Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - What It Really Means to be Purpose-Driven | Dr. Ranjay Gulati

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

This week’s conversation is with Dr. Ranjay Gulati, the Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor and the former Unit Head of the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. Until recently, he chaired the Advanced Management Program, the flagship senior leader executive program, at the school. Ranjay studies how “resilient” organizations—those that prosper when it’s smooth sailing - and when the seas are wild —drive growth and profitability. His work bridges strategy (establishing clear strategic pillars for growth), organizational design (reimagining purposeful and collaborative organizational systems), and leadership (fostering inspired, courageous and caring execution).The Economist, Financial Times, and the Economist Intelligence Unit have listed him as among the top handful of business school scholars whose work is most relevant to management practice. I’ve known Ranjay for a few years, and I’m thrilled to introduce you to him. He’s got a deep understanding of how great companies work. We dive into the ongoing process that leaders drive to ensure that purpose is at the foundation of the entire organization – as well as – it being a strategic compass for decision making._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Now, this week's conversation is with Dr. Ranjay Gulati, the Paul R. Lawrence MBA class of 1942 professor and the former unit head of the organizational behavior unit at Harvard Business School until recently. He chaired the Advanced Management Program. That's their flagship senior leader executive program at the school. Ranjay studies how resilient organizations, those that prosper when it's smooth sailing, as well as when the seas are wild, how they drive growth and profitability.

The Economist, Financial Times, and the Economist Intelligence Unit have listed him as among the top handful of business school scholars whose work is most relevant to management practice. I've known Ranjay for a few years, and I am thrilled to introduce you to him. He's got a rich and deep understanding of how great companies work. And then we dive into the ongoing process that leaders drive to ensure that purpose is at the foundation of the entire organization, as well as it being a strategic compass for decision-making. And with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Dr. Ranjay Gulati. Ranjay, how are you? I'm great, Michael.

Great to be here with you today. It is awesome that we are getting to spend this time. I have really enjoyed our relationship and I love what you're contributing to the field and how you're interrogating something that is deeply important in both my personal life and my professional life. So I can't wait to roll up the sleeves and get under the hood of the science and the art of Deep Purpose with you. So congratulations on the success of the book to date.

And I can't wait to get here with you. Well, likewise, every time I've interacted with you, every time we have talked, I have walked away learning something, a nugget of wisdom. So I was super excited because I know today I'm going to learn a lot from you. All right, well, let's go two ways. Let's make this a true conversation here. But let's start, give me the chance to kind of ask

you the first question here, is your mom. So your parents, okay, okay Indian descent is that right India not just said Indian Indian living in India living in India okay so so I want to understand your take of the heritage but I want to talk about your mom and the reason I want to talk about your mom is because um there's no coincidence of where you sit in the world and how your mom taught you so can you first take a sweep at like how you understand your your culture which is a big statement i understand and then i want to talk about your mom's influence so let me situate you where i was growing up india in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, even now, was very Western looking. It was about admiring the West for being advanced. And, you know, a lot of kind of rejection of

Indian things, Indian ethnic. We didn't speak Hindi at home. We spoke English. It was very much of an Anglophile model at that time. And my mother taught in the American school where all these American diplomats and others would come to India. And, you know, India was kind of dirty and not so well-developed. So it was a, my mother somehow loved India. She loved being Indian.

And she showed it by wearing Indian clothes. Indian meaning not the saris that women would wear, the traditional. She would take a modern twist on it. So she would take Indian fabrics and colors and wear it as dresses, as skirts. And that was her way of showing that, hey, I'm Indian. So she'd go to the American school where other Indian teachers would dress very American. They would dress like an American would with American fabrics. She would show up in her Indian outfits. And that was her thing.

And she wanted to show that India is beautiful. And she was an anthropologist by training at that point. Somewhere she'd got a degree in anthropology. So she was working with women in rural India. And that was kind of her thing, that she was going to learn from them about aesthetics, about beauty. But my mother was a force of nature, as I would say, you know, a really strong person who had a purpose and a vision for what she wanted to get done. And OK, so that being said, bridge between that and how she made money. So, you know, as my mother would always say, if a door slams on you, open the window.

That was kind of her line. And so, you know, the American school where she taught, where she had a great job, had some squabble with the Indian government on taxes. And they had to let go in that process. They had to let go of half their Indian stuff so they had a lottery so imagine my mother was a really good teacher also and so she showed up and her name got pulled in the lottery so she lost her job now she had been doing this master's in anthropology at Vanderbilt and traveling every year and whenever she would go all her friends would make her bring Indian clothes and buy them from her.

So she had this little side business going of Indian ethnic. So she takes her savings and you're only allowed two suitcases to travel even today. So same as them. And off she goes to Paris. And she's going to go door,

and her plan is she's going to go door to door with bags of clothes and try to convince design houses to buy her designs and she's successful because she's not selling clothes so her thing was I'm not selling you a design I'm not selling you clothes I'm selling you an idea and the idea I want to sell you on is people in countries like India that are underdeveloped have beautiful things. That these people who live in these rural villages create beauty. That vegetable dyes and colors and handprints are something you may want to consider putting onto your garments. So it was just an idea. And it was based on, and her thing was that if you do it,

she didn't sell the CSR part of it, which was that you also want to uplift the communities. That was on her mind that, you know, I'm going to make money. I'm going to uplift the communities. I'm going to bring beautiful things to the West. So it was this kind of aesthetic sensibility from the East that she was hoping to share with the West. And how old were you when she pulled the bad end of the deal on the lottery? She started, I was 10, 12 years. I was 12 years old, maybe. And then almost to my teenage years, my summers were spent working with her.

She would work 100 hours a week and I would work 100 hours a week with her. It was hard work. Okay. And then what is your title at Harvard? I am the Paul Lawrence 1942, Class of 1942 Professor of Business Administration. And I did not graduate in 1942. That's not why I have that title. It's my advisor. My dissertation advisor was Paul Lawrence. And this chair was named in his honor. And is because you're laddering it back to mom had purpose. Mom took risks. Mom wasn't selling in a traditional sense.

She was building from the ground up ideas about sharing culture, about taking care of people to provide jobs. She was telling the big story, if you will, to use your language about something that mattered to her deeply. And people were probably really inspired from that, gave her a shot. But she was also really clever in the way that she did it because she couldn't come to the US, as you reported in your book, she couldn't come to the US with cash in hand, but she could come with materials. So there's a scrappiness, there's a risk-taking, there's a rebel nature, and there's a big heart that comes with your mom. And then did you, that's how I understood your mom. Um, and, and it feels, you know, the majority of the book is on best practices

in business, but you touch on that as part of your origin story. So can you just add anything that I've missed? Because it's going to set us up later about why you're so fascinated with purpose and best practices. So let me tell you a short anecdote that plays into why purpose is important today. With the great resignation and the meaning crisis we're facing, I'm calling it the great rethink. So I was a teenager working for my mom. And one night, you know, we were at a, she was very successful.

