Timeless Principles for Uncertain Times - Business Matters 2021

next up we'll be joined by doug devos brian hooks and dr andrew abella in a conversation on timeless principles for challenging times doug is co-chair of the board of directors for amway the world's largest direct selling company with more than 8 billion in revenue he previously served as president of amway for more than 16 years doug along with his wife maria is the founder of continuum ventures an investment company for the doug and maria devos family devos is a globally recognized leader whose focus on entrepreneurship and providing opportunity for people around the world to build business of their own has been a lifelong passion through the doug and maria devos foundation doug and maria help youth families and the greater grand rapids community and beyond obtain resources to achieve their full potential doug also leads the ambassador network for stand together brian hooks is president of the charles koch foundation and chairman and ceo of stand together a philanthropic community that works with more than 700 business leaders and philanthropists to empower people to realize their unique potential and to help every person rise stand together's comprehensive approach to addressing the country's biggest challenges include support for more than 1 000 professors at 300 universities tens of thousands of k-12 teachers and more than 160 community-based organizations addressing persistent poverty as well as millions of grassroots activists working to improve public policy dr andrew abella is the founding dean of the bush school of business and economics an associate professor of marketing at the catholic university of america in washington d.c dr abella also provides consulting and training in internal communications recent clients of his include microsoft corporation jpmorgan chase and the corporate executive board he's the co-editor of a catechism for business from cua press and winner of the 2009 novak award a ten thousand dollar prize given by the acton institute for significant contributions to the study of the relationship between religion and economic liberty thank you to the acton institute for gathering us here together today uh we're going to be having a discussion about timeless principles for challenging times like we have now with us today we have doug devos who is co-chairman and president of amway corporation which is the world's largest direct sales company and also a company that has empowered millions of people to become independent business owners and we have brian hooks who's also in the business of empowerment and he is the president of the uh and ceo of stand together an organization that is focused on empowering people who help others to improve their lives he's also the co-author with charles koch of this excellent new book believe in people and we'll be talking about that uh quite a bit today and uh congratulations brian you've just been nominated to times uh 100 next list which is fantastic that's a really exciting i'm andrew bell i'm the dean of the bush school of business it's a we're a new school of business uh dedicated to the empowerment of people in the light of the gospel so the three of us different backgrounds uh we've been working together on the common set of principles uh that we believe are particularly relevant for these these difficult times so let me start out by asking you brian tell us about stand together and your work sure well let me first say thank you to uh to chris and father sirico and the acton institute for hosting this event and also for including the three of us in in the event we're very excited to be here as a native grand rapidian i'm particularly glad to be able to participate in the event today and i get to be with two of our best partners that stand together so stand together is a community of social entrepreneurs we're a philanthropic community hundreds of the world's and the country's leading business people and and philanthropists who have come together to solve some of the country's biggest problems and the way that we do that is by combining our knowledge and our resources to support social entrepreneurs people who are finding new and better ways to help others to overcome the barriers that are holding them back and i i i've i've i've shared with doug and with andrew that i think that andrew and what you guys are doing at the catholic university is a great example of social entrepreneurship and we're pleased to be a a proud supporter of the work that you're doing and so we have a lot of different people that have come together and stand together for a lot of different backgrounds and a lot of different passions but we all share a common vision and this is this idea that when we believe in people when we recognize that everybody has a gift something to contribute and we combine our efforts to remove the barriers that are holding them back and allow them to realize their potential not only do they benefit but that's how society makes progress and so we invest in these social entrepreneurs with that in mind and we are a community that was founded by charles koch about 20 years ago but we are we are strong because of our diversity of our partnership and the quality of our leadership and we have uh proud to be able to say that one of our strong partners doug devos is now the chairman of our frederick douglass society uh and which is a group of some of our most engaged partners uh and so doug thrilled thrilled that you're here to join join this discussion as well thank you brian um so doug you um brian right you mentioned so you're you're heavily involved in and stand together leading the frederick douglass society tell us about that what what drew you to be involved in it what what are you hoping to accomplish through your involvement and stand together certain certainly well thanks andrew and thank you brian and again brian congratulations on your most recent recognition in addition to the other recognitions that you've had uh it's an honor to be here again with our act and friends uh and to have this opportunity uh to to share a few thoughts and and talk a little bit and andrew as i as i uh think about the relationship with stand together i just have to tell you the first interaction that i had my mother and father were very involved uh a bit before i was and then they invited me to uh the first uh interaction that i had and and as i walked in i said i'm home this the everything that's being discussed here connects with everything that i was raised with it seemed like a big amway meeting forgive me brian but it seemed like it was a this is perfect this is exactly what we're talking about the the principles that uh that you've written so well about