[Music] hello hello googlers good to see you my name is Alex Russian I'm A Cloud engineering manager uh based here in the Seattle area I'm excited to introduce today's speaker Simon sck Simon may be best known for popular popularizing the concept of why described in his first Ted Talk in 2009 and his interview on Millennials on in the workplace which broke the internet in 2016 and led to Simon being YouTube's fifth most searched term in the year 2017 described as a Visionary thinker with a rare intellect Simon has devoted his professional life to help Advance
a vision of the world do not yet exist a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired and feeling safe wherever they are at to end the day fulfilled by the work that they do apologize I'm a little nervous I'm not going to lie thank you thank you thank you Simon is an unshakable optimist who believes in the bright future and our ability to build it together so Google please help me welcome Simon [Applause] Sak award thank you for being here [Applause] Simon well Simon we are so glad to
have you here thank you for spending time with us today oh thanks for having me absolutely to get us kicked off I'd like to ask you about your first TED Talk talk in 2009 start with Y uh that was 15 years ago start with why how great leaders can Inspire action can you walk us a little bit about what that was like what was that Journey getting to that Ted talk to deliver that message so people ask me like how long did it take you to like to write the talk or how long did it
take me to write the book and my answer is every day of my life up until that day um you know my work is semiot biographical um and the journey of the why is entirely based in my own personal journey of completely losing my passion for my own work I had a good job I made an okay living I did you know had great clients but I fell out of love with my own work um and uh uh I kept it to myself mainly because I was embarrassed um and if you've ever been in a
dark place and if you don't tell anybody about it turns out it gets darker um and that's exactly what happened to me way back when and um it wasn't until a very very dear friend of mine came to me and said something's wrong and I came clean and admitted what was I was going through and it was a huge weight off my shoulders and so um the journey I went on was to try and reclaim my passion and that's when I discovered there was a Confluence of events but the the short version is I discovered
that I knew what I did and I knew how I did it but I didn't know why and it's based on the biology of human decision-making so I had to know why I do what I do and making money is not a getting promoted is not a why those are results um and so I went on this J this journey to find my why but more important I learned how to help other people find theirs and I helped my friends find their wise and they found renewed love for their own work they some of them
started their own businesses um then they would invite me to share it with their friends and I would help people find their why for 100 bucks on the side and um and then we just sort of kind of spread thought everything was organic until I got an invitation to to do the tedex talk up here in Puget Sound yeah absolutely that's awesome thank you for sharing that with me um in your work you emphasize the importance of knowing one's why but and you just mentioned that you'd gone through this yourself how can individuals discover or
in most cases ReDiscover their own purpose especially during periods of change or uncertainty yeah so one of the uh we only have one why we are the product of our upbringing you and I are uh who we are is based on how we were raised experiences we had as kids our parents our teachers right that's made us those things made us who we are um and there's no changing who you are um and the rest of our lives offer us opportunities to make decisions that are either consistent with who we truly are or not we
call it authenticity we know what it feels like when we make those decisions we have inspiration we have we have passion we have flow we also know what it feels like to be out of balance you know I've done this 100 times why am I not enjoying it anymore you know um uh and so one way you can there's many ways to do it you know I've wrote a book called find your why we offer tools on our website but I'll tell you one one one fun way to do it it's called a friends exercise
and anyone can do this find a friend uh you love and who loves you do not do this with a spouse do not do do do not do this with a sibling do not do this with a parent those relationships are too close do it with a best friend somebody who you could call at 3:00 in the morning you know they take your call or they call you at 3:00 in the morning you would definitely take their call and ask them this simple question why are we friends and they're going to look at you like
you're insane because the part of the brain that controls feelings like love and loyalty doesn't control language we struggle to put our feelings into language I mean this is it's an age-old human problem um and they're going to look at you and like you're insane and then you actually stop asking the question why and you say come on what specifically is it about me that I know you'd be there for me no matter what and they're going to hem and ha they're going to like I don't know uh I can count on you you're always
there for me and you have to play Devil's Advocate good that's the definition of a friend what specifically is it about me that I know you'd be there for me no matter what and you're going to go through a few rounds of this they're going to hate you don't help them don't let anybody else help them and eventually they'll give up and eventually they'll start describing themselves and this is what my friend said to me my friend said look Simon I don't know all I know is I can sit in a room with you I
don't even have to talk to you and I feel inspired and I got goosebumps in fact I'm getting them right now because what they do is they articulate the value you have in their lives which is your why and it's the thing you give to the world that's why you had the emotional response cuz it tapped something deep inside you and that's when you know you're you're there which is you'll either get goosebumps or you'll well up with tears or whatever it is you'll have an emotional response to something they describe in themselves and I
if you do this with multiple friends which I did they'll say very similar if not the exact same thing because the thing you give to the world your why is the value that people take from you absolutely you know in in in start with why you often mention that you don't do business with people who can just give you something or serve a particular need you do business who believe in what you believe they on paper this should make sense but it it just doesn't feel right as you often would say right exactly right absolutely
um I'm going to move on real quick in what ways has your own why evolved over the last couple of years or been tested in Period of times of change in your life or career yeah so Evolution not a thing it's a permanent fixture I might tweak the words yeah but the evolution is how I choose to bring it to life but itself is is a is a is a foundation that's that's why people are reliable right cuz when your why is fixed it's you will always be who I know you will be and if