So by then she was staying in a nice hotel and we were out of town and we were going to have dinner and then go back to work. And we're having dinner. I told my mom, I said, mom, this is crazy. We're working like nonstop, seven days a week till midnight every night. I said, don't you want to take it easy? Let's just like take a day or two off. And she said, son, I just want you to know my wish for you is that you never have to work a day

in your life. So I presume the teenage brain in me was saying that means she's making so much money that I won't have to work that's why she's working so hard so I said thank you mom but you know maybe I you know I don't need to have so much money that I never have to work ever she quickly realized that she had miscommunicated with me she said no son no, son, I didn't say that. What I'm saying is I never want you to feel like you're working a day in your life. I don't feel like I'm working and you shouldn't be either. And if this makes you feel like you're working, you should be thinking what else could you do? So you don't feel like you're going to work. So when I was 15, there was a family friend.

His name was Larry, Larry Seifel. And he was an artist, businessman. And my parents' good friend. He completely dropped out. He made, when I say dropped out, it was the 70s, right? He was like anti-war,war dropped out I think he sued the president like he was he was a radical we're in my living room and I was about 16 and he says Mike so tell me what you're gonna do with your life now Ranjay I was a mess 15 I was an absolute

disaster I said I said I don't know I either going to chase waves and be a bit of a nomad or I'm going to crack it and make a lot of money. And he goes, oh, and I saw him take a breath and he's like, I wish the best for you, Mike. Now, like 24 hours later, my parents sat me down and said, what did you say to Larry? and i said i said okay i said i don't i don't know and they said well maybe you could consider something a little bit deeper yeah it changed me it so i was going to go chase money or chase waves and then so i didn't know what the in between was but it changed me. It was this conversation. It was kind of always with me from this mystical artist that said, do something

deeper. And so they shared with me that he was quite concerned by your response and I respected him. So I share that with you because it set me down a path to do something that mattered. And as one of the core components to purpose, this was my first origin story about this. And I love that story, Michael. And thank you for sharing it with me because I think it reveals how answering a very simple question can be such a powerful unlock. And it's simple, yet it's so incredibly hard. And you know, we do it for individuals. So both these stories are really about individuals asking you and I about our purpose. I found that when you transpose this to an organization,

it got a whole lot more complicated, because you are dealing with an aggregation of people who have to buy into this thing you might call. And that was where I found, I thought it was hard enough to find my purpose, but now to talk about it at an organization level was a whole different level of complexity in and of itself. Yes. And if I can add to it, my experience working with businesses is that most of them have a mission, a vision. They have a charter. They have some stuff that they've archived and they put it on the walls and they've got a nice little booklet of it, their values or whatever it might be. And it's academic.

And you and I both recognize that that doesn't work. It does not work at all. So some of the insights that are in your book are remarkable about how the purpose needs to stitch from the individual to the collective and also have favorable outcomes on a business front. And so can you riff a little bit here about some of the data, the findings, what you came to understand to be materially important? To really get to understanding purpose, I had to go through a lot of, you know, like you have to go through a lot of confusion, darkness before you get to light.

And I had to go through a lot of darkness around purpose confusion, purpose posturing, purpose as disguise, so much that I was forced to create a taxonomy of shallow purpose. That's how much I encountered, right? There was like, there are many shades of it. They were calling themselves purpose, but they were like, what I would call superficial or convenient purpose. And then, you know, I really wanted to call my book One Word. Michael, I don't know how you feel as an author, you know, I wanted wanted to call my book One Word. Michael, I don't know how you feel as an author. You know, I wanted a one word title. I wanted to call it purpose. I couldn't because I had to call it deep purpose because there were so few.

And to understand purpose as an unlock, you have to really go deep with it. Now, people think, what does purpose really mean? You may say it's why you exist. It's not always in the purpose statements, by the way. So I looked at a company called gotham green which is an agro-tech company that does urban farming on rooftops which they use then to sell into grocery stores whole foods in particular and it reduces spoilage it reduces transportation costs and it's extremely eco-friendly and they go after things that are very otherwise water intensive. So it's good for everybody and they make a lot of money doing it too. Now they don't have an official purpose statement, if you will, but are they deep purpose?

Because what is purpose after? It's about having intention. And I found that the ones who went after deep purpose did four things really well. The first one was really purpose as a compass, which is the image I have on the cover of my book, by the way. So they use it for directional clarity, which means decision-making, resource allocation, strategy setting, setting your vision, or how to what degree are you looking at it through the prism of your purpose?

Right? Then you discover that there are other elements of this as well, motivational. To what degree do employees really buy into it? Is it real? Or is it fake? Is it real or is it fake?

Is it posturing? The next one, which I found fascinating, was understanding how it plays into your customers, reputational. To what degree do your customers really believe that you're doing that? And the last one is relational with your partners. Now let me give you an example of that here and this will tell you why purpose is hard. So you all know a company called Etsy. Etsy is a great story. I went in there full disclosure, I thought I was going in there to study the bad guys. Oh you did? Totally. Because all the media coverage of

Etsy was about this purpose company that got taken over by the CEO who came and

destroyed the purpose. So I needed some negative examples in my book. I'm like,

okay, I got one. And then they agreed to let me interview them. So I'm thinking,

okay, the bad guys don't mind letting me talk to them. I discovered there was a whole different story there right because having a purpose doesn't mean you don't need to make money let's be very clear having a purpose doesn't mean you allow yourself to become indisciplined and sloppy in your work. Having a purpose doesn't mean you claim to do social things, but you're not really doing anything. And so purpose can easily become an indulgence for lack of discipline, sloppy spending, not even doing social impact, not even giving money to your shareholders.

And then say, we have a good heart. Purpose is not intention. Purpose is action. And SC showed me what this guy had to do, but coming into it, it was so hard. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus.

