hi everyone I'm Nicola tan the CEO of the Norwegian soone wealth fund and

today in good company we have a tremendous guest MC Gladwell who has refined the way we think about things like success intuition and how I D spread

great to have you here Malcolm

wonderful glad to be here

Malcolm what are the most important things which have changed in society over the last 25 years

oh wow I would turn the question on its head and which is I think we spend a lot of time talking about the things that change and too little time talking about things that haven't changed

I'm always you know we've seen this sort of Advent of this Avalanche of new technology and um I'm always deeply impressed by how little technology changes the way we function as human beings

we seem to be and how we're always left at the end of the day with some fairly difficult and intractable human problems while technology sails ahead and deals with ever more sophisticated problems

you know it's it always comes back to the same thing which is can we can human beings find a way to cooperate with each other in an efficient and um functional way

and that's been the problem for thousands of years and it doesn't seem to get any easier despite the fact that we're surrounded with ever more sophisticated tools for trying to make that happen

and why is that because I think it's funny because sometimes I meet with companies and I ask them what kind of problems do you have and they all talk about you know well we're trying to to build down the silos we're trying to get cooperation up uh we're trying to get people to share uh trust each other more uh feel safer and so on um

seems like it's the same problem everywhere and and been the same problem I'm sure had you at the conversation 50 years ago you would have heard a version of the same thing

there's an imbalance between um those two processes

what is the most uh interesting technology change you are seeing now

um I mean the obvious answer is AI um uh

although um I mean can I answer a slightly different question the the single most I think issue change in the in the western developed world is demographic

it is the aing Aging of the population which I think impacts the way in which all kinds of other technological innovations are used

so if you go back to to the beginning of the baby boom where you have across the West an extraordinarily large generation of people entering professions for the first time um

and that was a when those moments happen those demographic moments you have an opportunity to change the patterns of practice because patterns of practice in any domain are obviously heavily kind of specific to Generations

we don't have that now so instead of having a new generation embracing a technology and bringing it to the profession where're faced with a task of converting existing professional domains to new habits of practice

that's not impossible it's just harder

so you think when we get older we're a bit beyond repair

not Beyond repair I just think making an argument to a 55-year-old doctor that they should seed some enormous share of their diagnostic Behavior to AI is so much harder than it is if you're telling it to someone who's in medical school

and not and for good reasons why would they change their patterns of practice are set

there's no threat to their the way they do business their everything about the new technology strikes them as being um profoundly upsetting

I've seen some of the data from these experiments where they try and get doctors to adopt Ai and what you see is there's no question the AI is better than them

when they have a chance to use AI they don't want to use it and the main objection is it takes away essentially it takes away the fun of practicing medicine

but Co um really changed the technology uptake

I think that's right yeah that's a kind of exogenous shock to the system that has that allows for uh this kind of uh dramatic technology adoption you in a way um

invented the concept of Tipping Point what type of tipping points are you seeing now

I do think if I want to come back to this demographic thing I actually think we don't spend enough time on this

in the United States for example College age population the number of kids applying to college is plummeting um

it's one of the most dramatic shifts that we've seen in generations and I really think that's important

and I cannot tell you why it's important I don't think we know yet but I really do think there's something that's you know

that could be a good thing it could facilitate the introduction of new kinds of kind of cognitive Technologies like AI because we simply have a smaller code of people who are competing for them um

it dramatically changes the kind of social balance of power within industrialized societies if that sector of the population is shrinking

I don't know it's just but it strikes me that we've been living in a world where we have been steadily expanding the number of college educated people for 150 years and that may be coming to an end and that's weird

well if you think it's weird in the states I mean Europe looks much worse right when you look at the demographics in Europe and um

I just spent a month in New York meeting well altogether uh more than 50 American cosos and the first time I've heard them talk about declining demographies in uh in Europe and that therefore they weren't putting their best people elsewhere

demographic Trends to my mind will always Trump technological Trends in terms of their kind of seismic significance um

because they go to the core of who we are right they're um there are you know uh I don't know I

so I think yeah that would to my mind that's really really uh an important change

moving on a bit to Evolution and learning you um have argued that being open to correction builds trust and credibility why is it so hard for leaders to admit they're wrong

because they're confusing two things I think that um they're confusing um admitting you wrong about your ideas and admitting you you you were wrong um admitting to a kind of moral failing

