it is now time uh for me to introduce the final session um of day one and uh um the person who we have joining us is Simon cynic uh Simon is an unshakable optimist he believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together described as a Visionary thinker with a rare intellect Simon has devoted his professional life to help Advance a vision of the world that does not yet exist 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 they do he continues to share inspiration through his bestselling books including start with why Leaders Eat Last and the infinite game as well as his podcast a bit of optimism in addition Simon is the founder of the optimism company a leadership and learning development company and he publishes other inspiring thinkers and doers through his publishing partnership with penguin Random House called optimism press so this is going to be a session where we invite all of you to share your questions we want this to be a question sort of an interactive session where you'll be able to send in the things that you want to ask Simon so if you haven't already downloaded the wobi app that is the way that you'll be able to ask those questions please uh you can find the QR code on the uh back of your pass so you can download that now if you haven't done so um so get those questions coming in but without further Ado please join me in welcoming to the stage Simon [Applause] syk good very welcome thanks over [Applause] here uh Simon welcome welcome to New York thank you it's good to be back absolutely it's not the first time um delighted that you're here as I said we want this to be hopefully an opportunity for the audience to to send their questions in so I'll be taking as many of those as possible but I wanted just to kick off with a couple of questions specifically as you know this this uh the big theme for the world business Forum this year is purpose this is a topic that um goes to the very heart of your work um let's maybe just talk about some of the the biggest challenges that you think organizations are facing today when it comes to cultivating a purpose-driven culture and how they can sort of overcome some of those obstacles so here's the good news the good news is having purpose at work and recognizing that people want their work to be worth more than the money they make is now accepted that's a good thing talking about purpose no longer sounds like some ooey gooey hippie dippy stuff it's it actually sounds like serious business practice so we like that so much so that almost every company seems to have a purpose statement just visit their website and click purpose and it'll tell you what it means so we like that the problem is and when you talk about the difficulty is how many companies are actually making decisions based on that purpose and that number Falls woefully low and if you don't actually make decisions to advance your purpose then it's just marketing so for example um uh the company CVS uh which is pharmacies they have a purpose statement which is something to the effect of taking care of our customers and protecting their health something like that um and uh they would have meetings with Hospital leaders and doctors to you know do deals and at the end of those meetings there was always an awkward silence when the doctors would say so you say that you care about health in and that's your purpose then why do you sell cigarettes um and they realized that they had a problem and so they came back and they made a unilateral decision to remove every pack of cigarettes from every single one of their stores Wall Street freaked out um started criticizing the company telling them that all of those sales would then go to other stores and how dare CVS do that and their stock price was punished in the short term here's what actually happened where CVS had um a critical mass of stores they actually saw smoking decline just in those communities so not selling cigarettes actually helped more people quit smoking the other thing it did was it made people choose to come to CVS and they saw the average sale price go up and as will talked about when the people who work for the company hear their leaders talk about having purpose but can see clearly that they're not making decisions to advance that purpose and they saw their company take what should have been a huge Financial Risk and even a financial loss to do something the pride to work for a company that actually did the things that it stood for you saw morale Skyrocket and the best thing about it was the company continued their stock pric easily recovered of course it always does um and all of those sales didn't go to other stores and you started to see the company as will talked about Thrive Beyond they more than made up for the money that they lost in cigarette sales which by the way was billions of dollars the problem is that other companies who in their space never did the same thing so they said that they cared about health but they continued to sell uh cigarettes as well yeah so doing the thing and saying the thing that you believe are not the same thing and so what are how can we start overcoming what are the barriers to do that because you know we we see that there there's profit margins to be met there there's results quarterly results to be hit so how do you how can what would be some of your advice you would give to leaders to be able to you know you're saying it's not the same thing but to actually make them the same thing well this is the whole concept behind a finite and infinite mindset to be quite to be quite honest um when you talk about companies that are obsessed with their quarterly numbers what they're doing is playing with a finite mindset versus the companies that are purpose driven that are playing with an infinite mindset for those who don't know what I'm talking about let me sort of Define the terms really quickly um in the mid 1980s a philosopher and theologian by the name of Dr James kse defined these two types of games finite games and infinite games a finite game is defined as known players fixed rules and an agreed upon objective football baseball if there's a winner necessarily there has to be a loser and more importantly there's always a beginning a middle and an end then you have infite games infinite games are defined as known and unknown players which means you don't necessarily know who all the other players are and new players can join the game at any time the uh 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 whether we know it or not nobody wins career you'll never be declared the winner of