A Bit of Optimism - Thinking Differently with Matthew Barzun

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

Every now and then, I get to meet someone who sees the world differently. Matthew Barzun is one of those people. He was early to see opportunities that others  didn’t -  in the internet, in political fundraising and even as US Ambassador. Put simply,  Matthew helps us see the world differently.This is… A Bit of Optimism.YouTube: http://youtube.com/simonsinekFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/simonsinekLinkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/simonsinek/Instagram: https://instagram.com/simonsinek/Twitter: https://twitter.com/simonsinekPinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/officialsimonsinek/ 

Every now and then, I get to meet someone who sees the world completely differently from the rest of us. They don't just have a new way of doing things the way that things have always been done, but they do things unlike anyone else. Matthew Barzan is one of those people. He saw the power of the internet pretty early on. He also saw the power of small donations in politics pretty early on. He was also the U.S. ambassador to Sweden and Great Britain and saw things that others weren't seeing. This is what I love about Matthew.

He thinks differently. This is a bit of optimism. This is a bit of optimism. A few years ago, in partnership with Penguin Books, I started my own imprint called Optimism Press. And unlike most imprints, which are usually verticals, they're based on a subject. You know, they do cookbooks, they do business books. I wanted to publish the people and ideas that I'd met on my travels that I believed contributed to the greater good. I have this vision of a world that does not yet exist, a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired,

feel safe wherever they are, and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do. And I wanted to publish the people and ideas that I believe took us a little closer to that ideal. I published a book called How to Make Plants Love You, which is really a metaphor for how to treat people. I published a book all about trust. And now what I'm so excited is I get to publish your book, The Power of Giving Away Power by Matthew Barzin. How does that sound? That's really good. That's really good.

I'm Matthew Barzin. How does that sound? That's really good. That's really good. Because when you and I met, I was just astonished by how you defer to others. I watched it happen. I remember the first time we ever met, when you were ambassador to the court of St. James and US ambassador to Great Britain, I got to have a meeting with you and your staff at the embassy. And I've had meetings with people before who are in positions of authority or positions of power, and they own the room. And you didn't. You deferred to everyone in the room. And I was blown away by that. What is the power of giving away power? And where did you learn that?

away power. And where did you learn that? I've just sort of been a witness to this distinct kind of leadership in the course of my life thus far and watched how people give away power. It's not sharing power because I think sharing power sort of fundamentally is about division. It's like taking a finite amount of it and then dividing it up. The leaders that inspired me, they created power. Tell me a story that helps me understand, helps me see what the power of giving away power looks like. It's 2006 and Senator Obama comes to visit my adopted hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. And we do a big rally. And we didn't know how many people would show up, but 5,000 people showed up. And there was a spare hour. And I just figured he'd want to go catch up on his BlackBerry with his senatorial work. But he said,

hey, now, were there any Republican or independent friends you have from town who didn't come to the rally? And I said, sure. He's like, I'd love to just talk to them. So I call around, we get a group around the table. And Senator Obama doesn't say much. He really just sort of asked people about their hopes and fears for the country. They go around. And at the end, everyone said, what an amazing discussion, what a great speaker he is. And I noted that he hadn't really said much. And one of the people who couldn't make it to that meeting called afterwards and said, wow, wow, did he light up the room? And so I found myself saying, well, yes, the room got lit up, but not in the way I think you might think. He got everyone

else to light up. And that's how the room light up. I heard a statistic from Jack Daly, the famous sales coach, that a bad salesperson will ask seven questions on average per sales call, whereas a good salesperson will ask 32 questions per sales call. And when you give the other person the chance to talk, I mean, I remember like a job interview where I asked more questions than they asked me, and they thought it went fantastic, but they did all the talking. And it's really an amazing thing when you give someone the power to speak to be heard, how grateful they are to you. I saw you give a little presentation to some junior folks at the embassy that I loved, where you make this point. We know that top-down leadership doesn't work, the command and control,

you know, do as I say, I'm the boss. And we, there's sort of already a movement against that form of leadership, which we know. And the buzzword is bottom up. And what you so eloquently pointed out, is it still a triangle? Is it still highly structured, whether you're going up the pyramid or down the pyramid? Yeah, same shape, different direction. And if you really want to change the way leadership looks and sounds to drive innovation and trust, you throw the pyramid out entirely because people freak out, right? Because they think if you throw the structure of the pyramid out, the only alternative is chaos. Well, yeah. And when we first met in London, David Brooks, whose columns I love, talking about the world at the time, said it's like a hierarchy with its head cut off.