I do think admitting to a moral failing is something that is fundamentally damaging I don't think your colleagues um uh will forgive you easily or move on quickly from the knowledge that you have done that you have revealed some fundamental flaw in character

but admitting that you were wrong about a Mis about an idea or an action unless you understand the nature of your mistake and are endeavoring to do something about it strengthens my belief in you as a leader

it makes me uh think that you are someone who's better adapted to a fast changing world then and also it makes me feel better as a employee because I understand that this is an environment that doesn't penalize um risk-taking or um

and I think people confuse those two

you have revised some of your uh pretty strongly held positions what what type of things have you revised

the biggest example would be about around crime I mean I've returned to crime in almost every one of my books

and if you read all of them um starting with a Tipping Point 25 years ago um through to my last book you uh you will see that I have been returning it and essentially more than updating it in some way

and now to the point where I think that the way I talked about crime in my first book was simply wrong

why were you fascinated by crime in the first place

well I was living in New York at the time when New York City under in the in the early 90s when it underwent this very very sudden reduction in crime um

as did many American cities but New York was the leader and then New York went underwent a second declining crime which was unique to New York

and I just simply I found it so fascinating and no one could give me a good explanation for why

which is that's why I wrote my first book was to try and kind of wrap my hands around the phenomenon of how is it possible that a city could go from being thought of as one of the most dangerous urban areas in the west to a place now I mean New York is basically on par with Paris in many in many respects as a in terms of its crime rate which is you know if I said that to you Nikolai in 1990 you would have said I was crazy

I mean in our lifetime absolutely um

how has your view changed

I become um well mostly because an idea that I I sort of played with in my first book which I returned to much more strongly in my most recent book

I'm more and more and more and more impressed by the fundamental asymmetry of human behavior

um in my first book in my first book I I celebrated a theory of crime reduction that said that what what we want is uh more police more proactive police presence

in other words send police out into the community and have them very aggressively uh take note of and correct small instances of disorder because in doing that they will send a message that large kinds of disorder are um are impermissible

what I what I would I what what we realize now what the criminological world has kind of realized now is that that's not the way crime Works crime is not something embedded broadly in the community

crime is something that is um uh generated and sustained by a tiny tiny tiny fraction of the population

and if you can find that fraction you can create highly effective policing that is both limited um that is that is profoundly limited that is just targeted and limited to to um

so we're talking in New York City we're talking about a couple of thousand people who are probably at the core of the crime epidemic

and this is in a city of nine million people that is something that uh

no it did not occur to anyone in in the 90s

and what what are the implications for this the implications are that uh so there's two Dimensions to this one I wrote about in my last book and one in this book

one is that it is spatially specific that if you look at any and any urban area in the world and look at patterns of crime you will find that they are specific to Street segments so blocks city blocks

and that those that specificity is um has a kind of permanence in other words if I return to Oso 10 years from now I will find crime occurring on the same street corners today as I did 10 years ago that's one

and secondly that it's um is demog it's that it is um well demographically specific that it is certain individuals in certain age cohorts who are in certain um within certain social networks that are are responsible overwhelmingly for sustaining criminal activity

and so if you if you can paint a picture of that Network and look at the core of that Network you can instead of instead of trying to track a thousand people you can track 10

and that is I mean a a kind of that is so distant from what we thought the job of a police force was 25 years ago

I mean it's night and day it's like it's precision

it's the difference between you know you know in chemotherapy in the 50s you attacked the whole body and now you you detect some tiny portion of the tumor it's the same it's the same analogy

interesting different type of social network is uh we find in sports and um you you say that failure and mediocracy in sport can teach us a lot so what are your thoughts there

you were a previous Runner you still run

yeah but yeah you ran faster in the past

of course yes I did as do as do we all yeah um

well you know it's funny I I have many feelings about sports and I it took me a long time but I I came to the I I listened to to too many CEOs so many cosos or people who people running companies told me that they like to hire former athletes and for a long time I dismissed this and then I realized there must be something there that there must be picking up on there must be something specific that is taught in sports more effectively that's taught in other domains When We're Young um