career it's never going to happen um there's no such being no such thing as being number one in your marriage you know you can try it will not work um there's no such thing as winning education and there's definitely no such thing as being the winner of business when Circuit City went bankrupt Best Buy didn't win anything um uh business is an infinite game new players can join you can run your business however you want and the objective is to stay in business obviously the problem is is if you listen to the language of too many of our Business Leaders it becomes abundantly clear that they have no clue the game they're playing in they talk about being number one being the best or beating their competition based on what based upon what are green objectives metrics and time frames and this is a problem because when we play with a finite mindset in an infinite game when we play to win in a game that has no Finish Line there are some consistent and predictable outcomes the big ones the decline of trust the decline of cooperation and the decline of innovation and so when we talk about companies that fail to advance purpose it's us usually because they're playing with a finite mindset beat the competition hit the number right to the at the expense of the health of the actual company and the health of the culture other companies that play with an infinite mindset understand that we want this game to last forever and sometimes we're ahead and sometimes we're behind but there's no such thing as winning and those companies that are more purpose-driven have built in inherently a sense of patience yes absolutely it's good to have goals there's nothing problem with no problem with having targets and sometimes you'll hit them and sometimes you miss them the more important thing is what's your momentum are you trending up um and so it if you have an infinite mindset it is much easier to be uh purpose-driven in fact it it it sort of happens by accident happens automatically yeah super right so now we're going to dive into some of the questions in the audience which are starting to flood in um so let's start with um let's start with this one from Jess she says we heard from will about leaders clarify find the what and why and letting their team come up with how what tips do you have for getting leaders comfortable with giving that control and empowerment to their teams that's from Jess Jess where are you where are you scream out here okay it's a good question and it's a hard question because for any of us who have built a business and for many of us if you're an entrepreneur you were the chief cook and bottle washer from the beginning of time and you've slowly let go of all those things and it's I always think it's funny that our team talks to us like we don't know how anything works when we used to do everything um but one of the most difficult things to do for a leader is to let go because at the end of the day we trust ourselves sometimes we say things like well I'm just going to do a better job so why don't I just do it but the problem is is we're making the whole business reliant on us and that's a weak business that's power of personality that's not a strong business I'll give you an example um uh David marquay it's the second time we've invoked him the the submarine driver the submarine Captain talked about how on his submarine they had one guy who was the best guy at parking the submarine he was gifted in parking submarines and so whenever they came into Port they needed to park the submarine guess who they got to park the submarine and then it occurred to the captain once that what if he s sick what if he can't do it um I have a problem and so he asked somebody else to park the submarine and here's the problem didn't go well and so the Temptation is to go back and ask the best submarine uh Parker to do it again but he didn't he waited and he let the guy the the new guy try again and again and again until he became an expert submarine Parker and then guess what they did they asked for a third guy to do it and what they're doing is building a bench and we sometimes that submarine Parker we know we're the best at it we've been doing it longer than everybody else we usually care more than everybody else um and so the question is is how do you have the patience to let somebody fall and try again fall and try again and fall and try again what will give them the motivation to try again is that they can that they know that we're in their Corner cheering them on it is very hard I'm not going to lie but it is essential if you want to build a scalable business so thanks Simon um so this one let's pick up from Ed Ed says how do we encourage because you describe yourself as an optimist um and Ed says how do we encourage leaders not to confuse optimism with complacency but to see optimism within the lens of a strong belief in the creativity and common Touch of humans oh I that's so good where are you Ed shout thank you so um I find that combination of optimism as complacency really interesting the more common question I get is you know how does optimism not be sort of naive or blindly positive and I love this idea that optimism is complacency and I guess the connection is that if somebody's optimistic that they don't need to work hard because everything will just work out um uh I think we have to clearly Define what optimism is optimism is the undying belief that the future is bright but it allows for reality to exist and I think complacency has no room to exist in blind positivity or as we're calling it sort of blind optimism so for example we can be in darkness we can be in difficulty and we can be in struggle and The Optimist says look these are hard times and I do not know how long we were going to be in these hard times but what is necessary is for us to come together work hard take care of each other and I am confident that we will get through this and come out of the stronger than we went in that's what optimism sounds like but I I don't think you can be an optimist without hard work I think um I think uh the idea of just sitting back and thinking that the world would take care of itself what as you're describing as complacency is uh that's naive and blind yeah optimism takes a lot of hard work because the world is difficult and markets are difficult and everything doesn't go the way we want I mean what's the old adage if you know if you want to make God laugh tell him your plans you know um so yeah optimism is hard work that's a great question um so Justin um specific situ situation that he's facing he says we've grown very