Endgame with Gita Wirjawan - Jeffrey Pfeffer: Harness Power for Good

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

Jeffrey Pfeffer—Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University—breaks down one of his best-selling books, “7 Rules of Power”, and untangles its contentious points on why is it important and how can we implement it in real life. Mr. Pfeffer also talks about social media, democracy, woke culture, and his upcoming book on the US healthcare system. Jeffrey Pfeffer is an American business theorist and today's most influential management thinker. He has been teaching at Stanford University since 1979. His research and writings revolve around power and leadership in organizations, evidence-based management, and the effects of work environments on human health and well-being. #Endgame #GitaWirjawan #JeffreyPfeffer Recorded in Hillsborough, California, USA on October 21, 2022. ----------------- Episode takeaways: https://endgame.id/eps114notes ----------------- Pre-Order the official Endgame merchandise: https://wa.me/628119182045 SGPP Indonesia Master of Public Policy 2022/24 admission: admissions.sgpp.ac.id [e-mail] https://wa.me/628111522504 Other "Endgame" episode Playlist: https://endgame.id/season2 https://endgame.id/season1 https://endgame.id/thetake Visit and subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@SGPPIndonesia https://www.youtube.com/@VisinemaPictures

I could leave our strategic plan on a plane, and it wouldn't matter. The difference for us is not strategy. It's execution. And execution requires influence. I mean, that's what leadership is. Leadership is about getting things done through other people. Unless they were going to do it anyway, you have to influence them. Right.

Hi, friends and fellows. Welcome to this special series of conversations involving personalities coming from a of campuses, including Stanford University. The purpose of the series is really to unleash thought-provoking ideas that I think would be of tremendous value to you. I want to thank you for your support so far and welcome to the special series. Hi, today we're visited by Professor Jeffrey Feffer, who is a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. Jeff, thank you so much. It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure to be with you. It's nice to get to know you.

Thank you. It's quite amazing. You've been very prolific. You've written 16 books and your latest one is the seven rules of power. Correct. Walk through your experience of having written 16 books in the last God knows how many decades. That's a long time. And I'm actually working on book number 17. So I mean, this is what the, you know, people say you've written a lot of books. I think I should have and more. You know, this is after all my job. I mean, this is what I do. I mean, you know, I do teach a class on power now. And I used to teach a class on human resource management. At one point, I taught the core class in organizational behavior. But basically, I am paid to do research and writing. So I ought to be how to do research and writing. That's my view.

Talk a little bit about the process of writing for some of us that are aspiring to write. Well, the process is, I think you need, obviously, you need an idea. You need something that interests you, that provokes you, something that not a thousand, billion, trillion other people have written about, something where you think you can make a unique contribution because of your perspective or knowledge or whatever it is. And then my process is, I make an outline. And for the book I'm currently writing, I've made like a number of outlines, but I think I have now the final outline.

You make an outline because every book has the beginning, a middle and an end. So the order I think is actually important to have a flow. By the way, just as you would for a class, if you teach a class, you would do the same thing. You would say, what is a class that the students need to learn that isn't already being taught? How do I begin the class? How do I go through the class, the order of the sessions? I don't end the class. It's exactly what you do for a book.

Okay. Your latest book, it's walk us through the seven rules. Yeah. Some of them are pretty commonsensical, but at the same time, pretty controversial. I guess. For some of us. I guess. I don't know.

And this is, I think, a chance for me to get clarification, or explanation from you. Get out of your own way. That's rule number one. Yeah. Get out of your own. I think we get in our own way in a number of ways. One is we care too much about being liked.

You know, so I did an interview for my podcast, Fephyron Power, this morning with Gary Loveman, who ran Caesars, the huge casino company. And, you know, he talks about, he's this line, if you won't be like it, a dog. A dog will love you unconditionally. Your job as a senior executive, maybe even as a job. junior executive is to get stuff done. And getting stuff done, you know, there's always disagreements because different people have different perspectives about things. And so there will be disagreements. If you want everybody to like you, you probably can't do anything. I think that's one way,

in which we get in our own way. Another way in which we get in our own way is we carry around descriptions of ourselves that disempower us, that I can't do this because I'm a woman, or I can't do this because I'm an underrepresented minority. I can't do this because of whatever the reason is. And you need to lose any description of yourself that gets in your own way. I think we get on our own way by engaging in preemptory apology. I have this guy who I'm going to put on my podcast who told me the story, which he claims is a completely true story, that he's in Oxford and a car hits a pedestrian, and the pedestrian gets up and apologizes to the car driver

for being in the crosswalk. I mean, you know, there's a stereotype of the English is over apologizing that he claims the story actually happened, he witnessed it. I could believe him. You know, so I think you don't want to, I think you don't want to engage in preemptory apology. I see people all the time.