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Personally, I'm anchored by what they call the Momentus 3. Protein, creatine, and omega-3. And together, these foundational nutrients support muscle recovery, brain function, and long-term energy. They're part of my daily routine. And if you're ready to fuel your brain and body with the best, Momentus has a great new offer just for our community right here. Use the code FINDINGMASTERY for 35% off your first subscription order at livemomentous.com. Again, that's L-I-V-E Momentous, M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S, livemomentous.com and use the code finding mastery for 35% off your first subscription order. Finding mastery is brought to you by Felix gray. I spent a lot of time thinking about how we can create the conditions for high performance. How do we protect our ability

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And when I'm locked into deep work, they also help me stay focused for longer without digital fatigue creeping in. Plus, they look great. Clean, clear, no funky color distortion. Just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. You're saying that, listen, to have purpose, for a company to have purpose, to be deep purpose, it does not give you an excuse to

not meet bottom line. It does not give you an excuse for being undisciplined and it does not give you an excuse for not backing up what you say that you're doing. And so in other words, so you're interested in companies that are doing two things, doing good and doing well. So I really have to confess here, Michael, I got really confused about this topic. It was really confusing because I think there's a lot of kind of crosstalk around these issues. The first thing you understand is when you come from a place of purpose,

you are inherently thinking long term, right? What does purpose force you to confront? Why am I here means it forces me to think about as long as I'm on this planet, why am I here, right? So I'm kind of, it forces my lens, camera lens to be looking out there, right? Not narrow focused in an immediate term. The moment you start to ask those questions, anyone with a long-term lens is going to tell you that you have to think about different stakeholders in addition to shareholders. Yes, shareholders

are primary and you need to serve them. Otherwise, you know, you're in trouble. Yes, you need to deliver short-term results. Otherwise, you're in trouble. But having an eye in the future forces you to say, but I can't ignore other stakeholders. Think about it. Can I ignore customers? Or maybe in the short term, I'll get away with it. Can I ignore my employees? In the short term, you can get away with it, right? Can you ignore other community and the community around which you work? In the short term, you can, but you won't get away with it. Can you ignore which you were in the short term you can but you won't get away with it can you ignore the planet in the short term you can you can't today in today's world you can't get away with it so this idea suddenly the purpose was csr oh purpose is it was

the word got hijacked on the one side you say people say purpose is profit others say purpose is anything but profit and and i think is you have to reconcile the two it's messy messy set of trade-offs and choices now if you say i've got to serve five masters this is where it gets messy and economists don't like that economists like clean models not dirty hands And so they like to say, okay, but you have five stakeholders. They say slave of many masters is a master. It's indeterminate.

It's problematic. It's confusing. It's obfuscating. But that's real world today. You want to serve, you have to serve all of these people. And how do you do that? I think is the unlock for me with purpose

is not a tax on business. It's generative. It expands your production frontier. Just like for human beings, it unlocks, as you have noted so eloquently, it unlocks human potential. Okay. So I would love some examples. And maybe we can start with, I know that you know this, but not everyone in my community knows that I've had an upfront seat with Microsoft building their culture. And they've included me in that process in a meaningful way, which has been a thrill. So they have not only deeply thought about their mission, which is a purpose, right? So I want to thin slice this in just a moment,

but then they hire against it. They talk about it all the time. They've built best practices to be in alignment with the values that support the mission slash purpose. And so it's the talking the walk and walking the talk, which is, you know, it's not lost on anybody that it's been a massive turnaround over the last eight years. So I want to just share their mission and make sure that you and I are grokking in the same way. Is their mission a la their purpose? Because it, you know, to quote it is to empower

every person every organization on the planet to achieve more is that the purpose even though it's not called purpose statement it's called mission their mission so i'm really glad you're forcing this conversation you know i think uh companies have had mission statements for a long time unfortunately like you were saying earlier mission became kind of like wallpaper. And mission had a kind of a religious slash militaristic ring to it, the word did. And I think a modern reincarnation of it became what we are calling purpose. And I think it's because purpose forces the why question more easily than a mission statement does. Mission is just kind of more, I told you, it just sounds a little off for some people. So in some ways, they're synonymous.

You should also know that businesses from the 1600s, when incorporation first happened, businesses were required to have a purpose clause, legally required to do that because, and they had to have a social and commercial component to it. It couldn't just be, I'm here to make money. Thank you very much. There are plenty of companies that do that. And there are plenty of companies that are wolves in sheep's clothing that say our purpose is, but their practices are anything but. So you see what's happened is that this purpose idea morphed over time. These mission statements became wallpaper, and there was a lot of purpose posturing. A lot of purpose posturing.

I mean, you were mentioning their purpose statement. Tetanus had a purpose statement too. And I can give you example after example of companies where Enron had a purpose statement too. Do you have that? example of companies where, you know, Enron had a purpose statement too. You know, who else? Do you have that at your fingertips? I do. Read them to you. Okay.

And, you know, this is what, finally, there was an article written in the 1980s by a professor at a business school called Sex, Lies, and Mission Statements. That's good. Theranos' purpose statement was to facilitate the early detection and prevention of disease and empower people everywhere to live their best possible lives. Huh. Purdue Pharmaceutical, which has been just paid out $6 billion

for contributing to the opioid crisis, purpose statement, compassion for patients and excellence in science inspire our pursuit of new medicine. Let me pick another one now, which is more contemporary. In 2016, when Facebook was really getting in trouble, they pulled out a purpose statement called to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. Do you believe that those are earnest statements and then they've gone terribly wrong because of market pressures to make money, greed, whatever it might be? Or do you think that that's truly a marketing play, that the marketing team got together in a room with maybe the CEO and stitch something together that is sellable?

Are you more of a cynic about this? Or do you think that human nature, in some ways, if undisciplined and the pressures, the external pressures combined with it, corrupt the purity of why people want to do business. How do you come at this part of the conversation? Look, I would like to believe, I'm a person who gives people benefit of doubt. I don't like to kind of prejudge and lead to conclusions and become a cynic. You know, it's so easy in the world we're in today to be cynical about everything. And I want to give myself some hope.

So I'd like to believe that it's these confusion, lack of understanding, market pressures, thinking short-term versus long-term. But if you look at the Theranos story, it seems that was not the case over there or Purdue. There was a very deliberate malintent to deceive people. And then I hope there are only a few like that. I'd like to believe there are only a few like that. I think the vast majority, and I'm reasonably certain about this, I think are just confused. They don't understand the power of purpose. They think of it as an extractive force, a tax on business. It's CSR.

It's ESG. And ESG is environmental social governance, right? Yes. Okay. And CSR is? Corporate social responsibility. Right. Okay.

And so you're saying that you're suggesting that some people have corrupted the trust of others and other people have just lost their way. And I understand that. intellectual heartfelt exercise of getting leaders and visionaries in a room to craft a one or two sentence purpose slash mission or vision is hard. And I watch in those rooms, 90% of them are into it and really want to get the right words in place. But then when they leave, not everybody, some people are like, Hey, listen, okay, I'll just go along with this, which is part of human nature as well. But then as soon as the pressures to make payroll, to make whatever stories that need to be said publicly to keep the interest in the company from a shareholder perspective alive, that stuff is real.

And so you're saying, listen, we need to do the intellectual heartfelt work to get clarity of the North Star. And there's three other reasons why that will help the relational, motivational, and I'm blanking on the third one again. Reputational. You're saying, but listen, you have to be about it. And so the heartbeat has to come from somewhere. Does it only need to come from the founder, CEO, or how many people? And I'm sharing this from an inside perspective because I want to share a team that I work with, how many folks we thought needed to carry the heartbeat. So how many do you need? And does it need to be founder, CEO-led? So I think there's a great question, Michael.

