editor of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Joining us right here in studio.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch us
Speaker 2: live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen
Speaker 2: on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app,
Speaker 2: or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 3: What do Gabone, Almadi, Kazakhstan, San Francisco, Lima, Texas and
Speaker 3: I Pay all have in common?
Speaker 6: Hmm?
Speaker 5: That has me scratching my head. Well, I'll tell you
Speaker 5: what they have in common.
Speaker 3: They are all on Bloomberg Pursuit's list of where to
Speaker 3: go in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 4: The Bloomberg Pursuits tenth annual travel guide for the year
Speaker 4: ahead makes it easier than ever to cut through the
Speaker 4: noise and book your next vacation. The list of twenty
Speaker 4: five destinations is quite the mix reinvigorated classics and under
Speaker 4: the radar gems, each brimming with new luxuries and creative
Speaker 4: energy and places that won't strain your wallet.
Speaker 5: I'm ready. I'm so ready, so you.
Speaker 4: Can you can definitely find a place to strain your.
Speaker 1: Wallet, all right?
Speaker 3: With our deep dive on where to travel in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty six in the new year is Bloomberg Pursuits Global
Speaker 3: Travels are Nikki Eckstein. Nikki, we always love this list,
Speaker 3: We always love talking about it with you, But first
Speaker 3: of all, remind us how this list gets put together,
Speaker 3: because the world is a pretty big place. I mean
Speaker 3: it's a group effort.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, it takes a village. I say that creating
Speaker 9: this list each year is almost like having a child.
Speaker 9: I have two of them, so I don't take that lightly.
Speaker 9: But we do an all year round effort. Sometimes it
Speaker 9: takes multiple years for news to kind of bubble up
Speaker 9: in the way that we want in a particular place.
Speaker 9: So we're tracking places for a very long time all
Speaker 9: around the world, and as we see pockets of news,
Speaker 9: you know, hotel openings, museum expansions, airport expansions, new airports,
Speaker 9: new flights, what have you, we are looking at all
Speaker 9: of that news and more and kind of watching for
Speaker 9: little hot zones where a lot of things are going
Speaker 9: on all at once and making a place feel really
Speaker 9: magnetic at a particular moment in time.
Speaker 8: And then there's kind of intangibles.
Speaker 9: Where we just see that the culture is shifting in
Speaker 9: a particular way, the conversation is moving, and there's something
Speaker 9: in the zeitgeist that is homing in on particular parts
Speaker 9: of the world in ways that we can put our
Speaker 9: fingers on because we're watching this stuff day in and
Speaker 9: day out, but other people might not notice until they
Speaker 9: see it all over their Instagram feeds next year.
Speaker 4: Well, let's start with one of those places that I
Speaker 4: was surprised to see on the list, and that's Gabone.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Gabone is really interesting. So this is a particularly
Speaker 9: interesting case because you can really point a finger at
Speaker 9: what is happening and why and how, And it really
Speaker 9: started in many ways with Jeff Bezos. That's a surprising connection, right,
Speaker 9: like who saw that coming? But his Earth Fund pledged
Speaker 9: some thirty million dollars into conservation efforts across the country
Speaker 9: just a couple of years ago, and those efforts are
Speaker 9: really bearing fruit and helping turn them into robust wildlife
Speaker 9: tourism destinations where, among other things, you can see gorillas
Speaker 9: in really small groups of people, much smaller even than
Speaker 9: in Rwanda, which is so known for its gorilla tourism,
Speaker 9: and you can get these really really intimate sightings. One
Speaker 9: of the things that's school about Gubbon is that the
Speaker 9: wildlife parks are right against the coast, and so you
Speaker 9: can stay in these beachside resorts and like you're not
Speaker 9: fighting for lounge chairs with other people. The quote unquote
Speaker 9: people on the beach are hippos and elephants.
Speaker 8: Okay, I love that. I still love that.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, And it's you know, I think about, like,
Speaker 3: you know, Africa in general and going on safaris and
Speaker 3: things like these are things that have been around for
Speaker 3: a long time, but this just does feel like a
Speaker 3: much more intimate, intimate twist on.
Speaker 9: All of that oh yeah, you're not going to run
Speaker 9: into another jeep for a mile?
Speaker 3: Hey listen one of the things and when like when
Speaker 3: should we go? Because I think I just want to
Speaker 3: point out that what's cool about this list is should Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm on it begs packed.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 3: You guys do different factors that kind of determine the experiences,
Speaker 3: you know, and when is the right place to go
Speaker 3: and when not to go?
Speaker 5: So when should we go to Gabon?
Speaker 9: You know, we try really hard to make this list
Speaker 9: very useful. A lot of our competitors in the travel
Speaker 9: space do really interesting lists that are meant to surprise
Speaker 9: you in so many ways. We do that, but we
Speaker 9: also try to make it really really useful. And the
Speaker 9: way that we do that is exactly like you're saying,
Speaker 9: we're providing a ton of data. We have a partnership
Speaker 9: with Kayak. They supply us with two point five billion
Speaker 9: data points each year to get this project off the ground,
Speaker 9: and those data points power these incredible charts that are interactive.
Speaker 9: You can select your closest airport and then get predictive
Speaker 9: price insights month by month to understand what flights and
Speaker 9: hotels will cost you to go to each of the
Speaker 9: twenty five places that we're excited about this year, and
Speaker 9: then on top of that, we layer in expert insights
Speaker 9: from travel agents and operators that are real experts in
Speaker 9: these destinations. So for a place like Ubone, we can
Speaker 9: tell you very clearly that the summer months are summer
Speaker 9: months June, July, August are the best time to go.
Speaker 8: Because prices are favorable, but also that's.
Speaker 9: When you're going to get the best wildlife sidings. It's
Speaker 9: the dry season, so you'll not only be able to
Speaker 9: see gorillas, but also migratory whales. On the coast, there's
Speaker 9: a national park where there are lots of mandrel monkeys
Speaker 9: and that's their mating season.
Speaker 8: Like all of these.
Speaker 9: Reasons why the summer months are really the best time.
Speaker 5: I love. I love hey listen.
Speaker 3: I always think about People always talk about Greece, and
Speaker 3: when you haven't been to Greece like me, they're like,
Speaker 3: what you haven't been to Greece? But I always think
Speaker 3: about the Greek Isles and you guys actually include on
Speaker 3: this list the Greek mountains.
Speaker 9: Wait, what you haven't been to see I have either, Well,
Speaker 9: my parents went, they're on their honeymoon.
Speaker 4: Yeah, This was like, you know, back before everyone was
Speaker 4: posting Greek Isles on Instagram, well many decades before that.
Speaker 3: Apparently now we should go to the Greek mountains.
Speaker 9: Well, I do recommend that you go to the Greek
Speaker 9: Islands at some point in your life, but I think
Speaker 9: that a mistake that people make is overly focusing on
Speaker 9: the Greek Islands, and a change in behavior is happening
Speaker 9: now where people are understanding that the Greek Islands are
Speaker 9: very saturated, they're very expensive. Hotels are easily pushing one
Speaker 9: thousand dollars a night if you can even get in.
Speaker 9: The fairies are you know, there's difficulties with the fairies.
Speaker 9: There's always protests and strikes, and there's weather concern and
Speaker 9: there have been wildfires the last few years, very extreme temperatures.
Speaker 9: That doesn't make the Greek Islands any less magical. They're
Speaker 9: a very very special place. But people have understood that
Speaker 9: the headache that's associated with the Greek Isles means that
Speaker 9: sometimes you need to pair them with another place that's
Speaker 9: a little less stressful, And a really common solution to that,
Speaker 9: which is sometimes also just replacing the Greek Isles, is
Speaker 9: to go north to the mountains where you can get
Speaker 9: a lot of the same cultural draws, a lot of
Speaker 9: the same food even, but with a much quieter, more
Speaker 9: countryside vibe. Small villages where the culture is really still
Speaker 9: a Greek authentic experience. You know, you're going to get
Speaker 9: farmers and cheesemakers and very old monasteries and old stone
Speaker 9: buildings and just that kind of charm that in a
Speaker 9: lot of the islands has been eroded to kind of
Speaker 9: peddling to masterism.
Speaker 4: Okay, so that's an area that is certainly on my list.
Speaker 4: I want to talk a little bit about budgets here.