quickly and under previous HR screening was less than adequate so we have people who do not have the intellect work ethic or even the desire to be a high performer but these people are in key roles how do we deal with the transition of bringing in better performers who are better qualified without destroying morale we care about all people under our care but nonetheless they are all underperformers by any metric you're going to have to ask Justin where he is [Laughter] now Justin why don't we answer this one hypothetically you didn't come with your boss did you um uh thanks for the easy question thank you very much good night yeah um okay so let's tackle this one let's tackle this one um underperformance is sometimes obviously a condition of the people we hired of course of course and sometimes we hire poorly and sometimes we make a mistake that that happens that's okay um sometimes underperformance is a condition of the work environment that they're in let's give people the grace that if we changed the leadership environment and changed our mentality that we actually would help them and we're all guilty of this anybody who's ever been in a leadership position is guilty of forming a narrative about someone as an underperformer G they screw up everything and then what ends up happening is all we do is think about them and treat them as an underperformer and all we do is notice the things that they get wrong and then when we give them feedback sessions it's usually us correcting minor things over and over and over again to the point where we completely destroy their confidence and what I recommend and and by the way we're all guilty of this and I think it's essential for leadership teams to check each other that when somebody goes down a path of creating a narrative that someone is an underperformer as if it's a character flaw that we interrupt that and say is that true what have they gotten right what are they good at and if you catch people doing things right versus always catching them doing things wrong that positive reinforcement is so much more powerful than catching them doing things wrong it's also okay to announce that you expect a lot of your people um uh it's okay to say uh we as an organization can do better than we have been doing and I think it's incumbent on all of us to help each other and push further and push harder and we are here to help you and Coach you and for the people who raise their hands and say I'll take the coaching or for us to offer that coaching to people where they need help but the only time for me that somebody should be asked to leave the company is if they prove themselves to be uncoachable if there's no willingness to learn whatsoever um I'll give you one story story that really captures that the environment and our attitude towards our people really matters um uh I went on a business trip to uh Las Vegas a bunch of years ago and the they put me up at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas Lovely Hotel um and the reason it's a lovely hotel is not because of the fancy beds any hotel can buy a fancy bed it's because of the people who work there um and in the Four Seasons in Las Vegas they happen to have a coffee bar in the lobby so one afternoon I went and bought myself a cup of coffee and the Barista working that day was a kid named Noah Noah was funny and engaging and charming and I stood there for far too long buying a cup of coffee just CU I enjoyed talking to Noah and as is my nature I asked Noah do you like your job and without skipping a beat Noah said I love my job now in my line of work that's significant like is rational I like the people I work with I get paid well I like my job um Love is emotional it's a deep it's a higher order connection right do you love your wife I like her a lot right not the same Noah said I love my job this kid has a higher order of connection to his job so I wanted to know what was the root of that connection so I immediately followed up I said Noah tell me specifically what's happening at the Four Seasons what is the Four Seasons do what is the Four Seasons doing that you would say to me you love your job and without skipping a beat Noah said that throughout the day his managers walk past him and ask them if there's something he needs something that they can do to help him do his job better not just his manager any manager and then he said I also work for another hotel group and there the managers walk past me every day and catch me when I'm doing something wrong there all they do is drive my performance there I like to keep my head below the radar and get through the day and collect my paycheck and go home he said only the Four Seasons do I feel I can be myself the reason this is such a significant story is this is the exact same human being and yet our experience of him and his quality of performance is profoundly different not because of the person but because of the leadership environment in which he's working so to answer your question Justus let's give them the grace that they are higher performers than we think they are or even they think they are and if we create an environment where we can catch them doing things right and giving the coaching that they need I bet more than half of them would surprise you can we take this is a mini parenthesis here but we need to address this because the questions are getting filled with it um why are you wearing two watches you then people can stop asking so is it annoying people you I'm giving good advice and people are focused on why I'm wearing too muches have you heard anything I've said up until now the reason is is somebody gave me the Apple watch which was really nice of them but I don't want to wear an Apple Watch because I don't want to be connected all the time I don't want to get texts I don't want to get anything I don't want it buzzing and distracting me I want to be fully present all the time but I do know that it's the single best tracker you know sort of like like better than a whoop better than an aura ring mine's not charged I just like the way it looks um I I don't need a piece of technology to tell me how to bad night's sleep I mean I've been up since 3:00 in the morning and I'm really grumpy um um and so I have everything turned off on it except all of the tracking and pulse stuff so all it's doing is is tracking my health that's all thank you which I'm sure makes the people at Apple who works so hard so proud that I'm basically using it as a glorified whoop right let's get back to the uh let's get back to the more serious stuff um this from Crystal um how