Skills that future tech leaders will need | Ep. 163
are the technology leaders today different from the ones that most of us experienced over the past 20 to 30 years during the tech boom and if so what does that mean for the next generation of tech leadership we'll tackle everything from Tech bro culture to the top skills that tomorrow Tech tomorrow's Tech leaders will have on this episode of today in [Music] Tech hi everybody Welcome to today in Tech I'm Keith sh joining me on the show today is Robert Eric seagull he is a lecturer in management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business as well as a venture partner at Piva welcome to the show Rob thanks Keith great to be here all right so let's just jump right into it in the in the course of your career have you seen uh any changes in how technology leaders are created today versus maybe those in the past because you have seen a shift correct absolutely I think the biggest difference is that today's technology leaders are far more focused they're very product Le in terms of how they think about building their companies but also their social personas are very different than a lot of the tech leaders that came before if you look at the founding of Silicon Valley people like Bill huet David Packard Bob noise Andy Grove Etc you know these were people who brought a gravitas of character towards what they were doing how they ran their companies how they conducted themselves you know in the public eye and we see you know with the rise of social media and the importance of tech on a global basis we've seen that a lot of the technology leaders today will be more bombastic far more out there will be trying to make noise for the sake of making noise and by the way they get rewarded on blogs on on podcasts on mainstream media and social media so there's a positive reinforcing Circle for them from an attention standpoint not clear that it's kind of the behavior of stewardship that we saw perhaps from a previous generation of techn leaders do do you still see that the same type of people going into it with your classes at the at Stanford um is there still a a I don't want to say stereotype but is there an archetype that that that you say well it's funny when I graduated from Stanford over 30 years ago the tech industry was substantively smaller and even here within the heart of Silicon Valley those of us who went into Tech was a much smaller subset of the graduating population now it's very very prominent not only are the large tech companies so much more impactful on a global basis but as we've talked about Keith you know every company has a tech aspect to it so you see many many more people going into Tech and I think that you also see a lot of people maybe who are less technologically focused than they used to be as Tech becomes more prominent in everything from retail to financial services Etc you will see people going into Tech businesses but are often times very applied vertically into a particular domain so they may or may not have engineering degrees uh as in the past the last thing I'll say is they are very much more diverse than they were even 30 40 years ago or even 20 years ago there are some issues that we'll talk about a bit I know that you're going to raise in our discussions but it's certainly very very different than it was three decades ago well yeah so so when when you see a student coming in or you see someone who's like I want to be a tech leader I want to be an entrepreneur do they come in knowing that they have an idea in at in mind or do they just want to learn the skills of I'll get that I'll get that idea eventually or I'll find someone who has the idea and then and then run with it you know how much does a future entrepreneur need to understand technology especially if every company is either a technology company or with generative AI every company's now an AI company so what do you see when when when students are coming in and and then do you roll your eyes or not well I do roll eyes a little bit because I would say in particular at The Graduate School of Business we see a lot of people who are more enamored with notion of Entrepreneurship whether or not it's a particular idea that they know going in about what they want to explore yeah you'll see students whether they're undergrads or even people at The Graduate School level they see it as a 2 threee period to explore ideas and explore opportunities that may they might try something on and then discard it and try something else so you don't have a lot of people who say I'm coming back cuz I want to do something specific they're trying to figure out how to exercise the muscles to figure out what they want to go into I think perhaps one of the concerns that I see is what's made I think Stanford and Silicon Valley so successful the last 20 to 30 years it's not clear to me these are going to be the issues that we're going to be facing as a society and AS Global Business Leaders for the next couple of decades so I know that we're very very prominent in entrepreneurship and all the skills and classes and things that we teach the students I have to wonder however if the issues that are facing the future Generations over the next 20 and 30 years in business I'm not I'm pretty convinced they're not going to be kind of the challenges that we saw the last 20 years and I think it's important that we're making sure that we're giving the next generation of leaders the tools they need to be successful on a global basis yeah so when you were explaining some of the differences I another question popped into my head do do today's students that you're seeing do they understand the the the weight or the gravitas of those that came before them do they get a sense that they are standing on the shoulders of giants in the tech space or do they not know about the history you know I I worry that how I'm going to answer this question I'm going to sound like Clint Eastwood and shake my fist get off of my lawn but I would say broadly written no I don't think that today's Tech leaders really understand you you look at people like hulet and Packard and Bob noise these were people who went and served in Washington in both Democratic and Republican administrations when they were called to do so by their government and if we look at the tech leaders that we see today I don't think they really understand uh some of the the