Speaker 1: Hello, Hello. This is Smart Talks with IBM, a podcast
Speaker 1: from Pushkin Industries, High Heart Media and IBM about what
Speaker 1: it means to look at today's most challenging problems in
Speaker 1: a new way. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. In this episode, I'm
Speaker 1: speaking with Jim Whitehurst, senior advisor at IBM. In his
Speaker 1: time with IBM, as both an advisor and former president,
Speaker 1: Jim was responsible for the IBM Cloud and cognitive software
Speaker 1: organization and corporate strategy. Jim is an expert in open innovation.
Speaker 1: During his time as president of IBM, Jim embedded his
Speaker 1: philosophy into the company, helping clients and partners on their
Speaker 1: own digital transformation journeys. Today, we'll be talking about the
Speaker 1: ways open culture companies can change the way we lead
Speaker 1: and work together. Realize, Hey, this isn't insanity or chaos.
Speaker 1: It's actually different way to run an organization is trying
Speaker 1: to seek its way into the future. Before coming to IBM,
Speaker 1: Jim was the president and CEO of Red Hat. Red
Speaker 1: Hat has been a leader in enterprise open source software
Speaker 1: and while CEO, Jim helped it become the first one
Speaker 1: billion revenue open source software company. In let's dive in Hi, Jim, Hey,
Speaker 1: how are you? I'm good. Thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 1: Let's do so many things I want to talk to
Speaker 1: you about. Whenever I read the resume of someone like you,
Speaker 1: I always wonder how did he get there? Like? What
Speaker 1: tell me? Can you give me a short version of
Speaker 1: how did you end up thinking about things like innovation
Speaker 1: and creating these kinds of receptive cultures. It's such a
Speaker 1: kind of there must be a million paths to that direction.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious about what your path was. You know,
Speaker 1: graduated from college, thought I wanted to be in technology,
Speaker 1: interviewed with the Boston consulting group, love client service. Never
Speaker 1: thought I would leave the craft of working with clients
Speaker 1: and working in small teams I loved. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that was kind of the nub of how teams and
Speaker 1: innovation work. Uh and then a litterally I was a
Speaker 1: partner there. I never thought i'd leave it. Literally, at
Speaker 1: noon on nine eleven, the CEO of Delta called me
Speaker 1: and said, I need you now to be my treasure
Speaker 1: And I said, you know, you're out of your mind.
Speaker 1: I know nothing about being a treasurer. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: that's okay. Nobody in the right mind would loan his
Speaker 1: money right now. I just need kind of a creative
Speaker 1: strategic person. So I joined Delta literally at noon on
Speaker 1: nine eleven, and then kind of ran through the bankruptcy restructuring,
Speaker 1: and then was approached by Red Hat. And I had
Speaker 1: been a geek playing with Lennox in my spare time
Speaker 1: for a long time and I joined. I think that's
Speaker 1: where my interests really started. You know, Delta is considered
Speaker 1: a very low run company. It's always on the list
Speaker 1: of the most environant companies. And I got to Red
Speaker 1: Hat and I thought, okay, I know what leadership looks like.
Speaker 1: And I'd say in the first month, I thought this
Speaker 1: place is absolute chaos. I understand they brought me in
Speaker 1: here to clean it up, right. The problem at Delta
Speaker 1: is how do you run a tightly integrated has to
Speaker 1: be run with excellence operation Red hats all about innovation.
Speaker 1: You know, there isn't a leadership style that solves every problem.
Speaker 1: There's a leadership style for you know, driving efficiency and
Speaker 1: driving out variants in a static environment, which is what
Speaker 1: most leaders have been raised to do. And then there's
Speaker 1: a leadership style for trying to drive a faster pace
Speaker 1: of innovation, and those fundamentally look different. So wait, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm curious about this. So you go from Delta to
Speaker 1: Red Hat. So you couldn't if we were if we
Speaker 1: sat down Jim and tried to figure out tried to
Speaker 1: name two companies that were more different, Yeah, you couldn't
Speaker 1: do it. So now how long did it take you
Speaker 1: to come to the insight? You just spoke? So you
Speaker 1: go from A to Z and you say, WHOA, this
Speaker 1: place looks different because you could have gone the other way, right,
Speaker 1: you could have said I have to turn Red Hat
Speaker 1: into Delta, but you didn't. I'm guessing nine out of
Speaker 1: ten people would have tried to turn Red Hat into
Speaker 1: Delta and would have flamed out. But you didn't. Why Well,
Speaker 1: I do think a big part of it was I
Speaker 1: was also learning a new business, and so I literally
Speaker 1: spent the first six months on the road, traveling, seeing customers.