do you hold people accountable for high standards of excellence while also giving them the space to take risks and fail super easy oh good yeah super easy um you'll always get the behavior year reward um you'll always get the behavior year reward so when I was young in my career I worked for a big Ad Agency and we had a big new business pitch and it was the senior leaders wait who was who asked the question uh Crystal Crystal where are you shout okay thank you so when I uh young and my career I worked for a big ad Ad Agency and we had a big new business pitch coming up and it was normal for the senior Executives to do the the new business pitches I was the junior of the most Junior um and so all the senior Executives went away for Christmas vacation the pitch was in January this was December and I was assigned to work on this pitch and uh they told me to prepare the War Room which basically means hang the research on the walls um so me and this other Junior uh person we did that in an hour uh and we still had a week to kill um and so we decided to do the pitch just to fill time I guess um so we read all the research we went through it we developed an Insight we came up with a strategy and we actually wrote the pitch deck and when the senior Executives came back from their vacations we presented the work that we had done um and they were so impressed they actually used our pitch they used our strategy for for the for the new business pitch and we lost the business we did not win the pitch and my bus gave me a huge promotion they moved me up two levels because he wasn't rewarding My outcome he was rewarding my initiative and by rewarding my initiative get guess what I did more of took more initiative if he had come to me and said look amazing so glad you did that but you didn't win the pitch so I'm not going to give you anything next time I would have done nothing um or I would have taken the safe road um and simply asked somebody else to help me or waited for the you know the the senior guys to come back and so you're always going to get the behavior you reward and I think very often what we forget um is that we over we over index on trying to incentivize performance you can't incentivize performance you can only incentivize Behavior so what behaviors are more likely to lead to uh success the Marine Corps teaches this to their officers they understand that good leaders sometimes suffer Mission failure and bad leaders sometimes enjoy Mission success so simply rewarding the outcome does not ensure you get the kind of person you want in the company um so get the behavior and figure out a reward system where it's formal or informal to recognize and reward the behavior and you'll get more of it super this one from Laura she says uh we heard will and I know you are watching as well backstage uh talk about his premale team meetings what components do you deem essential for a regular team meeting to help build culture morale and team trust Laura shout out hi um uh so especially in this modern day and age where we have Blended workforces or we have virtual workforces um it actually requires more more work more of what will is doing um of what he recommends to actually maintain cohesion and Trust in an organization so Isaac Stern the famous violinist said music is what happens between the notes well in a company trust is what happens between the meetings it's the sauntering into the conference room it's the walking out of the conference room it's the it's the chatter you have on the hallway it's bumping into something to be like oh I forgot to tell you it's going to get a coffee it's going to get lunch it's stuff like that all of those things by themselves in us but in total they start to build cohesion trust relationships and all those other good Mushy Mushy things in a virtual scenario for example um we don't have between the meetings we just have the meetings and so we have to artificially create those things so one of the things we do as a company is we do a weekly huddle we come together about 30 45 minutes every single week the whole team and except for some high level announcements there's very little to any business discuss it's just a ha you and we break out into little breakout rooms that you can do on zoom and we talk about whatever there's no subject set we talk about important things unimportant things what somebody did that weekend it doesn't really matter and the point is we're getting to know each other and these meetings these huddles have become absolutely essential I'm a great believer in bringing people together especially if you have a virtual organization the annual offsite the other thing that I'm a great believer in is the hackathon where if you have a difficult problem to solve if you have an initiative that's coming up to take the core team of people who are working on it two three four people have them all go to one city and work together and come out with a solution or options and now and then I also believe in taking somebody who's not from that team because you want a completely different perspective and add them to that hackathon as well so they can offer something um so the most important thing that in in Will's advice is the discipline to always do these things to always do these things that bring together human connection and allow people to contribute and have their point of view hackathons by the way I don't think should have the most senior people in there um I think every for every reason that will talked about which is people on on on on on the on the front lines probably have more information at the uh I was going to give more but I realized I've probably given enough I I can I can over answer any question there there are lots more here so don't worry about it we're not short of material um we have uh Leanne asking you talked about affording people Grace in a society where social pressures are mounting patience is waning and change is constant what are your tips for affording Grace to yourself and your team at a time when it is desperately needed oh great question shout out lean where hi Leanne how are you um I think offering Grace um uh you're 100% right and I think offering Grace is it's a practice it it and when I say it's a practice meaning it takes practice um my friend Rick Elias is a remarkable human being um Rick do you remember the uh US Airways flight that landed on the Hudson Rick was on that plane um and uh he he talks about it in in remarkable terms cuz he said he got the most experience greatest experience of his life cuz he got to have that near-death experience