you make decisions inconsistent with your why then people will say he like I don't know who you are anymore so so the why hasn't evolved at all how I've chosen to bring it to life that's where the fun is that's I can change what I do but I can't change who I am I can't change why I do what I do so it's I mean it's it's taken many twists and turns um uh uh uh you know in all the ways I bring it to life whether it's speaking or writing books um uh doing the
online thing you know when social media showed up like none of those things scared me none of those things AI none of that stuff feels threatening to me it's like I'm I'm always I'm always looking to to thread a needle and I think this is one of the big mistakes people make when they manage a career right which is people plan Roots but they don't have a sense of destination right their sense of destination is abstract to to be senior one day to make millions of dollars one day whatever you know to run something like
sure so they plan routes like I'm going to do you know work at this company for this many years or I'm going to you and and it's the same it's kind of the equivalent of like leaving your house and you see your neighbor packing up their car and you say where are you going and they say vacation you go oh cool where are you going they said vacation they're like no no no I know but where are you going they said I told you vacation well how you going to get there and they say well
I'm going to take 95 going to drive 150 m a day so they tell you the route yeah but they don't know where they're going and that's how a lot of us manage our careers we plan routes and then we create back plans for whatever those short-term goals are but the problem is what if there's Road Works what if there's some sort of closure what do you do you freak out usually and now your metrics are destroyed and you're panicking right I'm the complete opposite I have no idea what roote I'm going to take but
I know that if I'm starting in New York and I want to get to California that's it that's all I know except my California is way abstract like you you uh well it's not that abstract it's just unrealizable it's just idealistic it's not abstract at all actually like you said it to create a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do that's my California right and the the thing is I'll start on 95 and
I'll try and drive 150 m a day that sounds great but then if there's Road works I'll be like oh I'll go this way and this is a slow road so people think that I'm off but they they can't see my twisty road but it's very very focused yeah and if somebody comes to me and says I have AE I'm like great but which direction are you going and I think that's one of the problems which is we jump at jobs that offer us more money but we don't know actually fulfills our values and helps
us Advance our cause and so then we end up somewhere where we're highly paid and unhappy then it's not worth it um so I think I think having a clear sense of very very um distant and idealistic destination and then being agnostic as to the route that we take I think at least for my my experience is a happier is a happier way to advance yeah absolutely that makes a lot of sense you know you and I are speaking a little bit earlier today um for Google and those of us who work in the technology
industry the last couple of years have been tumultuous there's been lightening fast improvements in technology and changes in I won't say the values but the the methods by which a lot of us are being told to achieve our goals and do our jobs and I think you bring up a good point that for each of us individually it shouldn't matter which route we're on or if we have to divert our path as long as we know where we're trying to get to as an end goal and I feel like I know for myself that's something
that I've had to recalibrate um and I think a lot of us have been going through something very similar in terms of are we still doing the work that we enjoy and is it moving us closer to what we want to achieve even if it's not the way we wanted to achieve it I mean you're touching on two things there you know it's still stressful you know what I'm talking about is not the absence of stress it's just clarity as you go through that stress you know and sometimes that stress is a little it feels
a little more passionate you know um but I think what's very important and I think often forgotten in these difficult and uncertain because uncertainty is the worst part like human beings can deal with bad news we can deal with tragedy we can deal with you know something sudden and bad but it's these it's the it's the slow drip of uncertainty that is actually much more Insidious yes um uh uh but in any time of high stress or uncertainty the most important thing we have to do is double down on relationships double down on friendships and
this is the thing we forget which is human beings you know are we're not designed to survive in nature by ourselves we're not very stronger and we're not very smart by ourselves but in groups we're remarkable there's nothing that has ever achieved of any kind of significance in this world by one person it was always teams of people every single time and so I think that um to know how to to develop the skill set of friendship is perhaps the single best thing we can do I I'll I'll give you a couple of examples so
if you think about it um uh sort of we have an entire industry to help us be better leaders we have an entire industry to help us be better parents an entire industry to teach us how to eat better how to exercise better how to sleep better and yet there's precious little on how to be a good friend right and if you look at the rising rates of anxiety and depression and sometimes suicide even the obsession with longevity friendship fixes all those things friendship is the ultimate bioh hack right and if you if you ask
most people are you a good friend most people say yes but if you peel the onion just a little bit you know would you cancel on a friend for a meeting or would you cancel a meeting for a friend oh but my friends would understand turns out we're actually pretty crap friends and if you if you if you look at people's relationships like think about the marriages or personal romantic relationships that that you look to be like that's what I want that's the kind of relationship I want if you ask all those people what's your
secret they all say the same thing which is it's hard work and we do the work now how many people describe their close friendships as hard work but we do the work we take it for granted we they happen by default like making friends is the easy part staying friends is hard and sometimes we stay in Friendship simply because time is the bond right I've been friends for 15 years but I get nothing from this how can you end a friendship after 15 years A friend of mine did this recently where her friendship was F
