Gary A Bolles  0:00  
This is the time to do that. Your workers have been knocked off of their, you know, safe foundations, everybody's basically sort of rethinking processes, don't lose that. Once we take the shackles off and we're, you know, the great reset is slowly diminishing you, you're gonna have a chance to go back to the same kind of work that you did before. And what I urge courageous leaders to do is to work with their people to figure out what remains, what can we keep, that retains a tremendously inclusive culture for our organization, but is incorporating all of these different characteristics that we're going to need to be able to thrive in the future and to be able to deal with the next great reset.

kevin edwards  0:47  
You are listening to the real leaders podcast, your number one source for impact leaders, harnessing capitalism to sustain the planet, people and profits. I'm your host, Kevin Edwards, and that x syrup. My friends was from Gary Bowles, who just wants to make sure capital leaders find the courage to rethink the day to day after this virtual trial. So what will the future of work look like? And what leadership skills does one need to possess? Find out on this episode of the relators podcast? Enjoy. Okay, here we go in 5432 in one and welcome everyone to this episode of the real leaders podcast here today to talk about the future of work is Mr. Gary Bowles. Gary, thanks for being with us today.

Gary A Bolles  1:41  
Thanks for inviting me.

kevin edwards  1:42  
Absolutely. Well, Gary, you know, Strange Times right now it seems to be like everyone's working remotely trying to figure out what to do. But before we jump in, to your thoughts on the future of work, what intrigued you first about the future.

Gary A Bolles  1:57  
So I have a confession to make you Even though I write in lecture extensively about the future for the future of education, I never was all that interested in college. So I sort of, I barely escaped High School. And and then I although I did a bunch of jobs for years, I sort of fell into the family business. And it just so happens that my father was a recovering minister Episcopalian minister who had been laid off in a budget crunch in San Francisco, and eventually found a job helping other ministers in the late 60s who themselves were being laid off, and he went to go write a little pamphlet to help them which turned into a book called What color is your parachute, which became the world's enduring career manual is 10 million copies in print. So I was actually trained as a career counselor when I was 19 years old. So imagine you're 19 and you're doing workshops with people in their 40s and 50s. And you're helping them to figure out how they should change their careers. So there's only one takeaway You can have bought you two. The first is do what you love. And the second is go do what you love. That is for me, I really thought I was you know, I learned a lot, but wasn't wasn't cut out to be a career counselor, and I love high tech. So I moved to Silicon Valley in the early 80s. So that definitely dates me. And virtually everything I've done since then has had something to do with the technology industry. But a lot of the patterns of the things that I'd like to add on the people that I talked to six, seven years ago, I was invited by the government of New Zealand to come down and do a series of talks on the future entrepreneurs on future work. And, and I realized that so much of the issues that we were dealing with just kept on coalescing back into future of work, the future of the organization and so on. And because I've been working with Singularity University now for a number of years, helping them The diamond deliver things like their global summit. The singularity asked me to come on as Chair for the future of work a couple of years ago. And so that's become just the anchor for so much of my work. 

kevin edwards  4:14  
We'll Gary thanks for sharing that's pretty interesting. Now, you said think back when you're 19, that that dates may as well. It's not too long ago. And that seems to be the number one question students are asking themselves when they come out of college, what do I want to do? And they have to feel like they have to have everything figured out. The question for you, Gary, is is Do people have to go to college nowadays?

Gary A Bolles  4:37  
So I have no moral standing to answer that question since I didn't know enough college this stuff into assemble so but I'll just tell you my perspective. So I parents asked me all the time. You know, how am I kids be okay. And young people ask me all the time. What should I do or is it does it do it? need to know what I should do or you know, and so I give a couple of what I think of as anchors. First is, if there ever was a very common model for what I call the old rules of work, when I finally call the three boxes of life, a big chunk of learning, and then a big chunk of work, and then a big chunk of leisure in the period, formerly known as retirement, if there ever was that pattern where you could just go and go study the right quote, unquote, field and go to the right college and go into the right industry and go to the right company, if there ever was that time, all of those things have changed. And so I honestly can't tell you a single industry that you can get trained for, that wouldn't guarantee that you'd have work in 10 years. And so, instead, what you're going to need to do is be continually adaptive, and so it's critical for young people and especially their pets. to dial down the anxiety around picking the right school, the right when you need to do is to basically learn a process about how you can continually make choices about what you feel you need to do in the world of work. And if you if you buy that we're all living longer that you know, now we're having to think about 80 years is being a pretty common life to lead. And then it might pretty soon be 100 might be even more than imagine an 80 year career. Like imagine what you would do. There's no way you're gonna stay in the same field or the same job for all that time you're going to continually and so what I want younger people especially to do and in most, especially with the support of their parents, is you should really be exploring how you follow your passions. How you find the thing that you can make money on a thing that you feel you can do well a thing that you feel you do Really actually, you're using skills you both enjoy using, those are actually the things to learn at that younger time and pay and worrying about picking the specific field or industry and hoping that what you learn in college is going to carry you through for another 40 or 50 years. I mean, that was that world is gone.

kevin edwards  7:19  
Gary, what does that feel like when you know, what you're doing is what you want to do? Is it a feeling? Is it like, how do you measure something like that? I guess?