I listened to to too many CEOs so many cosos or people who people running companies told me that they like to hire former athletes and for a long time I dismissed this and then I realized there must be something there

that there must be picking up on there must be something specific that is taught in sports more effectively that's taught in other domains When We're Young um

but the second question is is the thing that's being taught in sports specific to being good at them or is it just specific to participating in them

in other words to benefit from whatever good is coming out of being a long-distance Runner do you need to be in inab britson or can you be Malcolm Gladwell coming somewhere in the middle of the back um

and the answer is I I'm now convinced that there may be as many if not more gains to being good or mediocre as opposed to being very good

I don't think you want to be the um and I think we get you know the the you know for among reasons the time costs of being exceptional are so large that they crowd out other kinds of of knowledge and skill acquisition

what you want to be is someone who is simply um acquiring the kind of discipline and thought processes that come from participation in a sport without being overwhelmed by it

so if if I'm mediocre in sport what is it that I gain from it

well if you're mediocre because you don't train very hard you're not getting

no I'm training so let's say I'm training hard I'm getting up early I'm going for it but hey I'm just too fat I don't move fast enough

and I think and I I would further if I was someone who was hiring find it impressive that you persisted even though you were mediocre

in other words the idea that somebody could devote a large amount of their time and attention to something um and be comfortable with the fact that they weren't that wasn't being that wasn't receiving an immediate reward is interesting to me right

that they're that they have other words an attraction to um first of all they have a a self-de of success not one that's externally constructed

and two that they're happy to persist in an activity even though the world doesn't recognize their persistence in some tangible form that's really really crucial right

I'm what I'm interested in is the extent to which somebody is is their motivation is is self-generated That's The crucial thing

well I we we certainly see uh more grit uh more working on process focus on process rather than results a lot of uh you know a lot of Team uh spirit and work coming out of it a lot of positive things

how has your background in sport helped form you

well um many ways um I do think it teaches it taught me as a at a very young age I was a big high school Runner um uh

the distance between preparation and reward in sports is one of the key lessons you know there's no such thing as instant gratification

and that's for a 13-year-old is a really really really important idea and to lay down the notion at 13 that it is October and we're going to go for a 10 mile run and you will not see the results of this until you race in May is really really useful at that age

I mean it's useful at 61 too but um to to have that lesson um

and the second thing that um how well you do is a function not of not just of the intensity of your effort but more importantly of the consistency of your effort um

is another really really important you know when I look at my college Years and even my professional years I am not someone who ever does anything at the last moment

never do I never stay up all night I never I never work past you know I don't work in the evenings I don't I meet I meet deadlines

why do I meet deadlines that's a very runnner kind of thing to do there's no such thing as last minute preparation

in fact the opposite is true if you're you're supposed to do nothing at the very very at the very very end before cor race

so like those are all kinds of um you know foundational ideas for uh for an adolescent to kind of to be introduced to

and the third thing is this intensity consistency thing is something that only recently I've I've dwell a lot on

and I I've been struck by how many successful people I know are people who value consistency over intensity um

that this idea that you get up every day and you do something and that that is a far better way of succeeding than concentrating um doing these bursts of kind of um hyperkinetic activity which exhausts you and which give you very little time for reflection um

the thing about consistency is it allows for it gives you space to reflect um

and I a lot one of the things that one of the strategies that I've tried to follow in my work is trying to build uh space for reflection into creative Cycles

you know start early enough that I have the time to kind of put something aside and come back to it and that allows you gives you so much more insight into what into what's wrong with what you're doing

how do you do that

start earlier and do again it's the consistency better to do two hours a day you know starting six months early than to do six hours a day starting one month early

yeah a couple of things I mean one is uh consistency builds trust and we even see it in investment results you know

a consistent track record is much better than a more volatile track record it's perceived as more trustworthy

but uh in terms of the your disbelief in procrastination uh we have other thinkers such as Adam Grant who is advocating for procrastination why uh why could you elaborate a bit on that

well I don't uh to be fair I'm just I'm describing my own approach and why I think there may be benefits to someone engaging in the kind of sporting activity I'm not saying this is true for all people or all domains um

and uh uh there's certainly a case there's you know the the lovely way about the way human beings operate is that there are many many different ways of solving a problem um