faltering with someone you know what she did genius she demanded that she and her friend get therapy together wow just like a relationship yeah and I thought that was magical I thought it was absolutely brilliant um uh and very few of us actually have the skills of how to be a friend um um we're not very good at listening when somebody's going through a difficult time we want to fix them we want to offer them advice we're not very good at just sitting in mud with them and going yeah this sucks and waiting for them
to say I think I'm ready to get out now and making them feel not alone and that's the core to friendship and if we develop the skill set of being a friend to someone it's actually helping them be a friend to us as well um a friend of mine was going through something hard which I didn't know about I went to her house for dinner and we just catching up I'm like what have you been up to and she said well last week it was really rough and I was like well why didn't you call
me like I'm one of your best friends like why didn't you call me she says I did I'm like you didn't she goes I did I texted you multiple times I'm like no you didn't and I like pull out my phone to prove to her that she did and the text say what up what are you doing want to come over I'm like you mean these text how am I to be able to distinguish those texts from a for as a cry to help as opposed to every other text you've ever sent me and that's
uh uh she had read an article just previously that when somebody is struggling all they need is 8 minutes of attention from someone wow to feel not alone doesn't mean you're going to you know and so we be we came up with a code which is the text is now do you have 8 minutes which that means I really need you and anyone can leave a meeting for 8 minutes to go just let somebody know that they're not alone yeah um and I think this is when you're going through periods of stress the opportunity to
have somebody that you can simply go home to and say I don't know what's going on and I'm stressed out and there's so much uncertainty and I don't know how to deal with it and I'm so good at making decisions and I don't know what decision to make and just have somebody who knows how to sit there and hear you and give you space I'm telling you that's 90% of it yeah that's amazing you did mention earlier that it's easy to make friends so I'm going to have to tell you about the Seattle freeze after
this event I think friends happen friends happen at least that's how we treat it yeah you know absolutely um let me pivot a littleit everybody has a friend you know even even an imaginary one uh let's talk a little bit about the infinite game mindset um what is this perspective between finite and infinite games and how does that change the way you should move through the world and how you make decisions so this has profoundly changed my view of the world it profoundly changed my whole approach to the world in the mid 1980s a philosopher
and theologian by the name of James KS uh articulated these two types of games finite games and infinite games a finite game is defined as known players fixed rules and agreed upon objective football baseball a new business pitch right um uh if there is a winner necessarily there has to be a loser or losers but more important there's always a beginning a middle and an end always then you have infinite games infinite games are defined as known and unknown players which means you don't necessarily know who all the players are and new players can join
at any time yeah the rules are changeable which means every player can play however they want and the objective is to perpetuate the game to stay in the game as long as possible we are players in infinite games every day of Our Lives whether we know or not no one will ever win career no one will ever be declared the the the the winner of of of of Education or health or marriage nobody wins marriage right you have met wife if you think if you're if you're trying to be number one in your marriage it's
not going to work uh uh there's no such thing as the winner of business right right um uh but if you listen to the language of so many leaders it becomes very clear that they actually don't know the game they're playing in they talk about being number one being the best or beating their competition based on what based on what agreed upon metrics objectives and time frames you can choose those whatever you want um and when you play with a finite mindset in an infinite game when you play to win in a game that has
no Finish Line there are very predictable outcomes decline of trust decline of cooperation decline of innovation I'll give you a real life experience that I had that really captures it so I spoke at at an education Summit for Microsoft and by sheer coincidence a few months later I spoke at an education Summit for Apple this is the Steve Walmer days that's important um at the at the Microsoft Summit every executive's been like 80% of the executives been about 80% of their PowerPoints talking about how to how they were going to beat Apple at the Apple
Summit 100% of the executives been 100% of their presentations talking about how they're going to help teachers teach and how they're going to help students learn one was obsessed with their cause one was obsessed with beating their competition guess who's having morale problems um at the end of my Microsoft talk they gave me a gift they gave me the new Zoom when it was a thing uh the zoom was uh Microsoft's response to the iPod and Balmer had been very public that he was going to make the best iPod and beat apple and blah blah
blah and I got to tell you this little piece of technology was pretty good at the end of my Apple talk I shared a taxi with a senior Apple executive and uh I couldn't help myself it's a personality floww I had to stir the pot and so I turned to him I go you know Microsoft gave me their new Zoom it is so much better than my iPod touch and he looks at me goes I have no doubt and the conversation was over that was it because when you're playing with an infinite mindset you're not
actually competing against anybody else you're competing against yourself that's the only true competition and where Microsoft was trying to beat apple apple was simply trying to do itself um and you recognize when you play with an infinite mindset that sometimes you're ah head and sometimes you're behind that's fine that's just how the game goes and it's worth noting that two years later a year later Apple introduced the iPod uh the iPhone that rendered the zoom and the iPod Obsolete and that's what happens when you play with an infinite mindset you outdo yourself and you destroy
and change marketplaces and I think too many organizations these days for various reasons which we can go into if you want uh but too many organizations and too many leaders uh are playing with a finite mindset in infinite game like when Circuit City went bankrupt Best Buy didn't win anything that's a really good point absolutely now you've written about the importance of optimism what's the difference between blind and informed optimism and why is the latter essentially for effective leadership um well I think the the I don't think any optimism is blind uh I think I