Speaker 1: And if that hadn't happened, I think you're exactly right.
Speaker 1: I would have said, no, my job is to bring
Speaker 1: in quote unquote professional management. But I was traveling enough
Speaker 1: that I didn't kind of focus on change. I was saying,
Speaker 1: let me learn the business understand our clients, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: In that period of time, I saw a couple of
Speaker 1: amazing things happened. My second week on the job, I
Speaker 1: was being briefed on this area called virtualization, and I'm
Speaker 1: getting briefed on the strategy and when we picked the
Speaker 1: technology we picked, and in the room was kind of
Speaker 1: the head of engineering, a couple of people who worked
Speaker 1: for him, but all the way down to some engineers
Speaker 1: working on virtualization there told me the strategy and why
Speaker 1: we picked the technology we did, and what are the
Speaker 1: engineers So that the most junior people in the room
Speaker 1: and the briefing said, yeah, this is what we're doing,
Speaker 1: but you know it's wrong. Fundamentally, we picked the wrong technology.
Speaker 1: There's this new technology that's emerged which is kind of
Speaker 1: upstream and Linux, and this is when we should pick
Speaker 1: And a huge argument erupts, No, no, no, we did this,
Speaker 1: And so I'm list of this back and forth, and
Speaker 1: I remember going home and telling my wife that night,
Speaker 1: I said, I am living in chaos. There's a briefing
Speaker 1: in front of the CEO where these people are just
Speaker 1: like literally food fight arguing this stuff out. Four months later,
Speaker 1: that same set team came in and said, you know what,
Speaker 1: we were wrong. We need to acquire the company behind
Speaker 1: the other technology, because that's the way to go. And
Speaker 1: what I realized is, you know what if they had
Speaker 1: just come in and given me a briefing on here's
Speaker 1: the technology, why we did it, and four months later
Speaker 1: and come in and said no, no, no, we want
Speaker 1: to buy this other I would just in a way,
Speaker 1: you gave me all the reasons why this is right
Speaker 1: and even infested in it. Why would I do that?
Speaker 1: But because I heard the arguments that it was a
Speaker 1: fifty five forty five decision and understood it wasn't clear cut,
Speaker 1: and that changed over time because of changing circumstances, it
Speaker 1: was much easier for me to go to the board
Speaker 1: and say, you know, let's spend hundreds of millions of
Speaker 1: dollars buying this other company because you know, I'm convinced,
Speaker 1: convinced it's right because I've heard both sides of the argument.
Speaker 1: I've seen how it's involved over time. So that was
Speaker 1: a time when I realized, like wow, this system that
Speaker 1: seemed like chaos was a way that we socialize, you know,
Speaker 1: the problems that we need to solve. An innovation and
Speaker 1: recognizing that circumstances changed and therefore our output can change
Speaker 1: all of sudden over elise like, No, that argument wasn't chaos.
Speaker 1: That was a great way to make sure that we
Speaker 1: were all on the same page on both the facts
Speaker 1: and where we felt we should act coming out of
Speaker 1: those facts. And then I realized, Hey, this isn't insanity
Speaker 1: or chaos. It's actually a different way to run an
Speaker 1: organization is trying to seek its way into the future.
Speaker 1: M M, Now, can you let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about that transit. You have these two modes, and you're
Speaker 1: not saying mode A the Delta mode isn't useful. You're
Speaker 1: saying it works if you're in an industry that is
Speaker 1: well established, where the technology is moving incrementally, where you're
Speaker 1: where it's about. It's where it's about. Delta has to
Speaker 1: execute perfectly, right. You do not want anyone experimenting with
Speaker 1: the safety procedures before she right. I mean that's a
Speaker 1: strong example now because most companies have some of both.