I I think there I'm I'm describing one particularly fruitful Avenue

now you uh identify as an introvert what have you learned about introverts approach to challenges I mean are you really an introvert or are you just saying it

well well I uh the introvert is someone uh who is um not hostile to social interaction on the contrary they we can be we can be inspired by it thrilled by it love performing

but someone for whom social interaction is costly um

so I am someone who's I I do I enjoy this conversation I enjoy interviewing people I enjoy giving talks but it's costly it in other words it does not invigorate me it drains me um

thanks so that that just means that we because we regard those activity we understand those activities to be costly we ration them like you would in any

whereas the extrovert does not does not ration those things I I watched once watched Bill Clinton work a room he's the he's the quintessential extrovert

he is in so invigorated by meeting people that he will do it indefinitely I mean he he would stay in that room for hours if he had the chance

that's not what the introvert is so I suppose you know do I think there's something I don't have a kind of preference for I don't think one mode is superior to the other

it's just a kind of um uh you know it's the it's I if I I and I find I find the classic extrovert position that interaction is invigorating I find it deeply mystifying

I don't understand how that's possible but I I don't think it's a bad thing I just think it's a it's just a kind of foreign activity

where does extroversion come from

well these seem to be of the kind of Big Five personality traits introversion and extroversion are the most genetically determined right

so conscientiousness would be um the least oh no motivation we know that motivation seems to be the least um and conscientiousness seem to be the least genetically determined

and extroversion introversion seem to be the most so I it's purely kind of um baked into our systems

because I've been thinking quite a bit about energy where does energy come from and how do we how do we measure it and how important is it

yeah is that the same is extroversion the same as energy or is it different

no uh I think energy I I lump enine in my mind with enthusiasm um

and that the person who is energetic is typically the person who has simply done a better job of finding the thing that gives them pleasure and excitement um

and that in the that once you found that most of us are uh energetic but the problem is that most of us haven't found it

so when we observe in the like when I said earlier if you look at the Big Five personality traits you know introversion extroversion conscientiousness openness to experience neuroticism um agreeableness the one that is the least genetically determined is conscientiousness

so the things that make the the cluster of traits that surround motivation and the question is why would that be so

what is the what is the environment doing there in a way that it's not doing when it comes to extroversion introversion

and the answer is that um for us to express our motivation we need to externally come upon something worthy of our time attention I say enthusiasm because that's the way it um

now and to the ex that it is a little bit or some it it is genetically mediated it's that some people are just look harder or are much more inclined to find things um uh that that excite their enthusiasm

so you know when I when we when we hire people when I hire people I'm very interested in this trade and I I like I like the person who can find pleasure and joy in very very small things because it strikes me that oh that person is going to be be easy to motivate right

there're but the person who's very very very very particular um is going to be a harder um he gonna it's going to be harder to to keep them um focused

how do you tease tease this out in an interview

no idea I mean I have some ideas I think we're all very you know the truth is there's almost nothing we do worse than um assess someone's personality in a short period of time right

it's like it's just we're uniformly bad at it when we do it we tend to do it badly we tend to be misled by all kinds of things um

you know uh I don't think there's any kind of um there is any kind of uh substitute for uh substituting some longer interaction or for you know the as journalists we always we you know there's a a very standard thought experiment that a journalist has um

so Nichol I suppose I was assigned to write a long 10,000w profile of you and I was given two conditions you can have unlimited access to Nikolai or you can have unlimited access to everyone in nikolai's life which do you choose