broader issues about you know how Society is shaping up a lot of it is shaped it seems predominantly by a lot of their self-interest and I think one of my my worries about Silicon Valley is that people want to come here for the Gold Rush kind of want to come here to become a leader but what does that really mean to be a leader you know we we have a I think a dir of Statesmen and States women and stewards of organizations uh especially as the money has become so big and the implications have become so big that I worry that we might be training a generation of leaders who are a little bit too focused on you know have I put a dent in the universe have I done something that allowed me to build something that was so huge econom ially without thinking of some of the implications of the products and services that get sold into society is that is that a nice way of saying that everyone is just chasing the money and they they they go into this going yeah I just want to be a tech billionaire by the age of 30 I hate to use the word everyone okay but yeah I know and I am talking in generalities and stereotypes so but exactly because we talk in generalities and stereotypes you know on the plus side teaching at Stanford is like teaching at the United Nations right my students are brilliant and they come from all over the world you know you see men and women from every continent in front of you and I think one of the things that I try to kind of guide them towards us thinking about in a world where every product and service is connected as we talk about every company's a tech company what's the implication of action and reaction of when data and information is Flowing you know inside of a company or between your company and your ecosystem as you're Crossing Borders you know it's not just the men and women who large run large multinationals who are dealing with with you know a global Society even smaller companies will cross borders and you have to be thinking about what are the issues of the people on the other side of the world and in these other countries what are they going through how do you navigate through cultural issues uh legal issues uh all the Dynamics that come along with us and I think one of the things that's critical for the next generation of future Tech leaders is even if you see a split between the US and China and we see kind of different Tech Stacks that will develop in the likes of this people are still going to be Crossing borders I mean you and I right now think about the technology that we're using I'm here in my television Studio I mean my home office which was designed during the pandemic I teach people all over the world from this location or from the Stanford campus much less being on campus with people and with students right and so we have to be thinking about what are these reactions and the interconnectedness and what does that mean for the products and services that we sell yeah and I guess in the future at some point we'll be doing uh arvr uh interviews with with people and so that'll change the dynamic of how I react versus how I'm reacting with with cameras and screens right and whether it's AR and VR and I'm a little skeptical you know just because I think some of the Dynamics of what we have on our heads you know will that really create a great experience yeah but it is going to be and so for example you and I will sometimes be with people in person having conversations sometimes I'll be in a classroom sometimes I'll be doing this and as we think about this how will we as Leaders make sure that we can adapt and be successful both in a a physical and in a digital domain right so as we look at the best companies they combine digital and physical and they have the ability to do both well we as individuals actually need to kind of mirror that Duality inside we can't just be internal or external we can't just be thinking about whether we are you know thinking about our local market or our Global context you know I one of the courses I teach at Stanford is called systems leadership and the idea behind being a systems leader is being able to not only understand this action and reaction but also being able to master this Duality inside how do we think about geography or sphere of influence how do we think about managing people with both strength and empathy how do we think about how we prioritize operational excellence as well as managing Innovation at the same time right if company had both of those competencies in the past they were often kept separate I believe that on a go forward basis we as individuals need to have to master this Duality so that we can leave the next generation of leaders for the next couple of decades so you jumped ahead of me a little bit and got a book coming out that describes this systems leadership idea um and I and I think you you gave a great explanation of what what this means but when did you discover that that this was changing that that there was a shift in this mindset um towards towards systems leadership well about seven years ago my old boss from GE Jeff IML uh rang me up and he was in the process of transitioning out of the CEO role and we started talking about types of classes we might be able to collaborate on and the idea behind systems leadership was first started with this blending of digital and physical and how do leaders think about it but what's happened in the last 6 to S years we saw it with the rise of covid and the pandemic where it became about crisis leadership and now we see the the rate of technological change only going up exponentially like you talked about Ai and so what we see as a world where the rate of technological change in is not slowing down and it seems like we're in a constant crisis and that leaders no matter what they do they feel like they're going to get it wrong they're pulled by these cross pressures in 180° opposite directions and if they get it wrong they're going to get canceled or they're going to get fired and the speed with which they can keep up with things feels like it's almost impossible and so this idea of systems leaders is we started studying great leaders from all over the world about how were they navigating through these you know rapid changes you um Alvin Toffler wrote the book Future Shock in 1970 yeah and in that book he talked about the speed of technological change and he predicted fast fashion and the move the cities