Speaker 4: We mentioned that you can go on both ends of
Speaker 4: the budget extreme, so stuff that's affordable and stuff that
Speaker 4: many would classify as splurging. Let's start with the splurging
Speaker 4: side of things. If you look at this entire list
Speaker 4: of more than two dozen places, where do you go
Speaker 4: if you win the power ball?
Speaker 6: Wooh?
Speaker 8: That's a great question.
Speaker 9: So I would say my personal answer to that question
Speaker 9: is not born out by the data that we're showing necessarily,
Speaker 9: but I would go to wrote island in Indonesia, where
Speaker 9: a new hotel is soon to open called me he wrote. Now,
Speaker 9: if you're a hotel nerd like I am, then Niki
Speaker 9: has a strong connotation to you because about almost fifteen
Speaker 9: years ago, the entrepreneur Chris Birch and the Hotelia James
Speaker 9: McBride became like overnight sensations in the luxury travel world
Speaker 9: by opening what soon became known as the most luxurious
Speaker 9: resort in the whole life world. And it was called
Speaker 9: Meihi Wacho. Now it's just called me He they changed it.
Speaker 9: But this Indonesian private island resort has developed such a
Speaker 9: strong following. It really is known as one of the
Speaker 9: finest places you can stay. And for the first time,
Speaker 9: they're opening their second hotel, a spinoff to Nihim, on
Speaker 9: a tiny island called Rote And what's interesting about it
Speaker 9: is that they're also creating a big hospitality academy for
Speaker 9: locals there so that they can help Indonesians kind of
Speaker 9: capitalize on their own travel economy. It's a really interesting model.
Speaker 9: These are expensive hotels, but that's where I would go.
Speaker 9: The nice thing is that because that hotel isn't open yet,
Speaker 9: it's not reflected in Kayak's hotel data, and if you
Speaker 9: wanted to stay anywhere else, our price information shows that
Speaker 9: you can stay for as little as one hundred and
Speaker 9: sixteen dollars a night in a luxury hotel.
Speaker 3: I have to say I would love to go to
Speaker 3: Tanzania's Spice Islands. That's my kind of favorite pick in
Speaker 3: this list. Having said that, I got to go to
Speaker 3: the United States because there are a couple of places Ozarks,
Speaker 3: which made me think of the streaming series, and then Charleston,
Speaker 3: South Carolina, which made me think of the reality show
Speaker 3: Southern Charm.
Speaker 5: But they are on.
Speaker 3: Your list as places that are in the US that
Speaker 3: people might want to think about. Top up, they're among
Speaker 3: your tops.
Speaker 9: Yeah. Absolutely, so the Ozarks are really interesting. I think
Speaker 9: most people probably don't even know exactly.
Speaker 8: Where they are. They're in the South.
Speaker 9: There's a big kind of mountain range and connects numerous
Speaker 9: destinations that you probably do know about. There's Brandson, Missouri
Speaker 9: on one side, and then Bentonville, Arkansas, is on another side.
Speaker 9: And if you know anything about Bentonville, you know that
Speaker 9: it's the HQ for Walmart.
Speaker 4: I thought you were going to say it's the cycling
Speaker 4: capital of the country.
Speaker 5: Oh stops it is.
Speaker 4: It's also true thanks to the Walton family that have
Speaker 4: you know, they've actually just had a big race there.
Speaker 9: The Walton family has done so much for this part
Speaker 9: of the US, and their biggest contribution, and in my
Speaker 9: opinion and probably in a lot of people's opinion, is
Speaker 9: the museum that they created in Bentonville called Crystal Bridges
Speaker 9: Museum of American Art, and it is truly one of
Speaker 9: the finest art institutions in the country, if not possibly
Speaker 9: the world, frankly, and they are they're doing a massive,
Speaker 9: massive expansion of their gallery spaces. They're adding one hundred
Speaker 9: and fourteen thousand square feet of exhibition space. And this
Speaker 9: is like really architecturally impressive gallery space, Like we're not
Speaker 9: talking about like just boxy buildings. It's like beautiful, like
Speaker 9: you know, it's a complex worth seeing on its own.
Speaker 9: But it's also surrounded with like James Trell exhibit installations
Speaker 9: like those sky Space installations, and trails of one hundred
Speaker 9: public artworks that you can go biking around. Plus there's
Speaker 9: like all these new hotels in the area that make
Speaker 9: it really really quite fascinating culturally from an adventure standpoint.
Speaker 9: For a family standpoint, it's got everything.
Speaker 5: I think Corsica now may be my favorite place.
Speaker 3: Of this This.
Speaker 1: List is changing.
Speaker 5: It's oh my god, there's like it's really cool. It's
Speaker 5: really cool.
Speaker 3: We have to leave it there, unfortunately, but I do
Speaker 3: love how you say. It's interactive. We highly recommend everybodyhead
Speaker 3: either to the Bloomberg or Bloomberg dot com play around
Speaker 3: with it because you know, you can select an origin,
Speaker 3: you can you just kind of can play around with
Speaker 3: it and figure out the best time of the year
Speaker 3: to go.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: The financial part and what it would cost is all
Speaker 3: part of it. It's very cool how you guys put
Speaker 3: this list together. Nikki, thank you so much. Happy holidays
Speaker 3: and happy almost a new year. Places to go we
Speaker 3: travel Hapy travels.
Speaker 5: Love it. Take care of Nikki.
Speaker 4: That's Nikki x Stein Bloomberg pursuits that global travels are
Speaker 4: and be sure to check out the list at Bloomberg
Speaker 4: dot com and of course on the Bloomberg terminal too.
Speaker 5: Where would you go? Rocky Mountains were in there too,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 4: Well Canadian Canada's rocky mountains still rocky mountains. Yeah, that's
Speaker 4: a great place. I would I would I want to
Speaker 4: go to Kazakhstan.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's right. It sounds like.
Speaker 1: What yeah, really cool. This is the scener is just unbelievable.
Speaker 3: The information this list tells you why you really want
Speaker 3: to go there. And I love that they did the homework.
Speaker 4: Since you and I started doing this together, Carol, what
Speaker 4: I been to zero of these places?
Speaker 5: Welcome to having kids?
Speaker 8: Hey still I had.
Speaker 3: On Bloomberg Business Week, we reflect on the year that
Speaker 3: was for the world's richest man.
Speaker 5: Elon. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live
Speaker 2: each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car
Speaker 2: Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You
Speaker 2: can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship
Speaker 2: New York station, Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 3: Let's now turn to someone who seemed to dominate the
Speaker 3: news cycle in twenty twenty five. Seem to yeah, he
Speaker 3: totally dominates. Elon Musk wasn't just sending rockets to space
Speaker 3: and pushing robotaxis forward. He began the year by plunging
Speaker 3: head first into politics, taking the advisory role in the
Speaker 3: Trump Administration's Department of Government Efficiency or do Where Musk
Speaker 3: and his team of dozers helped is that what they
Speaker 3: call them do they call them dozers.
Speaker 11: Doge kids, doge doge kids.
Speaker 5: That's Maxis scientific.
Speaker 4: Doge boys, doage boys.
Speaker 5: He's going to come in just a moment, all right.
Speaker 3: Well, they helped lead sweeping federal spending cuts and stirred controversy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, just a little bit over the reach of private
Speaker 5: power in US government.
Speaker 4: It was a time when you would often see Elon
Speaker 4: and sometimes his young son alongside President Trump in the
Speaker 4: Oval Office, Elon and the President both taking questions from
Speaker 4: reporters addressing US government business. That was early on in
Speaker 4: the year totally. And then of course there was Elon's
Speaker 4: black eyes seen around the world from the Oval Office,
Speaker 4: and later the public fallout with President Trump. That still
Speaker 4: seems to exist on some level. It's kind of news
Speaker 4: when you see these two together now.
Speaker 3: But the bromance not what it was, it seems. Although
Speaker 3: let's remember in November, Elon was actually back at a
Speaker 3: White House dinner for Mohammed Ben Salmon NBS Saudi Arabia's
Speaker 3: crown prints along with other big tech bros.
Speaker 5: Remember those sneakers at Elon War. They were all over
Speaker 5: social media, all right.
Speaker 4: Then that's Elon the person. Then there's also Elon Empire,
Speaker 4: the ev company, the clean energy stuff Tesla facing a
Speaker 4: backlash protest tied to his ties to the White House
Speaker 4: and political moves.