the good journalist would always choose the latter that I feel I can get further in understanding you if I had unlimited access to all the people around you even if it meant I could never talk to you um then the reverse

um that's not because you will mislead me but just because there are real limits to the extent to which I can accurately gauge who you are from your own self-presentation right

there's just too many defenses too many and too many things about which you like all of us are unavoidably subjective

you you know we're just poor judges of ourselves so I I would do better if I could get your you know spouse mother sibling cooworker best friend that's just going to be way more useful

why do people at the top complain more than others

no this is I this is one of the Mysteries so I have there are many Mysteries that that I that I find with uh with wealth um

the there are several wealth paradoxes one is the wealthy should logically complain less about taxes and be less sensitive to tax rates than the poor right

because they're they're wealthy it makes up you know they still have so much left over they can still live their lives and yet they seem to be far more sensitive to even subtle changes and tax rates

now that maybe because they're more focused on whatever there's all kinds of other reasons you can come up with but fundamentally as a psychological problem you would think the acquisition of great wealth would permanently remove any worries I had about in impingements on my wealth right

because you're rich now but people never they never seem to Rich people never seem to reach the point where they say I'm rich and that means I can now focus on enjoying myself hanging out with my family going sailing you know

no they're still obsessed with the impingements on their own wealth so that's sort of mystery number one

mystery number two is that you would think that the acquisition of great wealth would make you aware of the fact that the rest of the world looks at you differently

in other words if I am a s year-old uh working two jobs with no money um and I complain the world understands the nature of my complaints

you're young you have no money your family um but if you that 17-year-old grows up to be a billionaire the world looks on that same set of complaints very differently

instead of being sympathetic and understanding of them the world now says why are you complaining right

so there's a certain point in the maturation of an individual where we have to realize we can no longer behave in the same way as we did previously if we would like to maintain the respect of the rest of the world around us

many many wealthy people don't make that transition they don't understand that we don't want to hear about their complaining anymore once they have enormous wealth

why don't they get it

well that's a really interesting question um part of it there's a benign explanation which is that we and I'm sure you've observed this too in talking to people who are powerful that we permanently inhabit the world of our youth right

in other words if somebody was grew up in very humble beginnings and attains enormous wealth some part of them is always someone to grw up in humble beginnings

in other words they can't transcend the kind of um the the psychological framework they established as a young person that's one um

uh uh definition the second definition is the more Insidious one is that um the condition of um uh you know the the function that being embedded in a network is uh is it is a a form of Correction

other words I my friends around me govern my um my utterances my behavior by they they're the ones who make me aware of when I've stepped over a line or um uh

as those um influence when you get higher and higher and higher on the higher up the scale the number of people in that correcting Circle starts to shrink you no longer get the you're not getting feedback anymore on your behavior right

you complain because all your friends complain and nobody's telling you not to

exactly yeah my think about my three-year-old gets nonstop feedback on her behavior

I mean every single thing she does if she grows up to be a billionaire that will vanish and that's a very different condition in which to live your life

related to this uh many successful people stay at work much longer than they need to and uh I meet a lot of people who continue to work really really hard long into the 70s and even 80s why is it so important for them to continue going

well because it's fun right I mean it I I suspect I will be one of those people

and I mean you know from from a kind of could I for example retire at this moment I could my brother has retired he's he retired at my age his friend best friend retired I mean lots of people in my age retire

I'm not retired I have no intention of so doing why not um

there's no reason for me to do what I do continue to do what I do other than I find it enjoyable and I always have

and it's just a way of feeling connected to the world I think it's a very actually I don't find that pattern of behavior problematic I find it kind of lovely

do you think it is because they have their identity tied up to their position

yeah but I think that's fine I I I I think you know it it can be there are versions of this that are highly problematic

uh Joe Biden staying in office long past the point where he should have that had really profound consequences for his party um and for the country um that's the worst case scenario

a lack of self-awareness about or the CEO who who is no longer capable of doing their job who's hanging on um

but there are other versions of people who are who remain very involved with what they're doing that I think are lovely and wonderful

and in a world where you know we are we are transitioning to a world where I'm guessing uh longevity is going to undergo some pretty dramatic improvements so we better get used to this

my daughters are you know are probably going to live to what I don't know 120

I mean uh Nicola you and I might we might actually our expectation of when we die May in the next 10 years so dramatically change that we might still be living very productive lives at 100 or whatever

in which case you know are you am I really going to spend the last uh 35 years of my life Idol no