Tends to be more women than men, but men will do it also. Pardon me for interrupting. Pardon me. I have students in my class. their hand and say, you know, I'm not sure the comment I'm about to make is that great. And so I will come down very hard of them and say, I don't care about the quality of your comment. I care a lot about the fact that before you made the comment, you apologized for it in advance, which, you know, I mean, basically, if you're going to make a comment that you don't think

it's worth anything, don't make the damn comment. I mean, you know, it's, so preemptory apology is, I think, a way in which we get in our own way, wanting to be liked, carrying around these scripts that we, that we, that we, that that we think we have to adhere to. So getting out of our own way, I think, is rule number one for a reason. It's the most important thing. If you are not out of your own way,

you're not gonna go very far. Screwed. But what are some of the steps that one could take to be able to get out of her only? Practice. Practice. Just practice. You just, so, you know, there's this idea about,

Imposter syndrome, which is a phrase I'm sure you know. And so people wander around with imposter syndrome. I don't deserve to be at Stanford or I don't deserve to be a full professor at Stanford. I don't deserve this or that. And the way I think you get over that is you just practice being bolder than you thought you could be. As I said, you know, when we were talking casually, I actually believe that the number one thing to my class, both the online and the on-campus classes on power do, is cause people to, to be more ambitious and to be bolder than they thought they could.

And all of a sudden, they see, wow, you know, it's amazing. The second one, break the rules. Yes, break the rules. That sounds unethical. No, shouldn't sound unethical. You know, Malcolm Gladwell wrote this wonderful 2009 New York article. How David beats Goliath? How does David be Goliath?

By changing the rules. You know, if he puts on the armor that Goliath is, wearing and picks up a sword and shield like Goliath has. He's not going to be able to move, let alone win the battle. So he's going to fight as a shepherd with a slingshot. You know, so I think you want the breaking the rules because people with power get to break the rules. If you break the rules, people think you have power.

And also rules favor the people who made them. When Rosa Parks sat in the front of the bus, she was breaking the rule. When Martin Luther King wrote a letter from her Birmingham, jail, he was in jail. Nelson Mandela became the father of South Africa while he was in prison. So, yes, that's breaking the rules. That is definitely breaking the law, apparently, because they're in jail, literally. So yes, breaking the rules catches people by surprise, and surprise makes them memorable. Breaking the rules, you know, I think permits you, you know, people are very basically conflict-averse. So if you break the rules, they may give you what you want.

If you don't ask, you don't get. One of the rules that people kind of follow, it's not really a rule, but it's kind of a rule, is you're not supposed to ask for things. Because you're supposed to be self-sufficient. I think, you know, my colleague Frank Flynn, Francis Flynn, and Vanessa Lake wrote a paper. If you want something, just ask. Because, you know, you don't, anything you don't ask for, you will definitely not. you lose 100% of the sales you don't ask.

Right. I mean, you know, I'm sure, in your experience, you know this. So absolutely. So you break the rules about being self-sufficient. You ask for things. Especially when the rules don't seem relevant anymore. Especially when the rules and the rulers don't seem to be able to account what happens, right? And by the way, if I were telling you we were talking about business strategy,

Right. You would say, of course, break the rules. What is the profit of bringing out a laptop that looks like every other laptop? I mean, if you think about Apple, Steve Jobs was a role breaker. An innovator. That innovation is basically getting out of what everybody takes for granted. Southwest Airlines was a rule breaker. My friend George Zimmer, the Men's Warehouse.

I mean, all of the Whole Foods with John Mackey, all of these companies basically said, And there is a conventional wisdom. I don't think the conventional wisdom actually makes sense. And we are going to do things differently, which is to break with convention, to break with, you know, you do not benchmark your way to the top. You benchmark your way to the middle. You know that. Yeah. Okay.

The third one, projecting, presenting yourself in a powerful fashion. Yes. Is that a must? Yes. Yes. I mean, we, body language matters. By the way, it matters for chimpanzees as well as human beings. Yes, you want to, you want to show up in a powerful fashion.

You want to use powerful gestures. You want to speak in a louder voice. Absolutely. We know that we form impressions of others within the first actual 10 seconds, 10 seconds. And those impressions are based mostly on how people look and how they sound. One of the studies I cite in Seven Rules of Power is the study of these professors a Nalinium body, who was a now deceased, unfortunately,

social psychologist, did this wonderful study where she takes videos of classroom teachers, their silent videos. She shows them to nine people and has them rated on a bunch of attributes

and then correlates the average of those ratings with the ratings that students, actual students gave them. And it turns out the correlation is reasonably high between, you know, nine, you know, these nine ratings of 30-second silent videos,

and students who sat through the whole class. And you say yourself, how can that be? And the answer is that they are both responding to the same thing. How people look, how they sound. How do you explain, you know, a bunch of these guys that are seemingly nerdy? They don't exactly present themselves in a powerful fashion, but they seem to be reasonably powerful. Governing and ruling a lot of things.

Who do you have in mind? certainly not Donald Trump certainly not Elon Musk certainly not Steve Jobs as you probably know Steve Jobs was really the creation of a public relations firm when they first came

when they first came upon Steve Jobs he couldn't give a talk he couldn't have four sentences in a row and he was created by them it's practice I mean the wonderful thing about the seven rules of power. Well, there are many wonderful things, but one of the wonderful

things is that these are not enduring personality traits. These are things you can learn. You can learn to get out of your own way. You can learn to break the rules. You can learn, certainly, you can learn to speak and act with power. I mean, because nobody's born an actor. I mean, you're born, you know, as an infant not walking or talking or using the toilet. So you can learn, you can learn to project yourself in a powerful fashion. Yeah. One of the things, you know, one of the things I like about your stuff is that it's so handy, it's so applicable. Yes. And the fourth one is really the relentless, you know, effort of networking.