Speaker 3: And then there's SpaceX. It launched more Falcon rockets, had
Speaker 3: successful test flights of its starship Mega Rocket, the world's
Speaker 3: largest and most powerful, shot more Starlink satellites into space,
Speaker 3: and then in December we all got the long awaited
Speaker 3: and anticipated news about a possible blockbuster IPO for SpaceX
Speaker 3: that could be the largest ever with a target evaluation
Speaker 3: of about one and a half trillion. December two, we
Speaker 3: saw Tesla hitting an all time high. It's first in
Speaker 3: about a year we had to talk about all of this.
Speaker 3: It's kind of our backdrop.
Speaker 4: Max Chafkin is Bloomberg BusinessWeek senior reporter. He's co host
Speaker 4: of the Everybody's Business podcast. He's the author of the
Speaker 4: Contrarian Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power. So, Max,
Speaker 4: when you think about the year that was for Elon Musk,
Speaker 4: I mean I think about the politics of it. That's
Speaker 4: kind of my biggest My biggest takeaway is his closeness
Speaker 4: and then distance to the President.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean he was briefly probably the most powerful
Speaker 11: person in the US government besides Donald Trump. I mean,
Speaker 11: he was at Trump's side pretty much continuously. Trump made
Speaker 11: Musk and this this Doge effort, and these young people
Speaker 11: that Elon Musk brought into government central to the beginning
Speaker 11: of his administration. It was a big part of this
Speaker 11: effort early on to kind of like flood the zone,
Speaker 11: which was a term you heard from Republican operatives.
Speaker 8: And that didn't last very long.
Speaker 11: But at the same time this year, Elon Musk also
Speaker 11: increased his net worth, you know, tremendously. He briefly he
Speaker 11: was briefly not the world's richest man. I think Larry Ellison,
Speaker 11: I can't remember.
Speaker 1: He's a couple of days.
Speaker 11: And he got the Tesla board to give him a
Speaker 11: trillion dollar pay package. So he simultaneously was kind of
Speaker 11: at the seat of power and getting paid more money
Speaker 11: than anybody in history. I mean, of course, those two
Speaker 11: things are related, but they're also complicated by the fact that,
Speaker 11: as he said to him, the relationship with Trump has
Speaker 11: been rocky.
Speaker 3: You know, he was in the White House but still
Speaker 3: also running a bunch of companies.
Speaker 11: He was running, you know, five companies and that created
Speaker 11: all sorts of interesting complications, and you kind of see
Speaker 11: both the way that Elon Musk leveraged his political power
Speaker 11: in the sort of asset prices of these stocks right
Speaker 11: where one of the reasons Tesla's value has gone up
Speaker 11: so much, and that's that's why what has driven Elon
Speaker 11: Musk net worth is this belief that his proximity to
Speaker 11: Republicans will allow him to get concessions on policies for
Speaker 11: driverless cars. So driverless cars, of course are not widely available.
Speaker 11: They're sort of different explanations for that. But if you
Speaker 11: are a teslable, you think one of the explanations is
Speaker 11: regulatory and you believe that Elon Musk's proximity to power
Speaker 11: is going to facilitate that. And so we've seen, you know,
Speaker 11: a dramatic run up in the price of Tesla driving
Speaker 11: up to Elon musk Networth. It's kind of similar dynamic
Speaker 11: with SpaceX, which of course is a government contractor. On
Speaker 11: the flip side in terms of consumers, Elon Musk's association
Speaker 11: with what is by now you know, a pretty unpopular
Speaker 11: presidency has really hurt him and you've sort of seen
Speaker 11: it in Tesla's sales where Tesla's sales. He did have
Speaker 11: a decent quarter right as the EV tax credits expired,
Speaker 11: but overall, I mean, the sales have been really poor.
Speaker 11: You're really seeing a backlash. You're seeing a company that
Speaker 11: managed to alienate a pretty decent swath of its customer base.
Speaker 11: But for now that doesn't matter because Tesla has sort
Speaker 11: of transcended into AI, into the AI firmament, and for
Speaker 11: whatever reason, Tesla has been able to kind of float
Speaker 11: above that. And I think some of that has to
Speaker 11: do with politics. Some of that has to do with
Speaker 11: Elon musk kind of unique relationship with his investor base
Speaker 11: and with his fan base, and yeah, it's just kind
Speaker 11: of the aura of Elon improbably continued this year despite
Speaker 11: all of the controversy and the black eye and all
Speaker 11: of that.
Speaker 3: It makes me think that even with all of that
Speaker 3: and the volatility and the pushback maybe among consumers, still
Speaker 3: a good year.
Speaker 11: I mean, if I told you that there were gonna
Speaker 11: be that Elon Musk was gonna leave the White House
Speaker 11: having a huge Twitter war with Donald Trump where they'd
Speaker 11: be trading insults over Epstein, that he would have a
Speaker 11: literal black guy, that there would be reports in the
Speaker 11: New York Times which Elon must denied.
Speaker 6: About his drug use.
Speaker 11: You have the President of the United States commenting on
Speaker 11: those reports.
Speaker 6: You would say like that, you must have.
Speaker 1: He must have been a.
Speaker 11: Terrible year for Elon. And yet this guy is he
Speaker 11: is Teflon right. There are there are there are things,
Speaker 11: reputational things that would hurt other people and that seem
Speaker 11: to hurt other business people that do not that where
Speaker 11: he is able to float above it. He has this
Speaker 11: very like I said, a very unique relationship with his
Speaker 11: investors and with his fans. And I think that the
Speaker 11: truth of it is that Elon may say he's done
Speaker 11: with politics. He may want to be done with politics,
Speaker 11: but he can't be done with politics because he is
Speaker 11: operating in businesses that are are just very close to
Speaker 11: the political heat. Right, Tesla is doing AI stuff. AI stuff,
Speaker 11: of course, is going to be sub subject to regulatory scrutiny.
Speaker 11: You have all this stuff with the AI tax credits.
Speaker 11: You have his rocket company, which depends on on government contracts. Like,
Speaker 11: all of this has politics baked into it. So he
Speaker 11: can't get away from politics if he wants to run
Speaker 11: his companies. This idea that he could step away from
Speaker 11: politics to run his business empire. It almost doesn't make
Speaker 11: sense if you actually understand what his business empire is.
Speaker 3: There's a great story in the Bloomberg Tesla's Musk Premium
Speaker 3: in focus with the SpaceX ipo on the horizon, and
Speaker 3: it reminds us that the shares are up more than
Speaker 3: one hundred percent since April eighth, making it one of
Speaker 3: the best performers in the S and P five hundred index.
Speaker 3: We won't talk about the valuation because that always freaks
Speaker 3: out everybody because it's pretty high. Having said that, I
Speaker 3: want to talk about its businesses because go back to
Speaker 3: Kathy Wood in the early days, who talked and was
Speaker 3: a big supporter, likened Elon to a Thomas Edison of
Speaker 3: our times. Is he you know Max when it's Neuralink,
Speaker 3: it's AI, it's Grock, it's SpaceX, it's Starlink, Like, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff boring company.
Speaker 5: I don't even know what's going on with that anymore.
Speaker 3: Is he still though kind of seen as a creative
Speaker 3: genius and moving the needle in our world?
Speaker 11: Well, he's within some corners of the business world. He
Speaker 11: is absolutely seen as as somebody on that level, on
Speaker 11: the Thomas Edison level. I mean, I think in terms
Speaker 11: of inventions and and that comparison. He didn't invent electric cars,
Speaker 11: he didn't invent the rocket engine that he is he's using,
Speaker 11: But but he has been a very successful at sort
Speaker 11: of taking existing technologies and manufacturing them and marketing him
Speaker 11: you know, he's it's it's almost a cliche to compare
Speaker 11: him to Steve Jobs, but I think it's similar to
Speaker 11: Steve Jobs. It's it's not he's not a technical genius,
Speaker 11: but he is really really good at marketing and sort
Speaker 11: of understanding how to how to create, you know, products,
Speaker 11: whether those are products that are sold to the government
Speaker 11: or products that are sold to consumers. And I mean,
Speaker 11: I think you also have to say he is pretty
Speaker 11: good at managing investors and managing politics. I mean, as
Speaker 11: messed up as it was, as chaotic as it was,
Speaker 11: he managed to play a pretty big role in Donald
Speaker 11: Trump's election, and he is still like a political powerbroker,
Speaker 11: and he's he's going to continue to be that, I
Speaker 11: think in the years to come.