Gary A Bolles  7:31  
That's an excellent question. So I'd say there's a number of different doors that path pass through to get to that answer. So each of us is driven by different things. So I'll just I'll just give you an example. So the four things I often talk about as anchors is what just sort of ran through is for some people, it's kind of making money. And that is what they feel is their purpose or rather, it's the meaning of that. The value or the way that they want to be able to work is they're most most intent on making money. And especially when we first started working, that's kind of the base deliverable to be able to pay the rent. For other people, it's Are you good at it, that is they're using skills that you can demonstrate, you're actually proficient at and of course, if you keep on working for a while you're there you probably gonna find out that you make more money if you're good at it, you know, if in most in most professions So, and to some people that's like the deliverable that's that's me. Now, then there's a third door. And that's one of the skills you love using or is there a population that you most love working with? Or is there a kind of field or industry you most love being at and so it's your love of something, it's the driver internally within you, that there you feel that there is something that matches the combination of the skills that you have and the things that you must have? But you most want to solve. And then there's a fourth door, which is what the world needs. Are you driven more by that there's a problem in the world and I always say that there are problems that you choose those the ones you know, for your work that you are constantly looking to solve, but there are problems that choose you there's a whole range of populations didn't choose to be homeless didn't choose to be handicap didn't choose to be a refugee and so so there's some of us are driven by what the world needs. Well, it just so happens that those four different aspects of those four different doors is a Japanese model called ikigai. And it turns out that the people in Okinawa, who Dan Buettner profiled in the book, Blue Zones, the longest lived people on the planet. They're those people that are living to 80 or 100 years old, and they don't believe that a life is well lived unless you have done all those things. Something doings doing something that you can make money at something You're good at something that you love doing and something that the world needs. 

kevin edwards  10:05  
I'm drawing a parallel here with like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it appears that a lot of the guests on the show, at least, that I can speak for, you know, had a really successful career, whether it was in finance, and banking, manufacturing, just, you know, overall stud made a lot of money. And now, they're having this, like you said, like this existential, this world problem of that, I want to go back to my core values, and I want to align my skills with something that's going to take on a social or environmental problem. I refer to that as like a crucible, something where a lot of elements come together to create something new. What do you think that is? And do you think that you can start out trying to pursue those core values and social and environmental changes before you make money and have that security?

Gary A Bolles  10:56  
So that's an excellent question. The old rules of work, we're basically moving to think I think of it as a stack. Okay, so you mazels hierarchy hierarchy. I'll come back to you in just a second because I think there's some things to learn that Maslow gave us a great language to use aside from anything else but, but I'll stick with the inky guy model for just a second because it seems to resonate with a lot of people in that audience. I did. I did 71 lectures in nine countries last year, and it just seems to resonate with people around the world. So. So when you first are starting to work, you have this baseline deliverable, or if you fall down Maslow's hierarchy, I used to be on the board of a nonprofit that job counseling for the homeless in Los Angeles and if you so if you fall off of as low as Maslow's pyramid and you're at the baseline, then you just need money. I mean, you know, what, if you a lot of people, when they picture a career, they Think of it as sort of this constantly moving art from the lower left to the upper right. But the truth is for many people, it's a fever chart. It's spiking up where you're making money and spiking down where you're not making money. And that's that that for carrier that, you know, that sort of up and down nature is true, whether you're a gig worker or it's true whether or not you have challenges in bouncing up and down Maslow's hierarchy. And so what's what's important with the read the reason I talked about sort of the mentality behind Iki guy is that the old rules of work your parents or your grandparents would tell you look, just make money. That's just it says that's like a baseline deliverable. If you're good at it great, because then you'll make more money. But that's it. Like if you if you're feeding your family and putting a roof over your head, duh, like, don't worry about anything more. But one of the things that my father started to point out 50 years ago was that Well, no, but if you love what you're doing, you're going to be better at it. Right? So you want to keep moving up the stack. And then it just so happens that many people that have That old rules of workmen model was well, you know, maybe once you've made a whole bunch of money and you're retired, then you can give away money, help people volunteer. Well, young people come out of school and and they flip the stack. So they they're often saying what does the world need? If I can focus on that, I'm going to love doing it. If I love doing it, I'm going to get better at it. If I get better at I'm gonna get it paid for better better for and so so they flip the stack, right? They're coming at it from the opposite direction. Now, parents freak out when they see that because they say to me, Why won't my kid get a real job? Well, picture this. In the old model, you had what my father called the three boxes of life, education, then work, then leisure in the period formerly known as retirement. So you made a big investment in education. So you're asking early on, does anybody have to go to college? Well, sure, there's still plenty of professions where employers that's The strongest signal you can send them, you've got a degree at the MBA. Oh, and, and there's also this certain fields, you know, like, like brain surgery where I kind of, I don't want you to just watch the YouTube video and walk into the operator, right? So, so so there's, there's this old model of first I get a whole bunch of education and then I'm going to work I'm going to advertise that investment over a long period of time. Don't people are coming out of college if they even go to college, and then they're getting a day job, but then they're also driving for Uber at night. And then they're working on a startup with their friends and then they take a gap year and then they you so that you have this constantly moving landscape of work, and I call that a portfolio of work. And it's a it's a totally rational response to an exponentially changing world, your investment accounts. And this is probably very top of mind for many people here in what I call the great reset. During the coven crisis, the the your investment council gonna tell you have a budget Just safe investments, then you can take a little bit more risk and then you get upset small amount that's a lot more risk. Right? Well, that's exactly what young people are doing. And and older people as well nowadays where they're building this portfolio of work and, and so I just caution people to be as intentional about that as possible. You, there's a bunch of tremendous benefits to it, flexibility variety, and there's a bunch of challenges to it. That's can be very precarious income. And so it's important to be able to develop the skill set to be able to manage that that's a different skill set than when you just had to go to a nine to five job.