Speaker 1: You do want people tinkering with trying experimenting on you know,
Speaker 1: Delta's website, right or the mobile app, and so all
Speaker 1: companies have a degree of difference in the types of
Speaker 1: of of operations that they're running. Right. You know, Red
Speaker 1: Hat has financial accounting and you know, I go to
Speaker 1: jail if those UH numbers are wrong, so you want
Speaker 1: to make sure that those are locked down. The key
Speaker 1: is for executives to recognize there are different approaches to
Speaker 1: your organization, your leadership, your management processes, depending on which
Speaker 1: objective function you're trying. You're trying to drive variants out
Speaker 1: to drive standardization or you're trying to inject variants in
Speaker 1: to drive innovation, and you have to do a little
Speaker 1: bit of both and recognizing that there's a continuum around that.
Speaker 1: But importantly, more and more of the world is moving
Speaker 1: to you know, innovation is important, So walk me through.
Speaker 1: Let's let's break down all of the components of this
Speaker 1: open innovation model. What is it? What does it look like?
Speaker 1: Does it feel like? Does it you know, give me
Speaker 1: a kind of prepare me, So Malcolm's gonna move, Malcolm's
Speaker 1: gonna join to do this transition and enjoin. Prepare me
Speaker 1: for what it looks and feels like. Sure, so, first off,
Speaker 1: it is absolutely clear what the strategy of the company is.
Speaker 1: But your work steps are typically left somewhat ambiguous, so
Speaker 1: you can work to improve, trying new things, observe what's happening.
Speaker 1: So I think most large companies will say frontline really
Speaker 1: needs to understand the work task to get their job done,
Speaker 1: and let's make those efficient. They don't really need to
Speaker 1: know the corporate strategy. We would flip that around and
Speaker 1: say everybody needs to know the corporate strategy and exactly
Speaker 1: what we're doing and why we're gonna leave the worksteps
Speaker 1: blurry so you can work to figure it out. And
Speaker 1: the other thing I think people see out of it,
Speaker 1: at least certainly a red hat is everybody thinks are
Speaker 1: gonna come in and everybody's gonna be nice and holding
Speaker 1: hands and seeing in kubaya. And one of the first
Speaker 1: things they find out it's like, wow, it's kind of harsh.
Speaker 1: I throw up an idea and immediately people shoot it down.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that we've learned over time,
Speaker 1: and I do think this is beyond red. This is
Speaker 1: kind of a broad. Important point is that great ideas
Speaker 1: are fused together from many good ideas and people arguing
Speaker 1: and fighting it out and building on top of each other.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a very random, odd question. I
Speaker 1: suppose I can do Jim and said I would like you.
Speaker 1: I'd like to bring you into my really good, you
Speaker 1: know school. Your job is to redesign the curriculum and
Speaker 1: pedagogy of this school to prepare our students for the
Speaker 1: world you just described. Yep, so look the broad way.
Speaker 1: I would say this is true for any organization. The
Speaker 1: traditional approach to thinking about solving the problem or leading
Speaker 1: is very simple is three big steps your plan, Right,
Speaker 1: You come up with a plan, You then prescribe the
Speaker 1: activities to whoever has to go executed, and then you
Speaker 1: execute and executes about driving compliance to that plan. You know,
Speaker 1: in university, what do you teach. You need to teach
Speaker 1: the a the capacity to be curious, to experiment, to try. Um,
Speaker 1: you need to teach the the comfort with ambiguity. And
Speaker 1: that's a tough thing to do. And so that's why
Speaker 1: I do think engineers in particular need to take more
Speaker 1: humanity right, you know, more open ivied, whether it's you know,
Speaker 1: philosophy or political science or sociology, where some of these
Speaker 1: questions don't have firm answers. I think it's really important
Speaker 1: for people to learn because comfort with ambiguity and recognizing
Speaker 1: that there are things that there is no firm, hard
Speaker 1: answer to combine with engineering skills or what enables great
Speaker 1: engineers to say, I'm gonna learn from others, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try them an experiment, I'm gonna come up to an answer.
Speaker 1: There is no right answer to solving X, y Z innovation.
Speaker 1: There are multiple approaches and getting people comfortable with that,
Speaker 1: and those are key important points that I would advise
Speaker 1: anyone going to university or universities is thinking about curriculum.