And then he said, it's a swarm. Swarm is such a negative word. And I thought, yeah, the pyramid, whether you're doing it top down or bottom up, does have in its favor stability of some kind. It's just not the only kind. There's another kind of order, another kind of stability that a lot of these great leaders that the book talks about have discovered. And it's pretty amazing. I call it the constellation. So you have pyramid

thinking, which is up, down, in, out, that kind of way. Constellation thinking and the constellation mindset says, hey, look, we are each our own star. And we look at other people as other stars. And we can choose to connect with them to make useful patterns. It is a mindset, and it is a way of seeing, thinking, feeling, and behaving. It is not like our default setting. We get very comfortable in the pyramid, or we say, well, I want to get rid of the pyramid and I'll just be on my own. But that sort of leads to alienation. So there's this alternative out there for us, if we can learn from these other leaders. Can you share an example of what a constellation looks like in practice?

Like, you know how there's a, you have a dispute at the Thanksgiving table or the dinner table and someone settles it and it's like, well, I'll Google it, right? But really what settles the argument isn't Google. Usually the first search result you get is Wikipedia, right? Wikipedia will settle it for you. So you're really Wikipedia-ing it. And so the story of how a commodities trader from Alabama, Jimmy Wales, and his team developed what became the largest human knowledge transfer engine the world has ever seen is a beautiful, radiant constellation. They weren't saying, well, we are the gatekeepers of knowledge and what

should be covered. They opened it up to all of us. And so you could write a sentence, you could write a paragraph, you could collaboratively co-create and build an encyclopedia article, and it will last forever. Where a lot of organizations get tripped up, right? It's like previous to Wikipedia, we had the encyclopedia. The knowledge was owned, edited by the encyclopedia company, Britannica or whoever. And when the internet showed up, Microsoft introduced Encarta, right? Yeah. Which was basically just the encyclopedia, but online. Yeah, it was a digital pyramid.

But Microsoft still owned, edited all the information. And what I find so fascinating about the Wikipedia example is that Wikipedia owns none of the information, is not the editor, is not the editor, is not the arbiter of what goes in or goes out, but it's a crowdsourced thing. And it has some errors in it, but so does the real encyclopedia. Totally. And what's interesting at the time, and you mentioned Encarta, I mean, it was on its way to be the richest company in the world. They could see the power of hyperlinking. They could see the

power of video compression. They could see the power of hyperlinking. They could see the power of video compression. They could see the power of all sorts of things. There is one kind of power they couldn't see, which is the power in you and me. What I love is that clearly this thinking has evolved from your own experience and your career has been remarkable. You were an entrepreneur and a business leader. Prior to you, the way that political donations were given was people would give the max and politicians thought you'd try and get the max from as many people as possible. And that's what Hillary Clinton's campaign was doing back in the day. And then you were one of the people who said, hold on, if we get $10 donations from a lot of people, that's more money than $2,500

donations from a few people. And which is now the standard of political fundraising today, micro donations. And you were a part of the group that invented that. If my memory serves, it came in partially because you're an introvert when you were told to go fundraise. Totally. You were like, I don't really want to go talk to people and hit them up for money, but what I can do is throw a party. I think the idea of small donations wasn't particularly new. Normally what you do is you get $10 donations late in the game by email, mass email. And I was like, you wouldn't wait to field organize till the last minute,

would you? That'd be kind of dumb. You start early. And I was like, this is a farming exercise, like plant seeds cultivate early. If you wait till late, it becomes a hunting exercise. And all the language of fundraising, which I found so abhorrent, not only because I'm an introvert, but because I am just have become allergic to pyramid thinking, like target list, snagging someone, hooking them. I mean, it's all hunting and fishing metaphors. And the math of hunting is if you aim, and here I am in Kentucky, so I'll use deer hunting, which may appeal to some and- Not to others.