kevin edwards  15:40  
Got it, be it be intentional, and is the world willing to pay you for that service, I think is probably the key is it's interesting times right now, I mean, we're experiencing at least you know, my generation, you know, this is like the first cause for us to be like jizya we really stand up. This is a recession that we're getting Experiencing we experienced it when our parents got hit by it. And now we're in the state where we were able to drive Uber, we were able to drop off food and do deliveries and do side gigs. But that whole gig economy right now is slowing down and the word sustainability is becoming is coming to the surface of are these jobs sustainable, and then an environment like this. How do you see this mini recession right now? Why don't want to call a recession that bear market right now let's just call it that for now. What do you see? How do you see this impacting the gig economy and the overall future of digital work economy?

Gary A Bolles  16:39  
So the reason I call this the great reset is because we had the great recession. And what we're doing right now, we would never in the history of humans except during a war or in some cases, in in when there were epidemics in the past, but we've never had a period where we basically all collectively said, Alright, we need to, we need to hit the pause button. And then we have to figure out what that means, like, how do we keep working or not keep working and what so so collectively, we are all going through one of the largest experiments in human history, there's a billion and a half people on the planet right now that are being either asked or required to stay home. And to figure out okay, if you're staying home, then how are you going to continue to live and, and and there's, there's no roadmap. There's no user manual. We're all just figuring it out together collectively. So I'm going to tell you that there's an awful lot of discussion between a lot of the networks that I'm plugged into and, and great thinkers and leaders and and I'll just tell you some of the consistent patterns. The first is that I've been saying for quite some time that we're unbundling work, that is that traditional construct of a job where you had to be nine to five in the same places other people can be There, you know, I, I did a talk for singularity University's virtual summit last week and I showed pictures of rush hour commute and a massive cubicle farm and I said, remind me why this was a good idea. It's not it's not human. It's not it's really not, you know, the, you know, going way, way back. People have talked about human thriving as being constantly changing context about doing different things in a day and being around different people and being outdoors and being indoors. And we've, we've lost a huge amount of that. And so, so what I hope is a couple things I hope remains, first off, that this traditional construct for a job or unbundling that so that it isn't, doesn't necessarily have to be as place based as possible. That is, if you want to live in a remote, small town where you can afford a home and and a quiet life yet still work and make a good wage from a company that's in some other place, then that's going to get more likely I'm going to hopefully more managers are going to be Develop the kind of courageous leadership that allows them to be able to manage distributed teams. Right? That's we've failed our managers by forcing them into this model where they have to see the people that they're managing. And and I hope we've broken that. Second is that I hope that we double down on skills, we double down on human skills. The RSA work is just three things humans skills applied to task, solve problems, we need to back up and say, Wait, what are the problems we're asking these humans to solve? and couldn't they be solving them together in a bunch of different ways, they don't all have to be in the same place. They don't have to go to meeting after meeting after meeting throughout a day, we know that we're going to discover that we're much more productive right now. Deeply more productive when we're not running from meeting to meeting. We know that we're going to learn the digital technologies that allow us to be able to collaborate when we're distributed much more effectively, that's already it had to happen. That's a skill set. Were many, many people in developing in real time. It's pretty likely that we're going to see That the the commitments that companies make about full time work and about salaries and so on that, that that's going to be at risk. Because the more you're saying gig workers, for instance, they just suddenly lost a whole bunch of work well, nobody had to pay them unemployment insurance, no employer, right. So so that's a contract that has broken. And that puts a whole bunch of people at risk when something like this happens, because they're not getting sick pay, they're not getting unemployment. So but it's another one of my hopes that will remain out of this is that we will actually come up with those new constructs that will allow us to ensure that a wide range of workers have those kinds of protections going forward. So those are some of the things that I believe are pretty likely coming out of this. And I'll tell you the most macro, I hope is that what we're learning as we're doing this global experiment, is that we realize just how connected we really are. We've gone through this polarity experiment that hasn't worked Really well, where we vilify each other constantly on social media and in news and, and what I hope is more really understanding that there's so much that connects us. There's so much that is similar for that all of us are going through in our experiences, and we're all going to figure out that when we come out of this, those connections shouldn't remain.