Yeah, that's actually Rule 5. Rule 4 is to build a powerful brand. That's right, the powerful brand, which you've talked about a little bit, you know. Yeah, yeah, of course. You want people, you want people to know who you are and you want to have a narrative that integrates who you are with what you've done and with what you are in the job for which you are applying or the job in which you are. Absolutely. You'll build a brand. And then Rule 5 is Network Relo. Yeah. Talk about that. Is it absolutely necessary?

Absolutely. If leadership is getting things, so many people say management or leadership will call what you will, is getting things done through other people. If you're going to get things done through other people, the more other people you know, the better off you're going to be. Yeah. And at any level of the organization, that's exactly right. You got to hook up with any of these guys. What are some of the steps that you can learn to be better at this? I think... How do you practice? I think one of the things that some studies indicate is that most people do not spend

enough time doing it. So the first thing you need to do is spend enough time. So, you know, take your cell phone or whatever and see how much time you're actually spending on various activities and make sure you're spending sufficient time meeting people. And again, this is practice. So the first, and this isn't going on a cocktail party in randomly schmoozing. This is also, I think what people underestimate about networking is the importance of generosity.

That's, you know, so tomorrow night, I will host a dinner at my house in which I will attempt to not poison anyone by cooking them a five-course Chinese meal. But one of the things that will probably happen as a consequence of that meeting is that people who did not know each other will meet. and they will find ways in which they can be helpful to each other, and they will give me credit for having fed them and introduced them to each other. Is this more of an effort to show off your cooking or an effort to force people to network with each other? It's an effort to get people together and to, you know, and to come into the house and to, you know, and for me to do something on a Tuesday night that I wouldn't otherwise do, I don't do it every Tuesday. do it, you know, every three or four weeks. We're going to stop for the holidays. And after the

holidays, I'll do it again maybe every three or four weeks. And it gets, and it puts me back, it permits me to get back in touch with people who I know, but haven't seen enough. And, you know, and I serve, you know, it's a five-course dinner. And they say, wow, you know, last time I was here, somebody was looking for the boxes or wherever it came in. It turns out I actually cook myself. Why? I mean, you're serious about cooking Chinese. I'm very serious. Okay, why? And why, why did you not just decide to outsource it? So I did. So the very first dinner like this, I did, though it wasn't a dinner in this series, I hired an extraordinarily expensive and an extraordinarily fabulous, and I have to say an extraordinarily messy personal chef. As he said to me,

before I cooked for you earlier this week, I cooked for Sergey Brin. I cook for Sergey and you. So he's very upscale. And then I had a dinner for some reason, and I cooked myself. And one of the people who was at both dinners said, I liked your dinner better.

Now, the food, trust me, the food was not as good. But she liked, I think, the authenticity or the whatever. I mean, the other thing, I mean, you hire somebody and pay them basically $400, $400 a person. plus whatever for the, you know, whatever. The food is fabulous, but it's fancy. This is like Jeffrey's Chinese food is not too fancy. I'm going to have to.

You are invited. As soon as you come back to town, we're going to have a dinner. We're going to have you and a bunch of other people of your stature, quite suitable. So that you'll say, you know, I'm hanging out with people like me. I had a deal for a while. In order to come to dinner, you have to be worth 500. Pardon me, not 500, $100 million and are flown on Air Force One. The next rule, the next rule.

Basically, use the rule, use the power. Use the power, that's right. Okay. A lot of people, have you seen people that actually don't use the power? Absolutely. Okay. People, some people believe powers like the water in your mug. The more you drink, the less there will be.

It turns out with power, the more you use it. And therefore, the more you get done, the more you'll have. because people want to invest in both their human capital and their financial capital and people can make stuff happen. So if you don't use your power to make stuff happen,

nobody's going to invest in you. So it becomes, I think it's called the flywheel effect. How do you stop that from being abused? You know, we've seen some dictatorial tendencies, right? Or power being utilized.

I think you said, you know, so how do you keep for American football or for European soccer or for tennis or whatever, how do you keep people, how do you get people to play the game? You have referees, you have rules,

and you have referees and you enforce the rules. Now, what has gone on in society today, not only in the U.S., but basically around the world, is that nobody's enforcing the rules. And so by the way, a norm, which is unenforced after a while, becomes, of course, not a norm

because if there are no sanctions for violating the norm, that the norm just disappears. So there needs to be sanctions, but in the absence of sanctions, you need to do what you think you need to do. So, you know, you have children? I do. Of course. So when your kids were little, if they're like normal children,

and I'm sure yours were way above normal, I'm sure they tested mommy and daddy to see exactly what they could get away with. And if you let them get away with, of course. And if you let them get away with everything and anything, then, of course, you cannot blame them for getting away with anything and everything. And that's, I think, the analogy for society. That if you want people to, you know, to operate within constraints, you have to enforce those constraints just as you did for your children.