Speaker 1: It's um, there are no right answers and innovation. They're
Speaker 1: different approaches, and we do spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: on right and wrong um, you know, versus kind of
Speaker 1: experiment in building and then the final thing's working together. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of evidence that shows that teams come
Speaker 1: up with better UH answers than individuals. I always talked
Speaker 1: about your red hats known for open source, which is
Speaker 1: you know, thousands of people working together to build like
Speaker 1: Linux other software, and I always make sure people understand
Speaker 1: open source is not the same thing as crowdsource. Crowdsourcing
Speaker 1: should get a million people to throw an idea, and
Speaker 1: when I'm probably gonna be good, open source, or what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about with an open organization is how you
Speaker 1: get multiple people work together to give you better solutions
Speaker 1: than any one of those individuals could on their own.
Speaker 1: And so the social skills about how you get people
Speaker 1: to work together to get better solutions is important. But
Speaker 1: if I, if I look at just take high school
Speaker 1: and university education in this in this country, so little
Speaker 1: of learning is taking place in groups. We are sending
Speaker 1: kids off by themselves to tackle problems that have been
Speaker 1: handed to them, prescribed, planned and prescribed and asked them
Speaker 1: to execute the problem that we've given them on their
Speaker 1: own in large part and to the extent that they
Speaker 1: are part of a team, it's a very very informal team.
Speaker 1: But then we break them up again when we evaluate them. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a complete disconnect between the world you
Speaker 1: are describing right, which is responding to the technological challenges
Speaker 1: of the century, and the world we're preparing kids for. Well,
Speaker 1: this is the lag. This is so it's not only
Speaker 1: you know, the leaders who don't realize their management systems
Speaker 1: built for you know, the proto typical factory work, road task,
Speaker 1: static environment, etcetera. Education Lighting people up in rows individual
Speaker 1: you know, you make a mistake, that's you know, that's wrong,
Speaker 1: that's bad. Where we know experimentation is so important for
Speaker 1: for innovation. Yeah, we have an education system that is
Speaker 1: optimized for the industrial world that no longer exists, and
Speaker 1: there is a lag there that we have to fix
Speaker 1: and we really have. If anything, we're sliding backwards with
Speaker 1: social media and other things that gets kids even more
Speaker 1: isolated from each other, and that core insight that we know.
Speaker 1: There's tons of academic evidence, uh in research that says
Speaker 1: groups do better at solving problems than individuals. Yet somehow
Speaker 1: we then want to split people up. It's just I
Speaker 1: think it's a lag problem. It's a recognition problem. To
Speaker 1: take that all the way back, you know, Ronald Coast
Speaker 1: letting Nobel Prize for explaining why a company exists. You know,
Speaker 1: the whole idea was transaction costs. You know, so in
Speaker 1: other words, the question is why companies exist versus everybody's
Speaker 1: an individual actor and kind of coordinating. And his point was, well,
Speaker 1: when transaction costs are lower, um by coordinating inside a
Speaker 1: company than when a market cost would be old, people
Speaker 1: will get together and kind of create a company that
Speaker 1: all assumes interactions between people are cost which is true
Speaker 1: when you're trying to coordinate and you know, kind of
Speaker 1: drive building something scale. But when you're trying to innovate,
Speaker 1: we know interactions between people are in benefit because teams
Speaker 1: to are more innovative than individuals. So all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: we built the corporate entities and how we put them together,
Speaker 1: how we educate people. It's all about minimizing transaction costs
Speaker 1: and optimizing you know, the individual output and assuming that
Speaker 1: there's some greater way of you know, some scientists somewhere,
Speaker 1: he's gonna plug all that together. Yet it is the
Speaker 1: interactions where you know, the magic happens when you're trying
Speaker 1: to innovate. Yeah, this reminds me I. In my podcast
Speaker 1: Revisions History, the one of the last episodes this season
Speaker 1: is all about war games and basically asked the question
Speaker 1: why does the military play war games? They play a
Speaker 1: lot of war games, and one of the reasons is
Speaker 1: exactly the one you articulated, which is that you can
Speaker 1: do all the plans formal planning and prediction. You can
Speaker 1: send your experts off to come back with reports and
Speaker 1: you will learn and get a certain kind of insight
Speaker 1: from that. With another way, more valuable insight that will
Speaker 1: only come if you bring a group of people together
Speaker 1: and have them interact over a problem. Every one of
Speaker 1: the war gaming world quotes this line from Thomas Shelling,
Speaker 1: which is something to the effect of even the smartest
Speaker 1: man in the world cannot make a list of the
Speaker 1: things that haven't occurred to him, right, which is so lovely.