think I think there's blind positivity for sure I mean and not to make it a semantic debate yes there's a there's a blind positiveness and there's an an aware positiveness but the way I like to Define it is um a leader or someone who's constantly positive that is actually very unhealthy um uh because for one it's just not true in very dark times when our leader comes goes everything's great guys look at all the good things that are happening he like sh shut up right um and and when you see somebody in very hard times
who's always positive it actually makes you feel worse about yourself because you're thinking God if they're always positive there be something wrong with me so it's actually it's actually not helpful and it does not breed uh espr deor and camaraderie I I understand why leaders do it it's well-intentioned just doesn't work optimism is the opposite optimism is not naive nor is it blind uh it is the undying belief that the future is bright but we can sit in hell and darkness and struggle now optimism allows for that um optimism allows you to say look these
are the darkest times we've ever been in and I don't even know how long it's going to last I don't even know 100% how to get through it but what I do know is that if we work together and take care of each other we 100% will get through this and we will come out stronger than we went in that's optimism and that's what good leaders are able to do they're able to help us work together in darkness but not ignore the fact that it's dark yeah absolutely one of my favorite phrases is it might
get worse before it gets better but the getting better is the important part right so I I agree with you it usually gets worse before this yeah time after time all right let's talk about change a little bit change is often accompanied by fear and resistance how can we shift our mindset to view change as an opportunity for growth and Innovation and what are some practical strategies we can use to cultivate a more optimistic Outlook during times of change all right that's a big one um okay so I I love all these change management I
love all these change management PowerPoints that are always given people fear change no they don't people fear Sudden Change you know gradual change is not threatening you know Evolution offends no one you know um and sometimes the results of that evolutionary change can be profound and there's no going back um people don't fear change uh people um don't want whatever is working for them to be disrupted right so it's not that I fear the change it's that this is working well for me I don't want this to change like and and I look at that
with uncertainty going is it going to take away this then I don't want it and usually when people are resistant to change it's not the change they're resistant to it's fear that someone younger will take over my job someone less expensive will replace me it's fear that whatever's been working for me that got me promoted time and time again will no longer work it's always it's Almost 100% fear-based And so if you can just recognize that instead of giving people PowerPoints with rational explanations why A change is good and you can look forward to this
change it doesn't you you what you're attempting to do is is address emotions with facts you can never bring facts to an emotional gunfight you have to meet people where they are emotion meets emotion facts meet facts so um the first thing to do is sit down and understand and listen to people tell me what you tell me what's going on tell me what you tell me what you fear do you fear anything and they'll always project it's this that's broken if that doesn't work but at the end of the day and we have a
rule at our company which is if the response is above a five it's about something else like when you leave your fridge open and your partner screams at you he's like why do you always leave the fridge open like it's not about the fridge right and so usually when people are that resistant it's usually not about whatever change you're proposing and so a good leader will spend the time to go and make that person feel heard that's the most important part it doesn't mean that they're going to get what they want but people want to
feel heard right like something like 70% of medical malpractice suits are because the doctor refused to apologize right people want to be seen and people want to be heard and if they feel validated and they feel like their points of view are considered people don't always expect to get what they want they just want to know that that they've been seen that they and that they matter yeah absolutely that makes a lot of sense I mentioned briefly earlier you know I feel like we're going through a period of a lot of change now and it
is the suddenness of it usually that catches us so off guard in the technology industry sudden changes happen all the time um you mentioned earlier about the the the iPad or the the the iPhone iPhone I'm sorry rendering the iPod completely uh extinct and how that was fine for Apple they were able to handle that because it was aligned with their by the way I think they should bring them back and give them to children so that they can cuz my nephew's like I'm listening to music on my iPhone I'm like H are you though
anyway but but but but I digress yeah that's totally fun bring back MP3 players all right let's talk about uh the Clifton strength top five assessment which I know that you have a partnership with so as part of gear up uh the Google school is also making the Clifton strength top five assessment available to every googler around the world so take note of that go to the go link um what why do you think it's important to lead with our strengths to to find them recognize them and then lead with them what have you learned
by doing this for yourself so yeah I like the strength finder and we did do it we did do it as a whole as a whole company everybody did it um and it does it does a lot of things right um the frustration you have with somebody who you just you just they annoy you at work um and I don't mean their personality I mean like there's some some things driving you nuts um it helps understand that they're actually in a position where they're struggling it does they're not leaning into their natural strengths so you're
expecting everybody to be their strengths to be your strengths right so it just helps you see people as people and it and you're like oh that's why and it becomes much easier to help people like sit in their strengths it also for people who are insecure or defensive we all are at some point about what we're good and bad at you look at it be like well that's why I suck at that and it sort of takes a weight of your own shoulders you know that I can't be good at everything it also helps you
understand teeming um uh and it also helps you sort of just recognize and relate to each other um like futuristic is uh I think one of my uh one of my big ones iterative strategic those are sort of I think some my big ones and like when you get to know me you recognize that basically I live with my head in the clouds you know that's why you know my execution is like this big I need other people around me to help me execute my ideas um uh and if you and you if you and