But others off, so forgive me. But I mean, if there's 10 deer standing under a tree and you're up in a tree stand and you shoot at one, best case you get one, nine run away. Whereas if you're planting seeds, which is what we try to do with these low dollar fundraisers, once people have invested, they're probably going to want to invest again. They're going to want others to invest and you get that kind of good math, constellation math. I love this. And I want to underscore this because I think it's such a great point because I think so much of what we do looks a lot more like hunting, like in business, than it does

like farming. Some of the reasons are because we have pressures to do things on certain days by certain times. It's, you know, go out and get this, bring me back the results, as opposed to farming, which is a little more like, I'm not 100% sure when we will get our crop. I know it's approximately in this timeframe, the harvest. But I don't know the day where a hunt I can go out today and I can bag me something. And that's it. And so fundamentally, this is about how we manage uncertainty. Yeah. And the pyramid mindset tries to factor it out. And so it picks a set goal and it works its way

backwards. And I actually think that's a backwards way of working. The constellation way, I mean, sure, look, it has goals and things it would like to achieve, but it is open-ended and it just sort of embraces uncertainty at the core. This is fundamentally infinite thinking. Totally. And it's amazing how many organizations attempt to be hunters and they're so happy when they bag that one deer. Then when it's eaten, it's eaten, it's over, and you have to go out and hunt again, where farming is a process rather than an event. Farming is an ongoing thing that you just, and that's how business should be. That's how politics should be. I love thinking of these

things as process rather than events. And Dr. Kars talked about it. He liked to think of it as play. You know, business should be about the playing, not about the winning, because there is no winning. The fun little parlor trick to play, I encourage listeners to try this sometimes. So let's say you're talking to 10 people and you say, what's the opposite of winning? This is just to warm them up. And they all say losing. And you're like, yeah, I agree. And I said, now, what is the opposite of winning and losing? From my deeply imprecise and unscientific method of having asked a thousand people this question, nine out of 10 of us will basically say, I don't know, not playing, sitting it out. One in 10 will say, to your point earlier, playing, loving, laughing, learning,

all the verbs that we actually value in life. But it's so quick that if we present it that way, which is the pyramid way, not winning and losing is nothing. And it's like, it's everything. It's everything and we know it. This is supposed to be a bit of optimism. You know, that's so depressing. No, I think it's depressing that nine out of 10 people

when challenged with the question, what's the opposite of winning and losing? The answer is not playing, sitting out of the game, being a spectator. Whereas the reality of not winning or losing, as you said, it's the joy of play. It's the laughing. It's Lego versus baseball. Totally. The reason I find it optimistic and not depressing is that if you look at the facial expressions of the nine out of 10 of us who say not playing. Once someone says playing, their shoulders drop a little bit and they're like, oh, right. Like, you know, you don't win a marriage. You could lose one. So it starts an interesting conversation. The reason bottom up

feels good for a second, it's really no better than top down, but its fatal flaw is you are either thinking of yourself as at the bottom or worse, you're thinking of other people as at the bottom. And once you have that vision of yourself and others, it's doom. If you think of yourself as a star and you think of other people as stars and be like, ooh, what could we do together? That is open-ended optimistic. Let's say that again. The weakness of the pyramid is that as appealing as the bottom sounds, either you see yourself at the bottom or you see somebody else at the bottom.

So one is self-deprecating, the other one is judgmental. And in your model of the constellation, if I see myself as a star, confidence, and I see other people as a star, I see value in other people. Yeah, you see value in them. You see power potential in them.