and the personal computers and it kind of boggled the mind he coined the phrase information overload he said that we as humans can't keep up with the speed of change and if you think about it that was 54 years ago and it's only gotten worse since then right yeah it's think of the speed with which AI has hit in the last you know 18 months since chat GPT was launched and every industry is being impacted by this if you're a business leader and you're trying to like hit your monthly and quarterly numbers now you've got to think through how do I take these new technology and bring it in so Jeff and I really started to look at this and try to understand more what are the best practices what are the problems that that people are facing and how do they navigate through it I don't think that anything's going to slow down I think things are going to only speed up and so the question is how do we give systems leaders the right tools to make sure they can see this action and reaction you we talk about things like having a product manager's mindset understanding what's going on outside of the building as well as what's going on inside we talk about the ability to see connections you know between how do different um um you know parts of Technologies how can they be applied in other areas that create new business opportunities because with technology you have the ability to move from one area to another area a best example of that is kind of what Apple did to Nokia uh you know destroying basically finland's greatest technology company ever in a matter of years just because they invented the iPhone and so if you have this going on how do you as a leader understand these Dynamics how can you be thinking through them and then how do you manage your teams in a world where you've got to like speak up on social issues or not you've got to navigate in a highly polarized world it's a non-trivial task for today's Business Leaders is this something that a a a current business leader can adapt to or do you think that systems leadership is going to be adopted by the next generation of of leaders such as the people that are in your your classroom uh or is it something that can be learned you know at this level you know someone is a is a director a manager an owner of a company that has been working for the last 20 years or 30 years it's absolutely something that can be learned like you know it's not like anybody has to bend light in a way that light's never been bent before that would be hard this is about us learning and constantly saying how do I continue to improve myself how do I continue to learn new skills how do I be open to new ideas and what's hard for us is we get more senior in organizations you know we got promoted and we got raises because of how we did things in the past and when suddenly that doesn't matter anymore it's can be very disconcerting for us as individuals the younger generation they're not constrained by the past on the other hand there are things that repeat themselves over and over again so hopefully the experience of of you know leaders who've been around for a while they can bring their pattern recognition and things that they've learned but they have to have the mindset to say I actually need to train myself on new technologies and new way of doing things you there's four key technologies that I think are impacting every function every company for artificial intelligence additive manufacturing analytics and Automation and my question for leaders is often are how are you keeping yourself current on these areas do you understand how they impact your function and your team and so I think that's you know the long answer that I've been giving is you know kind of can be summarized of you got to be willing to change and stop doing what you've been doing and be willing to learn new things yeah and how often do you see that happening though though some people are better at it than others I mean I think it's usually when like the world passes Us by that's when it gets very scary yeah I can think of at least twice in my career where I had been on the Forefront of technology and suddenly the world had changed and I had to adapt and that's very frightening for an individual and and I think by the way if we think about globalization like globalization we we moved through Labor Arbitrage we moved jobs to other parts of the world and we didn't retrain our labor force right you know and so that's led to a rise of global popul whether it's trp in the United States oraro in Brazil or yellow vest in France and Business Leaders are at the Forefront of this so they need to be thinking about how are you going to be retraining both yourself and your labor force so that you can make sure you stay current because education can't keep up with this speed of change yeah yeah all want to jump back to the the entrepreneurship angle especially when we we look at you know Silicon Valley over the last 20 30 years did is there still a place in this world for that that two you know two people in a garage uh entrepreneur I mean that was the huet and Packard right and and even Steve Jobs there was that idea of of you know building something in a garage with with someone else and and building a company is is there still that going on in Silicon Valley or is it more of the i' I've got a bunch of ideas and instead of starting in a garage I'm just going to go get a lot of Angel money and then build it from there because the angel invest that was relatively recent right within the last 10 15 years well I think there is still this notion of two people in a garage um this idea of a couple of people starting and tinkering on ideas the question is can they do it with their own capital or or without capital and can they can they live through this or do they need to get capital from other people and so almost everything still start small we read mostly about these humongous seed rounds you know of $40 million or whatever the case may be but those are outliers the average entrepreneur is actually trying to figure out what's the product how do I find product Market fit what problem am I solving and maybe they end up raising money from Angels so that they can you know eat because Silicon Valley is an expensive place to to to try to pay rent and put food on the table but I think it usually does start with something small every kind of innovation really starts small but we