you know in the book most recently brian and the principles that are espoused and all the things that charles spoke about at that conference were were just exactly what we had seen and many in many cases how we had tried to put them into practice uh in the amway business and so it was it was a it was a a setting and it was an environment that was incredibly friendly unbelievably welcoming and i just felt comfortable immediately and as i got more deeply involved the opportunity to engage with the frederick douglass society members those who are the most engaged in stand together i found people who felt exactly the same way they had businesses all over the country they had different interests different ages different types of businesses different perspectives but they rallied around these these principles these values that were important to them and they wanted to learn how they could continue to express them in different ways in their lives and so it was a compelling uh interaction the first time i i just enjoyed every minute of it and felt this is a place where you know i need to spend a little more time as we move forward here this is a group of people who are absolutely committed incredibly thoughtful have great partners like you andrew and many others um and and just are focused on doing the doing good things for people in our society uh and uh and working together to make that happen so uh so that's a little bit of the background of why we got there and so and thanks again to our to our acting friends for uh giving us this opportunity that's terrific doug if i could stay with you for a second i've heard a story you mentioned how your father first connected you to to stand together um i heard a story about him traveling to malaysia and getting a bigger welcome there than one of the government ministers and then teaching an important lesson to that minister could you could you tell us that story sure sure well and it's it's i i tell it often because it connects so much with the principles we talk about and and yeah so this is uh you know in the 1970s our first trip to uh to malaysia amway has been there for a few years at this point we've got a great start the business is growing we're there for our first annual convention we have a few thousand people that will be at the convention in those days when when when dad would arrive at a location people would greet him at the airport so there's a few hundred people that were there to to greet us as we as we landed uh at the airport and before the convention that evening it was actually the prime minister uh dr mahathir uh who uh who visited with dad and they talked about the business a little bit they were just kind of you know connecting and visiting and and as the prime minister was speaking he was saying that you know it's a tough time economically in malaysia he would go on to say that in in malaysia the greatest natural resources of malaysia were copper tin and oil and all of those prices were depressed on the global market and therefore was having a negative impact on their economy uh and and they continued on with kind of that economic or business discussion and then and then he kind of switched it around and he said but but you know your business is doing great and he referenced all the people that met us at the airport you have all these people meeting you at the airport nobody ever met me at the airport you know when i return or something and and so he uh joked about that a little bit and then he said no seriously what what what's the secret and and dad's response was very simple he said mr prime minister you you may think the greatest natural resources of malaysia are copper tin and oil but in the amway business we believe the greatest natural resources of malaysia are the people of malaysia and in our business we invest in people we create opportunities for people and and that just set the stage i was very young at that time and and dad repeated that story often and it was it just became the the the the defining moment where you just realize of what everything's about and in any business you know brian as you know stand together as you know uh andrew at catholic university if if you find good people you can have great things you know happening in your organization and and you're always surprised of where you find great people because somebody you know may not have the the written pedigree but they have the heart and the spirit inside and that's always been our experience uh at amway so that's the that's the story there that uh that we've thought about often thank you doug it it really is a very powerful story so thanks for sharing it and the the message of people being the greatest asset is something that maybe too many people give lip service too i want to brian turn to you talk about education with this notion of people being the greatest asset um this fellow i know by name of andrew pudua who once said that the education system in this country isn't broken it's doing exactly what it was designed to do which is basically stamp out the same product again and again and again and i don't know that it was ever a good idea either for employers or for people themselves still less it's certainly not a good idea right now so brian can you talk about what what needs to happen in our educational system to really live as if we truly believe that people are our greatest assets yeah absolutely and you know the the bottom line here is that we need an absolute transformation in our education system if we are really going to empower people to realize their potential and contribute and you know the the whole purpose of this conference this notion of how do we address unusually challenging times and the answer being we get back to some of the principles that we know that have driven progress over centuries um it really is exemplified by the challenges in education and also i think the way that we respond to these challenges and so you look at our education system right now in k-12 we're doing things basically the same way that we were doing we've been doing since the 1950s in in higher education no offense uh andrew is the dean of a very august school of higher education things it's incredible to say it's true things have not changed for a thousand years basically right i mean it's 1000 years back and you went to a university it would look a lot like you know most universities today that's a problem right you can't say that about very many things in a time when when americans don't agree on a lot of things they do agree on this eighty percent of americans say that the education system is not working for students excuse me that's a big problem i think about the future of our country i mean it depends on education education