kevin edwards  21:21  
Well, Gary, I really like that analogy of what are we doing? What are we doing here? Like, we're all going to one place. It's like a beehive. Everyone's populating and cities we're moving because there's more commerce there. But what fascinates me are like civilizations, how they're built, and they extend to the outer limits of their cities, and they use up all the resources. So I had a chat yesterday with James Ehrlich of region villages and he was bringing up this point and now why can't we live in a decentralized cities around the entire world where we're just a bunch of lily pads communicating using renewable resources, knowing when life be great The only thing with that is it's it's just a little too dystopian for me. The only reason I say that is because that is just like, that's just I feel like that's just human nature, like capitalism, to me is a reflection of human nature, their independence, their freedom of choice, there's free markets. And it's also not an equal one. It's not an equal playing field. And here in America, the idea is to go into a country that has it great. Like, I can speak for anyone who's traveled abroad. They have great lives, they have no big no big needs or anything, but it's our duty to go in there and prove their economy, grow their business, bring it to a global market, and then retire to go back to where they were originally. So it's an interesting thought there. What is your stance on like the future of work and mobilization and where do you see that fitting in in America?

Gary A Bolles  23:00  
I think when James's work is great, because what you always want are shining examples totally of how humans can collaborate. And even though they're not likely to scale, that is your you're not going to get millions of region villages, although that's certainly one model. But, but I think it's indicative, you want humans to be able to show that they can come up with these ways to collaborate, and to build these very human centric kinds of living and working environments. Now, having said that, sure, you may remember back in the 70s, there was a lot of discussion about the death of the city. Yeah, we've crossed over the point where more than 50% of all the people in the world live in urban areas and the projections right now are that by 2050 will be 80%. So what we've done is we've centered a whole bunch of economic benefit in these these mega sets. And and if you look at the flow, have capital flows of data, it's very, very clear. This is where huge amount of the value is being created. Now, that's a set of decisions. And a lot of those decisions are not laws of nature. It's not like global climate change, you know, where we had a perfectly good planet, we broke it. That's why we can't have nice things. It's these are laws of humans, you know, these are laws of economy. So I co founded something back in 2008, called socap. Social Capital Markets, which is now the world's largest conference focused on doing well and doing good money, meaning, money, I mean, intersection of money in me. And so and then we handed off to our co founders years ago, and I'm still very involved in that arena. And I'll tell you my basic premise, and I'm writing a book right now on the future of work. And this is one of my, my sort of anchors is what the, the framing is for how you think about the question The societies and economies that we built because these are just decisions now and we can, we can make different decisions. So our peculiar form of capitalism in the West and especially in America has actually a number of design heuristics that were created by people with wealth. And so they're actually designed to increase these flywheel effects of people with wealth. And so the, the, what we want to be true in America is that the, we all have equal opportunity, what we what we really want is equal access to opportunity. That is, if you were born in an inner city, you would have the same chance of moving up rungs on the ladder as anybody else that was born in another place or higher up on the ladder. Well, it doesn't work that way. If you don't have a college degree, you have a one in 10 chance of moving up one rung on the ladder. If you're born. Bought a bra. And and there's a bunch of complicated reasons for that. But one of them is that we actually reward capital over labor, we tax the board rewards of having money at a lower rate than we tax the rewards of working. So you just can't work your way out of out of you know, upper rung on the ladder, you actually have to have the money in the first place. And so, so I'm not trying to talk about these dynamics to the bend anybody out of shape, it's much more we have to design the world that we want, right? And so the truth is, capitalism has created a massive amount of benefit first huge number of people, but it's lumpy. It's not distributed evenly. I you know, I've written a series of papers, unbundling media and bubbling higher education and bundling work and bundling the middle class and they all have the same dynamic exponential technologies that are peculiar form of capitalism evaporate the middle. This flywheel effects that basically, if you're making money at the top, you make more money. And this flywheel effects that basically right now are evaporating middle class work and sort of pushing wages down. And, and those are perfectly understandable dynamics. It's just, you know, I don't think that's the inclusive economy that we all sort of want. So so there's no question we need to double down on capitalism, but it has to be inclusive capitalism. It has to be where we're helping people to be able to find or create meaningful well paid work, then then they get compensated fairly. And that's gonna continue as opposed to, you know, this sort of flywheel thing, you know, where where the internet and other technologies is actually helping to evaporate.

kevin edwards  27:47  
So are you suggesting to me like a ceiling on a CEO salaries or percentage of that, where the rest of the money is allocated back to the stakeholders in the organization?