read about Sam Alman and we read about these rounds that are so humongous but those are really outliers and a lot of that's also driven by the business model of venture capital where you're playing for disproportionate Returns on the you know efficient Frontier of risk and reward so I I think the question we have to ask ourselves is what does the average person do versus what gets written about in Tech Crunch and you can certainly blame the media for a lot of that too I mean we put spotlights again we were celebrity chasers for a lot of these these stories and the you know again we're we're we're going after a world that's looking for clicks and Views and all that other stuff it's it's very hard for me to just do a profile on you know the average person right well the business the business business of media is a business and that's neither bad nor good and so the question is what you you have to serve up to people what they want and what's going to get people to engage for better and for worse and so you know from the academic side our job is to try to understand you know what is it that kind of breaks down the the repeatable patterns or the lessons or the tools that we can give entrepreneurs as they're building their companies but you know what you and I are going to spend most of our time going through is how do we understand kind of like what people are saying online is Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg getting into a cage match is that normal like is that really what leadership is today right I don't happen to think so even if that's what gets the most press there are a lot of great leaders out there who by any figure of Merit are hugely successful in their organizations and they have tens of thousands of people reporting to them and they put food on their table and they sell products that that people buy but they are not these kind of you know out their leaders they just don't get written about that often but they're there I I since you brought up you know the the musk the musk culture and and and some some might say Donald Trump has the style as well um there's you know the Mark Zuckerberg's of the world they're getting headlines for that the the style that they have which is the do it my way or else you know style of leadership um and what I'm afraid of is two different things is you know is it possible for a leader to run their company like this or does this attitude only work because they have the the I don't give a crap money is what I'm going to call it um and so they don't you know that's that's what they have a lot of money so they don't need to worry about that and then what I'm worried about is someone who doesn't have all that money they start thinking that that's the the business leadership style that's going to get results for their company and I guess the the biggest analogy I have is uh bill bich with the New England Patriots I'm a New England guy you know here whenever he had a coach that would then get a head coaching position somewhere else they tried that whole bill bellot mentality and they failed miserably so is is there an equivalent Silicon Valley where people might think oh Elon Musk is so successful so I'm going to I'm going to be that way with my employees you know Elon Musk and Steve Jobs are amazing leaders and what they've accomplished truly kind of you know every few people a century that are like that they're you know outliers whether somewhere between six and 18 Sigma to the right of the mean they don't count and they can get away with that because like let's face it Elon Musk lands rockets on barges in the middle of the ocean that's pretty cool that's not you and me right and the average leader kind of needs to find her or his own voice for how they're going to lead their teams and we have to also be aware of the fact that there are some we can talk about stereotypes of generations I say this without any Prejudice Generations are different Boomers were different than Gen X which were different than Millennials which are different than gen Z because their lived experience has been different how they interacted with technology what their experience was like in education K through 12 or his undergrads is very different and as they enter the labor force or as they enter even the grad school level you know we as as managers and as Leaders need to understand how do I understand where they are but at the same token like you've got to be accountable for delivering results and everything else you're going to have to find that blend so I would say that the idea that you are just going to be you know cracking the whip at all times and I'm Elon Musk well he can get away with it cuz he's Elon eff and musk but for the rest of us we got to find ways to motivate team you talked about Bill bellich um Nick Sabin let me go to another football coach yeah friends of Bill bich too by the way right yeah and by the way there's a great you know interview set of interviews that they did with each other that talked about their leadership styles coach Sabin talked once about how you know a decade ago he would tell a player what to go do and they'd go do it and now he says I have to tell the player what to go do but also why because you know he the players are just different than they were 10 years ago and he's got to figure out how to be effective to get the results that he wants I think we as Leaders always need to grow and change but also need to understand the dynamic of what's going on around us so I would say holding putting musk and jobs up there is that's my going to be my management style no that's their management style right need to understand like what are ours and how do I get the type of results I need of a team you coach different athletes differently we should be leading different leaders differently and you need to as a leader kind of have that blend of strength and empathy you you want to show your team a strong leader but you also can like still you know see that they let them see their your humanity and you can see their Humanity yeah I a lot of great leaders I'll be writing about in the book that were kind of great examples of that where they were able to show like these this these are nobody's pushovers on the other hand you know it's a false choice between being ambitious and being kind do do you see a lot of leaders that have that self-reflection capability cuz I I don't