I mean it's it seems inconceivable so why wouldn't I want to continue doing the thing I'm that makes me happy

well um one of the things you do uh is also uh to Zig when other people are zagging you are contrarian in your thinking and um why why is it so difficult to be contrarian

well for many people there are there are real Stakes involved in being contrarian um

you know the the contrarian investor I remember once years ago interviewing uh I spent I did a whole piece on Nim TB um and before before he was sort of famous

and he was describing you know he had a he had a longtail uh fund and the nature of a longtail fund is that every day you lose a little bit of money in the hopes that that one day that a day that you have no idea you cannot predict when you'll make it all back in a rush

so this is the person who who wrote The Black Swan

yeah the person who wrot the black Black Swan and you know he was at that is a contrarian investing position

there are very few people at that time particularly who took that kind of position and it's really really hard because you will face nothing but social pressure um

for 95% of the time of the duration of your fund right everyone around you every friend you have everyone you went to business school with everyone you went to you know worked at you know wherever bare Sterns with is making money every day and you're losing money every day

there's consequences the contrarian doctor who decides that a certain kind of of treatment is more advantageous than another um

will face the disapproval of their peers and patients until such time as they can prove it and that can be years

I mean I've told stories of the I I remember writing a story about the guy who essentially invents combination chemotherapy who was ostracized by his peers at the National Cancer Institute for 10 years

for 10 years he couldn't even get graduate students to work in his lab right

10 years and then at the end of it he was like oh by the way I fundamentally changed the way we treat and he he got his payoff then

but he had to have a level of my point is if you're a journalist there is no social cost to being contrarian none

it doesn't like if anything there in a benefit you stand out from the crowd like it's a weird

so i' what's the most contrarian thing you think about these days these days yeah

that's interesting the problem is there's many definitions to contrarian

there are positions I have that are contrarian within my Social Circle but are not contrarian in the World At Large

so you know if you in my Social Circle it's quite contrarian to believe in markets

I have to believe in markets that I I I share your view on that one yeah

um when you um how do you come up with aders for your books

um you the search for a new idea comes after activity not before

in other words I don't come up with an idea and then go out in the world and pursue it what you do is you immerse yourself in the world in the hes of coming up with an idea

in other words you write so ideas emerg very often out of the previous thing you were working on

you because you chose to write about this unusual area with an uncertain outcome what you did along the way was to serendipitously come up with a bunch of other ideas

that the reason people have difficulty with ideas is that they're static finding IDE is is there static

you can't be static you must be moving and sometimes so movement is intellectual movement is good for its own sake um

and that is a kind of that's a difficult thing to grasp when you're starting out an easy thing to grasp when I think you're older

what does a day look like for you

um it depends what stage I am in the process but I um like many writers I think writing is in the morning

there's a few hours in the morning that are quite essential for where I'm highly productive um

there's uh a certain amount of kind of random reading of things of people who I find interesting and and then but the real heart of it is there are certain periods over the course of the Year where I I have very concentrated bursts of lots and lots and lots of interviews of people um

and that's the core that's when you and I will you know typically what happens when I'm doing something is I will have a very narrow sense of what I want and then in the course of doing multiple interviews that will inevitably broaden

do you do them in person

well uh as when I can um a lot on Zoom now these days because um it's it turns out to be very efficient

I wish when I was if I didn't have a family I would travel a lot more to do my interviews but I just it there's just a they real kind of um external limitations now on how much I can travel

now you are uh you know a world Superstar so you probably can interview whoever you like but who who is on who is at the top of the list for the moment