Gary A Bolles  28:01  
So I'm always a fan more a fan of taking the positive route. Okay, so how do you increase the benefit for many? And and then the the decreasing benefit for something, you know? Well, we have to figure that out, right. And that's a that's a set of, of agreements in the intersection of a society and an economy. So if you look at the Nordic countries, in Germany, there's a whole bunch of agreements, and they we call these laws, but there's all bunch of agreements that you can't just lay off workers or if you're going to lay off workers, you have to offer people the chance to be able to all take a cut in salary so that you don't have to lay off workers, you know, this, that there's a whole bunch of agreements in the form of laws and taxation that that essentially distributes a lot more of the Vout. And so think about, I'd like to think more about ways that we can ensure that people are going to be able to find or create meaningful well paid work. So So what are the ways that we can actually, you know, sort of amplify the processes that we use to be able to both modify the system that is make access to opportunity easier, and also help upgrade humans like how we help people to be able to continually develop the skills the superpowers to be able to solve the problems of tomorrow, these are the two places I center focus is how do we increase more access to opportunity and then ensure that people are going to get paid you know, meaningful, meaningful wealth bit ball paid work, and then and then how are we going to help humans to be able to continually adapt and use their their superpowers, that means transforming education systems, that means companies making much bigger investments and training. By that means personal commitments to lifelong learning, all of those things that will help each of us to be able to thrive.

kevin edwards  30:00  
Now, Gary, when you're having these panels when you're having these moderations these keynote talks about this topic, what is some of the feedback or skepticism that you receive? And how has that helped you maybe refine your your thesis?

Gary A Bolles  30:16  
Good question. So the first off, I think it's important, one of the reasons I talked about four domains of the future of work is it's important to understand just how it works, because you find that anything that has to do with work is especially work markets and workforces and, you know, economies that they're, they're complicated when you can't even get school economists to agree. sure what the right strategy is to right now during the Great reset, to be able to ensure that we're all going to be able to thrive when when eventually we take the shackles off and we're all able to go out in the world again. So So if these things are really, really complicated, and so the first thing is I try to help people. I don't I don't say I'm, I'm right. As a matter of fact, I tell every audience if you disagree with me, I want you to challenge me, they do. But I say, first off to understand that there are four domains. It's it's individuals, organizations, communities, and countries. And each of them has a problem statement. Individuals, I keep saying it just want to be able to find a create meaningful, well paid work today and tomorrow. That's all people want. And there's other things you want in life. But if you could do those things, and everybody on the planet can do it, we probably be okay. Organizations keep telling me that they they need the talented workers that can help them solve the problems of today and tomorrow. And that's kind of it. There's lots of other things but you know, unless you're going to run an entire company on AI and robots, you need talented people, but you need them for a long time. Communities want to be ecosystems where everybody can thrive. And then finally, when I, when I do workshops with the ministers of labor or education for different countries, they want to build inclusive economies. So individuals, organizations, communities and countries. And so first of all, I say, Okay, this is kind of the four domains. This is kind of what we're all designing for. Now, where do you fit? Are you? Are you just trying to make sure that you have the work that you want? Or you're helping a specific population group? There's tons of strategies for that? Are you an organizational leader? And are you trying to figure out how you're going to be able to channel the energies of humans to solve problems? Are you a community leader? And many people are all of those. They're their individual workers. They work in a company and they live in a community. And then do you feel that you can actually feed into or you have influence over what happens in your region or what happens in your country or you do at least you'll be knowledgeable. We're all we're all talking an awful lot about really big weighty issues about how we're going to restart our economies. And when we all have an issue about it so, so when I get pushback, it's normally first off people have questions not so much or Is that right? But okay, now what can I do? Like Like, I'm only one person or I'm only one leader of an organization, or I'm only one community? And there's an answer for every one of those. There, there are Australia, I'm actually starting a newsletter literally just today. If you go to my website, people's comm, or ping me on LinkedIn, and we're just starting a newsletter, weekly newsletter, synthesizing all of these different strategies that we hear from all over the world, and just gonna start sending out on a weekly basis to people that want to be able to just understand these different arenas and then say, Okay, what are people doing? What can I do what you know, and if it's something as focused and personal as homeschooling your kids during this period, or read something as big and weighty is feeding into what we're going to do to be able to restart our economies. There's, there's work everybody can do. Hmm but but the push back normally comes when people have to change their behavior. So so if you ask somebody who is running a company and you tell them, you know, if you're just focused on shareholder value, I get that. I get that. And there's a there's a lot of people that, you know, have a very, very strong belief that that's the way to economic benefit for everybody. We know jack welch said it was the world's dumbest idea and he's right. And, and I don't talk so much about stakeholder capitalism when I talk about as inclusive capitalism, but I basically say, look, you know, you you have more constituents these than just your, your shareholders, if you just double down on your shareholders, those other constituents are likely to be put at a disadvantage. So you've got to figure out how you can meet the needs of those various stakeholders. You can pay your employees a living wage, you can offer great value to your customers, you can actually be beneficial to the communities in which you operate, add up all of those and be intensely profitable by doing.

kevin edwards  34:59  
Got it. Okay, so by doing that, by being inclusive, everyone's gonna get what they want.