Speaker 3: I feel like the bulk of this conversation was about
Speaker 3: politics rather than his businesses. Does that say something or
Speaker 3: or the politics is what really supports As you said,
Speaker 3: they're intertwined in many ways, right.
Speaker 11: I mean, I think the story around Elon now is
Speaker 11: an investor story. It's it's a story about investors making
Speaker 11: a bet and believing, as you said, Carol, running that
Speaker 11: stock up really really high, based on a belief in
Speaker 11: the future. And it's it's less about what the company
Speaker 11: is doing now, because what the company is doing now,
Speaker 11: ESLA is doing now anyway, has not been particularly successful.
Speaker 11: But it's a belief that you know, driverlest cars are
Speaker 11: coming any day now, and you know there are a
Speaker 11: lot of people in the stock market who think that's true.
Speaker 5: So we're not gonna hear about him in twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: Okay, So just we could have done this for twenty
Speaker 4: thirty forty minutes, Max, we.
Speaker 1: Barely scratch the surface.
Speaker 4: Yeah, twenty twenty six SpaceX's IPO. I imagine we are
Speaker 4: going to be spending quite a bit of time talking
Speaker 4: about Elon next year.
Speaker 11: I mean, we're definitely gonna be talking about Elon. I
Speaker 11: think that, you know, we'll see if that IPO happens
Speaker 11: on schedule.
Speaker 1: You're a little skeptical, No, No, I'm not skeptical.
Speaker 11: I just think it's very I think anytime we're talking
Speaker 11: about a mega IPO like that, we're talking about trying
Speaker 11: to time the markets, and and I think there's just
Speaker 11: a lot of uncertainty in the market. So so yeah,
Speaker 11: I mean, if markets are doing what they're currently doing,
Speaker 11: then I think there's a very good chance that Elon
Speaker 11: Musk might say, yeah, this is this makes sense. On
Speaker 11: the other hand, he has for years and years and
Speaker 11: years talked about how much he hates running a public company.
Speaker 11: Remember he nuked his reputation like seven years ago because
Speaker 11: he hated having Tesla a public so much. And I
Speaker 11: think it makes sense to do it again with SpaceX,
Speaker 11: just because the public markets give him so much leverage.
Speaker 11: His ability to just get whatever he wants from the
Speaker 11: stock market and from kind of retail investors is so important.
Speaker 11: Would be helpful to SpaceX, just as it's helpful to Tesla.
Speaker 11: But if he can't do that at a good price,
Speaker 11: I don't think he will because why would he doesn't
Speaker 11: necessarily have to.
Speaker 3: I gotta ask, and I know we have to wrap
Speaker 3: but X formally Twitter is I we talk about it,
Speaker 3: I know, is it just didn't significant or it's just
Speaker 3: I don't even know does he even use it that
Speaker 3: much anymore?
Speaker 11: You know, I think part so x is definitely less
Speaker 11: like broadly influential than it used to be as a
Speaker 11: kind of like media thing.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 11: Part of that is because Elon Musk brought back all
Speaker 11: these kind of right wingers who were banned for various reasons,
Speaker 11: and the site has become sort of more of a
Speaker 11: conservative social network. Right, it's kind of like Fox News
Speaker 11: to Instagram's you know, MSNBC or something like that. And
Speaker 11: so as a result, right it doesn't have the same
Speaker 11: kind of broad influence where but it is still very
Speaker 11: influential kind of on the right. It is where like
Speaker 11: if you are if you're on the right, it's where
Speaker 11: you're talking to your friends, rivals, et cetera. The other
Speaker 11: thing is like it's it's like an AI thing now
Speaker 11: it's just a it's just a way for grock x
Speaker 11: AI Elon Musk's answer, just chat GPT to to sort
Speaker 11: of gather information. And so for those it's it's not
Speaker 11: like it's become less valuable. I think, in fact, it's
Speaker 11: probably become more valuable over the last year, but it's
Speaker 11: probably less influential than it was.
Speaker 4: Max Chafkin, we could go on with you for hours.
Speaker 4: We appreciate you taking the time. That's Max Chaffkin, Bloomberg
Speaker 4: BusinessWeek Senior reporter. He's the co host of the Everybody's
Speaker 4: Business podcast. He's the author of The Concherion, Peter Thiel
Speaker 4: and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power.
Speaker 3: And that wraps up our first hour of the weekend
Speaker 3: edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 5: Coming up in the next.
Speaker 3: Sixty minutes a holiday reading list, perhaps including an eye
Speaker 3: opening exploration into digital empires and the global regulation of
Speaker 3: AI technology.
Speaker 4: Plus unlocking the best in one another. That's what behavioral
Speaker 4: psychologist John Leevy calls collective genius. And he was the
Speaker 4: CEO of John Bajuice, on the board of the honest
Speaker 4: Company CAVA, and now he's helping others build an organization
Speaker 4: with purpose.
Speaker 1: James D. White joins us in the next hour.
Speaker 5: This is Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Carol Masser.
Speaker 1: And I'm Tim Stenebeck.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch us
Speaker 2: live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern Listen
Speaker 2: on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app,
Speaker 2: or watch us live on.
Speaker 3: YouTube Plenty Ahead in our second hour of the weekend
Speaker 3: edition of Bloomberg Business Week, It's a holiday reading list
Speaker 3: from some of the authors we spoke to in the
Speaker 3: last few months, including one the author of a book
Speaker 3: about an alternative way we think about great leaders, and
Speaker 3: I gotta tell you it just may be time to
Speaker 3: throw out all those other management books. We will talk
Speaker 3: to the author of Team Intelligence, how brilliant leaders unlock
Speaker 3: collective genius.
Speaker 4: Plus the former CEO of jam Bajus on shaping company
Speaker 4: culture in the age of gen Z employees. First up
Speaker 4: this hour, though our phones, our data, the apps we
Speaker 4: use every day. Behind it all is a quiet but
Speaker 4: consequential power struggle over who gets to make the rules
Speaker 4: of the digital world. Our next guest examines how the
Speaker 4: world's biggest powers, the US, China and the EU are
Speaker 4: exporting their digital rule books and what that means for
Speaker 4: all of us. The question how is the future of
Speaker 4: the digital world going?
Speaker 3: To Look For help Answering that question, Emily Graffeo and
Speaker 3: Tim spoke to a new Bradford.
Speaker 5: She is Henry L.
Speaker 3: Moses Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia Law School.
Speaker 3: She's also the author of the book Digital Empires, The
Speaker 3: Global Battle to regulate Technology.
Speaker 12: So thanks so much for having me, Tim and Emily.
Speaker 12: We may well be cooked, but the question is what
Speaker 12: are we most worried about. I think there are many
Speaker 12: exciting developments. I think we're certainly more entertained in many ways.
Speaker 12: But at the same time, I think those who warned
Speaker 12: us early on that this is not the kind of
Speaker 12: AI revolution that we should be just leaving for the
Speaker 12: tech companies to govern to manage. We do need governments involved.
Speaker 12: We need some guardrails, we need some regulation to make
Speaker 12: sure that these fast advances that we are witnessing are
Speaker 12: moving to the direction that we're comfortable with.
Speaker 1: It seems like it's too late, though.
Speaker 12: I don't think it's too late. I think we certainly
Speaker 12: are not at the point where we can say that
Speaker 12: AI is done. I think we will continue to see
Speaker 12: massive developments in coming years, and we already have AI
Speaker 12: governance regulation on the radar of many lawmakers. And obviously
Speaker 12: the Europeans have been most proactive, as they usually are,
Speaker 12: and they have the AI a comprehensive piece of legislation
Speaker 12: that is already in force, and now it's then the
Speaker 12: matter of implementing it effectively. And then we also need
Speaker 12: to see what happens in the United States at the
Speaker 12: state level. China is definitely interested in governing AI. We
Speaker 12: have many other jurisdictions, so I think there is a
Speaker 12: lot that is happening and a lot more that needs
Speaker 12: to be done.
Speaker 13: In your new book, Digital Empires, you break apart how
Speaker 13: basically different regimes across the globe are governing and regulating
Speaker 13: AI differently. So there's the US, there's Europe, there's China.