I think the first thing to understand is just like for individuals, there is something I call purpose drift. It drifts away from us. It's not something you remember. If you don't remember it every day and remind yourself every day, it kind of drifts away from us. And then we wake up one day saying, where am I? And why am I here?

How did I get here? And I think that's what happens in organizations. It's incremental. It's small steps. It's not big leaps. It's not some existential. If you look at Johnson & Johnson, the credo, and then they end up in a situation where the CEO has to go to Congress and apologize, pay fines, almost get into a criminal situation, then deal with the opioid crisis and say, what happened? Or you look at Boeing, a pioneer in aerospace, really put aerospace in America in the map, on the frontier of, I mean, I remember as a kid,

my God, the Boeing 737, the 747, the 757, the 767. And you live in, you know, Seattle so well, Michael. So, you know, it's, and then what do you have? The 737 MAX. And you ask us, hey, is this the Boeing I knew? So there's a natural purpose drift, I think, that happens. Well, let's open up the story. One is I'm friends with Ray Conner, former CEO. So, you know, I know him. That's a good man. And so I don't know the story of how he participated in this because it was right at a transition moment where um you know he was passing the baton you probably know the story deeply but what happened my understanding of what happened is that they celebrated this opportunity the max um there was a bigger name of that that

yeah that airplane what was it called yeah the 737 max but they there's something that's something of the spirit of renton there There was some of the names attached. Yeah, the spirit of Renton. There was a plane. That was the first plane that actually, I think the first 737 MAX was the spirit of Renton, I think. Yeah, and there was a moment like, oh gosh, okay. And this was about like 2016, something like that, right?

2015, somewhere in there. And it was a moment for Boeing to go, oh, we are going to absolutely crush this because we figured something out but they had some challenges and they delivered too early maybe is what the market would say and they their position right was um listen a couple planes crashed because the operators the pilots didn't have the right skill. So it was a back and forth. That's all I know. But you drilled into this deeply. Can you unpack the story a little bit? So as I got into the story and I didn't interview anybody at Boeing,

so my story there is based on archival historical research on this company, which I love. My first ever flight was on a Boeing 707. I mean, I was so excited. And, you know, Boeing's story, the decline started when they were merged, acquired by McDonnell Douglas. McDonnell Douglas had a very different culture than the Boeing culture was. The purpose of Boeing was very much aligned around really safety of flight. It was advances and safety of flight. They really want to be pioneers.

It was a very engineering-centric organization. McDonnell Douglas was a more scrappy market results, let's make money kind of a culture. And when you brought these two together now it was supposed to be boeing acquiring mcdonald douglas but actually turned out the other way around where the leadership team of mcdonald douglas became the leaders of the new boeing in that complicated combination and you start to see a drift happening at Boeing. So the 737 MAX is, of course,

a tragic story. You can explain it by the fact that Airbus had launched a rival product, the Airbus A320 NEO, and they were going to deliver an aircraft that was much more fuel efficient than the 737, which is the bread and butter of Boeing. So they had to really protect that franchise

because all of discount airlines from Southwest to anybody else flies the 737. And now you're going to have a competitor that is significantly more fuel efficient in the airline industry, in the discount carrier space. You're going to lose the biggest chunk of your market. So there was a lot of pressure on them. But I think behind the response, just like in all of us in human beings, we all face adversity.

And how we respond to that adversity reveals a lot about our character and our own beliefs, our values, and even our purpose. And I think this was their moment of adversity. It's like the Tylenol crisis at J&J. They responded positively because they had a purpose at that time. So here was a moment, kind of really your crucible moment. And unfortunately, they responded in a way that revealed who they really were. Now, to your question, who do you blame? Who do you hold responsible?

Is it one person and everything emanates from them? I think that's very hard to do. Having said that, the Microsoft story is very revealing because Satya, along with his team that he assembled,

found a way to infuse purpose or rather refresh purpose in the organization. Right? And it was beautifully done at scale, which makes it an extraordinary story. Yeah. The scale there, a lot of people talk about cascading. The scale there is, infusion is a better word. And so cascade feels like it comes from top all the way through. And sometimes things do happen that way because the thought leadership, you know, happens oftentimes with senior leaders, but it really was, um, there was a hydration that took place for people, right? Where it wasn't like the cascade, like this waterfall

coming on top of you, but it was so intimate in the way that he would speak about him and his company and the potential of people in the company, let alone the grand vision of the world, you know, that they potentially were going to serve. It's been remarkable, but he is so, again, I'll use the word, he is hydrated, fully hydrated by purpose. And then the thing that you highlight brilliantly is that when the company purpose and the individual purpose have harmony, it's an incredible experience for all, including shareholders, including customers, and obviously, you know, profits. So can you talk about how you learned how to bridge those two? And I think we probably need to define purpose.

You and I have a shorthand for it from a research science perspective. But can you just articulate, I always see purpose through three lenses, but can you work from your definition of purpose? So look, I first start with a micro individual definition, which I think is super helpful in understanding it for organizations. William Damon, a Stanford psychologist, calls purpose is a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is at the same time meaningful to the self and consequential for the world beyond the self. So there are many words in there, in stable, generalized intention, accomplish something meaningful to the self and consequential for the world beyond the self. And I think you can take those ideas and apply it to organizations

because it forces you to think about your ambitions, which are your goals. It also gives it an idealistic cast, which are your duties. Right. It gets you to think a little longer term. And when you think longer term, it gets you to think about the array of stakeholders who you must serve. And if you connect all those dots now, have to say that you know it's really hard for organizations because we are so busy with the what we're doing and how we're doing it right we what do we teach in business school we teach strategy strategy implementation build a strategy and go and implement the strategy what's the problem and okay understand the market so you build the strategy that's what i thought for decades study the market build your strategy around the market gaps then build the organizational

capabilities to execute the strategy and have a culture and structure and a people in the process to get it done bingo you're home free and Satya did all those things. But he was the first who really said to me, he said, Ranjit, this is all great. We did all those things. And yes, we were textbook, but none of this would have materialized if we hadn't also asked the why question.