I'm well I'm interested I'm doing a big project on um uh on uh the death penalty at the moment that's one of the big things I'm doing

and I'm there a particular case I'm interested in um

I you know I have I don't have a kind of hierarchical wish list in other words if you told me tomorrow that I could interview you know have an hour and a half with Donald Trump I would I'm not interested in talking to Donald Trump

or any or if you told me I could I could talk to any Fortune 500 CEO I wanted to for an hour and a half tomorrow I would say actually not that's I'm fine I don't need that

but what I would like is you know it's funny I'm going to do this thing with Eli Lily in Las Vegas and I'm interviewing a guy he not the CEO he's I don't know how many steps down it's a very big company let's just say he's five steps down

I love talking to the guys who are five steps down um

I'm laughing because I'm actually interviewing the CEO soon

oh I see no but nothing against the CEO and Sher is super interesting but there are real limitations in about what he can say and there real limitations about what he knows

and from a journalist standpoint he what he would have what the CEO would have is a broad conceptual understanding of where the company is headed very useful if you're an investor

but I'm a Storyteller what I want are specifics details like Oddities anomalies like

and the person who's five steps down is the one who knows that who can say the thing that the CEO will almost never tell you is um

I had this funny moment when I ran into this person and they said the following thing and I went back and I talked

they don't that's not what their life is Right whereas the guy who pipes sits down he's actually on the phone with the customer or he's on the phone with the guy in the lamp and the guy in the lab says you know oh my God you wouldn't believe what happened yesterday

like this that's the story I want you know we had this assay and I thought it wasn't going to work and it turns out or whatever you know so that's that's why I want

and I don't know who that the guy five steps down the guy I want I don't know who he is right

I can identify the CEO but I need to do some digging and in order to find

I had an interview last year we were doing all this stuff with IBM and it was during Co actually

and there was a guy who who was part of their Logistics practice and it was it was just like so interest it was stuff I had no idea about

he had like really specific granular insight and this whole point of course you would notice I didn't notice that bottlenecks in uh in in during covid were a behavioral problem they weren't actually

it was a particular human Dynamic about people cascading you know decisions and and he used a very specific thing and walked me through it

and it was like that's what I want I mean he was in the middle of it you know and he Comm and he was excited about genuinely excited about the details of that particular um problem

do you think C are boring

well I think they should be

why should they be boring

well they shouldn't be what I say to go back to something you said earlier that trust emerges out of consistency

and you were talking in that sense I suspect largely about consistency in performance but I think it's also true of consistency in um uh in in self-presentation

we want someone who uh you don't want the CEO who when I when you say someone is interesting what you mean is there is a variation in their self-presentation right

like if you think about I am not consistent in self-presentation there's sometimes when I get really really wound up and there's sometimes when I you know that's not I'm not what you want in a c in a CEO

you don't you don't want someone like you know and then you want someone who's right that's the job the job is really hard and needs a of focused steady attention

and that's enormously reassuring to the investor but you the manic you don't want manic behavior in someone who's running a large scale Enterprise

you may want that in the person five steps down but not in the not in the person running the show

I haven't really thought about um boring and consistency as a management quality but I see I totally see what you mean very interesting

what are you currently reading

I am reading what am I reading I'm reading a bunch of books on um on forgiveness um because it's so Central to this thing I'm doing on the death penally um

and I'm very interested in um what the kind of uh how you you know the how the uh what the kind of practical uh implications of forgiveness are

in other words it's one thing to talk about that is I forgive you and then the second harder question is all right so what does that actually mean in terms of how I would respond to some transgression by you um

and how would that play out in a formal uh process of law which is a very you know in a uh in a in a Vengeance based Criminal Justice System such as we have in the United States that's a very very very crucial question

what made you start to work on this topic

uh random uh I this one is actually I had a friend who um said to me I have this friend named Kate who's really interesting you should talk to her and I said all right

and I started talking to her and then it just LED turns out she is really interesting and led me in a million different directions

do you read a lot of books at the same time

I read a lot of uh fiction at the same I tend to read a lot of um detective fiction and um spy novels and things um

and I realize I've been doing it my entire life and I realize that a lot of I think there's so much to be learned learned