where his it was 90 seconds which is just long enough he says too much not too much not too little just long enough and he talks about how he got to have that near death experience where he got to have all the lessons that people talk about in near death experience without any survivors guilt no one was hurt no one died nothing 100% of people walked away just fine and it so it was this perfect microcosm of A Life Lesson and one of the things he walked away from and just as a quick aside um will thought um Rick thought of himself as this highflying executive he spent 18 years building a remarkable company um uh and he built it to something like uh uh I think it was $80 million or something 100 million doar you know most of his life to build this company he has this near that experience it profoundly changes the way he leads he built a $6 billion business since uh Red Ventures um is the name of the company um and so one of the things he learned was he had to learn to forgive himself and he says holding grudges or maintain or having or having anger or um um um labeling people he says it all it did was distract him all it did was hold him back and he said he he wasn't even good at forgiving others until he could learn to forgive himself it's okay it's okay you screwed up it's okay um and asking for forgiveness um I think is a big one as well and so I think your your your your question in in a world that seems desperately lacking in Grace I believe change starts at home and and um if we can learn to give ourselves Grace but more important to give those around us Grace and we by the way we're practiced at this because when we first went into lockdown it was kind of amazing if you remember which is a lot of leaders whether they were effective or ineffective prior to co every single one of them picked up the phone and called their people and said are you okay and we had tremendous Grace for people you know that their kids were running in the backgrounds and their pets were jumping through the screen and somebody would be slow at hitting a deadline and we sort of were okay with it because we understood the pressures because we were sharing in those pressures and I think very often we don't give Grace to people because we don't assume that they have anything else going on in their lives except the work they should be doing for us um one person agrees um uh and I think Grace and empathy go together as well and I'll give you a real life example of what Grace looks like in business so here's a fairly normal scenario you walk into someone's office and say hey your numbers are down for the third quarter in a row um we've had this conversation before if you don't pick up your numbers in the fourth quarter I don't know what's going to happen it's fairly normal I think what that conversation sounds like with Grace is hey um your numbers are down for the third quarter in a row we've had this conversation before are you okay what's going on I'm worried about you and you think about that person who receives Grace how they go home and talk to their kids and talk to their spouse or how they talk to their colleagues and then think about how those people then talk to their friends and talk to their colleagues and the Ripple goes and before you know it there's a lot more people offering Grace simply because we went first super thanks Simon maybe picking up it's a similar picking up a similar thread this one from Andre he says what do you think the role of companies nonprofits and even government should be in cultivating optimism spreading optimism in times of societal hardship adversity and fear what does this sort of leadership look like from our leadership tables and how can it address how our own people experience that same societal hardship adversity and fear at individual and family levels did you type all of that into your phone where are you I think he deserves to get the question answered after I mean that's a good question I think what you're touching on is something that we all feel which it seems for some reason we've lost idealism every become everybody's become so pragmatic and practical and I think you know short-termism is pragmatic you know we can we can easily tweak the machine to hit a number in three months maybe 12 and I think we've just forgotten about long-term because it's tooo hard to tweak the machine um you know no company even has long-term planning if they do it's three years or 5 years it's not 10 years or 20 years or 50 years and even that 5-year plan they're not following it and I think what our country and necessarily our businesses but what our leaders are lacking is dreams and idealism and imagine a world if imagine what world would look like if and let's commit our energies let's commit our company to help building that world in some way shape or form even if it's just the way we run our company um and so I lament the loss of idealism it wasn't that long ago I mean you can go back to Ronald Reagan or John F Kennedy so I don't care what your politics are and both of those presidents talked about world peace peace on Earth in their inaugural addresses Wen was the last time we heard a president say that they were motivated by world peace in fact talking about it now it actually sounds corny and cheesy and I think that's sad that we think world peace is now a corny idea and if we just look at the state of the world my goodness I think it would take what a what a wonderful thing it would be for more of us to believe in World Peace because absent idealism all we do is look for right or wrong absent idealism we no longer see ourselves on the same team and pursuit of the dream we see each other in opposition to me being right or you being wrong and if we're waiting for our governments to do it we're going to be waiting a long time and so I'm going to go back to the to the answer I gave some moments ago which is I think change begins at home I think having a sense of idealism at work being the leader with ideals with a vision an unrealizable Vision I think is essential so you hear us talk about it and our company we imagine a world that's how we talk about our vision literally living in our imagination we imagine 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 we are all fully aware that we will never get there but we will die trying which is the point excellent super Let's uh pick up with this one from Perry um he says I worked as a correctional officer at a state prison for nearly 10 years and start with why inspired me to change careers where I am now in Tech sales and work with incredibly bright people