Speaker 13: In your research, have you found one nation is kind
Speaker 13: of doing that balancing act the best so far in
Speaker 13: terms of balancing out They don't want to stifle innovation,
Speaker 13: but they also want to protect users of AI, consumers
Speaker 13: of AI, companies that are getting involved with AI. Who's
Speaker 13: doing balancing act the best?
Speaker 11: In your view?
Speaker 12: So I think any regulator really needs to think about
Speaker 12: this balancing to make sure that we harness these tremendous
Speaker 12: benefits that are associated with AI, but also really safeguard
Speaker 12: our citizens and societies from various risks. And in many ways,
Speaker 12: there is a perception that the Europeans are airing on
Speaker 12: the side or preemptively protecting against these risks and maybe
Speaker 12: then foregoing some of the innovation benefits, whereas the Americans
Speaker 12: would be airing on the side of maybe being very
Speaker 12: techno optimists and not thinking about all those potential downsides.
Speaker 12: I think in many ways I do like and endorse
Speaker 12: the European model in the sense that, in my view,
Speaker 12: that best safeguards the public interest and really takes seriously
Speaker 12: the fundamental rights of individuals and democratic structures of the society.
Speaker 12: But there is always I really reject this notion that
Speaker 12: this comes at the cost of innovation. There definitely is
Speaker 12: a gap where the Americans are doing much better in
Speaker 12: generating AI innovations compared to the Europeans. But the reason
Speaker 12: is not that the Europeans are so keen on regulating.
Speaker 12: I think there are many other reasons that explain why.
Speaker 12: There are just fundamental pillars of the tech ecosystem in
Speaker 12: the US that are much stronger and the Europeans have
Speaker 12: fallen short in replicating that. So regulation as such, the
Speaker 12: protection of those rights is not a choice that needs
Speaker 12: to come at the cost of making beneficial progress in
Speaker 12: this space.
Speaker 4: So you know, I keep going back to our conversation
Speaker 4: that I had with you two years ago, because the
Speaker 4: world has changed so much since then. Two years ago,
Speaker 4: Joe Biden was president, there were a lot of folks
Speaker 4: who didn't think that Donald Trump would win another term.
Speaker 4: Fast forward two years, Donald Trump is the president. David
Speaker 4: Sachs's crypto and aisar the regime is thinks about this
Speaker 4: completely differently than I think it's fair to say the
Speaker 4: Biden administration. What do you think the US needs to
Speaker 4: be doing right now to regulate this technology? What would
Speaker 4: you like to see David Sachs do?
Speaker 12: Yeah, so you're so right. There has been a complete
Speaker 12: U turn in many ways. Towards the end of the
Speaker 12: Biden administration. There was closer alignment between the traditional Transatlantic allies,
Speaker 12: where the US was really moving closer to the European
Speaker 12: view that technology like AI needs guardrails, and there was
Speaker 12: a genuine attempt to join forces among the world's techno
Speaker 12: democracies in order to halt the advances of Chinese digital
Speaker 12: authoritarian views of governing technology. So I really saw this
Speaker 12: potential for the US and the EU to join forces
Speaker 12: to bring about a very beneficial chase in this space.
Speaker 12: The US is doing, I think two things. So it's
Speaker 12: first of all, giving a lot more power to the
Speaker 12: tech companies, walking away from regulation, impraising these deregulatory zeal
Speaker 12: that really reflects the very strong form of Technolbertarian techno
Speaker 12: optimist firl wheel. But in many ways, the US is
Speaker 12: also playing Beijing's game and becoming very state driven. We
Speaker 12: see a nassive state investment in some of these leading
Speaker 12: tech companies. We see our export controls, investment restrictions, we
Speaker 12: see subsidies. So the US is, to me are losing
Speaker 12: some of its own goals. And if you think about
Speaker 12: how that will also impact the US's adamant goal of
Speaker 12: being a leader in AI, what is happening in the
Speaker 12: space of integration, I think that is really counterproductive if
Speaker 12: you think about where all those AI innovation comes innovations
Speaker 12: come from the US. So what the US would need
Speaker 12: to do first, The US would need to regulate this space.
Speaker 12: We need to make sure that fundamental rights are protected,
Speaker 12: we need to make sure that those societal risks are
Speaker 12: under control, and we need to also, at the same
Speaker 12: time make sure that we will continue to invest in
Speaker 12: the development of the AI by retaining the world's best talent,
Speaker 12: which often is immigrant talent, including then Chinese data scientists
Speaker 12: who have been contributing to advances in this space in
Speaker 12: the US.
Speaker 13: Is there any specific regulation that comes to mind like
Speaker 13: that you would want to see in the US that
Speaker 13: would prevent this kind of idea that Tim presented in
Speaker 13: the beginning of the segment about this, the spaghetti test.
Speaker 13: It sounds silly, the will Smith spaghetti test, but it gets.
Speaker 1: At the heart crazy.
Speaker 13: Yeah, concerned that people have that suddenly the Internet is
Speaker 13: going to be, you know, filled with these videos.
Speaker 1: We're we are and we think it's the end.
Speaker 13: I'm sorry, well, maybe we can have a professor help,
Speaker 13: she said.
Speaker 1: She said, it's not the end already, great.
Speaker 13: Right, for it's not the end. Is there a specific
Speaker 13: piece of regulation that that comes to mind? Is it
Speaker 13: about I don't know, digital privacy, people needing disclaimers on
Speaker 13: top of every video that you see on the Internet.
Speaker 12: So I think there are many aspects, and there's no
Speaker 12: easy way to say that you just need to do
Speaker 12: one thing in order to then address this multitude of
Speaker 12: different arms. But one thing, it does start from the
Speaker 12: protection of privacy and our agency and our ability to
Speaker 12: be able to tell what is fiction and what is not,
Speaker 12: and our ability to engage in conversation based on real
Speaker 12: information that is not manipulated by our AI. And this
Speaker 12: information obviously existed even without chat GPT type of tools,
Speaker 12: but they are now fueled with this AI driven ability
Speaker 12: to manipulate our sense of reality. So in many ways,
Speaker 12: I think it does need labeling. It does need the
Speaker 12: kind of transparency and accountability that we have a sense
Speaker 12: of how these AI systems are built and how we
Speaker 12: engage with them. But then there are also risks around
Speaker 12: and just protecting content content creators. We need to take
Speaker 12: copyright seriously and the idea of how we actually train
Speaker 12: these models with the data that has been generated by
Speaker 12: individual authors, by journalists, and that needs to be also
Speaker 12: compensated well so that we still have the incentive to
Speaker 12: engage in that kind of content production. But privacy is
Speaker 12: obviously very high on my list, This information is very
Speaker 12: high on my list. Then there are questions that are
Speaker 12: more about existential risks, more about systemic risks, And even
Speaker 12: if it's hard to sometimes know the probabilities of some
Speaker 12: of the most severe risks and how likely they are
Speaker 12: to materialize, we still need to be prepared to also
Speaker 12: as a society, to confront that kind of reality when
Speaker 12: AI advance is really fast and we reach the point
Speaker 12: when we find even harder to govern that technology. So
Speaker 12: I think there are all these layers, and we are
Speaker 12: not even really having, at least at the federal level,
Speaker 12: a real conversation in how we go about regulating this space.
Speaker 4: Professor Anu Bradford Henry el Moses, Professor of Law and
Speaker 4: an International Organization at Columbia Law School. She's the author
Speaker 4: of several books, including her most recent Digital Empires, The
Speaker 4: Global Battle to Regulate Technology, published back in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 4: but as relevant right now as it was two years ago.
Speaker 4: Please do come back soon and join us here on
Speaker 4: at Bloomberg Business Week Daily.
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live
Speaker 2: each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car
Speaker 2: Play and the Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app.
Speaker 2: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
Speaker 2: Flag New York station Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 3: Elon has it, so too does President Trump and Steve
Speaker 3: Jobs also as well.
Speaker 4: We're talking about leadership. I mean, these are all leaders.
Speaker 4: John Leevy thinks about leadership a lot. He argues, though,
Speaker 4: that one thing all leaders have in common is not
Speaker 4: the thing that we're told when it comes to these
Speaker 4: executive coaches or these business school courses, like you know,
Speaker 4: empathy or humility, those.
Speaker 1: Sorts of things.
Speaker 4: He says, it's something else. John Levy is a behavioral
Speaker 4: scientist and New York Times bestselling author. He's got a
Speaker 4: new book out, Team Intelligence, How brilliant leaders unlock collective genius.