know how many of leaders would would be able to look at themselves going you know I do have problems that I need to work on it feels like most leaders you meet they're like yeah I'm the best and I and I'm going to and I'm gonna succeed no matter what I I don't read about those people online but they show it in the classroom okay and that's one of the advantage of being on the academic side which is being on the journalist side that that they will actually talk through their issues and what they're going through in ways that they can't when they don't have to be on market now by the way they will show strong you know strong points of view and strong perspectives again these people aren't pushing overs but they try to think you know really subtly about you know some very often times very nuanced topics how are companies that are located in the United States going to deal with do you know doing business in China or not or in certain parts of the world or not and I find most of them to be quite thoughtful and how they think through it but of course that doesn't get clicks as we talked about earlier and that doesn't always you know kind of make them the the most high-profile people but you know I get leaders in in you know whether it's any body from you know the CEO of Goldman Sachs to the head of mubadala in the Middle East to even Steve bomber to even men and women who are entrepreneurs from around the world who will come into to my classes and they will show very different styles and very different perspectives for how they navigate through these issues yeah yeah I want you to put your uh VC hat on for a second I'm so take off your academic hat and and you know you you are a venture partner at a at a at a firm so is there still a mindset of that you have to be in silic Valley in order to succeed cuz I've seen it I've seen es and flows where you get a lot of people that go oh there's a lot of other investment companies out there in the rest of the world in the midwest in the East and you know all of these cities that claim to be like like Silicon alley silicon desert silicon you know all these other places um is there still a mindset though for a lot of entrepreneurs that well you know you got to be in that one you got to be in that region yes or no at this point I'm gonna say no but with an asteris okay that's fair that there are certainly hubs of innovation that are built in other parts of the world you talked about silicon alley we see New York Munich Shanghai you know there are like there are parts of the world where there's a lot of really interesting stuff going on like right now Riad in Saudi Arabia is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen given the transformation in that country yeah but I will say however Silicon Valley has a depth of infrastructure that does not exist anywhere else and this was built over 80 years right you have five major academic research institutions that bring in young people on a constant basis from all over the world where new technological innovation is happening you have a culture where failure is not vilified that as long as you conduct yourself with Grace and dignity you'll get another bite at the Apple you have Venture capitalists you have lawyers you have accountants so you have an ecosystem and by the way Silicon Valley is kind of a village right every our kids go to school together you know the kids play soccer together people do charity work together so that people get to know so there's there's a rich that comes with this place but is it necessary no is there a depth of of talent and a depth of infrastructure here that doesn't exist everywhere else absolutely is that something that a future Tech leader if if you come out and you're like well I I want to form a company but I don't want to do in Silicon Valley I want to I want to do it in in another city or wherever they should still find that Community however correct like you should find that infrastructure however it exists right you know one of the yeah I I I concur I think what's going to happen in a world where everything's connected I talk about the difference between globalization 1.0 and globalization 2.0 globalization 1.0 was about Labor Arbitrage we put lowcost Manufacturing in Asia we put lowcost customer service in India lowcost software engineering in Eastern Europe globalization 2.0 I think you're going to see companies act more like NES mesh networks where you'll have equal access nodes in various physical locations which will be able to communicate unate and collaborate far more efficiently than in kind of a hub and spoke model and so I think that you can certainly have a headquarters in in a different location than Silicon Valley but you might still have a Silicon Valley presence to tap into the knowledge the capabilities and competencies here and I think instead of having kind of that Hub and spoke of a headquarters and then some satellite offices I think you'll see centers of excellence that will develop around the world where people will be able to tap into Global Talent and those those centers of excellence will collaborate more like peers on uh on a go forward basis and um I you know I wanted you brought this up with the diversity of the of the students that you're seeing as well does that mean that Tech bro culture is is gone or go away or do you still see that on in little spots and and Bubbles um in is that a bad thing or a good thing well Tech bro culture that is unkind to people who aren't Tech Bros that's not good like there's kind of no confusion on good versus bad and back 10 12 years at the height of tech bro culture where you had basically engineering uh uh schools who were basically graduating 90% male Engineers like that was not a good and healthy thing right but you know just it was not an inclusive culture and I think that what you're seeing is that that has really kind of uh changed and evolved as you get more diverse entrepreneurs and the like more more diverse investors and it's not as far along as some people would like to see but it is important I I think that what you're going to you know what's going to happen is that you're going to see as we get more successes more successes globally more successes of entrepreneurs who don't look like the archetype that will actually Foster Innovation that'll Foster um you know people will look up at somebody and say hey I look like that person