The last one. Nobody likes the last one. You get forgiven and forgotten. That just sounds like it's not a justification. Casually we were talking earlier. it whatever describe it rule seven is almost as important as rule one because students would say to me oh geoffrey you know if i do x or y or if i upset this person or that person what's going to happen and my answer was and so therefore this was a way of them not leaning in and being as

powerful as they could or should be and so what i said to them and what i would say to everybody is that once you have power and money, all are the people who you think you upset on the way, they forgot. They have forgiven you. They forget. And you see this all the time. The most startling example,

and I think it's the example with which I begin the chapter, is Lindsay Graham and Donald Trump. Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, you know, is a never-Trump or he thinks Trump is this and that and the other thing. Trump becomes president, and, you know, Lindsay Graham flips. And in the New York Times, which is fascinated by this, Lindsay Graham says, I want to be relevant. And you see this, I'm sure you've seen this in Indonesian politics

because it's true in politics around the world. And you see it in companies. When somebody becomes CEO, everybody says, wow, I was with them all the time. You know, when people become president. Oh, great person, great idea. You'll see this now in the Philippines with Frednan Marcus Jr. Now, you know, I try to push you earlier as to whether or not this is similar to the ends

justifying the means. And you specifically said it's not justifying the means. The ends, so it depends upon what you think the biggest problem in the world is. I think the biggest price. So when I talk to CEOs and when I talk even to political leaders, what most people will to say is my problem is I can't get organizations to do what I want. I interviewed, I did a case

on a guy named Zia Yusuf who will also be at the dinner tomorrow night. See, I'm missing anyway. Zia Yusuf worked for Hassel Platner, the co-founder of SAP. And so I interviewed Haso Plattner as part of the case. And Haso and I spent a long time

so long somebody thought I had kidnapped him or something, literally, because he never talked along anybody. Anyway, and Hossel Platner said, you know, there's the Hossel Plotner design center at Stanford. And the whole principle behind the D-school is user-centered design. He said, I'm in a company, this huge company. We're designing software.

The software is hard to use. The software is designed by a bunch of engineers. They never asked the users what they've, on or what they need. He said, I am Hossoplatner, co-founder of the company, ostensibly the CEO, I can't get anybody to do user-centered design. Can you help me? And the answer to that was, of course, no, but in any event, the point being that I think one of the biggest problems in life is getting things done. Go to the city of San Francisco, which of course looks like, God knows what. 13 or 14 or 15 or 16 billion dollar budget.

they can't get the homeless off the streets. They can't do anything, basically. I think you look at, I think the big problem in life is implementation. Dick Kovosovic, Richard Kovosovic, who at one point was the chairman of Wells Fargo, has this wonderful line which he said, I could leave our strategic plan on a plane, and it wouldn't matter. The difference for us is not strategy. it's execution.

And execution requires influence. Yeah. I mean, that's what leadership is. Leadership is about getting things done through other people. Unless they were going to do it anyway, you have to influence them. Right.

I want to ask you, you've been at Stanford for decades. You've taught so many students. Thank you for you for being so polite. I've been at Stanford since 1979, 43 years. I mean, you've taught a lot of people that have become zillionaires. that have become masters of the universe. If you go back to this book, this book,

have you spotted anybody that would have risen to a position of power without, you know, adhering to any of these seven rules? No, and by the way, if you start a company and you don't pay attention to these seven rules of power, you could start a company, and the company may even be successful. But as we know, as you know, founders don't last.

And Nome Wasserman wrote an article about this, wrote a book on this, and he pointed out something which is not obvious until you think about it. The more successful the company, the more likely you are to be fired as a founder. Not the less, the more. Got it. Because one of my friends said her husband had been thrown out of a company and now her husband was running a much more successful company where she said he spent, you know, a third of his, worrying about power dynamics. And I said to her, I said, but his company, the one from which he was thrown out, was actually quite successful. And she's looked at me and she said, as though I was dumb, which of course I am, she said, nobody fights over garbage. If the company is a failure,

nobody wants to take it over. The more successful it is, the bigger the stakes. Okay. I want to take this to a different place. When you, or when, when, somebody's in a position of power, how does she or he make sure that they find the right set of talents? Sometimes you don't see an alignment between talent and power. There's some of an alignment between talent and power. I mean, power is one thing and talent is another. No, no.

What I mean is two things, right? Once you get to a position of power, you may be able to get that without the necessary set of talents. or once you get there with the necessary set of talents, you don't surround yourself with the necessary set of talents. That's probably correct. How do you realign that? Well, I think it's hard to do because I think people like to be the star,

and therefore they don't like to have their star light outshown by anybody else. You know, I think we know, because there's a ton of research on this, that while nobody talks about this very much, narcissism positively predicts rising, getting promoted, getting hired. And so many people who run organizations are narcissists. And narcissists are fundamentally insecure, and insecure people don't tend to surround themselves

with a lot of talent. So, you know, you have to go against your natural tendencies, which I'm not expecting many people to do. All right. Let's, let's, you know, move. to a different space. You know, in the context of democracies around the world, slightly different from entrepreneurial space,

we're seeing an increasing number of democracies where they're not able to democratize talent. They're selecting talent more based on loyalty as opposed to merit, right? Is that an observation that could be remedied? I don't know. I mean, you know, I think, as you know, because there are several indices of democracy, democracy is in retreat, which was the opposite of what everybody thought social media was going to do. But social media has actually done the opposite of what everybody thought was going to do.

So democracies are in retreat. Many people have been elected in many countries around the world who nobody ever thought was qualified for the job or would be elected or would be elected or whatever. I recommend to everybody. I think we recommended this when we had coffee together, the kingmaker, the story of Emil de Marcos, and it's a documentary made prior to the election of her son to the presidency of the Philippines. Here's a family, and I don't know if this is true or not.