and when I think strength finders does is it it allows to something that I like to call uh confident ignorance right which is we're always told in sort of leadership theory that you have to be vulnerable you have to say what you you know say you don't know something if you don't know something you know and admit your shortcomings and that's scary to a lot of people because nobody wants to be weak but there's confident ignorance right so for example if somebody's like I need you to do this you're like ah I don't know how
to do that uh I'm definitely going to need help uh don't do that like that will freak people out right but if you say oh I suck at this I have no idea how to do that I'm definitely going to need help how to do that need help to to execute that if you just own it that's the confident ignorance just be super confident what you don't know yeah be super confident in what your weaknesses are it actually is quite inspiring it actually gives people a Clues as to where you need help which means they'll
help you but also it helps them create a space so that they'll be honest back to you so if you're in a leadership position especially and you're confident in the things you don't know guess what the team will do they'll be confident in things they don't know and then you can help them but if you're lying and hi get and faking every day pretending you know everything and you know all the answers guess what your team's going to do pretend they know all the answers all the time because we generally follow our leaders yeah absolutely
now you touched on something that reminded me of a previous topic as well in terms of competition versus worthy Rivals right and knowing your own strengths the strengths of the people that you're not competing with but operating within the same the same game within and how you might be able to sharpen Steel against steel can you tell me a little bit more about that and viewing people as Rivals you can learn and grow from versus people that you must defeat sure so in a in a finite game you have competitors you play to beat someone
right they are your competition in an infinite game there is no competition because there's no winning and losing right and yet the fact that we call other companies in our space or even our colleagues competitors is actually incorrect right um uh they are other players and they are Rivals and some of those Rivals are worthy of comparison in other words they're really good at what they do in fact sometimes they're better at some things than we are and so I believe in the concept of worthy rivalry which is find another player who is as good
or better than you in some things um uh that their strengths reveal to you your weaknesses and use them as a foil be grateful for them now go work on those weaknesses right so where uh I have no problem with Microsoft making a great MP3 player but start trying to beat Apple just use apple as a foil and be like oh my god look how good their product is guys we need to do better right um so uh and we can do it at work too you know we we pick people to we compete against
at work which think about that like when you hear somebody got a promotion and you get mad right like you got mad at somebody else's success well they don't deserve it maybe not I mean this nobody said this was always fair right think about all the promotions you got [Laughter] uh cuz I deserved all of my every single one over everybody else yeah no uh uh but having worthy Rivals at work is totally fine to be like oh my God that person they're so good at public speaking they're such a great engineer they're so good
at like the way they lead and other people just like follow them that if they quit I knew that like 10 people are going to leave with them like I want to be like that instead of hating them and trying to bring them down use them to learn from them watch them study them use them as your worthy rival your P your Pacer um and maybe you'll outgrow them and they won't be your worthy rival anymore that's fine too um but I think worthy rivalry is a much healthier way of viewing other players in the
game yeah absolutely awesome we're going to transition to some questions that came directly from googlers if that's all right uh so our first one is from Isam and I apologize if I mispronounce any of your names Isam from Dublin in a world [Music] [Laughter] increasingly in a world increasingly driven by artificial intelligence and automation how can individuals find and maintain a sense of purpose and what role should leaders play in helping them do so so so the great thing about technology and the great thing about technologists is they have great imaginations and that's part of
how the technology gets invented in advance right somebody dreams of something insane and they build a a crappy version of it right like for those of you old enough to remember when the internet showed up and people predicted the end of bricks and mortar that there would be no more bricks and mortar stores all shopping would be online well that didn't happen turns out people like browsing and trying things on now there are challenges to those bricks and mor staying open from a strictly numbers standpoint but we like going shopping you know we're Hunter gathers
and so those predictions were completely wrong even though the technology would allow for it and this is part of the problem with technologists and no disrespect to any of the engineers in the room but like technology doesn't solve human problems technology won't replace a friend right yes might be able to give you some advice and hard times but at the end of the day to be able to sit with somebody and if somebody's going through a hard time to feel their hand on your shoulder and say don't worry I got your back there's no technology
that's ever going to replace that um and I think a lot of the promises of AI are just that they're promises and very few of any of them are being realized right now it's fun it's having and algorithms are not a new thing you know we've had AI for a long time it's becoming more sophisticated without a doubt some of it's incredible but I I think I think a lot of the promises are yet to be realized um so I'm kind of in a wait and sea mode but I also I'm also doubling down on
on Humanity you know and I and I and I not to be cynical but if we go back to the 70s and 80s where robotics started to show up in in factories for example and uh a robotics kind of did a lot of harm to the livelihoods of people in Blue Collar jobs they were replaced by robots go to a car factory it's a lot of robots and a few people it used to be a lot of people with few robots and when people in those jobs said you're destroying our livelihoods sort of the white
color world you know Wall Street and technologist said you know just res skill right well AI is going to do nothing to blue color work work like AI is not going to replace the baggage handler at the airport AI is not going to replace your plumber to fix your toilet it's just not going to happen right it's not going to build your house right Blue Collar work is about as strong as it can be in the AI world where it's going to affect is the knowledge economy and it's kind of like it's kind of like