I wasn't convinced. I said, that doesn't make sense. Why is a very academic question. I said, no, you need to understand wasn't convinced i said that doesn't make sense why is a very academic question i said no you need to understand why clarifies the what and the how it gives you the foundation and then what happens is strategies will change your org designs will change everything will change but your purpose is pretty stable you may revisit it once every 10 years like we did at Microsoft but you need some stability so he said culture and purpose were the two things now that's

so that was the first big aha for me the other how was I found an interesting correlation that companies like Microsoft that were working on organizational purpose were also working on employee purpose. Like what's your personal life purpose? And I also saw this in my students. So I was chairing our advanced management program. These senior executives would come on campus and I was having them, giving them each a coach

and they were working on their personal purpose, but they also wanted to talk about organizational purpose. So I said, it's coincidental that, you know, once they hear the word purpose, they want to apply it everywhere. It's coincidental that, you know, once they hear the word purpose, they want to apply it everywhere. It's like a hammer, you know, bang anyway. I didn't connect, but the two are connected. And actually my conversations with you and Pete

were among the first clarifications to me that you can't get somebody buying into a company or an organizational slogan if they are not in that zone of purpose themselves. And so watching what you were doing with Pete at the time, and also what you were doing with Microsoft, that human beings, we are not like, oh, I buy into the mission. And we tell these, perpetuate these myths. I'm putting a man on the moon, Mr. President. I'm building a cathedral, not laying bricks.

As if any random person at low level is going to buy into some company mission. That was naive of me as well. And I found companies doing this. KPMG, one of the companies I talk about in my book, they had every employee go through an exercise. Why do you come to work? And they had to write it down on an index card,

put their picture on the index card and stick it on the wall in the office lobby. But even coming up with it was pretty strange for many of them, but they did it. And 40,000 people did this. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep.

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Head to calderalab.com slash findingmastery and use the code findingmastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. Let's go old school, new school, if you will, or I'm not sure that's the right framing, but intellectual exercise, heart and intellect meet, you shape a word, I'm sorry, you shape a sentence, and then you say, that's our mission, or that's our purpose, or this is our company vision, which all three can be the same, right? There is a subtle difference between them, but they could be the same.

Vision is different. Vision is your goal. It's explicitly vision 2020, vision 2025. What are the measurable things you want to get done in a finite time frame? on the individual to support the mission of the company is to say, when you use your imagination, what do you see in your future? So we're asking to cast a vision of what life looks like in 2020 something. And so when you cast that vision, then you say, okay, then what we do is like, why is that important to you? Why does that matter? So that's how we're subtly getting to the difference between vision and purpose. And then, and then the purpose really, when you double click under that is it gives the teeth, it gives the backbone. This is why I'm doing it. And I learned this from a special operator. He said, listen, Mike, when you know your purpose, you'll do whatever it takes. And he almost whispered it with this

incredible sturdiness. And I looked at him like, well, I feel all of that right through me. And he looked at me, he says, you love your son, right? I said, yeah. He goes, you do whatever it takes for him, right? Jump in front of a bus, No problems. Yep. So when you can get to that level at the individual and then that level And the company goes, listen, we're helping unlock the people inside to have their most meaningful life, to use our company for their wellness and gain. And if we can all work together, then we're going to have something on the other side of it that is extraordinary for our customers and shareholders. But we got to get our stuff together. Yeah.

And Michael, I think this is so well said. I think the point I think is to understand is that purpose, we show up differently. It unlocks a new you. I'll just speak for myself. It took me a long time in my own personal life to really figure out what was my purpose in life and if I have one regret in my life is I wish I had done it sooner there they go it would have clarified so many things for me and I think I would have shown up differently you know it's not that I would have done anything differently it would have been how I did those things differently even the how and the what would have changed somewhat because I knew the why. Without the why, we are reactive, rudderless people. You know, we are reacting to situations.

And the same is true for organizations. Look in Ukraine right now. You have a range of responses. Some are very reactive, saying, oh my God, what do we need to do to cover our rear end? You know, like, oh my God, oh, they want the reputational management here, impression. Others are much more deliberate. Crises reveal ourselves. And so how do we bring that intention into what we're doing? And I think that's, I'm happy to give you an example of two of this as well in companies. Can we start with your purpose? So my purpose remarkably has aligned deeply with my organization's purpose. And my organization's purpose is we educate leaders who make a difference in the world. Soon to be leaders. I understand that. I understand the language, but they're not necessarily leaders. Or do you say, no, no, no, you get to Harvard, you're already a leader?

I think a leader doesn't have to be anything in a position. I think a leader means somebody who's willing to make a positive difference in the world around them. So you put the positive word in there because Hitler was a leader. Yeah. Mussolini was a leader. I wish I never had to put the word positive. I wish I could have just said impact on the world.

But there are unfortunately plenty of negative examples out there too who have exercised leadership. And leadership, as we know from decades, is about followership. It's about who is willing to follow you. People are willing to follow you. It's not leaders, not granted.

You don't get it from your title. It's bestowed on you by the people who follow you and saying, you know, one of the great leaders I interviewed and has come to my class, the number five is Anne Mulcahy. And Anne said that when she was a young manager, her boss told her, let me tell you a good goal for you to have. And that is to be the leader everybody wants to work for. And so she spent her career trying to become the leader everybody wants to work for. And leadership is bestowed on you. And when it is, how do you exercise it in a positive way?

And I think we kind of get lost in this. So my purpose, and I wish I had remembered this earlier, educate leaders to make a difference in the world. I spent a lot of time focusing only on, remember, we have research and educating also, educate is also unpackable. It's what I do in the classroom, but also what I do writing my research. So how am I trying to do that? I'm doing a CEO series right now, which I'm just putting out there on the web, which is going to be interviewed with really inspiring CEOs from all over the world. And I think there's so much to be learned from that. So I think that's my purpose. It took me too long to get there. And mine is aligned with my organization. So I feel like I don't have to go to work. So now you get to use all of the

power of Harvard, all of the weight of that organization to figure out how she, if you will, I don't know what you call the university, but how that organization and you can work together. And I would imagine that if you're clever, that the organization has full support of the book you've written, full support, even monetary value attached to the research that you're doing and, and, and, and, right. And so that's where you start to get these combination, the two for the, we overuse the word flywheel, but there's a flywheel effect. So a common friend we have, Kathleen Hogan, once said, you don't really work for Microsoft until Microsoft works for you.

That's right. And okay, so she's the CHRO, Chris Kapp, and I'm going to pull this up right now. Chris Kapp is their CMO. And now imagine the budget, the CMO of Microsoft. I mean, they do the NFL deal, right? Like it's a massive budget. This is what Satya says to him. You have to use Microsoft as your platform to do what matters to you.

And then he goes on to say, I've never heard anyone say that before. No one's ever said that to him in business. That is remarkable. And so these are two of the senior leaders at Microsoft saying, Microsoft has to work for you, for you to want to work for Microsoft. Absolutely. And that intersection, that's why, and that was the aha to me when I realized that, you know what, an organization can only really have a purpose when it connects it to the people

also bringing everybody into the zone of purpose. It's only when everybody is in the zone of purpose or most of them are in the zone of purpose that they can be more receptive to receiving an organization's purpose. Otherwise, it's corporate slogans, right? We see so many of them. There's so much posturing and slogans.