who's a tech leader that person's been successful maybe I can do that and so I'm hopeful now these things do take time to change and it's you know probably doesn't change as quickly as some people would like but on the other hand like my classes are like they look radically different than they did even you know 15 20 years ago as to who's sitting in front of me so I'm more optimistic than not right right right okay um and I'm going to give you a chance to to make a little bit of a controversial uh discussion here uh when we were talking in our preall we we were talking about that over the past two years you saw a lot of companies that were shedding their staff in through layoffs you still see companies that it feels like that's the first option they go to rather than another method if they need to either hit number or looking at their staff um the reason that was given to a lot of the people when you're discussing these layoffs is well we over hired during the pandemic but that was four years ago and it feels like that that excuse is is wearing thin so you know what is something else going on here that that maybe people haven't thought about in terms of why all of these layoffs continue to happen well I think the over hiring was indeed part of it but there were some other dynamics that were happening the first is with the pandemic and remote work you know you had a a situation where a lot of people weren't showing up it is harder to manage people when we don't see them on a frequent basis that that's true for if we don't really know kind of what they're doing how do we make sure that people are actually performing to the level that we need them to culture change right we dealt with a lot of social issues and we dealt with you know how is the ability for us to manage people and to hold people accountable that became much harder to do especially as we we thought about how we did reviews not that everything was perfect before but we've kind of been trying to figure this out I think what you're seeing is you know it became harder to shed staff especially at a time when unemployment was at 3% you know people would hold on to staff to kind of you know hoard them if you will so I think that right now you're seeing this as an excuse to basically coach out people who are underperforming and by the way in work and in life we have people who perform better and worse and so I think what you're seeing is a lot of this is kind of the it's working it way through the snake over hiring was part of it I think we moved away from good governance on a lot of things by the way a lot of it we did for the right reasons when the pandemic was here but the pendulum takes time to swing back I mean I saw it even going into the classroom okay we were on zoom and then we were back in the classroom going back in the classroom was not like it was right before you know the the pandemic hit how I had to you know connect with the students or how I failed at connecting with the students they were shaped by what happened during the pandemic how were or my colleagues on our faculty enforcing Norms or not right you know we didn't enforce Norms during the pandemic we came back and a lot of people didn't want to enforce Norms anymore why cuz it's hard managing people is hard man telling somebody they're not performing well that's never fun laying somebody off not fun and a lot of that didn't happen for many many years and so now you're you're seeing a lot of that catch up with itself all right so this is and I I'll take the blame on this one but do you think that many employees might not be as good as we thought they were and that maybe they're taking advantage of some of these new methods of of working and going well you know I could work at home and you know go and run out an errand if I needed to and um you know this whole work life balancing and then then being asked to shift back to an office mentality there made be like well I don't really want to do that because I was having such a good time being able to run my errands and do you know only only work 5 hours instead of eight for example or seven I guess I'm going to say sort of yeah um I think there are some people who took advantage of this absolutely yes do I think that's widespread hard to know I think you know the culture and Norms are having to shift back and I think people will do what they have to do to adapt um I also think that we need to be kind of a kind of you know at a time again where we weren't enforcing Norms PE a lot of people got away with stuff now by the way there's a flip side to this right if you have children you know so you know how do you make sure like if your school your school's closed what do you do for child care right there are some advantages that came out of this that we were able to see our our teammates and our employees as whole people and so I think by the way because we can do this with communication and collaboration tools maybe we need to find ways well wait a minute maybe we do we can be more flexible and that can be a good thing for our team I remember when Bernard Tyson was running Kaiser Permanente he invested heavily in technology way before everybody else did not just as cost cutting but he realized you know if I could do a 15-minute video call with my doctor that's better than my having to drive 35 minutes to the doctor's office sit in the waiting room for 20 minutes then have my 15 minutes and then drive home through traffic so there are times that we can think about how do we use Tech to be more efficient maybe not all the time but we should be able to find ways well wait a minute how you know what are the pressures that my employees are under and are there times when I can be a little bit more flexible and Technology allows us still to be productive so so yes some people took advantage of it but I also think how we think about the future of work we also as Leaders need to be aware of these things and figure out where's that balance between the two right and I'm not saying that that obviously people that have kids are not going to have these problems and there's certainly a an empathy that goes along with people that have I mean I've got three myself and you know the last 15 18 years I've been juggling all this stuff um but what what what bothers me is when I see stories that are in the Wall Street Journal about um Mouse jigglers and and the software that