I mean I enjoy them but then secondarily I think unconsciously I am drawn I'm looking for lessons about how to tell uh complicated stories

which is what a and how to order a the definition of a of a good spine novel or a good mystery is it is an exercise in disordered information flow right

that if I'm talking to you about uh an event that happened yesterday the fall of Syria

I say Syria fell yesterday Assad's in Moscow and then we proceed to talk about why right

if I was writing a thriller about it I'd flip it I would withhold the fact that Syria fell yesterday in assads in Moscow and we would start at the beginning and at the end and I the big surprise would be the whole thing falls apart and Assad's in Moscow right

that's disordered information that's a much more the efficient way to talk about Siri is the first way the fun way is the second way right

so I'm in the fun business I'm in the disordered information

now disordered information stories are really really they're much harder to tell every child knows how to tell an orderly story

but a good disordered story is like there are only at any given time in the world of literature what 50 people who can tell a good one

I mean it's an astonishing small I'm talking about in in the developer an astonishing small number of people right

why is John mcer revered 50 years after he wrote some of his best work because he could do the disordered story

what are the other keys to that to telling a good story

well it's about pacing so I can't withhold information forever otherwise you leave you become frustrated you you don't understand what the point is

so I have to impress upon you that the Enterprise in which we're embarked has a payoff even though I can't tell what it is

that you need to be patient and I need to kind of service your impatience throughout the story by giving you little bits that create the confidence in you that there will be a dramatic resolution right

I need I need to know that the reader needs to know the listener needs to know that the the Storyteller can pull it off

you know uh you know um uh what's her name who wrote Harry Potter uh Rin

that was her IUS was that she could in a 600 page book she could Telegraph to a 9-year-old that there was enough going on here that it was worth uh it was worth investing in this a process that would could take weeks

did do you read the Harry Potter books

my kids are too my kids are too young but they will when the time comes we will do we will do an awful lot of Harry Potter

do you uh finish books do you always finish them

no uh if I to this very point point when I lose confidence in the storyteller's ability to land the plane I I I just abandon the book

and how quickly can that be how how how fast can that be

I have abandoned books with five pages left right

and what's the quickest you abandon a book

probably the first page if I just think you're not setting it up for me in a way that's compelling or you're trying to tell me too much

the the tip off is when they try and tell you too much on the first page which is by the way you there are important lessons you know

some our our mutual friend malag ganar loves to talk about storytelling and investing that and I she's absolutely right um

that that's what we're looking for yeah is can is this we're about to entrust our money to an entity and we need to know that they have a story about what they're doing and the story needs to be compelling

and it needs to in many ways resemble the story that I'm talking about and we have to have the confidence that the the that we're embarking on this journey that it will end well right

that's a storytelling function you don't know you know Apple in 1980 whatever you don't know they're going to land the plane but somehow Steve Jobs manages to communicate the confidence that he can that's he's a Storyteller a really good one right yeah

how do you relax

uh well I'm a a running would be one and uh uh reading my spy tillers and hanging out with my with my children would be the the leading ones

and what is your advice to young people who want to think differently

travel would be the first uh in fact I I think it's I think I it it may not it may not even be necessary at the beginning to go further than that

I I just think particularly now um when you have uh one of the fun one of the one of the dysfunctions of elite production in the west is that we increasingly sequester uh young people in these um homogeneous universes right

they're simply not getting access to people outside their class peer group

and that's fine it's a very efficient way of learning the you know the the modes of kind of Elite Performance but it really hampers them when they are put in a position where they have to deal with someone outside outside of their world

and what is the fastest way outside of that bubble is to travel

I don't think a a university education for example is complete if it does not require the student to not just leave the school but leave the school and go somewhere that is uh profoundly different in its social structure and and political structure and whatever structure than the than their place they grow up

well Malcolm you have taken us on uh travel after travel with your with your books you are just an incredible Storyteller and you have pulled it off Time After Time After Time

and we are looking forward to you pulling it off again with uh with your work on forgiveness and other things so big thanks for being here

fantastic thank you so much nickl this has been very fun thank you