And they're like, oh my God, another one of those inspirational speeches to work harder and spend longer time at work. Yeah, to make that person more money or the shareholders more money. Yeah, and Michael, I'll tell you what I learned. I did a separate study on small companies that had grown fast. and everyone I talked to would

talk about in nostalgic terms about the good old days you know in the good old days we used to do this and we had foosball tables and we hung out so I then spent almost a year I said this is not good enough for me just good old days and some nostalgic warm feeling about something by gone days. I want to know what are the good old days. And it led me to write an article since you yourself correctly took issue with the word purpose. It was called the soul of a startup.

I love it. Now I want to take cultural appropriation on the word soul because being from India and we really talk a lot about the soul in India right yeah rebirth of the soul and but it was interesting because all these leaders and then you see even established leaders then Howard Schultz left Starbucks and came back his first observation was Starbucks has lost its soul when Steve Jobs left Apple and came back his first

observation was oh Apple has lost its soul somehow they talk in left Apple and came back, his first observation was, oh, Apple has lost its soul. Somehow they talk in soulful terms about this thing that has been lost. And so my question for that one year project was, it was a precursor to this book, was so what's in this soul? I want to know like, what's this thing? And that time I discovered three things. One of them was the purpose. The first one was this loss of what I call going from big ideas to grand ideals. That we had a grand ideal about changing the world in some way. And now we are just about big ideas. We lost the ideal.

And ideal is also about making money. No, no, it's not. You know, Steve Jobs jobs didn't say we're going to save amazon for us he wanted to make beautiful things easy to use right so it was very commercially oriented but it was about an ideal not an idea so that was the first thing they said i don't know we've become a very tactical organization going after new markets with new products and we had this kind of energizing spirit that we lost the second one they talked about was customer connect this deep empathetic connection to who you are here to serve who are these these are not numbers they're not a market segment. They are real companies

or real people. And what are their problems that they're here to solve? Okay. So let's go back to the personal bit for a moment, because that framing of the business, who other than leaders can answer that? I'm not sure. So it feels like it starts with the individuals ringing that bell, like this is our spirit, our soul, our heartbeat. And eventually that becomes the manifestation of the purpose. I don't even know if I want to say manifestation. That becomes the important calling to get clarity on. Is that true for you? So look, in a founder-led enterprise, it typically is very top-down, right? The founder, in fact, starts to manifest and embody the purpose itself. They become the very embodiment. In fact, that's why when they leave, it leaves this massive

vacuum, right? So when I interviewed the CEO of Starbucks, Kevin Johnson, he said, we had to go from founder led to founder inspired. Right. Because we had this kind of larger than life founder. Right. And they carried the purpose of the company. They were like the DNA. This is really compelling. And because there's plenty of folks in our community that are entrepreneurial and have a small to medium sized business and their founder CEOs still are working in that culture. If purpose is not incredibly clear, this is an opportunity, right? Say, how do I get my purpose right? Well, you need to write some stuff down.

You need to externalize it in some respects, probably as a way to get some clarity around what it is. But when, so I, being up in Seattle for a long time, I also know the founder and he walked me through his building and he stopped at the wall, the mural wall, where he has his purpose written there, the company's purpose. And you can feel it when he stopped and he read it to me, like Howard Schultz reading his purpose, and you could feel the animation of how much it mattered to him. And so there's a danger in this, but without it, I'm not sure it really works. And I want to go back to a question I asked 10 minutes ago is how many people do we need to carry that heartbeat to be animated with the spirit of the purpose? Why do these leaders talk about the loss of the soul? They lament the loss of the soul when the company closed because people no longer have imbibed or drunk the Kool-Aid, if I may say so.

Right? It's not one person. Of course, that person is an embodiment. And all of us human beings, we kind of like a physical embodiment. It's good to have a person you can attach an idea to or an ideal to. So if you're a young entrepreneur,

I think it's so easy to get caught up in what are we going to do and how are we going to do it. Right? The pitch. You're making the pitch deck and you're talking about what are we going to do and how are we going to do it. We don't talk about the why. And I've talked now to seasoned investors who know how to, the smell test,

the sniff test about what's going to really work. And the ability to talk in a little more expansive terms about the ideal, we are here to solve what? What is our larger purpose? We are here to address what in the world today. Or another way, one of my, you know, I have a colleague of mine who loves to say it in a very eloquent way,

which she says is, if you disappeared tomorrow, who would care and why? So it's kind of like this, making yourself relevant in the world and explaining that relevance of your place in the world and how you are uniquely positioned to do that, I think is a much more powerful statement

that we are about to make this widget and there is nobody making it and we can sell it for 5 cents cheaper than anybody else and we believe there is a total addressable market of $50 billion. Right. And we can capture 1% of that,

we're in good shape. So I think, I'm not saying we don't need that. We need both. And that's why I talk about ideals and ideals. Okay. All right.

Very cool. And just to put some math to it, in the NFL, go back to the sport and I'm no longer working in sport right now. Um, but in the NFL, there's about 25 coaches and there's 60 some athletes and there's another 25 or 30 operational staff. So if you do the math, there's somewhere around 125-ish folks. And we thought that we needed three to five people to be authentically connected to the deep purpose. And if we could have three to five people, we wouldn't lose our way. Now, if we only had one, it's too big of a bell to ring consistently.

If we had more than that, it would be better. But if we had three to five as a minimum critical mass, we felt like we were okay to weather the storms when times got hard to to remind us of our purpose to be animated and connected to the to be the breathing emblem of purpose so i think i have no way to judge whether it makes sense in big sport it sounds to me reasonable for your context i think big business is different okay you really got to get people to understand. Remember, because we haven't talked about this yet, but there are second and third order consequences of having a purpose. If people buy into your purpose, you can then create a culture where responsibility is a central piece of the puzzle. You can then start to empower people more because they understand the purpose. So you're able to create a much more decentralized organization. The ability to create

collaboration across the organization is also enabled because people understand a shared purpose. So there are all these consequences. We're teaching all this stuff now about agile organizations. I have a course I'm teaching on agile organizations. You can't build an agile organization when people don't have some alignment with each other. You can't measure it and force ram it. We've tried that before. Well, you can't, you also can't teach and you can't become an agile organization if people don't have psychological agility. And under high stress, if we don't, this is where my purpose starts to come alive is if we don't help people understand best practices for psychological skills building, there's no chance that they become dynamically flexible, which is what agile is because they're

rigid in thinking they're overwhelmed with anxiety. They are, they have an exhaustion that they're feeling because of the over stress under recovered aspect of the human organism. And so agility is being able to put your foot in the ground and move forward. So Michael, here's where your and my training and where we are coming from comes into play here. Okay. See a psychologist psychologist looks at the individual to understand individual differences and tries to find the right individuals with the right kind of characteristics

and hopefully help them develop those characteristics. I'm a sociologist by training. We study how social context shapes behavior, both positively and negatively. That the environment we get placed in, whatever it is, whether it's in our university, in college, in our families, in our workplace, we are all social creatures who take our cues from the environment we are placed in.