what are some recommendations in in combating impostor syndrome in this context where where are you okay um you have more skills because of your work in Corrections than the people you work with in Tech and Tech sales and what did Teddy Roosevelt say um comparison is the thief of joy and I think when we feel imposter syndrome what we're doing is comparing ourselves to other people based on their skill set it's like saying how good we are at playing our sport on their field and of course we're all imposters if I compare my strengths to yours based on your standards based on how good you are at the things that you do and yet we leave behind all the things that make us who we are right um and so here's one thing I know about Corrections Officers that I admire the ability to stay calm in pressure Corrections Officers are spat on and worse you've had things thrown at you and you know that you have to come back to work every day and work with these same people and the remarkable thing about Corrections Officers is their ability not to take things personally they understand that you're being the uniform is being sped on it's not you being sped on and that is true when in a sales call somebody hangs up on you they hung up on the sales call they don't hang up on you you have a a strength of ego not to take things personally because of your experience that everybody else doesn't have and I would Lally literally do an itinerary and think to yourself like who am I where do I come from and that's the stuff you want to be proud of I also think we have to own the stuff we suck at now what do I mean by that right when I talk about um being vulnerable a lot of people in the business world like shudder but at that mere utterance of the word vulnerable of course none of us want to be weak we want to present ourselves as strong and all knowing and so I'm not going to admit that I don't know things or that you're smarter than me right but it works just fine if you own it for example if you go you guys are so much smarter than me um I don't really understand this sector and I really need somebody to explain it to me okay that no one wants to follow you right but if you walk into me and be like I don't understand anything that we're talking about everything you're talking about is beyond me like you guys have been doing this for 10 years I just got here um and so I'm going to have to have somebody explain this to me and as soon as you do I'll be I'll be great but if somebody could please explain to me because I'm an idiot when it comes to this stuff and you just own it all of a sudden people want to follow you and by the way they will follow your lead and they'll tell you the stuff that they need help on to great advice um this one from Charlie he says with the co with Co and the pandemic many many jobs moved to remote work some have remained remote now the country is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness is this a symptom of causation or correlation how do you build Connection in a virtual Workforce should we bring back workers to the office at least partially if for nothing else than to bring back the aspect of health healthy relationships and connections yeah it's causation it's not correlation let's be blunt um uh especially young people who started their careers where are you so I can answer your question Charlie Charlie thanks Charlie just I know it's random but most of the questions are coming from the right side it's nothing to do with me I know it's just it's just interesting you ask me why I'm wearing two watches I can ask why the questions are coming from the right side uh Charlie um uh I think that it's causation I mean human beings are social animals right like we we know that solitary confinement is actually a form of torture like we know that um um and I think for a lot of people who started their careers virtually who think it's the greatest thing in the world don't realize the damage that it's doing it's a bit of a slow boiling frog and they're suffering that loneliness that anxiety um they're looking to um uh treat it in unhealthy ways right um and then when we ask them to come back to work they freak out and the anxiety takes hold and they think it's the work that made them freak out and they don't realize the connection to being home alone and part of the problem is there's a there's a lot of people particularly younger but not exclusively particularly excuse younger that they really think I have a friend who's super smart works for a company she believes in really likes the work that she does and she has said to me that if they make her go back to work she's quitting she's so in love with being virtual um the way I think and by the way I don't think the dust is settled I think it's it's still it's still in flux and we actually for people who are predicting what the future of work looks like I don't think we actually know yet um because we also don't want to create class structures right where people who do accounting or back office function can work from home but like people who have essential jobs whether you work on a factory floor or customer service you know front facing that we make them come to work then what we're doing is creating a class struct the halves and the have knots really unhealthy um but I think one of the most important things we can do is reframe uh coming to work as an act of service what do I mean by that so we know that coming to work favored the extrovert we know that extroverts like coming to work and when the pandemic hit and we all went home the introverts all went yes and the extroverts freaked out right and now we're being asked to come back to work and the extroverts are going yes and the introverts are going freaking out right and the answer is we're Blended we're a mixed different different team and I'm a I'm a great believer that if we can frame it a service which is Hey listen we have friends of ours our colleagues who are extroverts and really need to come to work so I need you to take one for the team now and then and come to work to work with the team to help out your colleagues oh and by the way we also work with some introverts and they really need the time to recharge and be at home and just have a couple days of focus they're more productive at home than they are at work so give them the grace there's that word again give them that Grace and and and help them out because I think what we've done is we made it all about ourselves where I like to work and what I want and like what I need and we're completely deaf to what anybody else needs and I think