a balancing MH you know and so yeah there's going to be a lot of knowledge work that will be replaced by AI without a doubt will it completely decimate it no will there be new jobs created that we kind imagine of course and by the way I don't think prompter is one of them uh and the reason is is you need to have a prompter because right now the technolog is not very sophisticated and so you need to know how to ask it questions that'll be solved in a couple years where you can just speak
like you and I are now and it will be able to basically understand it so that's a nonsense job for all prompt engineers in the crowd just take note No but it's good for now just not forever but I think there's going to be a rebalancing is what it's going to be and there will be some new skill sets that we need to go go build up and yes knowledge work is going to be the place that it's going to hurt not blue color work um you know it's just that's how the that's how it
went um but I do think that that jobs will switch so for example um in my world the writer is the king and the editor is like me you know and uh I think that'll completely flop I think you know AI can write a shitty first draft of a press release but you need a person to edit it and so I think editors people with good editorial eyes are going to become Heroes whereas the the the writer who can write the shitty first draft and then give it to the editor that used to be treated
like the hero and spend you know a week working on that whatever that draft was that that's the job that's going to be decimated but but editors editors of everything so prompt editor is what we should editor exactly exactly because at the end of the day you know AI is good at taking old work and like I'm not afraid of ai ai like if you said write a book in the style of Simon cynic it'll write a book based on what I've done right but has no idea what I'm thinking it's not going to come
up with the idea of like I'm writing a book about friendship AI would not conceive of that right so I think new ideas and looking forwards and this is why having why and having purpose and having cause matters because I'm always looking way ahead going like this AI is behind AI is looking backwards asking where I came from I don't care where I'm came from I care where I'm going and so I think the more that we can focus on where we're going and AI becomes a tool to help do that but I don't think
it's threatening if you're forward focused yeah absolutely awesome thank you we have a second question here from Valentina and Boulder quite a long question so I might cut it up a little bit uh Simon you often speak about the importance of finding purpose and meaning in our work and our lives in a world facing increasing uncertainty and change how can we cultivate genuine optimism without falling into the Trap of POS toxic positivity which we touched on earlier or trying to force meaning onto events that feel overwhelming and beyond our control I like that second part
which is forcing meaning on things I find that very interesting and it's it's uh I have a friend this is this is great I have a friend who called me up and she's sort of woo woo uh I'm saying I just realized I'm saying that in like one of the woooo capitals of the world Pacific Northwest anyway she she's woooo and I call her up to check in on her and she's going through a hard time and I'm like how are you she goes it's difficult but I'm I'm supposed to be learning a lesson I
said how are you she goes I'm I'm struggling but the universe is telling me that I need to you know up my game I'm like how do you feel she goes and this went on like so many rounds yeah and I just kept saying about how do you feel how do you feel and she just kept telling me that you know the universe is trying to teach her a lesson and she needs to look inside deep and all this stuff and I just said can you stop with all of this please and just tell me
how you feel and she says I'm sad and she started crying I said just sit in there that please like don't worry about if what you're supposed to learn don't worry about if it's a sign you're sad just be sad you know and I think our society has forgotten here's how I'll tell you so I I love art I have I I buy a lot of Art and I bought this sketch this beautiful sketch of a dead bird and it showed up in the mail and I opened it up and I was like I had
the biggest buyer's remorse I was like what the hell am I doing buying a picture of a dead bird I'm not going to hang a dead bird on my wall and I was just like you know and by sheer dumb luck I had a friend who was visiting who was over at the time when it showed up in the mail who's an artist and she says to me she says to me uh a good art collection has a uh what dides she say she says a a a good art collection and captures all the emotions
and I went yeah and then I had my dead bird framed and I hang it on the wall and I love my dead bird now cuz I have I have all the emotions in my art collection not just the happy ones and and same is true for people right a healthy person has all the emotions if you get stuck in sadness that's a clinical problem if you get stuck in happiness happiness That's not healthy either right a good well-rounded human being has all the emotions and we should be okay with having emotions in fact we've
made it that it's a bad thing to have emotions like think about how we talk about mental health we talk about mental health like it's a goal you either have it or you don't right um which is nonsense that's I don't even like the term mental health I like the term mental Fitness it's something you're constantly working on like Fitness is something that we're supposed to always be doing sometimes we fall off the wagon sometimes we get back on but it's a it's a lifelong process and mental Fitness is the same thing I should always
be working on my mental Fitness sometimes I'm ahead and sometimes I'm behind but it's okay to be sad or confused or uncertain or depressed or and just go through and the most important thing for us to do is just say it how are you H if I'm honest little sad what's making you sad not really sure anything you want to talk about no no I'm good well I'm here for you I appreciate that and just knowing we're not alone yeah that's what makes us capable of managing our emotions and being in our emotions um my
friend Rick who's like a he's a monk to all of us you know I asked him about loneliness uh and I said to I said Rick do you ever get lonely and he said never I'm always with myself and I've taken that on like I've taken that on and I've taken on sort of being okay with my emotions but I think I I love what she says like trying to find meaning where there is none sometimes it's just a bad day sometimes you didn't get enough sleep I mean who knows what sometimes you just feel
a little lonely a little shitty okay just make sure you're okay with it and make sure maybe somebody knows and that's it yeah that makes sense awesome uh we have a question from Dennis in New York in your view what role does optimism play in driving Innovation how can Google employees use optimism to fuel creativity and break through thinking especially in times of uncertainty you have to have optimism for Innovation you have to have an infinite mindset for Innovation otherwise it's features and benefits otherwise you just make the screen a little bigger and make it