Speaker 10: Let's think about it like this. Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, Right,
Speaker 10: they weren't great at creating psychological safety or even getting
Speaker 10: consensus among their leadership. Yet people still hold them up
Speaker 10: as these examples of amazing leaders. The problem is that
Speaker 10: what we've been sold is that, and mostly through universities
Speaker 10: like Harvard, Gale and so on, is that we have
Speaker 10: to have these essential skills if you want to be
Speaker 10: a leader, and if you pay them a whole lot
Speaker 10: of money, they'll teach you those skills and then you'll
Speaker 10: be a certified leader. Congratulations. The problem is it just
Speaker 10: doesn't track. When we really started looking at this, there
Speaker 10: was only one trait that was common across all leaders.
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 10: It's that they have followers. It's so self referential and
Speaker 10: it's kind of ridiculous, and so we really wanted to
Speaker 10: ask the question. Then, Okay, what causes us to follow someone?
Speaker 10: Generally people say, okay, it's vision and charisma, but that
Speaker 10: doesn't make sense. There are plenty of people who have
Speaker 10: no vision and no charisma, still people follow them.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 10: So the answer, it turns out, comes down to this.
Speaker 10: Do you remember how you felt when you were in
Speaker 10: high school on Sunday at six pm? The Sunday scaries? Now,
Speaker 10: why you think about this? You were free, you were
Speaker 10: at home, but you felt anxious. Friday at one o'clock
Speaker 10: you were in class. But how did you feel?
Speaker 6: Great?
Speaker 10: Yeah, so exciting, ecstatic. And that's because as human beings
Speaker 10: don't relate to the present, they relate to the future
Speaker 10: that they believe they have. If you can make me
Speaker 10: feel you don't live in the moment, definitely not. We
Speaker 10: believe we tend to have this association right now to
Speaker 10: what we think is about to happen. And so in
Speaker 10: high school on Sunday, what was going to happen was
Speaker 10: school the next day? Or if you're about to leave
Speaker 10: for vacation. You might be sitting at work, but you're
Speaker 10: wildly excited. The reason we follow somebody is because when
Speaker 10: we interact with them or their media, they cause us
Speaker 10: to feel that there'll be a new and better future.
Speaker 10: That's it.
Speaker 8: So that's fascinating. So let's take it to somebody.
Speaker 3: President Trump is that kind of his success or where
Speaker 3: he is today?
Speaker 8: It's because of that.
Speaker 10: I would argue that people in general vote for whoever
Speaker 10: they feel will cause them to have a new and
Speaker 10: better future, whether it's President Trump or it's investing into
Speaker 10: Elon Musk's companies. Listen, when you read the report of
Speaker 10: what he's like as a boss at Elon, right, it's
Speaker 10: not the type of boss that we exemplify.
Speaker 4: I mean, you might not even have to read reports
Speaker 4: of what he's like as a boss. You could just
Speaker 4: follow him on social media and he had a good
Speaker 4: understanding of his personality.
Speaker 10: And when you do, you have to ask yourself like,
Speaker 10: is this really the person I'd want to be reporting to?
Speaker 10: And the answer is maybe not. But what he's amazing
Speaker 10: at is he has a handful of super skills that
Speaker 10: nobody else has. Right, he thinks at scale and moves
Speaker 10: faster than anyone in our society. And those super skills
Speaker 10: are so profound that when we interact with him, people
Speaker 10: will either say, hey, we'll give him a trillion dollar bonus, right,
Speaker 10: or we will come and work for you, or we
Speaker 10: want to launch things into space. But it's not because
Speaker 10: he's charismatic.
Speaker 4: Right, I mean, look at the example of when he
Speaker 4: pieced together the Doge team. What was the what were
Speaker 4: the qualifications that he put out there? Right, you have
Speaker 4: to work eighty hours a week, You're not going to
Speaker 4: get paid. Yeah, and you know he has sign he
Speaker 4: had people from all over the country who not just
Speaker 4: wanted to work with him, but believed in his mission.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's really kind of fascinating. So the things that we get,
Speaker 3: so being nice and generous is not necessarily things that
Speaker 3: are going to make a good leaders.
Speaker 10: So I want to separate two things though. Okay, let's
Speaker 10: separate being an effective leader from having followers. Having followers
Speaker 10: just means that people feel that you'll have a new
Speaker 10: and better or they'll feel doesn't mean you will correct
Speaker 10: because you could have somebody who's incompetent leading a bunch
Speaker 10: of morons frankly and get nowhere When we actually started
Speaker 10: looking at the research of what causes teams to be
Speaker 10: really effective. It came from a woman named Anita Williams Willie,
Speaker 10: and what she found in running a whole series of
Speaker 10: experiments is that none of the things that we actually
Speaker 10: thought actually make a team more effective. Right, So IQ
Speaker 10: of the smartest person no effect, average IQ, no effect.
Speaker 10: How much people liked each other not a great predictor, right.
Speaker 10: Do you need to trust each other, sure, or think
Speaker 10: that somebody's competent. Yeah, but you don't necessarily need to
Speaker 10: want to invite everybody you work with your wedding or
Speaker 10: something like that. The single greatest predictor the number of
Speaker 10: women on the team.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 10: And I want to be clear, it's not because they're women.
Speaker 10: It's not a chromosomal thing. We're not out of a job.
Speaker 10: Don't worry.
Speaker 1: It was looking at me.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's because women index high on emotional intelligence, and
Speaker 10: so there are plenty of men with high emotional intelligence,
Speaker 10: plenty of women who don't have any.
Speaker 3: But this makes a better Wait, so more women on
Speaker 3: a team means what.
Speaker 10: That, on average, you have more emotional intelligence on the team,
Speaker 10: and then the team can function better because they can
Speaker 10: coordinate better, and then they outperform because when you have
Speaker 10: a single person sport, it's all about pure talent, right
Speaker 10: or activity. But when you have a group, you've gone
Speaker 10: from taking your shots to passing either information or the ball. Now,
Speaker 10: if I can't communicate with you, we are not going
Speaker 10: to be able to work well together. Right. Having that
Speaker 10: high emotional intelligence on the team means that we know
Speaker 10: when to push on a topic and when not to,
Speaker 10: who to call on even if they're being quiet and
Speaker 10: get the information out.
Speaker 4: Your behavioral side, well, what is your credential in this?
Speaker 4: Because you've studied behavioral science, but you know there are
Speaker 4: entire curricula that are dedicated to teaching leadership that ostensibly
Speaker 4: have evidence backed you know, elements that are backed by
Speaker 4: studies that say this is the right way.
Speaker 1: To do things.
Speaker 4: And you're essentially saying that's not really the right predictor here,
Speaker 4: we have been looking at the right thing. What's the
Speaker 4: evidence that you have when it comes to number.
Speaker 1: Of followers or people who are actually.
Speaker 4: Following this charismatic personality that says this is the right outcome.
Speaker 10: So let's separate a few things on the team stuff.
Speaker 10: There's a bunch of research. I mentioned Anita Williams Willie,
Speaker 10: and there's several studies that back the same thing that
Speaker 10: teams with more emotional intelligence outperform on the leadership side.
Speaker 10: When you actually look at all of the studies on
Speaker 10: people who've gotten MBAs versus those didn't, there they find
Speaker 10: that there's absolutely no improvement in performance whatsoever having an
Speaker 10: NBA versus not compared. And there's like several of these
Speaker 10: studies on the three year mark, five year mark, seven
Speaker 10: year mark, there's no evidence in better management skills or
Speaker 10: anything like that. And so the skills that we're told
Speaker 10: are essential, we might not really be able to train
Speaker 10: them in the way that these programs are running.
Speaker 4: The reason I ask about your reason, I know you
Speaker 4: want to jump in, but the reason I ask about
Speaker 4: the credentialing here is because you have this background and
Speaker 4: having these dinners hosting thousands of people over the last
Speaker 4: ten years, fifteen people, fifteen years, four thousand people. These
Speaker 4: are private influencer dinners where you have had no about
Speaker 4: laureates Limp. You were listening tones together from two to
Speaker 4: five people. What the takeaways that you've been able to
Speaker 4: gather from getting this disparate group of people together or
Speaker 4: watch us live on you.
Speaker 10: So there's kind of two main things that I've really noticed.