Gary A Bolles  35:07  
It's not easy, and it's always messy. And it's all you're always going to, there's always gonna be somebody who's gonna be more disadvantaged and others is gonna be more advantage. And that's why it's a work in progress. Right But, but I've got tons of examples of courageous leaders in organizations who have said they're gonna pay their employees a living wage, and who've said that they're going to be tremendous beneficiaries in their communities and and have an incredibly successful companies doing it.

kevin edwards  35:36  
Gary, you mentioned the inclusive, inclusive economy. Now I interview a lot of social entrepreneur, sustainable companies certified B corporations. So I hear conscious capitalism. I hear business as a force for good I hear, you know, what do you say? Yes, stakeholder value, shareholder value, maximum stakeholder value versus shareholder value, what do you define as the inclusive and economy and what why is it separate from all the others?

Gary A Bolles  36:04  
So, so the, the marvelous thing about the world that we live in is there's so many different perspectives and, and then the labels matter, right? So, but the labels are constantly changing we, and we've seen this in a variety of the different initiatives that my group has been involved in, throughout the, throughout the years. And and and so what happens when you see these big changes in markets and we think of these as market shifts, right. So you mentioned B corps. In 2008, when we started socap, we talked about the need for new forms of companies. And we got laughed at by a whole bunch of people. It's like, Well, wait a minute, we have LLC s and s. Carson. C Corp said, Isn't that enough? Well, no, actually, you needed a set of agreements with your shareholders. If you're gonna have a positive impact to the world. You're gonna start Warby Parker or TOMS shoes. You got to be able to have an agreement about What you're going to do and the positive benefits you're going to have, then that means a new form of corporation with agreements baked into your charter. So so we get laughed at for a lot of these things that are now considered today people just, this is just what you do, right? So so the but what happens is people have different words for the same thing and the same words for different things. And then over time, they sort of gel and and then people sort of generally agree on it. 

So the reason we talk more about inclusive capitalism is because when you look at an inclusive economy, like economies are always optimized for certain things and not for others, right? I always say policy is only two things. It's either lubricant or it's a glue. It's either it's either going to accelerate things you want to have happen, or it's going to stop things you don't want to have happen. And usually it's stopping things you don't want to happen and so, so that so there's a lot of designs of markets that actually are trying to encourage either certain kinds of behavior discouraged are the kinds of behavior and inclusive capitalism, you step back and you look at those dynamics and say, what will be the consequences of these decisions? That's what you do. You You have to have a design thinking mentality. And then you've got to test and iterate, to be able to determine you're going to get the benefits that you want. Now, you can't always do that we're going through the largest capital experiment in the history of the world right now. And we're guessing how we're going to restart our economies. But in many cases, the decisions that you make how you price your products, the kinds of customers that you're trying to market to them, you know, we can actually test those things. We can iterate them, the way that you compensate your workers, the way all of these things are processes that can be inclusive. You can involve them in the process. You can involve your your workers in the in the way that you're thinking about compensation and make them part of that discussion and and in your community, you can involve the people that have been marginalized in the past in the process of discussing what the new solutions are going to be. It violates people's thinking that you should actually be sitting down with homeless people and asking them how you can help them to be able to solve this problem. But the truth is we've seen over and over again, that's an inclusive set of processes involves. So inclusive capitalism is basically just the same kind of mentality. It's that it's that you've got a range of different constituents, you're designing markets, to be able to benefit some and not benefit others as much. And that is a proper set of processes that can be itself more inclusive. And I can give you tons of example of companies that do that on an ongoing basis. 

kevin edwards  39:49  
It's exciting times right now. It's like you mentioned, it's the great reset. I really enjoy that. That thinking right there. And just to go off Now what you're saying is, well, you know, you happier when you're 1234, individuals, organizations, communities, countries, you have this inclusive economy, you have more recession proof companies because of these inclusive relationships. Now, we're at a point and this is my understanding of this. I like to call it like an interregnum. We're between reigns of what is culturally acceptable. And we're figuring that out. I think the great reset right now, it's an interesting time because we like the cost of capitalism, which you alluded to, cannot comfortably be ignored anymore. It just can't. We can't continue and sustain our city so we can't continue and sustain our environment, our air because of business. And these all these factors are coming into play. Now. I do want you to elaborate on some examples, and some leaders in this space Gary, that you respect and you look up to they're doing a good job with this