that makes it look like you're working and then the companies respond to that by putting monitoring software on uh on computers and and so you have this balance and I think Wells Fargo uh recently just let a bunch of people go because these people were using these Mouse jigglers um the software to make it pretend like they were going to works and you know is that an extreme or is this now becoming an attitude with some workers is like well there you know I'm working at home so I can get away with it more versus when I was in the office and that's what's concerning me I think it's an extreme and it makes for a great story in the wallshot journal and by the way I read the same story too right you know so it's like we read it because it it titillates and it's fun like oh my God I can't believe that we get indignant on it okay but let me play with the other side of this which is we have to think about how do we use systems and how do we use capabilities are we trying to you know put you know stuff on our employees machines because we're trying to kind of Moder them and like the Way Frederick Taylor the way they design factories to keep people in a very narrow box or do you build a culture of accountability and responsibility see to me I think it's it's there are different ways to approach this the qu you know let's go back to sports because you brought it up with Bill bellich if you look at those Patriots teams they had the this expression do your job right and the idea behind this was is if you're the quarterback and I'm an offensive lineman if you do your job and I do my job we win we play for each other and my job is to make sure that whatever I'm doing I am doing it to the best of my ability that gets to a culture of why are we doing what we do and so I think what happens is is like we try to approach this we are very clear on what our expectations are and when people live up to it we reward them for it and we win as a team when people don't you know do what we need to do they have to be coached off the team and that's true in business and so the real trick is for every individual to find where are the values where's the culture that I want to work for and that's what I want to be a part of it's a big world not every company needs to be run the same way right right okay I I want to jump back to the startup world for a second do you see do you see companies where a technology founder starts the company um and then can run the business to a certain point but then can't bring it to the next step you know or you know how does a smart leader and a Founder know when it's time to kind of give up the Reign and maybe focus on the technology angle of it versus the business angle of it I've seen this happen a lot of times and and there there are certain Founders that are like no no no I I can do this I can be someone maybe that I'm not like how do they know when it's time to to to kind of give up the Reigns you know I've been in the valley for over 40 years and to be honest with you I don't think this has changed very much in the last 40 years I think it's actually a human nature issue because you know we like to think if we started the company and we came up with the idea we should be able to scale with the business and some leaders do scale some leaders don't um Katrina Lake who was the founder of Stitch fix used to ask this great question to all of her for uh direct reports every year if you were hiring for your job today would you hire yourself MH and I think a great leader should be willing to ask that of himself or herself right it's like is my are my skills the right skills for this company at this moment in time um and if so great you keep going if we need to improve by by the way even the greatest athletes in the world have coaches right you know can you work with a coach to help make yourself better or you know has the the challenge in front of you kind of out gr that which where you're great do not have the right skills for the next phase and if so how do you make a good transition as a leader and it is a very unnatural act for human beings to give up power like that's not a normal thing for us to do yeah so you know when I talk to leaders about this I'll often sit there and say are you getting the results that the company needs and Are you delivering the results and if not why not and what are you going to do about it and and you know as as a board member or as an investor or a teacher and Mentor my job is to help the leader be as good as they possibly can be but I don't think it's just about Founders I think we as humans like we hold on to what made us cre or what we right it's the evolved person who says am I the right person right now um and then there's also like sometimes there's also there's the hard times and I'm supposed to fight through it I'm supposed to be resilient I'm supposed to be the person who shows the world that they were wrong and I was right and I'm the one who put a dent in the universe and can see around corners which gets to The Narrative of the hero's journey which is so big part of what we talk about as Founders and leaders and I think having that balance and self-awareness like that's a hard thing for people to do I tend to be very empathetic of it but in the end if we deliver results we get to keep our jobs if we don't results we don't yeah it it you know you mentioned the hero's journey it feels like what what was called main character syndrome now too where everyone everyone believes that they're the main character I and you are you are the main character in your own story but then they take it to the extreme which means I'm the main character and all of the rest of you are are my side characters or or My Sidekicks and that's not how the world works the world the world needs everybody to kind of get together or work together on on a lot of things and it's difficult because we generally don't tell stories about kind of the side characters right there's always the kind of the main character becomes the the who we write about in the you know we see in our movies we see on television we see about in The Press about the great Business Leaders but great Business Leaders will often say like teams win championships not individuals and so like the question for Business Leaders to think is how do they build that right team and when's the point of they they just need to improve themselves and invest in