a little faster that's all you ever get right and that's usually where Tech goes It goes to features and benefits because because uh the pressures become greater the risk tolerance has become smaller in in companies uh the the incentive structures no longer reward risk-taking they reward success right I remember when I was young in my career I'll spare you the whole story but basically I took part in something that failed and I got a huge promot promotion and they promoted me for my initiative they rewarded the behavior not the outcome and great cultures will recognize
the behaviors that they want repeated yeah not just the outcomes because if it's only outcome based we're going to play it safe because we're more likely to get an outcome right um and so leaps you know the same year that Babe Ruth broke the record for home runs he also broke the record for strikeouts uh uh I think it was Hank Aaron who broke his record he broke the strikeout record as well right um uh so I think optimism plays a huge role and that's where cause comes in which is we're trying to advance something
way bigger than ourselves and the company and the leaders can easily describe the vision the idealistic vision of the world we're trying to build I have a dream all men are created equal like these are visions of Worlds that don't exist and never will but they are strivings and and and the joy and the the sense of progress that make every time we accomplish something that makes us feel like we're getting closer to that idealistic state but idealism and the and and and and the optimism that idealism breeds is essential and I fear that it's
been lost in our country it's been lost from our national leaders and by the way I don't it's not a political thing it's been probably since the fall of the Berlin Wall like no democrat or republican has effectively articulated a vision for America that inspires all Americans um and I think we've lost it in in business if I if we look at our our our our business leader today and in in our biggest companies they're more obsessed with their shareholder value than they are with the visions that they founded the companies with um they're uh
more obsessed with short-term incentive structures than they are with long-term bets even if they fail a bunch of times they fear Wall Street which is hilarious to me how can you claim to be a leader when you do what a 27-year-old analyst tells you to do and it's all of these things we keep replacing Visionary CEOs with operators to run our companies the number of CEOs that were the COO or CFO MH is amazing uh and uh um and they have proven track records no Visionary has a proven track record because it's all nonsense it's
all Madness right um um but they inspire people to come and take the risks with them and I don't blame any particular company or leader I just think over the past 40 years the way that capitalism has gone and the rise of miltonian and and Jack welan uh capitalism we've seen in one of the side effects uh is is an eroding of optimism and idealism I think we need it back and we need the leaders who will give it back to us now you bring up a good point about uh the those companies who had
started by Visionaries and then eventually get taken over by operators can you tell me a little bit more about your assessment of some of those companies and for some of them there have been times where new Visionaries are brought in who can recapture the original why the original cause get a company back on top we saw we saw it we saw it we saw Bill Gates get replaced by his Operator by Balmer and Balmer is a very talented executive when he's working alongside a Visionary but we saw what happened at Microsoft right they became uninspiring
they became short-term focused they couldn't attract Talent the best talent left the place was I I mean I visited during those days I mean nobody was having fun you know fear was the was the overriding feeling at work you know watching your back was the overriding feeling and when bomber left Sacha came in and He restored some of that that vision you know Mike Duke at Walmart he was pure pure operator who only cared about short-term incentive structures and he was replaced by Doug McMillan who brought back some of the the magic and you see
morale and you see like people hated Walmart now they like Walmart again like you can see what what happens internally happens externally as well Michael Dell replaced himself with his operator he had to come back Howard Schultz replaced himself with his operator twice he had to come back right um and it's just this repeating pattern and I know why why we do it um when you talk to the Visionary and you say who should replace you they look at their CFO or CEO and they say I couldn't have done it without them true they know
about they know more they know more about the workings of the business than I do true um I trust them more than anybody else true the problem is they're not Visionary the problem is the wrong skill set for the job and what makes great companies is the partnership of visionary and operator Visionaries by themselves just Drool on themselves and have great ideas about how to change the world but you know they can't build the companies yeah right uh at least not in the way that they need to be built but it's this magical partnership that
makes great companies and operators will always do well in life because they know how to get things done Visionaries really need the operators more but it's it's the partnership but the Visionary needs to lead the vision and the operating needs to have the the strength of ego to say it's not my vision but damn I believe in it and I know how to build it and it's the partnership that's so magical um and it's very hard to put the Visionary in the subordinate position yeah uh in a in a corporation that that requires Vision yeah
absolutely we've lost even the definition of vision right what's your vision and they give us some Financial number by some date yeah well that's what you mentioned earlier even outcomes like promotions and making money those are results those are not actually causes right can you talk a little bit more about that the the the what's that prove your why a little bit by the way money is fine but let's recognize the role that money plays inside a Visionary organization right which is it's the fuel that makes the car go so if the car is the
company and the vision is the destination that you're trying to get to money makes the car go if you don't have money the car doesn't go no vision is accomplished so money is an essential component but it's not the reason to own a car you don't own a car just so you can buy gas right for the same reason you don't start a company just so you can make money it's inconsistent we make we buy a car to go places we started the business to advance something to move towards something to change the way the
world functions and the money will get us there and somewhere along the way we take our eyes off the road and start looking obsessively at the gas tank you know um and I think some of it's gotten a little a little confused for a lot of companies um and you can tell a lot about what a company believes by looking at their products um I I'll give you a little inside baseball so when I was writing start with Y I had all these theories about Apple and I'd never really visited or met anybody at Apple