We're accused of looting the country of billions of dollars. The son was just elected, and as far as I could tell, a free and fair election. So democracy is in retreat, and I am not an expert on the subject that I would need to be an expert on to tell you what to do about this. And that's subject to social media. I mean, the ability to spread lies.

You know, in the olden days, if you had the ones that spread a lie, you built a printing press and you printed some copies that you distributed them, or, you know, maybe you bought some TV time or something. Now it costs almost nothing, and the lies can go viral. And so, and of course, what is viral, I was at a, a conference sponsored by the Brookings Institution the other day, a dinner, actually. And there was an expert there from Brookings who talked about what sells. And of course, we know what sells.

Hate and fear. Hate and fear. And so I don't, you know, and basically we are appealing to people's basest instincts. We're appealing to their subconscious. We're appealing, you know, to click, whatever. You know, if you believe the internet, George Clooney has died 20 times. today because, you know, George Clooney has died, of course, gets people to click or whatever, you know, I mean, whatever. And so we, I don't really know what to do. I don't, by the way,

believe I was at this meeting which had a guy from Google and a woman from Salesforce and somebody from other equally distinguished. And the guy himself who had testified in front of Congress from Brookings. And these are very famous fancy people. And they had no answer. They had no answer. So if they don't have an answer, I therefore get to not have an answer because I'm not nearly as expert as they are. There is no answer. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. You know, I don't, I'm trying to find this article.

I'm not making up what I'm about to tell you, but I can't find the article somebody's asked for it. So some years ago in the science section of the New York Times, there was an article that asked the following question. Why, with all the radio telescopes and all this other stuff? can't we find signs of intelligent life? And the answer, by some fancy theoretical physicists, is that it is possible that evolution leads to extinction, that we do not evolve to higher life forms, that we evolve to where we are evolving to,

to the destruction of the planet, to a doggy dog, whatever kind of thing like you see in politics and as you see in society. And so they're the one of their arguments, And they, of course, there's no way of proving this. Is that, in fact, that all the planets that had intelligent life became what we are going to become? If you believe Stephen Hawking, you know, Stephen Hawking, the famous physicist. Stephen Hawking said, we have 100 years left.

That's all. Ooh, that's scary. Well, Jeff, he's dead, so maybe he's wrong. Anyway. Your book seems to suggest a very cold-blooded approach to life. right and and a very cold-blooded evolutionary process could mean something like you've just alluded to yeah I so I prefer to say as you know my book

advocates for a strategic not cold blood but a strategic process where you are thoughtful you know as I as we discussed companies around the world but certainly in the United States for decades have said you are responsible for your career we we we do we We are not promising you a job for life. We're not promising you a pension anymore. We're not promising you basically anything other than what you're able to,

you know, to get and extract. We are certainly not going to, in quotes, take care of you from cradle of the grave, like IBM and many other companies used to do. And so they tell you, you're responsible for your career. You want to take that message seriously. If you are responsible for your career, then you are responsible for your career. You are responsible for your promotions. You are responsible for having the people in power want to promote you.

You are responsible for building relationships with people who can be helpful to you and getting your job done and getting your career advanced. I mean, you cannot wait for, you know, the paternal organization, which doesn't exist anymore, to take care of you. So I don't think this is in any way cold-blooded. I think it is, I prefer to say, realistic. And by the way, realistic in the context of what companies themselves have said that we are not going to take care of you from cradle to grave or even from maybe five minutes. I mean, one of the things that astounds me is how companies that were paying hiring bonuses three and four and five months ago are today laying off the people that they paid bonuses to hire. And when the economy turns back up, well then pay bonuses again to rehire the people that they've laid off, which to me makes no sense.

but on the other hand, you know. Okay. This book, in your belief, will be able to cross-fertilize into a different culture, right? I mean, intuitively, as an Asian, some of the rules are just seemingly different, culturally speaking, right?

Especially the last one. I don't see that. Okay. Explain that. I don't see that. I mean, you know, as I, you know, I think if this book had sold as well in the U.S. as it does and as my earlier books on power did in Asia, I would be a zillionaire.

The last book on power was literally for a while at bestseller in Japan. Certainly, I've given talks on this in China. The translation of the last book has just been renewed in Chinese. So I don't see, I think one of my books actually was published in Indonesian. So I don't see that. And in fact, this raises an interesting little

discussion. So I have a friend who ran proud for Japan and did an LBO or an MBO or some kind of thing and then whatever is now kind of retired. But he had a very successful consulting company and he did it by basically violating every rule. Of course. And I said to him, so I went to, he brought me over, I would do events for him. And he would have some beautiful woman violinist and he do all kinds of interesting things. And I say to him, explain. And his answer was simple. He said, picture me, proud foot Japan, picture customers. Picture a bridge between us. How do I get people to come over the bridge? And of course, the way I get people to come over the bridge is by being different, is by being different. By saying, who is this guy? Who is this guy? Keech was a

his first name. I don't remember his last name. Asagawa, maybe I don't remember anyway. Who is this guy? Doing all these things that are different. In order to differentiate, the root of the word differentiate is, of course, being different. Different. Breaking the rules, doing things differently. Of course. So I don't believe that this doesn't work in Asia for a nanosecond, not just because the book's been translated in the foreign languages that I've been in. privilege to give talks on all these places, but also because if you, the logic is, if I want you, metaphorically speaking, and not just Proudfoot versus the clients, but you know, you and the people are going to promote you, what is going to make them interested in you? What is going to