So if you create the right conditions, you're going to get the right kind of behaviors. It's so good. Yeah, I love this because I say yes, and then I say and. Exactly. If the conditions are beautifully designed and the people that walk into those conditions are, let's just use one lever, overstressed and under-recovered and they're anxious. So this is why one of our models for our company is we work from the inside out and the outside in. And so we're working to enhance both of those conditions. And so

this is why I love talking to you. Every time it's like, oh, look at that. Oh, look at that. Okay, good. So there is some research that would suggest that the conditions account for, and I think it's 60%. It's a little foggy, 60% of outcomes. Do you, do you have your arms around that, that bit of research or that finding? So look, there isn't a, people have a lot of different numbers around that like to present. But the answer, of course, is not so, is much more nuanced because depending on the kinds of behaviors you're looking at and the kinds of conditions you're looking at, some are stronger conditions, some are weaker conditions.

So I think it's hard to put a percentage number on that. But let's think about it. A lot of the work in sociology started by trying to understand why people behave in certain ways. Right? So for me, the interesting idea when you were with the Seahawks was, what are the conditions you are trying to create that would get players to perform better than they would for anybody else, right? Now, you're also applying your filters to see who do you bring in and you're trying to see who would fit into your organization. All that stuff is true. But how do I create conditions in which I will perform differently? I choose to perform differently.

Now, there's a self-selection going on, who chooses to come for you. So, you know, we had this old case on Coach K versus Coach Knight. For those who don't know, Coach K of Duke, who just retired, and Bobby Knight of Indiana fame, who was at one point then eventually not allowed to coach anymore.

And by the way, Coach K had worked for Bobby Knight, but they were different coaches. They both got outstanding results. They both were extraordinary, but they had very different conditions in which players had to perform. Now, maybe there was a self-selection. Who chose to go and play for Bobby Knight

knew what they were getting into. He might throw a chair at you. He might throw it, or he might choke you. Yeah, right. Or he might choke you. Well, both are well-documented. That's right. So you have a little bit of playing to fear.

And then you have the other model, which some have described as more of a love, but not exactly love, but it's a demanding kind of love. So it's tough love so different people perform differently now when i've taught that case in my class in my classes i have asked students reflect back on a time when you were performing at your very best think about the person you were reporting to how many of you would say your boss was a Coach K

and how many was a Bobby Knight? It's not all Coach K. Some say Bobby Knight. So I think we have to recognize that there are different conditions that trigger extraordinary behavior in different people. For different people, that's right. And then, so this is our yin and yang,

which I love so much. I would suggest that one of the reasons for success is the matching. I like that, which is from a sociological perspective. And I would say each of those coaches were authentically working from their core philosophy. So their coach, they were authentically themselves. They weren't trying to be the other or some, some mythical version of what they thought a coach was supposed to be. They were passionately working in their own unique way. And if, if the fit was worked well, great. I don't want to work. I think Bobby Knight is, um coach for some people. I wouldn't thrive in that

environment. I'd want to reach back out. And I don't know, what is your environment, just for fun? I would say mine is a much more of a Coach K environment. But I think there's something going on here today, Michael, that we think we should apply to today's context. We talked about the great resignation or the great reshuffle or the great upgrade or the great rethink. I think there's a labor market sorting going on right now. Where people are recalibrating, first of all, they're thinking hard about what they want to do with their lives. My hypothesis, I don't have data on it, is that they're looking for more meaning in their lives. Period. Yeah, period. And if they don't find it at work, they're going to check out. Either they're going to disengage completely

or they're going to look. So if you are a company, ask yourself, is having a purpose a source of competitive advantage in the talent space or not? Oh, so it's super simple, right? This is super simple. And I'll even give you an interesting case study. One, people are leaving because they're waving their both of their arms saying, I'm not doing it like this anymore. This is whack. Like I'm exhausted. I don't know my kids and I'm making money for what? Like, forget about it. I got a taste of autonomy. I got a taste of agency as soon as we went hybrid or as soon as we went remote. And I'm not doing this anymore. I love it. I think there's a power in purpose and meaning

that people are tripling down on. And it's forcing the old way of thinking in big business to say, oh, our people matter. Bullshit, they didn't matter. You were using people. You were extracting every bit of goodness out of them. And now we're going from the extracting model to the unlock. And those companies that get the unlock right, where I see you, I understand you, I'm clear on what we're trying to do. I want

to support you to be your very best. The unlock, I think, so call it the great unlock, right? So I think that's what's good. Yeah. And Michael, I think what is happening is that what's happening though, is that look at how people are responding. There are some sectors of the economy that needed to get paid better. Okay. Let's be very clear, right? There are sectors of the economy where people are not earning a fair living wage. They couldn't even survive on one job. And I think they needed

to get paid more. And that is happening. Thankfully so. Sooner, better late than never. But the idea that everybody's saying, oh, I just got to pay people more. It's a demand and supply calibration issue.

You know, the demand exceeds the supply. I need to raise the wages because that's what economists always teach us. And so wages and you're gonna get some people but are they the people you really want right so is it a wage story is it a interesting work and flexible work story is it a meaning story or is it all of the above and i think we have to be asking ourselves that in today's world if you're going to be the magnet for the best talent what's your distinctive proposition for an for somebody who may want to choose to come and work

for you why what would they say why do you come to work why do you choose to work here what do you want them to say I work here because it gives you the best pay package and I'm going to be working flexibly from anywhere I want and whenever I want. Or are they going to say, you know, I really, I buy in. I'm in. I'm using your language now. I'm in. So there's a, I was helping on selection. I've done this both on sport and big business and trying to get to purpose and, but not explicitly saying, what is your purpose? So we'd say, okay, so, you know, what are some goals that you have, or how do you see yourself in three years? Like we're trying to kind of get

around it a little bit to feel what we're trying to understand as purpose. And then somebody says, you know, I think I'm going to crack a big contract in sport or whatever. And in sport, they say that in business, they don't necessarily say it because there's a social intelligence, which is like, you're not supposed to talk about money all the time. And so they say, I want to crack a big contract. And you go, okay, why? What do you mean why? Like, what are you going to do with the money? Well, first thing I can do is I'm going to buy my parents a house. I'm going to buy my mom a house.

Then what are you going to do with the money? Well, I'm going to buy me a house. For what reason? Man, it was tough growing up. We didn't have something that we could kind of have as a roof. So like, I really want to do that for the people that, that bet on me and I can't wait to have that security. Oh, okay.