predicts the future and right now our education system doesn't predict a very good future and so what what do we do well i think we go back to these first principles if we have a deep belief in people we believe everybody has a gift and as a society we benefit we succeed when we help all people to realize that gift education plays a critical role so as we see it at stand together the purpose of education is to do three things it's to help people discover their gift it's to help people to develop the skills that can express that gift in a way that benefits others and then to give people an opportunity to apply that gift in a way that benefits themselves by helping others and if education can take people on that journey it it helps them to discover really who they are and and to realize their potential in a way that benefits themselves by benefiting society that's education in the ideal and unfortunately right now rather than that kind of three-dimensional education we have something like one-dimensional schooling where we're treating uh all students basically is the same we've got a one-size-fits-all as your friend said sort of a process to stamp out the same product which is which is a an awful bit but an accurate way i think to to think about the way that the education system thinks about students right now and the result should not be surprising it's not working and so one of the most compelling ways that i understand this is it's not working is when you ask fifth graders how engaged are you with your studies which is a kind of an odd question ask fifth graders but that's what social scientists do about 70 of them say yeah you know what i'm pretty engaged by 12th grade that number shrinks to 30 percent and even if you allow for some of the you know senior you know teenager malaise that's a terrible that's a terrible outcome because if you're not at all engaged in your studies how in the world are you going to discover your gift and find it a productive way to apply it and so the answer is not let's tweak it at the margin the answer is not let's get balled up in some of these sort of petty battles us versus them you know public versus private charter versus whatever all that's useful but it's not it misses the point the point is how do we transform our entire education system so that every student can get an individualized education education that is tailored to who they truly are and helps them to go through that three-step process so that they can contribute and if that sounds like a tall order it is but it's not it's not it's not something that's impossible it's something that we can absolutely do as a society people have been doing this uh in small pockets around the country for a long time i can't help but i was from grand rapids i benefited from this kind of an education from a great program in grand rapids stepping stones montessori school that's that's what the the whole uh program there is designed to do is to help bring out who each one of the students are so they can express their gifts in a way that's productive but it's not just a program like stepping stones we work with uh sal khan who's one of the most exciting education entrepreneurs i think of this generation cell khan is the founder of khan academy which is a digital platform that now serves about 100 million students worldwide sal is starting a new project in partnership with stand together and a number of our our partners called schoolhouse.world which is a digital platform that basically allows individualized education for students uh in cohorts so it's not just sort of zoom learning but students can learn from each other and learn from people who have something to offer to those students and and the beauty of the of the platform is that it can be individualized at scale and there are uh literally hundreds of programs like that that we're supporting right now uh as through stand together because we see this unique moment in education where people are paying attention a whole lot of people around the country are realizing just how unsatisfying and broken the system is and there's a real energy to do something about it and we think that it's it's time to go big because we can't afford to continue to shortchange students the way that our education system does right now we can't afford it as a country well said brian i'm with you couldn't agree more i'm glad you brought up sal i had the pleasure of meeting him at a stand together event a couple of years ago a super inspiring guy but as you say one of of many right many of these innovators who are bringing up new ideas and it's these kinds of bottom-up solutions i think that are the hope for for education but just i think for our society as a whole doug um in in the christian tradition we use the word uh subsidiarity to mean in effect bottom-up solutions right letting people closest to the problem try to find ways to solve the problem rather than imposing top-down solutions this is very much as i understand the way amway is is run could you talk about subsidiarity slash bottom-up solutions and and how things work at amway sure sure again this is why i i felt so connected uh at my first stand together experience because because when you talk about you know a solution from and i'll use the term entrepreneur from you know from whether it's a social entrepreneur or a business entrepreneur when you have somebody who has a drive and a passion they're going to find a way to succeed and there's no way i'm going to know their specific situation now now in amway we created a few things a bit of a of an infrastructure we have a product line we have a compensation plan and we have a few things to kind of guide the development of our newest independent business owners but they have to kind of find their own path and they don't do it on their own in our structure you have a mentor that works with them and you have access to other people who've been successful and can start with at least a range of suggestions or ideas of what's worked for them but that doesn't come from the company it doesn't come from us saying well we've done a lot of studies and and here's what you do and in fact there was a a story that uh early on my dad and jay had a consultant who was saying well you know in amway you don't want to just offer this to anybody you know you really want to have some qualifications you want to give them a test and see if they have sales experience and you want to you know do all these other things before you allow them to even get started and dad and jay fired him and they said to him at the time they said who are you going to leave out who are you going to leave out and why are you going to leave them out we don't know if they have a chance to be successful or