make you stand out so you don't look like the carpet in the Graduate School of Business, the color of which you could not tell me, because if it's been chosen to blend in, it's been chosen to be neutral. You don't want to be neutral. You know what they say in public affairs, public relations. There's good publicity, there's bad publicity, and then, of course, there's no publicity. And you want people to pay attention to you. You seem to suggest that if anybody goes at you low, you play low. You don't play high. Yes, exactly. You do not win, you know, one of the examples I use in several rules of power is an article in the New York Times, you know, from 2014 by Sam Borden talking about U.S. men's soccer

and how unlike the Europeans, the U.S. people want to have sportsmanship. So when you touch them, they don't fall to the ground and try to draw a foul and roll over and all this other stuff. And so basically, he says when it comes to cheating, U.S. soccer, men's soccer apparently falls short. So the question then becomes, in a competitive world, How do you manage with your competitors? Because you're going to have competitors. And you have to figure out a strategy that is effective against the competition.

You can't say, I'm hoping the competition will disappear because they won't. I'm hoping that they'll change what they do because if it's working, they won't. You have to figure out how to compete. I think, you know, in the world of the U.S. politics, the Democratic, Party has been way too nice and the Republicans have been smart about using social media, about using fear and anger, about doing all these things. And the only way you're not going to, you're not going to, you know, not going to win if you don't understand the principles and don't figure out a way to counteract them. You may not have to do more than them, but you at least

have to understand what they're doing and why it's working. Do you sense that this woke on the left is by way if they're not listening to a lot of the stuff that you've been saying in your books? Probably. I mean, you know, I think here's the problem with the woke culture. I have no problem with being woke. I try to be awake every day. But the problem is that a lot of this is virtue signaling.

So people will say, oh, this terrible thing happened to an African American. And oftentimes, of course, a terrible thing has happened. Right. But they don't do anything. You know, demonstrating in the streets, you know, it's fine. But if you really want to, so I, this is absolutely a true story. So after the shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, one of the students called me. One of the student leaders called me and said, what should we do?

And I said, you're not going to like the answer. The answer is no op-eds, no demonstration. You have a senator from Florida. His name is Marco Rubio. He's against gun control. On the day, being against gun control causes you to lose elections, your problems will be solved. And until then, nothing's going to matter. You get rid of the people who are standing in your way. And that requires effort. Not, I'm going to write a letter to the editor. I'm going to hold up a banner. Just do anything. I mean, it's nice. It's a sense. sentiment. But at the end of the day, the thing that matters is you change the power structure,

you change the rules, you change, change the laws. Got it. It was a, by the way, it was a powerful talk. It was a powerful talk. I said to what I said to the guy, it was a man, one of the boys students who called, I said, it's an honor to talk to you. I said, and I said, your intentions are good. I said, but if you're, if you're going to accomplish anything, you have to do grassroots or roots organizing and people who permit children and teachers to be slaughtered in their classrooms. And by the way, there have been slaughtered since then. There have to be a consequence. If there's no consequence, why in the hell is anything going to change? Look, you've talked about this in some of your podcast and also in your book about the hegemonic

tendencies of the big tech companies, right? How do you control these? Well, you know, I think, look, do we just rely on a societal type of checks and balances? I think that's part of it. But also I think, you know, we have woken up, to use the word woke, to the fact that under Democratic and Republican administrations for years, decades, there was no enforcement of the antitrust laws. That's why we have four shitty airlines that provide no service. That's why when you call your cell phone carrier, you're going to get a message that says, your call is important to us, and you'll hold forever because they, of course,

because there's no competition. We, the government spent a fortune and years breaking up AT&T and then permitted it to essentially reassemble itself. What was the point of having the damn antitrust case if you were going to let them put themselves back together into what, you know, so we have not enforced antitrust.

We've let Google, we've let Facebook buy, or matter, whatever it's now called, buy everything. We've let airlines buy everything. My friends who know more about this than me will tell you that almost every industry, the concentration ratio is higher than it's ever been. There's no airlines to compete with each other. There are, you know, there's no, there's very few cell phone carriers and we, you know, and there's very few, you know, now Safeway wants to merge with, you know, some other, Kroger. I mean, you know, because God forbid, you know, there'd be too much competition in the grocery industry. I mean, we have let consolidation occur. We've let consolidation occur in health care.

You go talk to a doctor. Why our health care prices so high? Because we've let all these hospital systems merge. Fine. You know, now, by the way, take them apart is much easier than preventing them from coming together in the first place. We need it. We need, if you want, if you want choice, there has to be options. You know, you have to have, have to be as smart as you in order to figure.

that out you you know it's going to be choice in order to choose there have to be an option so therefore you cannot permit the consolidation that has already occurred by the way not only here but basically around the world but it's been worse than the u.s ironically europe has done a much better job of maintaining competition than the u.s maybe the guys on the antitrust need to read your books well then we now have a new person in the federal trade commission i think they even the Republicans have kind of woken up to this. I mean, if you want markets to work, you have to have a functioning market. A market with one player is not a market.