And the opportunity is not lift up, push down. The opportunity is partnership and draw lines, which is what the constellations are, right? They're patterns of dots. Totally. Which by the way, are not self-evident, right? This is why it's not depressing to me. Like Orion's belt isn't obvious. Like you have to be shown and be like, do you see how those things make a line? But there is no line. It's a visual leap to choose to see it. And so once you choose to see it,

like these constellations leaders did, then we can all learn, we're all capable of seeing, thinking, feeling, and acting this way. So you turned me into an optimist again. What I thought was depressing was that nine out of 10 people saw not playing as the only alternative when you count, win or lose. And what, what is optimistic about is it

only took one person to say, no joy, the play that nine people went, oh yeah. And so the depressing part is we're all thinking about pyramids and top down and bottom up. And all it takes is one person to say, have you seen this constellation? And everyone goes, oh yeah. Well, that's right. And it's sort of a lower stakes one is you get people to finish this sentence. Hey, the world isn't black and white. It's multicolored. See, this is why I didn't want to play it with you because you're the one in 10, Simon. That's why we're such good pals. I'll tell you, nine out of 10, and maybe it's eight out of 10, say gray. Right.

The world isn't black and white, it's shades of gray. And it's like you nod your head and you're like, no, the world isn't black and white, it's color. And it's like, we know it's color. Look around. I love that. Can I use that? Please, please.

This is why I love your thinking because nine out of 10 people go to one direction, and you're the guy who says, well, what about this? And everybody goes, oh, yeah. I love that seeing. In other words, not only seeing what is, but seeing alternatives and seeing what isn't there and seeing new ways of thinking. It's sort of like that's where magic happens.

I've gone through this in past relationships and the word past is operative here which is when I'm in a relationship and I start to focus on all the things that are wrong

it's doomed because I literally see nothing else we do this at work too you have a colleague and you just see all their mistakes and what they got wrong

you can't get around it and it becomes an obsession. And all it takes is one person to say, well, what's good? What did they do right? And instantaneously, you have a list just as long. Yeah. And it completely and profoundly changes

your view of this other person and how you show up with them and how you talk to them and how you interact with them. So my wife is trained in art therapy. So I've learned a lot from Brooke, right? Because it's a great trick. And you and I did it that time with the embassy team. But if you get people to draw things as opposed to write things, you learn different things. They kind of open up more. But there's a great thing if you go onto YouTube and you search for GoPro skiing the trees, for everyone I offended with hunting metaphors,

we'll try to win them back with skiing. But if you do, if you show someone like a 10 second clip of someone, you know, in Colorado, skiing through the trees with a GoPro helmet, you know, you say, hey, what's your reaction to that image? And everyone will be like, holy shit, trees. Like that's all you see is just trees, right? That this guy is flying through. And you think, how do they not die? Well, it turns out,

if you get a lesson from a ski thing on how to do that, they only have one rule. Don't you ever, ever, ever, ever look at a tree. And then they say, just look for the white between the trees. look at a tree. And then they say, just look for the white between the trees. And then you show the exact same clip again. And all you see is the white. You just see how much they're really, most of the space in front of you isn't trees. It's white. And back to your relationship point, it's like, now it'd be pretty dumb to pretend there are no trees. And I saw this like weirdly just from human relationships to the Brexit debate when I was there at the end of my time in London. One side sort of seemed to be like, there are no trees. Everything's fine.

And the other side is like, it's just trees. We're all going to get smashed up. Yeah. And I was like, there are trees. Now look for the spaces that aren't trees. Yeah. So the answer is not this or that. It's not black and white.

It's a little more. Yeah, it's color. It's color black and white. It's a little more. Yeah, it's color. It's color. They teach pilots this, by the way. The human brain cannot comprehend the negative, right? Don't think of an elephant. Right, yeah. And so when pilots are taught, don't look at the obstacle, don't hit the obstacle, they invariably steer their planes into the obstacle. There was a Singapore Airlines plane a bunch of years ago that was told like, don't hit the tractor on the runway.

And they full on hit the tractor on the runway because the pilots are fixated on the tractor. And it's like being fixated on the trees. You're going to hit it. When you say follow the clear path or follow, you know, then you fixate on the clear path. Yeah. And, you know, this is high school driver's education. We have three teenagers at home. So this has been top of mind. At least when I was taught how to drive, obviously staring at your phone and texting while driving is really stupid and will get you killed.