not we don't know if they can go forward now we have we have standards and rules they can't do things wrong in the marketplace but but people have from all different backgrounds have been successful and some of the most unlikely or unpredictable i shouldn't say unlikely because they always had that content of character inside themselves but unpredictable you would never say oh this is the resume of somebody who's going to be terror wonderfully successful in the amway business and so what we've always done is we've said we want to offer the opportunity to everybody and we know there are some people that that that'll just at the beginning say hey i don't want to do that there's other people say i'd like to do it but may not really have the skills and they're not successful and it breaks our hearts but many times they'll say i learned something along the way and i think it helped me in something else okay well then we were we were helpful and then those who become successful have again very very different backgrounds and how they became successful what what they did to to become successful is a little bit different and so we celebrate those differences we celebrate that background uh and we recognize uh what they've done and said and that's been the the strength of our business model we don't try to tell everybody what to do we we set goals we create conditions for success we we we provide support um but it's wonderful to see that entrepreneurial spirit alive and well and and and spark in an individual as they uh start out uh having a business of their own it just it just releases so much energy right when you when you give people the opportunity to to to do this uh and it's not easy just to go it's not easy we've had sometimes the people that are successful say you know i told myself i'm gonna fail a hundred times i'm gonna have a hundred people you know turn me down on a product sale or or whatever it is and and they said by you know by the time i got to 100 i was actually successful you know so so i mean it's tough work you know it's tough to develop yourself as brian talks about these sorts of things you know it's tough to find your you know your your gifts and then to figure out how to turn them into talents into skills and then to apply them that's you know it's not easy work but that's the most fulfilling and that's the most productive in our opinion and and you you have a system and a culture that encourages that that drives that and i think it's um the more we can replicate that brian just could you generalize this for us i mean bottom-up solutions can can work in a company like amway they can work society-wide right so you stand together is involved in poverty alleviation issues uh so talk about um bottom-up solutions in in in the area of issue of fighting poverty yeah that's right these are the this these are the the timeless principles for these challenging times right this this is the story of successful businesses like doug's it also happens to be the story of our country's success right we we started as a country with a very noble north star right an ideal i think best represented by the language and the declaration of independence this notion that when we when we guarantee equal rights and we recognize that everybody has the opportunity to contribute and pursue their happiness then we as a society benefit and of course right from the start we never lived up to those ideals but the progress in our in our country that has come has been when we struggled uh together to address the gaps between the reality and those ideals address the injustices in our society and bring more and more people into that noble north star and it's the principles of liberation and empowerment basically that's been what's what's uh caused our country to have such and frankly uh exceptional success the uh the same is true in in successful companies especially companies that have succeeded over the long term as doug's have uh and the and the same principles apply as we're trying to address some of the really big challenges in our society today challenges like poverty uh and here again i've got to give a shout out to the uh to the home team here uh acton has been a pioneer in this approach you know for at least the last 10 years probably more with with programs like poverty inc that that talk about some of these core principles you know in the book we we basically try to put forward three big ideas the notion that uh the solutions to our country's problems are going to look very lots of different different solutions to lots of different problems but they're all going to have this deep belief in people at their core notion that we get when people have have something to offer and when we help them to unleash that that's how we're going to solve problems second big idea is that the best solutions tend to come when you empower people from the bottom up rather than from the top down and the third big idea is this idea that when we unite with anyone to do right we can get a lot more done than if we try to go it alone and in in tackling a problem like poverty the best solutions tend to embody those big ideas and so we look at the way that our society has tended to treat the problem of poverty say take the war on poverty for instance a 60-year program that has spent by some estimates more than 15 trillion dollars and yet the the rate of poverty in our country has not budged during that period of time that's a failure that's an abject failure by any standard you look at counter examples of of of of programs that unlike the war on poverty rather than treating people as problems to be solved from the top down recognize that the solution to poverty is often found in those who are struggling with poverty themselves the solution to our problems are often found in those that are closest to those problems and we invest in people who are struggling with poverty as the source of the solution you see extraordinary results and i think again that's i think the lesson from a lot of what acton teaches it's the certainly the lesson from our experience a quick example of a group that we work with that i think really exemplifies those principles it's a group called the family independence initiative this tiny little group as doug says you know unlikely or organization if you were it's a great it's a great group it really it's a great group brian i'm sorry to interrupt but great great folks no and and and and it's it's it's realized a whole lot more success through partnerships uh like the partnership with udog in grand rapids and and with thousands of people now in communities across the country family independence initiative tiny little group out of oakland california uh their their idea is that the solution