themselves and when's the time they need to say maybe like the stuff I enjoy and the stuff that I'm good at maybe that's not the right fit for right now um you know do you believe do you play for the name on the front of the Jersey or the name on the back of the Jersey yeah if you play for the name on the front of the Jersey well you should do what's right for the team I don't know how this turned into a sports podcast Rob I happen to be a sports fan so you open that door Keith and I just walked right through well we were mentioning the Patriots and of course we're recording this on the day after the Celtics just won the the championship in basketball and that was their approach was this team concept a lot more than a lot you see in the NBA um so there's a lot of lessons you can learn from the the Celtics as well absolutely as painful as that is for me to say as a Lakers fan you you got to give a hat tip to the Celtics that was a great team and a great run see I thought you'd be a golden state Warriors fan being up in the up in you know Northern California there you know I'm a fifth generation Californian but I actually grew up in Southern California so the showtime Lakers that was the team that I grew up with but by the way I can definitely appreciate Steph and the team here for their greatness and again as painful as it is I'll give a hat tip to our friends on the paret floors all right so again I'm I'm going to ask you to put your VC hat on again and it wouldn't be one of our podcast here if we didn't talk about generative AI a little bit more so is is there going to be a reckoning uh in this space around all of this money that's going to these AI companies um a correction maybe I mean I don't want to use the the b word um you know are we heading for are we heading for a b word a bubble burst okay so yes yeah and this stuff's real okay like I have never I work with companies all over the world I have never seen a technology adopted so quickly by both large and small companies and see it being applied and experimented in many different ways like it is this stuff is real how it's all going to sort itself out we're in the early Innings and we're still figuring it out um and did too much money kind of flood into this and do we have valuations that are ridiculous and make no sense oh dear God yes yes and but now the question is you know and by the that's normal in the hype cycle and and so this is just another one of these hype Cycles but I've got to tell you in my 40 years in Tech I've never seen a technology you know be applied so quickly be used so pervasively and so quickly I mean even in how I teach right and I can see my students using it and like for 24 hours I fought it like nfw like the students like I want them to they're just using it to not do the work and then I realized it's an instrument they need to learn how to play it and so I totally changed my mindset on okay if you're going to use it I want you to be better than if you didn't use it and you you try to work with them to try to make sure that they can figure out how to synthesize and learn but apply the human in the loop uh I see it with the large clients and even the small clients that I work with and so like lots of startups every startup was is an AI startup but eventually you got to figure out how you're going to make money other than just having a in your company's domain well and it feels like the the use cases and the end users are not adopting it as maybe quickly as a lot of these companies would hope um because they need they have they need to have Revenue attached to it in order to keep it running um do you see that eventually changing where users will understand how to use it in in their in their regular lives or in their work lives or is it going to become a nichy uh feature set within you know something that they're working with my bet is that it's going to become pervasive but it will be inconsistent to the speed with which it gets applied um we're seeing we're seeing the technology evolve so quickly you know uh different you know generations of models that come out and we're seeing you know how they improve so substantively and then we'll see companies like open Ai and the like starting to charge for the you know the newer versions of it and they're going to get people used to paying at the same time the cost of the application will go down right the compute costs will go down as as you know semiconductor companies get better at architectures that are more efficient and more power efficient so we'll see a lot of that will continue to happen um but it won't be a a smooth line it never is it won't be yal X Cub where it goes like this it'll be like this okay and and we'll see ups and downs but but I still think it's going to be a plot you know very very prominent very very big all over the world uh but you're going you know we'll see some major blowouts and then we'll read about it in the Wall Street Journal in the New York Times we'll talk about it on on on podcast right so you don't see it you don't see something happening down the road where people just get sick of it and going yeah it was it it it never really achieved the the limits of the promises that they were making and all of these people are just husters and they're just trying to sell us they're trying to PT baram us um no I I don't think this is nfts and I I don't think this is blockchain which is still broadly writ not widely used in a commercial you know instanciation you know six seven 8 nine years later after we've been talking about it where there was so much hype with crypto and everything else and maybe that will eventually get there AI feels very very different than that to me okay all right Rob seagull again thanks we could probably talk for another hour uh on a lot of these different topics uh i' I'd love to have you back on the show at some point to talk more about uh any kind of these educ ational topics and VC stuff in Silicon Valley you're my like my Silicon Valley guy now uh thank you so much we would love to be back with you again and I hope you and everybody there has a great rest of your day all right thank you again thanks Keith that's all the time we have for today's episode be sure to like the video subscribe to the channel add any thoughts you have below join us every week for new episodes of today and Tech I'm Keith Shaw thanks for watching [Music]
2024-07-04 20:27