they were just theories and I thought before I publish a book I should probably check so we sent a note to Apple ask requesting an interview with Steve Jobs and I didn't know this at the time but my publisher had uh uh my publisher had published an unauthorized biography of Steve Jobs and so because I was associated with that publisher uh I was told to know I was told not only can I not interview jobs I can't interview anybody and I may never V visit campus oh and by the way all your ideas are wrong
so I had no inside access yeah the only thing that I had was the way that Apple talked about itself so I looked at its packaging I looked at its products I looked at its store experience I looked at its advertising I looked at it I read its legal type on a box I read I just looked at everything that was public and you can see a very clear pattern of who they are who they were and what they stood for and so I could easily assess what the why was because what they did proved
it what they did was so consistent some of the whats made money some of the whats didn't make money but it didn't matter the through line was there and so I was able to accurately say this is what Apple St stands for stood for just by looking at what they put out there so I think when when you and you asked me the question before you know how do you use the why the Y is a filter so Disney for example um went off the rails when uh at the lat later half of Michael eisner's
tenure because he became obsessed with world domination when Bob Iger and Tom Stags took over uh um they sat down with the portfolio and they divested of things that didn't make sense so they got rid of the production company that made Pulp Fiction they got rid of the music company that um that had bands in it called World War III that was names of one of the bands that did Death Metal not very Disney and they just they they were profitable but they didn't they didn't prove the Disney ethos so they just divested them Disney
has never and will never go into casinos like think about that a Star Wars and Marvel Casino in the Vegas Strip best casino ever good it'll never happen because it doesn't fit the ethos you'd scratch your head and say that doesn't make sense right and so they're very disciplined about doing things not they don't just Chase profit first they say should we in this bu be in this business now how are we going to make a profit doing it but there's a filter first and I think what happens for a lot of companies they chase
the money before the before they run the filter so using your why is that filter absolutely all right we have a question from mioko in New York it's it can feel easy to be an optimist when things are going well what tips do you have for maintaining an optimistic mindset when things are tough especially for an extended or uncertain period of time yeah so a couple things it goes back to the answer I gave some moments ago which is the future is bright and for an optimist to say this sucks and what you double down
on is relationships you double down on taking care of each other you double down on all of the principles of good leadership and so how you make it work whether you're in a position of formal leadership ship or not and this is important which is every one of us can be the leaders we wish we had whether we have the formal rank or not and you take responsibility for making sure that you good you good we're good you take responsibility for saying folks I don't know how long this is going to be I don't know
this is this sucks this sucks it sucks for you it sucks for me I don't like this either this sucks but I know that if we take care of each other we will get through this stronger than we than we than we feel now yeah um and uh and what you find is the strength of those relationships if somebody's laid off they leave with this network uh if people decide to quit they take people with them because we follow people yeah right and so what you're doing is is is is relationships will always Outlast everything
else there's nothing certain about anything at work new technologies are disruptive uh new leaders are sometimes disruptive uh corporate strategies are sometimes disruptive and we can't rely that everybody makes the right decisions people in leadership positions make stupid decisions and sometimes we're the the the the the collateral damage of stupid decisions it happens all the time doesn't mean they're bad people just means they made a stupid leadership decision and didn't consider the the the ripples so the thing that we have to double down on is friendship is friendship it is the thing and that doesn't
mean we're going to avoid struggle I'll give you perfect example I had the opportunity to visit Kenya this year and uh for those who haven't been please go and we went to rural Kenya into the into the Mara and we like poverty mud Huts all the tropes right MH um and you start to realize that they're happy they don't die of heart disease they don't die of uh diabetes a lot of they have a lot less cancer and yes they have struggle they have struggle that we can't comprehend walking for hours to get water yes
all that is true they absolutely have struggle but they have each other in a way that we don't and we we look down on them you know because we have wealth and they don't have wealth like our kids have lots of toys their kids have a stick in a tire you know but there's data that shows that um children with too many toys children with more toys have a worse imagination than children with fewer toys so yeah the kids got to sticking a tire and he's laughing and he's with his friends you know and you
realize that kid's got an imagination he's not playing with stick and tire he's playing up here yeah you know and um the way they talk about leadership and the way they talk about taking care of each other and and I started to realize like we're so addicted to money we're so addicted to wealth that we feel sorry people for people who don't have wealth right and so it's like a heroin addict feeling sorry for somebody who doesn't feel my high and we're looking at the heroin at going yeah I know you feel good but you
know you're addicted to heroin right uh and I realized like like I think we can double down on imagination we can double down on having less we can double down on community we can double down on taking care of each other we can double down on celebrating the success of others we can double down on the joy of helping someone else achieve and that's the some of the people I met there they were the most remarkable leaders the most remarkable people I've ever met and they have a pittance for what we have and I think
they we may have wealth but they're a lot wealthier than we are absolutely well thank you very very much Simon for sharing all these thoughts with us this conversation is going me a lot to think about I hope you all have enjoyed it as well thank you so much for being with us here today this was a real fun enjoy appreciate it thanks so much apprciate it [Music]