Speaker 1: And that's the point, right, that you only learn about
Speaker 1: the things that haven't occurred to you when you are
Speaker 1: in this kind of free flowing, interactive social environment. That's
Speaker 1: the point. That's why we throw people together in these
Speaker 1: in the end create the kind of chaos you're talking about,
Speaker 1: because it's going to force you off the narrow path
Speaker 1: that you put yourself on. Yeah, speaking of the military,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite kind of pieces to read on leadership,
Speaker 1: it's uh commander's intent. And the whole point is intent
Speaker 1: is so important for you know, others in the field
Speaker 1: to understand because you can get separated, frankly, commander to
Speaker 1: get killed, and understanding the intent and the objective is
Speaker 1: so much more important than understanding the kind of the
Speaker 1: specifics that go around that because as soon as you're
Speaker 1: on a battle field, things changed by definition, and so
Speaker 1: if you you need to really understand intent and how
Speaker 1: do you convey that as a leader? It's uh, I
Speaker 1: do think those are critical in an ambiguous environment? Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you? Is there a way to adopt the war
Speaker 1: gaming model UM in the kind of more conventional corporate setting,
Speaker 1: and it was running simulations, real world social simulations of
Speaker 1: anticipated problem. Is that something that we that we're doing
Speaker 1: or at least doing enough. I think I remember talking
Speaker 1: to to the CEO of one of the major global
Speaker 1: banks and they were saying, basically, hey, we got this
Speaker 1: issue with you know, uh, fin techs attacking us, and
Speaker 1: you know, I've asked my team, you know what's our
Speaker 1: you know, two big initiatives we're gonna go and attack
Speaker 1: this and and I basically told him, don't go out
Speaker 1: and say you have two initiatives to do this, because
Speaker 1: a an initiative fails, the person is probably gonna get fired.
Speaker 1: So how much is anybody really really really gonna go
Speaker 1: out and try something radical? So what you need to
Speaker 1: do is say, hey, I want to see our twenty
Speaker 1: five best ideas. You've got six months. Each one can
Speaker 1: have no more than you know, two hundred fifty dollars
Speaker 1: to experiment with. Let's come back in six months and say,
Speaker 1: let's see where those are, and we're gonna maybe kill
Speaker 1: all of them and talk about the lessons learn, or
Speaker 1: we're gonna take two and then we're gonna take the
Speaker 1: lessons learn and launch another twenty five and we're gonna
Speaker 1: keep doing that until we feel the right things emerge
Speaker 1: and those are the ones that we're gonna go do.
Speaker 1: That's a management approach that says, let's experiment and try
Speaker 1: and learn and kind of quickly modify around that. As
Speaker 1: soon as you launch these big, big, big initiatives, by definition,
Speaker 1: you're not doing much experimentation in it because you've already
Speaker 1: put dollars behind it with a you know, with an
Speaker 1: outcome predefined. And that's the problem in general with so
Speaker 1: many of the existing management process It's uh, I call
Speaker 1: it's drive a future state. When the words I'll use
Speaker 1: with with leaders as seek a future state. How do
Speaker 1: you build an organization that can seek a future optimal state?
Speaker 1: You know? That's so we went backwards and talked about
Speaker 1: high school and college education. Let's now go forward, Let's
Speaker 1: go beyond the corporation. I understand now that a lot
Speaker 1: of your focus is on UM philanthropic stuff, climate change,
Speaker 1: you know, larger kind of society wide issues. Let's apply
Speaker 1: that that model to s of those. How would you
Speaker 1: guide us in the way that we think an attack
Speaker 1: a problem, like, for example, climate change. Well I'll come
Speaker 1: back to that model of instead of plan, prescribe, execute, configure, enable,
Speaker 1: and gave so much of what we're talking about is like,
Speaker 1: what are the big ways we're gonna go elect electrify
Speaker 1: UM the country and you know, put stations around for
Speaker 1: autonomous driving, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And how do we preplan
Speaker 1: all that out? My census? We need to configure for success.