What is counterintuitive is that if you do the opposite, and they have these weird trackers in Sweden, which is like car safety capital of the world. So I went to go see like where they test on, you see these videos of people driving with the headsets on and staring in their laps, which is dangerous. And then they do the opposite, right? And they just look at the road in front of them.

And that will get you killed too, because it's called tunnel vision. So it turns out we were all taught in driver's ed, the safe way to drive is that little red X. If you picture the car safety academy, it should be moving every two seconds ahead of you, behind you, to the side, in front of you again, way down the road, up close. So guess what it looks like if you plot safe driving? Constellation. A constellation of stars. It's called engaged driving. Once you start to look at the world this way, it casts some strange shadows and on some sort

of sacred cows too. I'm just thinking about the most exhausting driving is when you're on a long road trip where you're a little tired and you still have to drive home. And all you do is focus out the front window to stay awake and get home safely. But the reality is it's exhausting. Like road trips are exhausting when you start just staring out the windshield, focused on driving. But relaxed driving is, as you said, you check your side mirrors, you check your rear mirror, you look out the front, you look to the side, you quickly change the radio, you check. And your eyes are all over the place all the time. And it's not as

exhausting what's interesting. So, what I think is so interesting about your work is that you're telling us when you're obsessed and fixated, not only you're exhausted, you're not getting any help, you're not seeing any opportunity, and you might bag a deer, but my God, you're missing out on so much more. That's it. I mean, it's why I think the first three words of the book are pretending is exhausting. Yeah. And we just do so much pretending that we know what the answer is and work our way back from there. Pretending we can factor out uncertainty, just pretending, pretending, pretending. And it's tempting because you think you're doing the right thing by focus, focus, focus.

But, you know, you're factoring out so much. You tell a story that is, I just love it. And this is purely for me. Who knows if it'll ever make it into the podcast. This is for one listener. Can you please tell the story of cell phones and how we figured out how to make dialing work on a cell phone. Oh my God. Thank you for asking that. It's so good. Oh, okay. So I learned about this amazing woman when I was in Sweden and her name is Lila Olgren. She was the youngest and the only female engineer on, this is the 1970s. They have, I think it's Finland, Sweden, and Norway. I don't

know if Denmark was part of it. If this does make the podcast, we'll learn because I will have offended some Danes, but I think it was just Finns, Swedes, and Norwegians trying to develop cellular telephony, so cell phones. And there was a race going on in the US to do it too. Anyway, so they put all these engineers in the room and they had figured out almost all of it, right? They had these cell towers along the strip of highway in Sweden, picture of Volvo. They actually had carved wood handsets. It's really kind of quaint and awesomely Swedish.

So they figured out almost all of it. They have cell towers, they have the bulky car phone, and it all kind of works except for one huge problem, which is as you're driving down the highway, your car phone establishes contact with the first base tower, and you start to dial the digits, but then you keep going down the road. By the time you make connection with the second tower along the road, you've lost connection with the first one. And so the numbers get junk and it doesn't work because what they're trying to do is get the dial tone. So trying to make it like a regular, pick up the phone, hear the dial tone, dial the number. Exactly. So you establish connection with the first tower, you get your dial tone, you start dialing, and then you lose it before the next tower can pick it up.

The clever people are like, well, okay, you could drive slower, but that's dangerous, tower can pick it up. The clever people are like, well, okay, you could drive slower, but that's dangerous, right? Or you could just have like many more cell towers, but that's sort of not feasible and really expensive. So everyone stumped. And so Lila, and I was not in the meeting, obviously, but I like to picture this, that she sort of raises her hand in the back and says, what if we dialed the number first and then hit send? And then I imagine it sort of goes something like, what do you mean? No dial tone? And she's like, yeah, we don't need a dial tone. She says there's a microchip in this clunky cell phone. It is more than capable of just storing all the numbers and then sending them in one go. So her invention is called green button dialing,