Gary A Bolles  41:00  
So, no thanks. I think that's I think it's really important this the, I always say first off one of the key aspects. One of the ways that change happens is that courageous leaders take stances that are initially unpopular and and but but they know are morally correct that is that they're, they're consistent with their own ethics. And and so and that that might sound really soft. But this is the world that we're creating right now is we created a form of capitalism that tried to divorce itself as much as possible from what it thinks of as irrational behavior, especially irrational market behavior. And, and and the truth is there's a ton of decisions that humans make that influence markets that have nothing to do with rationality. I just read Dan Ariely Work is an old friend. And he talks about why we do things against their own best interests, Mark markets are completely irrational. So there's this very, very few arguments you can make that make it clear that when we make rational decisions, even given the heuristics that we that we all believe we follow, so but I'll give you an example. So I was Tom Friedman, invited me to a talk that he was giving at a Simon's office, about a year and a half ago, I've been two years. And Mark bertolini, at the time was the CEO that Mark and I had never met, but we just ended up on a conversation and he just had a big grin on his face. And he said, so why so happy so well, I had a great, great lunch yesterday with one of my top shareholders. And, and he thanked me for, you know, investing in my company. And so why do you Thank you. So well, what happened was about a year and a half before he had made an announcement that he was going to To a throttle, he was going to focus on wellness and well being, he was going to institute courses on mindfulness, he was going to encourage employees to meditate. He was going to create spaces in the offices where people could have a chance to be able to do a little momentary reset through their day. And basically, it was going to try to create a better work environment for humans. And it just so happened that had a pretty substantial investor, I think a hedge fund guy was investor in his company and the guy took them out the lunch that after Mark made this announcement, and then the guy just leaned on the table said, you know, well, what if your top investor told you you didn't know what you're doing these things. And it's not repeatable in public but are basically said, you know, go pound sand. Yeah. And so the guy did, and then the other investor came in and bought the company stock in the stock. And so, so that's an example of a courageous leader. If you look at Etsy at the founding The international marketplace Etsy, which was initially was one of the first beat corpse.

They were, the founding team did a great job of creating a model where craftspeople in remote countries and developing economies could get paid. Both of them was a princely sum, to sell their their crafts on an international marketplace, and then you're gonna have a party and you want to get 10 of something to be able to give to your guests, you can get it for insanely cheap compared to your local market. And so that's a great example of creating a company designing literally designing a two sided market platform to ensure benefit for both but then the company went public. The new investors kicked out management, one of the board took over and they raised all the prices on the supply. So So that's an example of where the capital made completely new decisions about the way that that market should function and put one set of constituents at a greater risk. That doesn't mean that people aren't still getting value out of it. It just means that it's, it's harder to be okay. It's harder to make as much money and so, so that's what I look for is where courageous leaders come up. And I've mentioned Warby Parker, I mentioned, you know, I'm shoes, all birds, I mean, these are all companies that have made commitments to doing well and doing good. What they are seeing is that a market values that, right? So So this is, if you can call it, you know, just complete capitalistic marketing, we're going to do sell one and give one away and we're going to do that because we want you to be the one buying the thing you can, you know, say that that's just good marketing. But the truth is, when it's done authentically, then then humans benefit and and everybody wins because you've designed a company that actually can do Better than competitors. I don't know what the most recent numbers were but Warby Parker, actually had last year had a better year to year first door, retail, sales average per square foot and many Apple stores. So this is something you can design for. And all it takes that is courageous leaders to be able to lead the way.

kevin edwards  46:26  
Yeah, and going back to your, you know, your four quadrants, you know, the individuals, the organizations and communities in the countries that just taps on all of them really, I found with all these organizations have you had those core values if you're doing to rephrase and kind of what you said to be a leader and do something that's not externally validated at first, put the stick to those moral principles to stick to the company's core values. They're attracting people with the same core values, they retain them for longer, they're working, they're more fulfilled. It spreads the to the community. It does great things for society and for the environment. So it's really interesting times right now. Now, Gary, the question I have for you is advice now for leaders listening to this going through this, this great reset right now, what advice would you give to them?

Gary A Bolles  47:18  
All right. So, so I don't want to I don't have the hubris where I think I've, I've never led a large organization or even a mid sized organization of that. So the smaller organizations, it's, it's surpassingly hard. This is a very challenging era. It's really, really tough, but I'll just I'll just give you some thoughts for what I've seen from people that I think are approaching the challenges of today. What I hope are some of the most effective strategies. So the first one is take care of your people. And whatever that means, so there's a there's a range of different tools that you've got in your toolkit. There, some leaders that I've laid off immediately, like just like just said, Okay, let's do the numbers. Great. All right, that but that subset of people is just gone. And there are others that have said, Listen, we're all going to tighten our belts. And we're going to get through this. And we're going to apply for government loans, we're going to do anything we can do to be able to attain every single work that we can. And we're going to ask everybody to take a little bit of a pay cut or the unpaid leave for a period of time, but we're going to get through this together, right. So the first thing is figure out what taking care of your people need means and then do the best that you possibly can. That's the first one. Second is I think rahm emanuel has gotten a lot of credit for saying you know, that basically, don't never, never waste a crisis. So think about what you can do. To transform your organization in the ways that will help us to become more adaptive and resilient in the future. And so, a more distributed workforce is a more resilient one. Right? So if everybody's coming into the same mothership every single day commuting in the same location, you have a monoculture and as we have absolutely determined or and over again, monocultures or risk, we, my company, we produced a conference in the future work in Detroit last year. And and that's it, that's an example of a former monoculture culture and economy that is still putting the pieces back together. And it's, you know, they're doing a tremendous job. Detroit is definitely it's really coming back. But it's been a long haul. And so avoiding monocultures avoiding having everybody that is higher, looks the same way. He comes from the same backgrounds thinks the same way. That's not a resilient organization. So so everything you can do to try to build the heuristics of a more adaptive organization or more Inclusive organization, an organization that is more nimble, this is the time to do that your workers have been knocked off of their, you know, safe foundations, everybody's basically re rethinking processes, don't lose that. Once we take the shackles off, and when you know, the great reset is slowly diminishing you, you're gonna have a chance to go back to the same kind of work that you did before. And what I urge courageous leaders to do is to work with their people to figure out what remains, what can we keep, that retains it in a tremendously inclusive culture for our organization bus is incorporating all of these different characteristics that we're going to need to be able to thrive in the future and to be able to deal with the next great reset. Interesting, interesting, very good points there. Okay, obviously, I can't speak for anything as well. So I'll keep my thoughts to myself. But let's let's wrap this up. Though let's let's, uh, let's wrap this up. Let's bring this full circle talked a lot about leadership today. You mentioned heuristics a lot as well, somebody that can't It was very difficult to transcribe to other people. We've talked about the four quadrants, we talked about what color is your parachute today? Gary, we've talked about a lot to you. What is your definition of a real leader? So