So there's the beginnings and the origins of purpose, whether that is like the final polished statement, probably not, but it's the origin of where pain comes from springs purpose. And I don't think we get to, I don't think we get to purpose without exploring the pain that is leading to it. And so that to me, whether you're a CEO, founder and or contributor to business or running a house, understand your pain, take a look at it and purpose will spill from that. You know, it's really well said, and I love the way you described it. I'll just share with you a story that exemplifies exactly what you said. November 26, 2008 was a typical busy evening at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai. And a young girl named Malika Jagat was in charge of a VIP banquet.

The entire leadership team of Unilever was in the hotel having dinner, celebrating the new CEO and the departure of the old one. About 9.30 p.m., they hear some firecracker kind of sound. But it's not firecracker season at all. It's not like what is called Diwali.

It's like, we don't know what's going on. And Malika's phone goes crazy with alerts that there's been a shooting in the hotel. There's some terrorists running around the hotel and they need to urgently. So she immediately, she's 23 years old. She, without hesitation, takes charge, locks the doors of the function room and calmly has to inform the guest. She's the youngest person in the room. And she informs them that, look, this is what's going on. I need you to lie down in the corners. I've locked the doors. We're going to lie down in the corners. Stay calm. If you need to use the restroom, there's a restroom in the back area. And we'll show you where the restroom

is. If you need anything to drink or eat, please let us know, but please stay calm. Some people started to panic. You know, I want to go. Let me out of here. I'll leave, open the door. She said, I'm sorry, I can't open the door. We don't know where where the terrorists are it's too dangerous because you will tell them where we are and right now we need to just act like there's nobody in this room so anyone leaving here is a risk to everybody and so they she does that the whole night right and at any moment she and the staff could have run away because they knew the exits they could have actually escaped they couldn't have taken all these people with them but they could have run away she didn't leave in the wee hours of the morning smoke the terrorists start to light fires

and smoke comes into the this room so they have to evacuate so they break these thick glass windows and they are able to wave usher a fire and they come back and bring them down. She's the last one to get out of the building, of that banquet floor, right? And you know what she told me was? She said, I was absolutely terrified. But you know, I was responsible for this event and I had a job to do. So there was no way I was going anywhere. Now, how do you get that kind of commitment?

How do you get people to perform at that level? You know, it's not a job description. It's not a bonus. There was no kind of a bonus structure that if you stick around during a terrorist attack, you're going to give you a 20% bonus. How do we instinctively know what we need to do? And I think purpose is that deeply internalized sensibility that activates in every moment. It's like the perfect control system, if you will, among people. And I think you can see this in so many other... I had a chance to look at people who are doing very simple,

some would say mundane jobs, call center workers, cleaners in a hospital. And this is not my study, in a hospital. You know, and this is not my study, in a Michigan and Yale study, they looked at cleaners in hospitals and they were asking them, is your work a job for money?

Is it a career to get ahead? Or is it a calling? One third said it was a calling. And they said, I don't come here to clean I'm here to help people I get to make a difference how do we create the conditions in which we humanize our work in which we find meaning in what we do

in which we feel connected to others in service of others. So when you hear Satya and others saying, I want to empower, the idea is, how do I get this deep internalization where people feel, and you know, it's hard to do, it's easy to have a slogan.

You know, Satya said to me, he said, writing a purpose statement was easy. What came next was much harder. And how do we create the conditions in which people operate and behave like a young 23-year-old did? And just said,

I was doing my job. It's awesome. And so that how requires practice. And so if you can help somebody align with core values and then their purpose, and we call the core values, their understanding, their personal philosophy, their first principles in life, and then understand why living aligned to those matters so much. That what we found is just that is a cool unlock, right? Because there is a hydration that takes place there. The second underneath of it is how do you practice those? And so there's an intention to it.

There's imagination that we call on. And there is putting into action daily a plan to practice and build those virtues, those first principles, so that when called on, which by the way, this moment is when it's called on. It's always this moment. But that's another story. I love the language of hydration. I think so much of our life is spent living superficially. You know, we're scratching the surface. I mean, I'll speak for myself. You know, it was all about Ranjit, you've got to have some goals. What do you want

to do? You know, and usually kind of quantifiable goals. And then you've got to figure out what are your strengths. I'm good at biology. Oh, you should figure out what are your strengths? I'm good at biology. Oh, you should be a doctor. You know, or I'm good at math or you could be an engineer, right? So you're aligning your goals with kind of some kind of strengths you have. And then you've got a third bucket,

which is what does the market value? So I'm trying to find this kind of intersection between my goals, my strengths, and align with the what the market wants and most of us operate there the companies operate there too you know i think to me it's extraordinary that the parallels between what's happening at the individual organization are so

uncanny that we are caught up in this mode of what am i going to do and how am i going to get there and then you want to if you've got even a little deeper we get into this emotion okay so i got to that we are caught up in this mode of what am I going to do and how am I going to get there? And then you want to, if you've got even a little deeper, we get into this emotion. Okay, so I got to have emotional intelligence, which becomes about emotional regulation. How do I learn to regulate my emotions? Because I got to behave properly to keep it in check, you know, so I got emotional regulation in there. Then I say, oh, but I need to understand my drivers, my psychological drivers, right? So I need to know need for achievement, need for affiliation, need for power. What are my needs? I get there too. Then you say, no, but you know, you say, but I think is we stop there.

Yeah, right. Yeah. And where you're taking us in this conversation, I think is how you go the next level below that. And the same happens for organizations. The same exact thing is happening. Yeah. This is what's really fun about sociological and psychological is that organizations are people. A lot of them or a handful of them. So, you know, it's like, it's the relationship with self and others.

It's a relationship with self, others, and mother nature. And the relationship with self, others, mother nature, and machines. So this is part of why my company exists as well. I love finding mastery. I think that's a beautiful phrase. So listen, I have to go and teach. And guess what I'm teaching today?

I'm teaching a case on, of all subjects, I'm teaching a case on the Seattle Seahawks. Come on, bring us on. And I got Pete coming to class by Zoom. So this is kind of deja vu coming full circle day. Oh, how fun, how fun. Awesome. Well, I love your mind mind i love your heart i love how you stitch the two of those together um you said one of your regrets is that

you didn't know your purpose earlier is that um a regret i have is that i didn't get to learn from you in college so you know like it is awesome like what you're doing so i'm wishing you all the best thank you and um you know uh thank you for for the contributions that you're making and i can't wait to see you soon and do some more work with you and and let's figure out what next looks like i will and i'll tell you what this conversation to me was like the blues band or a jazz band it was just riffing together with you so it was so much fun. So thank you so much for that. Oh, doc. It's a pleasure. Go have fun and we'll huddle soon. Take care. Take care. Bye-bye. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us.

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