Speaker 10: The first is that all of them are at the
Speaker 10: top of their industry, whether they're commanding the International Space
Speaker 10: Station or they're running a major company, and none of
Speaker 10: them have the same characteristics at all. Malala does not
Speaker 10: produce results in the same way as a military commander,
Speaker 10: but people follow and will go very far in both
Speaker 10: cases right to support that cause. The second is, and
Speaker 10: this is kind of a wilder thing that people don't
Speaker 10: really notice, is that no matter how successful people are,
Speaker 10: they tend not to feel like they fit in or
Speaker 10: belong because the CEO knows that they've had three great quarters,
Speaker 10: but if the next two are off there, they might
Speaker 10: be out of a job. And the olympian knows that
Speaker 10: maybe they won at the last Olympics, but who knows
Speaker 10: if they'll even qualify at the next one, and then
Speaker 10: no one will care. And so no matter what, there's
Speaker 10: this absolute factor that people feel a great desire to
Speaker 10: want to fit in and belong, which brings me to
Speaker 10: my real desire to understand is clearly those leadership traits
Speaker 10: didn't matter. And if there's such a great desire to belong.
Speaker 10: It's because human beings tend to be best with each other.
Speaker 10: So let's try and understand at our core what will
Speaker 10: allow us to be best with each other. And that's
Speaker 10: what the book explores, which is what are the characteristics
Speaker 10: that makes teams smarter than the sum of their parts?
Speaker 8: Okay, so why if that is our driving force?
Speaker 3: When I look at Congress, and I know you layer politics.
Speaker 8: On things, and things change. But if we are better.
Speaker 1: They cannot be studied.
Speaker 8: If we are better as a group and a community,
Speaker 8: and yes.
Speaker 3: Indeed right, they have to vote on things, and so
Speaker 3: when they work together, things can actually move forward, or
Speaker 3: at least move.
Speaker 8: Why does that not work its way out?
Speaker 10: So that's I think a great question. And I want
Speaker 10: to be very clear. I don't study politics. I'm not
Speaker 10: an actually and.
Speaker 3: Full disclosure like you lay politics on everything.
Speaker 8: And so a little bit different.
Speaker 10: I'm under the impression that things changed, and this is
Speaker 10: what I've been told after Newt Gingridge was in Congress,
Speaker 10: because he really pushed for less cooperation and also for
Speaker 10: people to spend more time in their home districts. Now,
Speaker 10: when that occurs, then we have something called the mirror
Speaker 10: exposure effect. The mirror exposure effect is simply here's the
Speaker 10: funny thing. Have you ever what would you consider the
Speaker 10: greatest painting of all time?
Speaker 5: Well, people will say Mona Lisa exactly.
Speaker 10: Do you know why?
Speaker 1: Isn't it the perfectly symmetrical.
Speaker 10: That's what tell you. But that's frankly not true. In
Speaker 10: nineteen eleven, a man walked into the Louver on a
Speaker 10: Monday while it was closed. The louver was protected by
Speaker 10: eleven mostly drunk lesionnaires, and walked into the Renaissance section,
Speaker 10: ripped the smallest painting he could off the wall, took
Speaker 10: it out of its frame, and then wrapped in a
Speaker 10: workman's bock and walked out.
Speaker 5: That was the Mona Lisa, wasn't it?
Speaker 6: Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 10: Newspapers around the world spread images of it, and it's
Speaker 10: the first time almost anybody had ever heard of it. It
Speaker 10: was not considered a great painting. Three years later it
Speaker 10: was returned once again. Newspapers around the world rejoiced. And
Speaker 10: it was a way too. It was the build up
Speaker 10: to World War One, so it was a way to
Speaker 10: make fun of the French government and it's incompetence.
Speaker 6: At the time.
Speaker 10: Now, human beings tend to like and trust the things
Speaker 10: that they're familiar with. And when you see you're the
Speaker 10: person who might be across the aisle picking up kids
Speaker 10: at school and your kids are in the same class,
Speaker 10: and you're at the same birthday parties, and you've developed
Speaker 10: familiarity and trust and all these other factors outside of
Speaker 10: that voting room, then suddenly you tend to treat people
Speaker 10: with more humanity and have a greater ability to work
Speaker 10: with them. And so much like the Mona Lisa is
Speaker 10: not really a great painting if you actually speak to historians,
Speaker 10: the lack of that mere exposure and the trust that
Speaker 10: develops from interacting outside of these traditional negotiations, Yeah, we've
Speaker 10: lost a lot to that well.
Speaker 3: And we always bring up Alan Greenspan saying years ago
Speaker 3: about how when he was in Washington, people actually Democrats
Speaker 3: Republicans went to cocktail parties together, and so you know,
Speaker 3: you have a glass of wine with somebody and yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, you kind of relate. You're much more relatable,
Speaker 3: if you will, John, this was really really fun. Hopefully
Speaker 3: we can catch up again in the future.
Speaker 10: I'd be honored.
Speaker 6: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, John Levy, he's a behavioral scientist New York Times
Speaker 3: bestselling author. His new book is Team Intelligence, How Brilliant
Speaker 3: Leaders unlock collective genius.
Speaker 5: Joining us right here in studio.
Speaker 4: Were you invited to one of those secret dinners?
Speaker 5: Ever, it's secret, so I can't tell.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, same, same.
Speaker 2: You are listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch
Speaker 2: us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern.
Speaker 2: Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg
Speaker 2: Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 1: From this small town on the central coast of California.
Speaker 5: Wait, you're from California.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's known for a few things. We've got the
Speaker 1: last operating nuclear power plan in the state. You do,
Speaker 1: That's why I'm glowing. Yes, Hurst Castle is right there.
Speaker 8: Oh it is right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I forgot about that.
Speaker 4: Also, there's this little smoothie shop. When I was growing up,
Speaker 4: it was called Juice Club, and on for special treats
Speaker 4: after school, I would get to go to Juice Club.
Speaker 4: My parents would take me there or a babysitter would
Speaker 4: take us there.
Speaker 8: It's like you loved it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was started by this guy who went to
Speaker 4: cal Poly and Juice Club is what John Bajuice was
Speaker 4: before they did a rebrand, did an IPO and became
Speaker 4: the company that it's known for now.
Speaker 5: I love that.
Speaker 4: So John Bajuice is it began? It began his Juice
Speaker 4: Club on you know, on Foothill.
Speaker 1: James D.
Speaker 4: White knows all about this. He's former CEO of John Bajuice.
Speaker 4: He led it from two thousand and eight to twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4: He's also the author of several books. His new book
Speaker 4: out this month, along with Krista White, called Culture Design
Speaker 4: How to Build a high performing, resilient organization with Purpose.
Speaker 4: He's also the chairman of the board of The Honest Company.
Speaker 4: He's co founder, chair and CEO of Culture Design Lab.
Speaker 4: He's a board member at the fast casual chain Kava.
Speaker 4: He joins U from Scottsdale, Arizona. Good to have you
Speaker 4: on the program, James, how are you.
Speaker 6: Sam and Carl?
Speaker 14: Thanks for hosting me.
Speaker 4: When you were CEO of John But did you ever
Speaker 4: get to go to that foothill location in San Luis Obispo.
Speaker 4: Absolutely the original that was the one.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's amazing.
Speaker 14: And got to spend time with Kirk Paar and the
Speaker 14: fantastic founder who we lost a few years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very tragic.
Speaker 4: Well, I want to talk a little bit about culture design,
Speaker 4: how to build a high performing, resilient organization with purpose.
Speaker 4: But first I just want to remind everybody about what
Speaker 4: John Bajuice was when you were leading it from two
Speaker 4: thousand and eight to twenty sixteen. It's now owned by
Speaker 4: a private equity firm, but it did have a life
Speaker 4: as a publicly traded company. What was John Bajuice under
Speaker 4: your tenure?
Speaker 14: Well, I joined Jamba in December two thousand and eight
Speaker 14: and led the company through a turnaround in transformation. We're
Speaker 14: a public company. Market cap over my tenure increase by
Speaker 14: five hundred percent. We really reposition the company from a
Speaker 14: smoothie chain the more healthy lifestyle brand. But had a
Speaker 14: great run, you know, twenty eight quarters as a public company, CEO.
Speaker 3: So tell us about like going through your experiences and
Speaker 3: kind of what you learned in terms of running a company,
Speaker 3: building a company, going through different cycles.
Speaker 8: What that has taught you.