and it is on all 7 billion or whatever cell phones on the planet. Isn't that cool? I mean, there's an entire generation that recognizes that that's how telephones work. My kids have never heard a dial tone. Right. You dial a phone number and then you hit send rather than get a dial tone to ensure that the line is open. We talk about, is the line open? Then you dial the phone number and it goes through. And I just love that this young person with an entirely new perspective who challenged the pyramid thinking of the senior people in the room of how this works. And that is the standard of how we dial a cell phone today. I love that. And another one of a constellation hero is this guy, Vint Cerf, who is amazing, who co-invented the internet, right? TCP IP protocol. And I don't want to get too dorky here, but he had a similar kind of insight, right? That computer networking wasn't new. But the way it used to work is if I had a computer and you had a computer, we would have a dedicated connection, right? And we could only talk to each other. We were locked in, but it was really reliable. And so his innovation, without getting too much into the

details, was, no, no, what if we could talk to each other, but there wasn't any fixed connection? We could chop this up into a lot of different pieces, and in the end, guarantee it got assembled. And it was called an unreliable network. I mean, his architecture, so to to speak and it built the most reliable network the world's ever seen by making this sort of leap of unreliability and leap of uncertainty which is kind of cool well it's making a leap from the fixed pyramid

which is certain I know the direction it goes it goes up or down and it's saying we're going to hook computers up like a constellation where each computer is a star. And that's it. Well, and then he describes, and then kindly came like you did, kindly came and just offered his time to the embassy. And when we did our session with him, he's getting all these questions from awesome, like activists and people are rightly concerned back then and now with, wait a minute, how's this internet thing gone?

And privacy concerns and surveillance concerns, all that kind of stuff was very much in the news. And he's sort of halfway through and he's answering everyone's questions, but he says, you know, you all tend to talk about the internet like it's one big thing. And he's like, it's not one thing. It's many things. And then he kind of goes, it's not really a thing either. And he's like, the internet was a verb. And I'm like, oh, that's cool. He's like, we used to say, would you internet work with me?

And he said, it was like asking someone to dance. And I thought that was so beautiful because it's like that leap of faith you have to make of like, I'm going to ask you to dance. You might say no, but if you say yes, you know, and there's that. Will you intern network with me? And that's kind of, that's the constellation. Yeah. that's the constellation.

Let's change tacks slightly. You grew up in Massachusetts. Right outside of Boston. I know something about you that I don't think you know that I know. Uh-oh. You were kind of a bit of a loner as a kid, right? You had to take responsibility for yourself at a certain age.

Yeah, I lived alone, slightly misleading, and my lovely parents will maybe be listening to this, but my parents got divorced when I was 11. And my favorite place in the world was in Cape Cod, which was my father's family's place. So for understandable reasons, my mother didn't want to go there for the summer after they were divorced. But I was like, well, that is your problem. It is not my problem. I am going to go down there. It's my happy place. And so they wonderfully and sort of miraculously said, okay. So Monday through Friday, I would live alone at age 11 and my dad would come down

on weekend. That's insane. You're 11. Like I have an 11-year-old niece. I couldn't imagine leaving her in a house by herself for five days a week. There were relatives nearby. Do you know what I mean? So it wasn't like, I mean, I was not raised by wolves and it does sort of sound that way, but I did learn a lot. But you did. You made yourself breakfast every day.

You took- Yeah, I learned how to cook. So from the age of 11, five out of seven days, you raised yourself. So that's sort of the story I tell myself. I think if I went back, I mean, it's true. And it's slightly misleading at the same time, like many things. And it actually happened. So I'm a great believer that the solutions we find to the challenges we have when we're kids become our strength as adults. So I was a kid with ADD and it wasn't a thing back then. So it wasn't diagnosable. I was

just hyperactive and couldn't focus and got yelled at and didn't do my homework. Couldn't read a book. Wasn't good at paying attention, but had this minor little problem. I had to still get through school. And so at a pretty young age, I learned to ask questions and I learned to listen to answers and I learned to ask for help a lot. So I'd go talk to teachers after class and ask them to explain it to me. I'd ask my friends who were smarter than me. And I remember when I got to college, I had to take classes with good professors because I couldn't skip class because I had to listen to the answer.