to families struggling in poverty can be found within the families what they do is they come alongside families who are struggling with poverty and they help to provide them with with two things things that we all need in order to succeed financial capital and social capital and that social capital they create by putting families who are in similar situations together so again kind of a counter-intuitive solution family struggling in poverty you put them together with a cohort of say five other families that are struggling they create they create bonds and they they begin to help each other you invest a relatively small amount of capital through their program about 3 500 on average over two years not a lot of money but enough to make a difference and on average families that stick with that program for two years they increased their income by about 27 percent i remember compare that to the baseline and the war on poverty it's extraordinary results they tend to double their savings over that period of time and importantly that puts them on a trajectory not just to get out of poverty but to stay out of poverty which is really the key in addressing persistent poverty especially generational poverty and so family independent what's their secret two things they invest in those families and they're run by people who experience poverty so the founder of the family independence initiative a guy named mauricio miller uh is somebody who grew up in poverty the current president jesus harena great guy somebody who struggled with poverty he he's seen what it means to confront those challenges he's got that personal local knowledge that he can then apply through his organization to empower people in in tough times ultimately to overcome those struggles by by realizing their potential and and it's you know these lessons they just work and and you can see those at a lot of the the groups and all the groups that we work with thanks man that's why we're having this conversation is we need to get the this news out need to get emphasized of the power of these dogs it sounds like you're involved beyond amway also in some of these poverty uh alleviation initiatives yeah absolutely and a lot of the a lot of the the work that stand together does and particularly with uh fi has really started to shape how how we think about being active because you know so it's a it's frustrating to me personally my actions sometimes when you know from an amway perspective we all about you know finding that entrepreneurial spark helping that person be successful but but seeing how they drive and go forward and then on a charitable side we have a program and we you know we think that we have all the solutions because we've you know thought about this and we've studied this but i didn't grow up in poverty so how do i know it you know i can listen i can learn a little bit but certainly the solutions are going to be much better coming from someone says well here's the reality of the situation and when you do this it doesn't work for me okay so how do we do a better job listening in thinking in that way and then actually change what each one of us do so my wife maria and i are just thrilled every time that we that we meet a new partner we're starting to stand together and we hear what they're doing and we start changing what we're doing because of that that's what you know that's the innovation and you talk about business principles how you apply them going forward you have that that rock solid foundation but you always you're always looking to do it better to find better results as we go forward and that's where stand together has found these these entrepreneurs these these ideas these new ways of doing things that are really exciting and compelling and they're generating results which is which is what we're trying to always trying to get to so i want to follow your lead dog here now it focuses on more on on businesses themselves i want to set the stage first with a with a story that that is told in brian and charles's book where charles is visiting i think it's mit um an mba class there and he's talking to the students and he says um the purpose of business is to create create value for others to basically create value by creating value for others and one of the smart mba kids says i think that's really naive isn't the purpose of business just to maximize profits and charles i love this his comeback is he says you tell me what's more naive to expect people to pay you money because you're creating value for them or to expect them to pay you money because you're not creating value for them it's like boom you know just really kind of sets it very clear but i think what this student was saying is this this misunderstanding this kind of trope about business that the purpose of business to maximize profits um this assumption that somehow business is purely amoral it's just about the money you know and there's nothing in life that is amoral because human beings we are moral beings in the sense that we want to be moral even though we disagree ten times a day on what moral means but we want to be moral being so so when somebody tried to convince folks that that business is amoral it didn't work and so so people try to bring morality back into business and the way that's happening this year and last year very concerning to many of us is under this title of woke capitalism right so where where businesses are kind of putting on a show of being being moral being woke by you know paying off the the issue of the day you know this is um it's it's not constructive for society it's not actually helpful for a business it doesn't create value um we have this alternative uh brian that actually the three of us have spoken about principled entrepreneurship right so the bush school uh we have our own center for principal entrepreneurship because it's courtesy of art and ciocca art and carly so it's the coca center for principal entrepreneurship everything we teach is grounded in in the principles of printable entrepreneurship this is a better alternative than this woke capitalism stuff brian could you talk about the superiority of principal entrepreneurship for actually helping society not just for businesses but for the way the way businesses contribute to society well yeah yeah i'm happy to talk about andrew as you say the program at catholic university is doing just really great work in helping to really breathe life into the principles of business and and the great thing about that is and and you know you you can speak more to this than i can but i i've seen it because i've met some of your students when you show students that they can uh do well in business by doing good they get really turned on right and and and so you you are