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is if all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, battery technology takes a leap forward and we
Speaker 1: get triple the density UM in a car battery that
Speaker 1: we have today, well guess what the number of stations
Speaker 1: recharging stations probably drops by half. I don't know the
Speaker 1: asthemtopicy that maybe by four x with the three X battery.
Speaker 1: IM not sure how that math works, but somebody I'm
Speaker 1: sure would figure that out. Which means the number stations
Speaker 1: you need, which means the number of like colides you
Speaker 1: need are all going to change. And what I know
Speaker 1: is that no one knows what the innovation curve of
Speaker 1: batteries look like. We can model things, but nobody knows,
Speaker 1: and innovation is discontinuous often, so we need to set
Speaker 1: context for that to happen. So what does that mean?
Speaker 1: I would argue, And I know IBM does advocate for
Speaker 1: a price on carbon because if you know what carbon costs,
Speaker 1: that you have a carbon tax associated with it. Now, innovators, entrepreneurs,
Speaker 1: well everybody, large companies know here's the cost and therefore,
Speaker 1: what am I willing to invest in the literally millions
Speaker 1: of decisions to get made in the economy, Whether that's
Speaker 1: for an innovator to invest in the technology to try
Speaker 1: to make a batter battery, or whether that's companies and
Speaker 1: how they think about fleets and what they're doing. Um,
Speaker 1: that's what I mean by configuring. Now do you think
Speaker 1: every could play a role in you know, substantial investments
Speaker 1: and fundamental research at the right sets of universities or
Speaker 1: partnerships with companies. That again is configuring. So it's not
Speaker 1: saying here's the specific steps and pathway to get there,
Speaker 1: because in the context of innovation, you know you're gonna
Speaker 1: be wrong, and that's how you build a bridge to nowhere.
Speaker 1: The dollars were there, but you didn't realize, well, that
Speaker 1: no longer makes sense. So setting up the context is critical.
Speaker 1: And I will say I'm very encouraged by what we're
Speaker 1: seeing happening around the world in terms of interest on
Speaker 1: climate change. But I do think there's a knee jerk
Speaker 1: reaction from governments in particular to say, Okay, what are
Speaker 1: the multi hundred billion dollar, massive twenty year initiatives when
Speaker 1: almost for sure those are gonna be wrong because you
Speaker 1: need to take a more nimble, agile approach that as
Speaker 1: we learn, you know, how do you kind of move
Speaker 1: I'm not saying we don't want to spend hundreds of
Speaker 1: billions of dollars on them. We do, but the approach
Speaker 1: for how we do it can't be these multi year
Speaker 1: plan things in the world there we don't know what
Speaker 1: the world's gonna look like or the pace of innovation. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had somebody had a conversation with so recently that
Speaker 1: was so fascinating. He was talking entirely about light. Led
Speaker 1: lights have driven down the cost of light by levels
Speaker 1: that would have been unimaginable when we we didn't realize
Speaker 1: it was going to be so radical. Lights essentially moving
Speaker 1: towards not going to be free. But it's getting really,
Speaker 1: really cheap, and with all these things that it has,
Speaker 1: all these impacts that no one, not a single person
Speaker 1: would have imagined. For example, that lighting is getting so cheap,
Speaker 1: it means that you can grow you know, vegetables in
Speaker 1: greenhouses cheaper than you can grow them in fields, which
Speaker 1: never occurred to anybody. Right, if you had started with
Speaker 1: I'd like to make greenhouse vegetables cheaper than farmers. If
Speaker 1: you started with that is your goal, you never would
Speaker 1: have gotten there. It's an impossible physics problem. But I
Speaker 1: don't know how you build a kind of social and
Speaker 1: political infrastructure with that kind because it takes the very
Speaker 1: things that you were talking about. To be comfortable with uncertainty,
Speaker 1: you have to to kind of give up on the
Speaker 1: notion you can push the world in a given direction.
Speaker 1: You just have to set something like you say, put
Speaker 1: the stick in the see and let the life them
Speaker 1: around it. Right. That takes an incredible amount of is
Speaker 1: it self confidence? What's the quality that requires of us? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think one of the I see this in companies
Speaker 1: as well, and you can argue it's self confidence. You
Speaker 1: can argue it's uh needing to check your ego because
Speaker 1: so much of I think senior executives sense of worth
Speaker 1: is I'm the smartest person in the room, or I
Speaker 1: came up with the answer because I'm here, I've driven
Speaker 1: this where building these types of things. You are the facilitator.