I couldn't just like skip class and go read the book and do fine because I couldn't get through the book. I didn't have the focus to read a textbook. Now as an adult, that was all a survival mechanism, the ability to ask for help. And now as an adult, the ability to ask questions and listen for insight, I've made a career out of it. It was all a survival mechanism. That's where that skill came from. Of the many kind things you've done for me, with me, was when I got my personal find your why with Simon Sinek in the back of a heavily armored ambassadorial car. And the weird thing about this moment, we're like driving from our residence to the embassy and you're like, all right, let's just do it now. And I think,

great, but we're not alone, right? Because we have- Security, yeah. Tony, the driver and Ben, the security guy in the front seat. So we're not alone, but you asked me for a specific grownup, we're not going to do it here, but a grownup thing I was proud of, whether anyone knew it or not. And that kind of came fairly easily, which was this Obama low dollar fundraiser thing we talked about earlier. And then the second thing you're like, specific childhood memory, happy childhood memory. And it was like the most awkward silence. And I could just feel Ben and Tony in the front being like, man. And then I'm like, and then I was like, I had a totally happy childhood. I have a wonderful mother and father and siblings and friends.

And, but I really couldn't. And then I started saying lame ones and you wouldn't in that great Simon way. You're like, nope, more specific, more specific, more specific. And I was like, this is so painful. We're almost at the embassy. It put me out of my misery. And then finally, I had one that met your rigorous standard for specificity and happiness, which was teaching sailing. I am probably 13 years old and I'm tiny, like prepubescent, five foot nothing.

And there's some little seven, eight year old kid crying his eyes out in this tiny boat. It only fits one person. And the boom is going back and forth and whacking him on the head. And so the older teachers were like, Hey, Matthew, you got to go hop in that boat with him and set them straight. So I get off the big boat where the teachers all were, hop into this tiny boat because I fit and wouldn't sink the thing and just tell the little kid some basic stuff so he could stop crying, stop getting hurt and go off and sail. And then they picked me up and you're like, great, perfect. That's all I need. And I was like, I don't get it. And you said, big boat, little

boat. And then you said, do me a favor, like at your desk at home, buy a little toy boat, one big, one little, and put them there. So right, you can't see it here, but right on my table on the other side of the screen is a big boat and a little boat. Because of your ability- To sort of go between. To go between. And I sort of need both. I need sort of the big boat with older people, wiser. Many of my friends are a lot older than I am

because I just love learning from people older. And then being able to sort of hop in the little boat, which is probably why I loved going to the sixth form colleges or high school seniors, went to 200 schools, 20,000 kids. And I now know where this comes from. So I did, I mean, I knew the insight, but I didn't know the origin story. And the origin story is this, this you as an 11 year old, and your ability to go between

worlds. And it is true, you know, you're an ambassador playing at a very high level. I mean, you, that's a big job. And you talk to other ambassadors and world leaders. And then you spend more time than most ambassadors, as you said, visiting high schools to talk to kids, but you did it with your own teams as well. You know, most ambassadors live in their ivory towers behind all the guarded walls. And you spent a lot of time with the most junior people in the embassy to share what you knew before you went back into the big boat. And this constant big boat, little boat, big boat, little boat is your happy place, you know, as you said. Totally. And I didn't know the origin story. I absolutely love that. One of the things that

makes you able to go into a little boat is the humility. Because a lot of people may attempt to get into the little boat, but because they bring all their weight, they sink the boat. They suck the energy out of the room. They become blowhards. They become, I know so much, let me tell you everything. And you're an experienced person who gets into a little boat, who shows up to a room of kids. And I've seen you do it. When you invited me to speak to the embassy, unbeknownst to me, you also invited me to speak to kids that I didn't realize I was doing two things at the embassy that day. But I remember you were there with me and you sat, you didn't do like ladies and gentlemen, Simon, and then you left. You sat there with the kids the whole time.