providing the the right answer i i think you're right i think this notion of work capitalism or call it stakeholder capitalism is some have i think it's very dangerous i think it's not only going to destroy business or could but it also is going to not accomplish any of the the social goals that it purports to in fact i think it makes a lot of those problems worse uh but i do think that we have to take seriously the motivation you know i i look at it this way i look at what capitalism is the wrong answer to the right question and the right question is how how can business be a force for good in society and you've given the answer you know our answer is through principled entrepreneurship the notion that businesses succeed when they create value in society and you know it's easy to understand and and and and the business leaders in this in this audience i'm sure know this stuff better than i do but it's easy for people to understand that businesses create value for their customers as you said what's it's naive to think anything else but it's a lot more than that right as the business leaders here know to succeed over the long term you need to strive to be the preferred partner not just to your customers but your employees right you need good people to work before you for for a long time for the other people who you count on to make you successful you need to make sure that you're treating your suppliers well you need to make sure you're treating your community as well all of that is part of good business and the measure of whether or not you're being successful in being that partner to all of your constituents you're creating value in society is your profit and if that's how you're making profit you know you're doing well by doing good the problem and i think we really important to acknowledge this problem we write about this in the book is that there's a whole lot of businesses that are making profit through other means through uh rigging the system through looking to the political process to get rich quick at the expense of their customers or their employees or or what have you and you see this uh through you know things like bailouts for instance right uh absolutely unacceptable we call that corporate welfare uh where you see that through businesses that sort of collude with uh the government to create regulations that they can they can abide by but it makes it really hard for new businesses to come into the market and compete with them that's not fair and and so when when when people see that that's how businesses are making money they get upset and they say wait a minute you're not creating value in society we got to do something about that and so their aunt their answer woke capitalism or stakeholder capitalism uh is is the wrong answer right it's actually going to make that problem worse if the problem is people are looking to the political means to profit you don't want to put more politics into that into that equation right the the right answer though is principled entrepreneurship yeah exactly can i jump in a little bit here and and just an observation andrew i love i love that story about charles because charles i find to be unbelievably intelligent incredibly thoughtful and yet he's able to communicate a very simple powerful message that we can all understand and sometimes and again for all of us in the audience we like to like to figure out all the knowledge that we have and find a lot of words to use and sometimes bringing it down to just the cut to the chase the simple message that that business is and must be a social good brian's articulated beautifully how how business can get off track and and take away from the fabric of society take away from innovation and entrepreneurship and and and competition and take away from the ability of creating value in the marketplace for a customer and employees and communities and supplier networks all those sorts of things it's just brian i love listening to how you go through that but the observation to pull out and for all of us who all of us at this at this conference think through the simplicity of the communication and your values what what you believe because on this world capitalism question brian exactly it's the right question these are topics of the day we must address but let's be really really thoughtful about answers that will really generate results and if you just take the war on poverty example there's been a lot of answers but they haven't generated the results and so we can think about what's the right answer for you and your business what are your values how are you going to express them so that you're creating value in the marketplace for your customers your employees your communities um and i think that's just a hugely important topic and and we are you know we you know when amway started dad and jay just kind of lived that we grew up in that we're doing it we're continuing to refresh that discussion that's a tough discussion and those answers aren't simple uh but it's well worth the journey so i just had to dive in on that part sorry excuse me no i think that's exactly right and the and to me the very cool thing about all of this is that it's something we can all do right do the right thing you know even when it's tough do the right thing and as business leaders you know as as tough as things are right now when you look at where where do people in our country look for leadership there's a lot of institutions that are really at the bottom of that list you know government is at the bottom of that list right people do not trust government leaders right now for for frankly for good reasons you know who they do trust more than anybody it's business leaders and so when they see business leaders doing the right thing and setting that example uh that's a powerful uh signal it's a powerful way to help people to really kind of see what what the right thing is and and the converse is also true when they see business leaders do the wrong thing that makes a very negative impression so we've all got the opportunity on this one i think to really help to make progress just just through doing the right thing i i think so i think part of the problem is in effect there are two kinds of capitalism but we call them both capitalism but one crony capitalism proceeds by just trying to sequester as much value as you can for yourself regardless of value creation the other one succeeds through innovation and creating value for others unfortunately we use the same name for both we should somehow split that and just they're two very very different things but the the innovative the the sort of principal entrepreneurship capitalism that's the one that serves society and doug i'm glad you were giving those exp examples from