Speaker 1: You're trying to say, if I'm the smartest person in
Speaker 1: the room, I've done a lousy job of building the
Speaker 1: right team around me. There's something you said that I
Speaker 1: think is a lovely way to tie up the conversation.
Speaker 1: And I have to say, even after talking to you,
Speaker 1: what you said took me by surprise when you said,
Speaker 1: if I'm silent during a meeting, the meeting is going
Speaker 1: well or things are I just think that's so beautiful.
Speaker 1: So you say the people. If I say thing, I'm
Speaker 1: the leader here. If I say nothing, then we've succeeded.
Speaker 1: So moving from red Hat to IBM, I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: twelve years of red Hat, everybody knew me in style
Speaker 1: and it would kind of organically grow over time. I
Speaker 1: was very explicit at IBM on the point of, hey,
Speaker 1: if I'm silent in a meeting, don't be uncomfortable. That
Speaker 1: is positive. It means I am listening to and observing
Speaker 1: the dynamics among everyone, and um, I'm feeling really really
Speaker 1: good about how the conversation is going. If I have
Speaker 1: an opinion, I might decide to voice it, but I'm
Speaker 1: always a little bit, especially um in new groups of people,
Speaker 1: I'm a little hesitant to voice of because I'm worried
Speaker 1: that that starts to jade others points of view. And
Speaker 1: if I'm silent, that's great. If I jump in, it
Speaker 1: could be because I have an idea that I just
Speaker 1: want to throw out there. As a participant, it could
Speaker 1: be that I'm throwing out the exact opposite of what
Speaker 1: I believe because I think that's going to help the
Speaker 1: dialogue happen. And as the team, you shouldn't rate what
Speaker 1: I say any higher lower than anyone else in the room.
Speaker 1: I would participant in the room, but that's how we're
Speaker 1: going to get the best ideas out there. If my
Speaker 1: idea turned out to be best and it was what
Speaker 1: I really believe, great. If it's a horrible idea, I
Speaker 1: you know, threw it out on purpose to try to
Speaker 1: take the conversation in a way in areas we want
Speaker 1: to poke. I think that's really really critical because most
Speaker 1: leaders go into a room and think their job is
Speaker 1: the content. And my view is no. If you believe
Speaker 1: teams do better than individuals, your job is to make
Speaker 1: sure that tenor and tone are the conversation is happening,
Speaker 1: because then the best idea will emerge. But it makes
Speaker 1: me want to work for you. It sounds so much fun. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sure we can find a job discussion. So what's
Speaker 1: next for you? Well, using the same approach of not
Speaker 1: overly planning, I'm configuring myself for going forward. Right, you
Speaker 1: have created a foundation around climate change. I want to
Speaker 1: spend some time trying to see how I can participate
Speaker 1: using some of these open principles and in solving that problem.
Speaker 1: I'll continue to work with some technology companies as an
Speaker 1: advisor and we'll see what happens in the future. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: good luck. Jim has a big challenge ahead as he
Speaker 1: focuses his efforts on climate change. It will be interesting
Speaker 1: to see what kind of solutions he'll find with using
Speaker 1: an open culture strategy. Thanks again to Jim for taking
Speaker 1: the time to chat with me. I can only hope
Speaker 1: we'll all learn something from taking a more collaborative approach
Speaker 1: towards problem solving. Smart Talks with IBM is produced by
Speaker 1: Emily Rostak with Carlie Migliori and Katherine Gurdo, edited by
Speaker 1: Karen Shakerji, engineering by Martin Gonzalez, mixed and mastered by
Speaker 1: Jason Gambrel and Ben Holiday music by Gramoscope. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Molly Sosha, Andy Kelly, Miila Belle, Jacob Weisberg, Hadaphane,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, and Maggie Taylor and the teams at eight
Speaker 1: Bar and IBM. Smart Talks with IBM is a production
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. You can find more Pushkin
Speaker 1: podcasts on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you like to listen. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, See you
Speaker 1: next time.