Speaker 14: I think for me, the place I always started, I
Speaker 14: just go back to really my first week on the
Speaker 14: job at Jamba is you start with the people, You
Speaker 14: start with the key stakeholders. And you know, for me,
Speaker 14: as I go back to that first week, we asked,
Speaker 14: you know, four simple questions, what should the organization start doing,
Speaker 14: what should we stop doing? And what are the things
Speaker 14: that are working well that we should continue. And then
Speaker 14: the final bonus question is what advice would you have
Speaker 14: for me as CEO? And we really leverage that approach
Speaker 14: with really all of our stakeholder groups and use that
Speaker 14: to build a plan to turn around and transform the company.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 14: But I always start with people first. The thesis of
Speaker 14: our book is companies have culture by designer default, So
Speaker 14: always be intentional in building a company's culture.
Speaker 4: So, so talk about who those key stakeholders are. Uh,
Speaker 4: And then I have this this follow up question that
Speaker 4: I think Carol will nod because she kind of knows
Speaker 4: exactly where I'm going. When you when you started, when
Speaker 4: you start on a board or when you're you know,
Speaker 4: a decision maker at a company, who are the stakeholders
Speaker 4: you speak to understand the culture?
Speaker 14: Yeah, I always start with the employees because they actually
Speaker 14: know what actually needs to be done to you know,
Speaker 14: really re energize or strengthen the company. So I started
Speaker 14: with the one hundred or so employees that we're in
Speaker 14: our support center that supported all our stores. Obviously the
Speaker 14: frontline workforce is a source of fantastic input the border directors,
Speaker 14: key suppliers, but also we talk to consumers as a
Speaker 14: part of that processes. We formulated the original Transformation Planet
Speaker 14: job book.
Speaker 4: So connect that with company performance because every you know
Speaker 4: in Zoom just reporter earnings for example, and when we
Speaker 4: look at any company that reports it's most recent quarter,
Speaker 4: we talk about numbers like the outlook. We talk about
Speaker 4: top line revenue, we talk about margins, we talk about outlooks,
Speaker 4: or we talk about what happened in the current quarter.
Speaker 4: What we don't talk about is the company's culture. We
Speaker 4: don't talk about how happy employees are or if they're
Speaker 4: not happy. We don't talk about customer satisfaction because investors
Speaker 4: don't necessarily trade on those things. How do you connect
Speaker 4: those non tangibles to the actual numbers that a public
Speaker 4: company reports.
Speaker 14: Yeah, the way I think about it is, and I've
Speaker 14: got a colleague amount of board Talagmoment says, the human
Speaker 14: capital drives the financial capital, and that directly relates to
Speaker 14: the people and relates to the company culture. We think
Speaker 14: about culture being the huge unlocked in this environment. And
Speaker 14: the reason we wrote the book Culture Design is we've
Speaker 14: felt like with the dramatic change over the course of
Speaker 14: the last five years, the thing that we've not talked
Speaker 14: about as much as we need to as we look
Speaker 14: at hybrid ork the influences of AI is the company
Speaker 14: culture and how that shift needs to happen. The best
Speaker 14: companies become changed savvy in terms of how they lead
Speaker 14: the companies moving forward. And the book has three pillars,
Speaker 14: Knowing what matters that's really about the context that the
Speaker 14: company operates in doing what matters? How do you operationalize culture?
Speaker 14: How does culture really live day to day inside an organization?
Speaker 14: And then anything in business that matters, you actually measure
Speaker 14: it in the You know, there are both hard and
Speaker 14: soft measurements. You know, employee engagement, there's pole surveys, there's
Speaker 14: net promoter scores, but there's employee net promoter scores that
Speaker 14: are one of the things that I find incredibly helpful.
Speaker 14: But the best leaders are thinking harder about this, whether
Speaker 14: they're in the boardroom or running companies today.
Speaker 3: Hey, James, one thing I want to ask you, and
Speaker 3: I'm just curious you wrote this with your daughter, Krista,
Speaker 3: and I was just looking at one thing in I
Speaker 3: think it's Paige and ninety six here and how she
Speaker 3: has kind of taught you that an effective leader actually
Speaker 3: shares a lot of their life journey is a lot
Speaker 3: more transparent with folks at work. And it's interesting, like
Speaker 3: I've often heard people like, your personal life is your
Speaker 3: personal life, don't bring it to the office, keep them separate,
Speaker 3: Like you just don't share stuff, and yet you know
Speaker 3: your lifeline is in there and like all the things
Speaker 3: that you've gone through in your life. And I'm just
Speaker 3: the importance of like leaders and leadership sharing their life
Speaker 3: journey with the folks that work with them.
Speaker 14: We think that empathy is really a core capability. And
Speaker 14: one of the things that I've learned in my work
Speaker 14: with my millennial daughter is, you know, kind of sharing
Speaker 14: more of myself really strengthens the ability for me to
Speaker 14: connect with leaders and people on a really different level.
Speaker 14: So this is not really where I started as a leader,
Speaker 14: but have kind of learned this over the arc of
Speaker 14: a career, and it's really a force multiplier. When we
Speaker 14: get to know each other as human beings, we can
Speaker 14: find the things that are common and what I found
Speaker 14: from a leadership perspective is that allows you to unlock
Speaker 14: the full potential of the organization by being more human
Speaker 14: and kind of humanizing the leader. We interviewed one leader
Speaker 14: that describes his version of this as he provides new
Speaker 14: teams that he joined Sam Bright. He runs Google Play,
Speaker 14: he describes a user manual on how to best work
Speaker 14: with him as a leader, and he does some of
Speaker 14: the same kinds of things where he shares information on
Speaker 14: his family and background, which is really a shortcut to
Speaker 14: how we might work best together as colleagues.
Speaker 4: James, before I let you go, you've written this is
Speaker 4: not your first book that you've written along with your
Speaker 4: daughter Krista. Back in twenty twenty two, he wrote Anti
Speaker 4: Racist Leadership, How to Transform Corporate Culture in a Race
Speaker 4: conscious World. We spent a lot of time, Carol and
Speaker 4: I've been doing this together for five years, and over
Speaker 4: that period of time, the conversation around DEI has changed
Speaker 4: a lot. Most recently, the iteration is these companies getting
Speaker 4: rid of DEI programs, not talking about.
Speaker 5: It any not being a conversation around Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking.
Speaker 4: We're doing a deep dive on target in just a
Speaker 4: few minutes and they've gone through their own issues with this.
Speaker 4: I'm just wondering what the state of how you view
Speaker 4: DEI and anti racism now in twenty twenty five, and
Speaker 4: how that's different among a C suite executives versus twenty
Speaker 4: twenty two.
Speaker 14: Yes, I think the conversation has definitely changed. But I
Speaker 14: think the best leaders, at least the best leaders that
Speaker 14: I work with, they've got a true north. They're very
Speaker 14: focused on their values and they know that if you
Speaker 14: put people first and you create an environment where all
Speaker 14: the humans get to do their best work, you're going
Speaker 14: to always win. And what I always advise companies and
Speaker 14: the leaders that I work with, the labeling of things
Speaker 14: I'm less concerned with. I'm more concerned with, you know,
Speaker 14: really the true north of the organization and how we
Speaker 14: focused on creating environments where everybody can do their very
Speaker 14: best work, and that starts with people and it starts
Speaker 14: with culture by design.
Speaker 3: I would assume that then that is like if you
Speaker 3: had to give one piece of advice to leaders that
Speaker 3: are out there and they get so much advice, But
Speaker 3: I'm just curious, is that what it would be or
Speaker 3: something else and just got about forty seconds here.
Speaker 14: It would be you know, really put the human beings,
Speaker 14: the people in your organization first and work hard to
Speaker 14: create and design environments where they can do their very
Speaker 14: best work and bring their full selves to the organization.
Speaker 14: And I think it will yield great benefits that will
Speaker 14: deliver high performance results.
Speaker 5: Well, very much appreciate it, James, Thank you so much.
Speaker 13: James D.
Speaker 3: White, former CEO of Jambajuice. He led the company from
Speaker 3: twenty eight to twenty sixteen. He is the co author
Speaker 3: of a book app.
Speaker 5: That he did with his daughter. Second book that he
Speaker 5: did with his daughter.
Speaker 3: This book though Culture Design, How to build a high performing,
Speaker 3: resilient organization with Purpose.
Speaker 5: And you can catch that book. It is out now. James,
Speaker 5: thank you so much.
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