from amway because this is something that clearly this is what you guys are doing i want to ask you though about about servant leadership i think it is a certain sort of humility that is needed in order to run a large enterprise that is truly consistently oriented to serving others could you say something about say more about servant leadership yeah absolutely and and uh we've had a lot of fun at amway talking about this in the same way and there's you know there's a lot of misperceptions about that you know uh the originally some of the discussions that i was involved with at the company we're like well you know it's just everyone's being nice to each other and you're taking care of each other and you're serving each other it's like well that's that's not exactly it servant leadership is understanding your role as a leader wherever you are in the organization you have a responsibility to people so it's your role and your responsibility and filling that role and making sure that you're answering the questions that you need to answer as a leader that that if you're the ceo you know that you better you better have the answers for strategy and you better be clear about setting the targets and you better understand how how people are going to advance and develop in the organization and how you're going to continue to have the right people in the right place and and and be able to communicate that clearly and easily and evaluate whether you're doing well or not uh and being honest with people and saying hey you're making it work or you're not making it work and here's how i can help you make it work but you do set clear standards and that's how you serve now you don't serve by trying to show everybody that you're smart and do their jobs for them or wait for them to to delegate up and ask you all the questions so you can answer and you can sit behind your desk or wherever you want to sit and say well i've got all the answers in fact i found you know i had one wonderful experience i was early in my career uh i had two experiences i'll i'll share them quickly one i was brand new in my role as a general manager amway uk and um and uh i didn't want to screw up it was a relatively small operation about 70 80s employees and very early and so i didn't want to make a mistake so i didn't make any decisions at all i just kind of would sit there and think about stuff and finally my boss came over and said look close the door to my office said look i don't care what you do flip a coin if you have to but make a decision that's your job you have to make a decision and so i'm like okay i take that and there's another time where i i took a decision but i realized that i wasn't the right one to take the decision i was involved with our meetings and programs team we had a convention there was a program happening on stage i was backstage and i had an old uh run of show document in front of me and i thought that this group of people was the next group to go on stage and i realized they weren't going on stage so i grabbed them i said you got to go go go and i threw them all on stage and the actual manager of the production looked at me and he said we changed the program they weren't supposed to go on stage we'll make it work it's it's okay so i realized you know what an idiot i am when i try to do somebody else's job they're far more qualified they're far more qualified to do that i have my role they have theirs we have to work together and and especially depending where you are in leadership your ability to encourage and help others work together so servant leadership brings in all those aspects of of fulfilling that leadership role without abdicating your responsibility because that's how you serve the organization and so um so i i think it's a a great concept but it's it's the and you you rightly hit on the humility aspect because you need to also be aware like my uh story on the on the production on the uh and there's a lot of other stupid things i've done too i could spend a lot of time uh uh on that front but um recognize that you know they that the people you work with are really smart in their areas and you need to respect what they're recommending what they're saying what they're doing uh as a servant leader and accept that um and and and and and just you know walk with them while they're making great decisions and doing great work to help the organization move forward so uh so there's got to be a huge element of humility to know what you know what your role is and then what it isn't you know and what you have to back away from thank you doug it it's a profound thing um brian humility is actually one of the guiding principles of coke industries right so this is this is a big deal um it tell us a little about how how from your perspective i think doug makes a really good case for from from his experience at amway from your perspective why does humility rise up so so high and then i have one more question for doug and then i think we we reach the end of our time so over to you brian great well i i mean i'll just kind of build on what doug said i think he really summed it up the the um you know the principles at that we have both at stand together and as you say at coke really are designed to help to empower employees to be able to make good decisions based on you know whatever comes comes at them and so they know what we're trying to accomplish they sort of know what our vision is they understand the resources that they have to apply towards that vision and they know what the principles of just conduct look like and those principles that are going to help to make them effective within our culture you know we want to we want to empower them to create value and so humility is a critical aspect of that culture uh for for a lot of reasons um one is this notion that you know no matter how well we're doing uh whoever we are whatever our company is we can always do better and uh we we we look to a principal uh that a social scientist named joseph schumpeter came up with uh called creative destruction and and uh what he said was uh to describe creative destruction he said that the the earth beneath the business the business leader's feet is always crumbling and he used that metaphor to kind of describe the what happens given the pace of change and the need for continual uh in innovation continual transformation now he wrote that that uh that concept back in the 40s and so if the pace of change in the 40s caused the ground to crumble beneath business leader's feet imagine what it's doing now given the pace of change and so if if you don't have the humility to say hey no matter how well i'm doing i can always do better somebody else is going to give you that humility the hard way so you might as