It's called a monopoly. All right. I want to show gear to countries now. You've taught in so many places around the world, right? Of course. And by the way, I haven't ruined any of them. They've all survived. You've done justice and favors too many of these.

But tell us your view about what's happened in China recently. Here's a guy that was able to attain a position of power. And probably was able to check off every one of the seven boxes. I don't know enough about how. I do not know enough about how he has consolidated power to give himself a position that nobody, maybe after Mao, maybe even Mao himself had, which is he will basically be president for life.

For a long time. Forever. 30s, probably. Forever. until he dies or maybe longer who knows yeah um i have no idea how he did that though my suspicion is that he was able maybe willing also able and i don't know why he was able uh to do things that his predecessors could not do which is basically get rid of his his opposition and i don't know why he was able i would have to know much more about china and how it works

than i do to understand how that but he would he would be a good reader of your book, right? He's certainly Rule 6. He understands using power. You think he'll be able to complete Rule 7? You think people will forget and forget? He's already completed Rule 7. Because if you don't, you've done it, the Bible, Rule 7, you'll get sent to a re-education

camp. Then you'll figure Rule 7. Yeah. You've taught in Singapore. Yes. What's your take on Singapore? I mean, here's a country that's only 5.5 million people, but it's been able to project, you know, soft power to a lot of people in the world. Singapore was very lucky.

As I've often said, when you have basically a one-party system like Singapore has and somebody who's ruled with an iron hand as Lekwine U did, you either get Likw or Robert Mugabe. You either become Singapore or Zambia or Rhodesia or something. Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe. Yes, exactly. You become either this corrupt, you know, place, which is whatever, or you regard, you know, fortunately they had the right person with, with, who actually, I think, at least on some occasions and often cared about the well-being of the country.

Many people do not care about the well-being of the country. Donald Trump clearly, you know, for good or for ill, I don't even think his biggest supporters would say he cared about much more than Donald Trump. you know and i think Vladimir Putin cares only about you know Vladimir Putin um i think i think there's a tendency for leaders particularly leaders with a lot of power you know the zeld saying power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely and i think i think Singapore was very fortunate um to have basically somebody running the country for as long as he did who cared about economic development and multi-ethnic integration and all the things that he cared about that built this economic powerhouse.

Singapore was also frankly lucky. Talk about that. In a... I know we talked about that over coffee. The role of luck. Well, in a bad neighborhood, you know, in a bad neighborhood, Singapore could be the place where everybody wanted to have their headquarters. Nobody wants to live in Vietnam or Laos or Cambodia or maybe even in the United. at some point, Indonesia, I had friends in Indonesia at the YPO, and I understand how things

in Indonesia, at least at one stage worked, you paid money and got concessions. And the concessions essentially made you wealthy. So, you know, I mean, Singapore was the place that everybody wanted their Asian headquarters. Increasingly so. Of course. Even now. Of course. Particularly now, with what's happened. Because Singapore at one point competed with Hong Kong. Hong Kong is now, Hong Kong once was is gone. It's now another Chinese province. Yeah, Singapore has been a real beneficiary of whatever is happening in many parts. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's located in a enormous population center, Asia, which is a, where there's enormous economic growth and development,

including in places like Vietnam and including in some of the other other places, including probably even in the Philippines and certainly including in China. And Singapore is a good place to live and a bad neighborhood. So, you know, it's like, you know, you go to San Francisco to work during the day. You want to live in Hillsborough. You don't want to live in this city. Anyway. It's a nice place, too.

But would you regard the fulfillment of the seven rules as the manifestation of luck? No, I don't think luck. I think luck obviously plays a rule. role in people's lives, but I actually believe in people's agency. I have seen people, and the reason why I say that is because in the online version of this class, which is taught to working adults, I see people transform their careers in the period of eight weeks, transform their careers. In a big way. Completely. Give examples. What's sort of a transformation? There was a Nigerian woman. I think I quote her in here. Tosun Joel. And that's not her Nigerian name, but that's her semi-Americanized Nigerian name. Toesan Joel came to my online version of the power class, put it all into practice. She is like one of my podcasts. We haven't released it yet. She got four promotions in six months. She would force it.

directly to the CEO. Soon after your class. Oh, yeah. Yes, of course. I mean, people transform their lives. I have a, you know, a guy, I think it's another example. A guy writes me and says, I'm sorry, I can't be at your last class. I'm on the corporate jet.

Flying with the CEO. I mean, people literally, so I have seen people take the learnings. That's one of the reasons why I have 191 people on the waiting list for my on-campus version of the class. because this, if you will take the stuff, use the coaching that you get from the executive coaches who I have worked with both the on-campus and online versions of the class and implement it. Your life will be transformed. And by the way, the coaches, the reason why I get, tell me, is there a waiting list to be in the class?

I know. It's a long wait list. There's a waiting list to coach for the class because coaches love being able to intervene in people's lives and see results in six or eight weeks, not 20 years. years, not 10 years, not even one year, but in the period of the class. You can see people alter their trajectories. Your class has been very successful, right? You think would you put premium on the fact that it's been so handy for people to be able to transform? Or is it your teaching? That's not my teaching. I think the class is useful. The material is useful,

the resources that we provide them in terms of the exercises we have them to the feedback that they get from the executive coaches. This class, I mean, this class, no, most of the, I think most of the students don't like that. It's bad ass, which is fine. Most of the students don't like me. I'm not warm and fuzzy and going to tell them kumbaya stuff and stories about how everything is going to be fine. You know, it's all, what's the line from the best exotic marigold hotel?