if we can reframe it as an act of service we're going to find a better balance quicker excellent um Moving Straight on so this one is from nadav um asks how do you as an optimist feel about AI in the workplace and the possibility of widespread job loss where not of shout out oh hello down on the right yeah you got to look right [Laughter] first just saying um so when the internet first showed up we feared the same thing um and the jobs changed um so for example when the IRS announced many years ago that they were going to digitize our taxes they're going to fire all the accountants who went through our taxes and they're going to make it a digital experience and they promised this massive savings because of all of the accountants that would no longer be needed do you know how much money they actually saved zero because they had to build up their it departments the jobs changed the jobs changed will there be losses 100% there will be losses will there be some pain 100% there will be some pain will the society correct and figure out how the new essential jobs based on the new technology of course and it's because we don't know and because it's the unknown it's scary and so we're all a bit doomsday about it because all we can do is compare it to the situation we have now so take my world for example uh writing right um um if you're a if you in some way shape or form have to do writing advertising public relations where you have to write something for someone yeah AI can do that really quickly but it's the editing that's now become more difficult in the writing world it was the writer who was the hero and the editor was treated like a disposable asset it's just going to switch the writer will be treated as the Disposable asset and the editor will be the hero because you're going to take an okay job by Ai and someone has to edit it to make it good and so I think the the the the tensions and the pressures will change um I think AI um what makes I AI scary to me is not that it's going to take jobs away which it will but it'll create new jobs as as well which it will which we don't know yet and that's scary and not knowing as scary the thing that scares me most about it is the speed at which it's being developed the Internet took over a decade and look how it changed our lives and the fact that this is in months if not quicker that to me is the scary part because if you just take the internet as comparison we still have laws from 1996 governing the ethics of how the internet works and we have and this is going way faster and that's the part that I think and and the problem is you can't ask companies to slow down they all have the Twisted logic well if we don't somebody else will which is not entirely true but uh but that scares me it's the speed more than than the job less I think that'll we'll go through a period of difficulty and it'll it'll find its it'll find its balance excellent um another sort of switching topic slightly here this is from John uh he says many organizations are weaving the sustainability agenda into their purpose both real and perceived as greenwashing what advice do you give leaders to really challenge virtue signaling versus achieving the real benefits that come from addressing this opportunity it's a great question where are you I mean it's Skuse [Laughter] right um uh I think this is the same question as the purpose question which is are you saying it because it's good for marketing and you know that it's virtue signaling or you actually doing it and I think it's right for us to hold companies accountable um and ask to see the numbers as to see what they're actually doing um I'll give you one example of where I think companies are good at spinning it and I think we have to hold them accountable so um I saw a presentation at a conference by the uh Chief environmental officer of a very large uh food company and she gave this amazing presentation how her compy was saving water and saving electricity um and all the positive benefits it was doing to the environment and because I'm a cynical bastard I uh went up to her afterwards and I said hey look I really appreciated your presentation and I really appreciate that you're doing all those things I am fully aware that you save a ton of money by using less water and using less electricity so I'm going to believe you're not doing it to save the environment that you're doing it to save money which is fine um um because if you really cared about health and the environment you put chemicals on all of your food and you have a chief environmental officer but you don't have a chief Health officer so reconcile that for me that you keep you care so much about life but not the human life just just the saving of the money the conversation was uncomfortable um um uh but the point is I think we need to point those things out I think we need to point out um even if the motivation is for money it's kind of like giving to charity it's like they only give to charity to see their name in the program but they gave to charity right so it's not always bad that they're motivated by money but I think we need to hold companies accountable and actually I think we need to see demonstrations I think we need I think we need new metrics um I'm a great believer that we need new metrics in business there's nothing wrong with the old met metrics of share price or profit or Revenue but I think we need new metrics for the world that we live in to tell tell everybody that we're actually doing the thing that we're say we're doing so yeah I think it's an opportunity to create those metrics and then have B Corp I think is on that path like when you see that b Corp seal on a company that gives us confidence that they're actually doing the right thing so I think companies like BC Corp uh and things like that I think are a great way to hold companies accountable excellent this one from Kirby says to create positive change if you could ask executive leaders to do only one thing and one thing only what would that ask be Kirby yes representing the left side of the room you're a hero my friend um if I could ask leaders to do one thing um that's a great question so I think that great leaders are students of leadership and so if there's one thing I want a leader to do it's to take themselves on if there's one thing that I want a leader to do is to take themselves on and work to be the leader that they wish they had and by the way you don't have to have a position of rank or authority to be a leader leadership is the awesome responsibility to see those around us rise and any one of us can be the