well bring it you might as well bring it yourself and and continually looking for better ways to do things being open to learning how you can do things better but the second aspect of it really gets to what doug was talking about this idea that you know as good as you might be at something you're not going to be good at everything and if you know what you're good at you also ought to know what you're what you're not so good at and then have the humility to go out and seek partners who complement your capabilities and when you do that and i mean that ultimately i mean our organization's called stand together for a reason right when we seek partners who share vision who share values and who bring complementary capabilities uh we can and we work together we can accomplish a whole lot more than any one of us can on our own i don't i don't care how good we are or you are at at anything we can always do do better when we combine uh capabilities in a partnership that's characterized by those three things and but to do that i think you really do have to take humility seriously thank you brian that that's this is is so important uh okay let me close with one last question and we're going to see recognition if i can andrew sure humility starts at the top charles is just such a humble straightforward person he's just brilliant in how he demonstrates that it really has to start at the top doesn't it doug i mean if the leaders aren't modeling that then it's just it's just not going to work i okay so so last question um going off in a slightly different tangent but but come back to particularly the topic of innovation so doug something you and i are both passionate about sailing so so you're actually in new zealand now right with for the america's cup so that's fantastic um and so i i want to i you know um full disclosure i'm somewhat of a traditionalist so i want to raise maybe a controversial subject in sailing which is you probably guessed it foiling right so foiling boat is shooting across the top of this over the surface of the water riding on a on a foil you look at that and you could be excused for thinking that's not sailing that's flying that's like a hang glider going sideways over the water right so okay but i get it this is innovation and it's exciting innovation and i look forward someday to having a small foiling dinghy that i can take out but but here's the thing as i read about this i learned that there's all kinds of rules about the foil and it can only be this shape and you can only get this part from this manufacturer and it used to be it couldn't move now only this one part can move it seems like a lot of heavy regulation is this going to be actually stifling the innovation in in sailing yeah andrew you know once you get me going on sailing it could be a while but um you know the the idea uh you know of uh you know the of innovation in our sport and like anything is is wild and people are thinking of things all the time now in the competition america's cup you do need to put some sort of rule around it but it's a great illustration of kind of crony capitalism if you will because in this competition the amount of time we spend talking about the rules and the amount of in the way that one team is trying to talk about the rules to impact another team because as soon as innovation is seen when another team found an innovation then the rest of the teams all get together and say hey that innovation is outside the rules you know you know and so they make a new rule to kind of hold it back and to do different things we we had a uh my father had a a fun story years ago in in the national basketball association when you know we're involved with the orlando magic and we weren't doing that well and and we thought we should have regulations on michael jordan you know michael jordan you know he he jumps too high he runs too fast he shoots too well so once he gets to uh you know 40 points a game that's it you got to take him out you know because he just can't have that anymore and we you know so the rest of the nba should should create rules to limit his innovation his creativity his skills and and if he jumps higher than than a certain amount like the average of what our team could jump well then we should you know we we should you know call a foul and you know turn the ball over and you can see how silly that sounds in a sporting example and in the sailing example it it it how the house you know there's some rules that you need to have in the marketplace too but you can see how it gets misused in a competitive sense to wipe out the skill the innovation the talent the creativity of a of a potential competitor and if you apply that in sport you see how silly that sounds but yet that's being applied in business on a regular basis so uh so we think that uh innovation in in sport in our competition is still incredible innovation inside that but you hit a a perfect illustration there's so much time talking about the rules and one of some of the team meetings that you know the lawyers come in and then the rules experts come in and then we talk about this and this and here's an interpretation that happened it was the first hire was actually the lawyer you know on the sports team uh you know that that we did many many years ago so uh you know so when you put you know these principles that are happening in the marketplace into a sports connotation they seem silly so why wouldn't they be silly on the business side and so for all of us who are attending be engaged in what's happening around you you know be engaged you know bill seidman when when gerald ford became president bill seidman was a local uh uh a guy in grand rapids uh many of you know the seidman school at grand valley state so certainly you would you'd be aware of some of that history but i remember he told the dad he told dad and jay said you better pay attention to washington because they got the power to put you out of business uh and so you better pay attention to what's happening in the marketplace around uh and and and be active finding good solutions there's still problems we can agree there's problems we can be better but we should all be active together finding good solutions and so we'll have more time to talk about sailing uh andrew as we go forward and how things are are working down here at the americas cup but uh great illustration a great way to use sport to connect back uh to business and the marketplace thank you thank you very much doug and thank you brian for giving us the time i think we had a good good conversation here hopefully we're giving people a bunch of things to think about and some good some good inspiration here so thank you

2021-03-19 01:55

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