I think of it, I think of the characteristics as being contextual. Like there's, it's difficult for me because I've just seen so many different we did, we did everything from a workshop for refugee youth in Amman, Jordan, to a workshop for, you know, leaders from Chile, a video conference call last year and, and I think I'm trying to think of applying leadership model each of those different environments and a little bit of a failure of imagination. different circumstances and different times require different characteristics, but I'll tell you what I think of is the three that that remain that are that are consistent. So, it's competence, compassion and courage. So, and in each is necessary not nine none of them is sufficient features necessary. So competence and if you if you think of cultures of organizations as a quest as a quadrant system, so this access the the, you know, the up and down axis, the y axis is competence is how good you are at what you do. And the x axis is whatever characteristics you want to say about culture but let's just say compassion. Let's just say, you know, Human Centered is the bottom so in the lower left, so that's low competence and low compassion you should be Why are you a leader Just get out of your different job. High competence and low compassion. Yeah, I mean, there might be some times where that's required. I mean, maybe in military circumstances, you know, you just, you know, in a war you just, maybe you just have to be good at it. High compassion and low competence. Yeah, I don't know, I, but maybe in some nonprofits, you know, that's okay. But, but but high competence and high compassion. that's those are superpowers. And so, so competent and compassionate leadership is like a yin and yang. But without courage. I don't know that you'll you know, maybe just being competent. You wouldn't take action. But I think it requires courage. You know, when I talk about Mark bertolini, it took tremendous courage for him to challenge one of his major investors. It took tremendous courage to say I have a vision for a more human centered environment and then to push that through. Look at Yvonne shannara In the way he runs Patagonia, I look at I mean, you know, the these these are these are competent and compassionate leaders, but they have the courage of their convictions. They have the courage of their values, they're anchored in what they believe is important. And they and they live those values. That's the hardest part. having the courage to actually take a step, having the courage to say, Listen, I know that I'm, you know, I'm going to take a pay cut myself. And and that means that you know, that I'm not gonna have as many of the things I want. But we all need to do this, because this is a time of shared sacrifice. Without courage, I don't know that you're going to take those steps. And so that's what I urge especially leaders during these challenging times to think about is how, how can I continually model the most competent ways to try to solve problems and make those inclusive so I'm not just the sage on the stage. You know, I'm the guy on the side. I'm the one that's, you know, helping others to be able to solve these problems together, but I I'm compassionate because I have I know that every single human that works with me, has a life that has a family and has friends. And they've got challenges in this era, and how am I helping them to be able to do the best possible and then, and then how can I have the courage to do what I know is right.

kevin edwards  55:17  
competence, compassion, and courage. Gary, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I always enjoy a good conversation around social capital markets and leadership. It's great to have an expert like you on the future of work. Got to figure out what my color my parachute is, though. I'll make sure I'll hop on that a little bit later. Gary one I appreciate your time coming on the religious podcast for everyone out there listening to this for variables. I'm Kevin Edwards asked me to go out there and always folks, keep it real. Thanks, Gary.

Gary A Bolles  55:47  
Appreciate you. All right. Thanks a lot.

kevin edwards  55:50  
All right, good people. And thank you for tuning into this episode of the real leaders podcast. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and if you haven't yet subscribed Then please by all means hit the subscribe button to start receiving notifications of this bi weekly podcast. And for all the lucky listeners today you are going to walk away with a free magazine go to real Deshler comm slash subscribe and use coupon code podcast 25 at checkout to receive your first magazine for free with a year subscription. That's for magazines for the price of three again, folks, coupon code podcast 25. Also for our visual learners who want to watch this at home to cooped up during the quarantine, go to our YouTube channel at religious magazine to see all of our interviews with guests harnessing capitalism to sustain the planet, people and profits. Thanks again for being a real leader and stay tuned for the next episode of the relators podcast.

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