It's all right at the end. And if it's not all right, it's not yet the end or something and whatever. Anyway, it's not. I'm going to tell them that. So, no, I think the reason why people sign up for this class is because it is truly transformative. Jeff, you got any final messages for people in Southeast Asia? No. Just, you know, be agentic.

I think this is about not waiting for good things to happen to you. Or good things to happen to your country or good things to happen to your company or good things to happen to your company or good things to happen to. your city or whatever, or state, this is about, you know, if you see something that needs to be done, don't wait for other people to do it. Yeah. Try to do it yourself. Got it. What's the topic of your 17th book?

My topic of the 17th book would be of no interest to anybody outside the United States. The topic of my 17th book is how companies who are the purchase more than half of U.S. health care could fix the U.S. health care system if they managed it properly. if they manage their purchasing properly. So the working title of the book is no measurement plus no accountability equals no performance. And that's the story of the U.S. healthcare system.

There is no measurement. It's not measurement of the right things. And there's no accountability. And that's why we have such crappy performance. And companies could fix this. And they don't have to get together in these collectives, and they don't have to do anything other than

just be smarter purchasers of health care and understand why they're buying health care and measure their vendors against that, do it like to do with everything else. And, you know, I had the head of Blue Shield, California, I interviewed for the book, say to me, well, you know, health care is different. And I said the phrase health care is different accounts for why there's 30% waste in the U.S. health care system because we believe it's different. I don't believe it's different at all. I don't think that's unique, though.

I think it happens in many other parts of the world. What happens worse here? As you know, we have the highest per capita health care span. And we are not in the top 20, 20 on any WHO indicator of health, not infant mortality, not life expectancy, not cancer, cure, not recovery after heart attack. There is no measure that I can find where we're in the top 20. And that's ridiculous. Despite high cost.

Maybe because of high cost, but yes, in spite of high cost. In spite of high, in spite of high cost, it's 40 to 50% higher than number two in the world, or per capita spend. And we have, you know, we have crappy infant mortality and we have, you know, crappy outcomes. Now, we also, of course, have enormous inequality. Enormous inequality. There was an article in health affairs, which talked about how, All of the gains in life expectancy in the last 40 years,

I believe it's 40 years, has gone to a relatively small segment of the population and that the life expectancy of the people on the bottom has gone down. That's scary. So health care for me, it's great. You know, my new primary care physician is the guy who runs primary care for Stanford. If you're me, you get access.

If you're, you know, you can see this, by the way. You have to believe me. Look at more death. rates by geographic area from COVID, from COVID. From COVID. Hillsborough has 10,000 people, I think 10 people died. You know, you could predict rates in Santa Clara in San Mateo County almost perfectly by the proportion of Latinos. Is this a scandal, but you know, this is the US.

Nobody in Hillsborough died. Everybody got vaccines early. Yeah. Everybody gets, you know, whatever. You know, I saw this after my wife, may she rest of peace, had a stroke. You know, private room, fancy neurologist, not that it didn't be good at the end. You know, but I mean, it's access. Access is unequal in the U.S. We know that. But by the way, that's a decision of employers also.

So I sit at a university. Yeah. Which talks about diversity, equity, and inclusion. And I sit on the committee. Ouch. That does health benefits. Do we measure health outcomes, health treatment by the subpopulations? Of course not.

I'm now part of a team funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation looking at health and equities, looking at what gets measured. By the way, if I say I want equity in the delivery of health care, the first thing I have to do is measure the demographics and what the hell. how people are received. I cannot manage anything that I do not measure and nothing is measured. It's unbelievable. Anyway, that's book number 17. When is it going to come out? I have to finish it. And the problem is I'm behind. And the reason why I'm behind is that on August 27th, 2020, the love of my life had a stroke. And on 9-11,

actually 9-10, 2021, she began the process of taking her life. And she died on 9-11. And these two years have been the worst two years of my existence. I cannot even begin to describe how hard this has been. For me to try to rebuild my life, first of all, to live with her in the guest bedroom with a caregiver 24-7, you know, in the room next to her. And to see her to struggle to recover with three physical therapists a day. By the way, $35,000 a month out of pocket. It's fine.

I'd have paid twice that. And to see, to watch someone that you love. Not be able to sit at the chair where we're sitting, except looking out the window with the shades up and look trapped, trapped in her own body. And I knew where this was going to end. So this has been not the easiest thing. But hopefully next year is going to be better.

May she rest in peace. I said, one of my friends said, I don't know where she is, but she is where she wanted to be. Hey, Jeffrey. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure. It's been fascinating. Thank you for coming over.

Beautiful home. Thank you. And then, you know, next time you'll be here for dinner. Guys, that was Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer from Stanford's school business. Thank you. Inila, Endgame. Which you decided not to rain? There's a doorbell.

I know. I didn't want to. We need to have your shoes off. Sure. We leave you my side? Sure, of course. Oh, 1990. This guy, this obviously is not whatever, he's saying he's in the Smithsonian.

He's a very famous Western fan. He's in the Smithsonian. Yes. So that was my, you know, my theme song is Sharon. If I could turn back time.