And then you and I answered their questions, but you didn't lecture them. And most ambassadors lecture. Most people from the big boat lecture people on the little boat. I love it. And I seek it out. And that is me at my best. And me at my worst is,

and we debated you and I keeping this in the book. We ended up keeping it, which I'm glad. But the story of where I'm, it's a wonderful couple invited me to this big formal dinner. And I was supposed to, at the beginning of the meal, stand up and do what's called a tour de horizon. Is that a diplomacy thing?

It's a diplomacy, a French term I'm not pronouncing well. Well, you got the tour de horizon is that a diplomacy thing it's a diplomacy a french term i'm not pronouncing well well you got the tour de right thank you horizon tour d'horizon um anyway so what is it toward the horizon it's like a a survey of the waterfront so like let me tell you about um and in fact i had it's the sort of thing I sort of had to do as ambassador. So you stand up and you provide the- Like the pronouncements on US foreign policy priorities. And let's look east to the relationship with China. Let's look south to what's happening in Syria or South Sudan. It's an update. It is an update. And it is usually expected to be given in this tone of kind of often wrong, never in doubt. Yeah. Right. Which

is sort of the default diplomatic tone that I am capable of faking, but it's faking when I do it anyway. And, but I got sort of good with, like, I made it into a little memory game, North, and I'd be like, you know, look East, look south, look west for the transatlantic trade deal, look up for the polar climate and the melting polar ice cap. And so that sort of made it a fun game internally for me because I hated it. And so my lovely wife, Brooke's there at the other, she looks across the table at me and it's like, you don't look good. And I sort of shook back a look like, I don't feel good. So I like loosen my tie and i was like oh dear i i gotta get out of here so i was like pardon me one second it's sort of crowded so i like scoot my way out and there's like four like a little mini flight of stairs with to go to the bathroom and uh i don't

make it i just make it to the top of the stairs and i pass out and projectile vomit everywhere um or maybe projectile vomit and passed out. I don't remember the order. Or maybe simultaneously. But it was humiliating. I mean, this was like a crowded restaurant. We were like in the private table in the back. But like everyone saw this.

And so I wake up like in the arms of Simon, the security guy, like catches me as I pass out. And I wake up like smiling. arms of Simon, the security guy, like catches me as I pass out. And I wake up like smiling. And I was like totally relieved, which is a weird feeling when you've just humiliated yourself and others. And I just sort of felt this like, I'm just not going to do this shit anymore. I'm not going to pretend. And so it's this little mini epiphany. What was it about that experience that gave you the confidence to give up the lying, hiding and faking?

You know, I think it was in contrast. Earlier that morning, I had been up in Scotland, and I had done a bunch of these sessions we talked about with the high schoolers, and they were dealing with Scottish independence, and they were dealing with, it wasn't yet Brexit, but just wrestling with all these issues. And it was so energizing just watching and learning from this next generation. And then the contrast with, and this was my problem, not our wonderful hosts. I mean, they made me feel welcome. You know what I mean? And they may not have even wanted the thing I thought they wanted, but I just got myself in that strange place. So I'm just allergic to pyramids and I don't want to do

it. And I think the goal is that the rest of us can give them up too. Because constellations, let's be honest, are so much prettier. So much prettier. I'm so proud that Optimism Press is publishing your book. I'm so proud that we get to share. It's one of those things where, for me, I get to meet these amazing people and I get to learn from them and I count you among them and it always bums me out that other people aren't learning what they know

and so for me one of the great joys is getting to share so much of the the things that you have taught me with more people that's what I love about the opportunity to publish someone's book to publish your book in particular and it was so much fun backwards and forwardsing with you as you were writing it, because it was the stuff that I cherish and the stuff that I learned from you that is now in that book. And I don't have to remember all the stories. So I guess this is my very long-winded way. I'm just saying thank you. Thank you for sort of being willing to put it out there, for giving up the pyramid and championing the constellation, because it's a nicer way to live when you

see everybody else as a star. Thank you. If you enjoyed this podcast and you'd like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. Until then, take care of yourself. Take care of each other.