leader which we had but we have to become a student of leadership and you don't become a leader just because you get promoted and now you have some title and a new business card all you are is you got a new title and a new business card you're the same idiot as you were the day before um leadership is a skill that must be practiced and learned and I think I I I this is the reason we started the optimism company the reason I started the optimism company was for the very simple reason is we realized that the skills of leadership weren't being taught and we wanted to offer those skills to companies so that they would teach them to their people things like how to listen things like effective confrontation the things like um uh how to resolve conflict um these essential human skills I hate the term soft skills hate the term um uh you have hard skills and human skills there's nothing soft about them hard skills are the skills we need to do our jobs human skills are the skills we need to be better humans and we have to excel at both of them and so I think what companies have to do is teach people human skills and what leaders have to do is take themselves on and have the courage to say I have more to learn and study those human skills and study becoming a leader excellent so we coming probably to the last couple of questions here so we'll go with this one from Patty uh she has Patty where left side right side [Music] so she says um Jim Collins um you may know was was speaking this morning uh shed some um ways in which his thinking has changed since he wrote his first books what would you change as you reflect on your earlier work if anything um so the the the the thing about start with why Jim and I are very different in our approach to how we wrote our first Works um Jim is an academic who made a study of things and and wrote down the patterns that he saw from his research I'm an idiot uh and don't know how to do what he did um uh I mean it's true um it's funny because it's true um uh and my experience was different which is my experience was I went through personal Agony and personal pain and loss of my own passionate work a a series of events that left me um not wanting to wake up and go to work anymore and yet superficially everything was good in my life and so I was very embarrassed to say I am struggling and I used all of my energy to pretend that I was happier more successful and More in control than I felt and um uh it wasn't until a friend of mine came to me something's wrong and said to me something's wrong did I come clean about what I was going through which gave me the confidence and the weight off my shoulders to take all of that energy that I was lying hiding and faking to find a solution and the solution that I discovered was this thing called the why I knew what I did and I was good at it I knew how I did it and I could tell you how I was different from other people who did what I did but I couldn't tell you why I was getting out of bed in the morning and I couldn't tell you why it mattered and I realized that was the source of of my darkness not having any sense of purpose or cause or why I should be doing what I'm doing and that journey of trying to discover my why and more importantly how to help my friends and other people I met discover their why the impact was huge I watched people have renewed passion for their work where they had double the amount of passion for the jobs they had or some of them um would start businesses that they've only dreamed of and I just saw this incredible rise in passion like my own and it wasn't supposed to be an academic thing I wasn't I made no formal study of it wasn't supposed to be um a commercial thing it just kept working and people kep asking me to help their friends and I said yes and then somebody said will you help my company and I said yes and I applied a scientific method to it which is I wanted to find all the places it would fail so I could make the idea better and so somebody would come to me and say will this work in manufacturing and I said I don't know let's try and it just kept working and so I'm fairly confident that the that it actually does work because I've tried to make it fail for years and it just kept working and so though there are some details that I would definitely change in the book um I'm still an absolute devotee to to the original gospel um that was written all those years ago super so let's make this the last one I think looking at the clock um so let's do this from Manny um ask Simon what do you think about 2024 what is a key word for you as you move into the new year what would be the word of the Year for you and optimists in the coming year Manny um I'm going to back go back to what to the question before you know I likeed I don't believe in New Year's resolutions um uh I do like New Year's themes and um I hadn't thought about my New Year's theme yet and so you bringing it up I think is is is nice timing coming into Thanksgiving but I I I think that my New Year's theme in 2024 should be about idealism I think I think the question that we had some time some moments ago and the loss of idealism I think we should all imagine what a perfect world should look like and we should talk about it and we should talk about it obsessively and we should think about how we can lead Our Lives manage our relationships and build our business to take us one step closer to that ideal State as I said before I believe change starts at home and if we can change the way we lead and just think about the number of people in this room that if we can go home and we can learn to have Grace and we can learn to have empathy and we can learn learn to change the narrative we have about some of the people in our team that maybe they're just in a bad situation they've had bad leadership um think about the Ripple effects that just this one room can have and how many employees how many people we work with just in this one room that by us treating them with dignity us treating them with respect us learning those human skills that people feel seen and heard and understood that those people go home happier they treat their families better they treat their friends better they treat their colleagues better those people go home and they treat their families I think the possibility for World Peace literally exists in this room alone I can't think of a much better point to end on than that well peace that's that's a pretty good point to finish good um Simon that's been a fantastic hour it's flown by thank you and thank you for all your questions Sim thank [Applause] you