The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Office Hours: Is Executive Education Worth It?, Scott’s Take on the “He Gets Us” Campaign, and Expressing Anger in the Workplace

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

Scott gives his unfiltered thoughts on executive education programs, specifically why he believes they’re not worth it. He then speaks about the “He Gets Us” campaign, which recently featured two ads during the Super Bowl. He wraps up with advice to a listener whose coworker yells in meetings, saying that while yelling is inappropriate in most workplace settings, anger isn’t.  Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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NMLS 1617539. Welcome to the Prof G Pod's Office Hours. This is the part of the show where we answer your question about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehoursatprofgmedia.com. First question. Hey, Prop G. Anonymous from New York City here. I'm a 52-year-old product leader at a big tech company. As I consider the next step in my career slash working life, I've started to explore executive education programs, specifically a chief technology officer program offered via Berkeley and a chief product officer program offered via Berkeley and a Chief Product Officer program offered via Kellogg. Both are delivered by third-party companies, take a year to complete,

cost about $30,000, and require four to eight hours per week. The respective curriculums look great and the programs tout all sorts of great benefits and have great references and numbers. My question is, what is your opinion on executive education programs of this form where a prestigious school seemingly licenses out their brand to a third party? Do you think they're worth it? Thank you. Hey, Anonymous from New York City. So look, I have a bias here. I'm kind of so turned off my industry and the leadership in this industry. I just think we're fucking whores.

This is what the programs are that you're talking about. They string together a mediocre curriculum. They get one or two professors from that university, and then they have the whole thing delivered by a third party spends $6,000 or $8,000 delivering it, and they split the gigantic margin with the brand that gives it a halo of credibility and the company, the outsource company that is delivering the service. I think these things are bullshit. They are charging way too much money. $30,000 is real money. That is real money. And guess what?

You're going to get about 20% of that in terms of the delivery, the actual, what they spent to actually deliver it. So these companies are essentially, hi, we're Kellogg, we want to monetize our brand. Not we're going to deliver a great on-campus experience or let you experience camaraderie or give you amazing professors. We're going to give you one or two Kellogg professors, and then we're going to have this Joey Bag of Donuts online education company deliver it. And you'll get a credential that you can put on LinkedIn that says Kellogg. You'll get six or eight thousand dollars worth of education that will charge you thirty thousand dollars for. And this is essentially executive education is a way for these universities to whore out their brands and monetize them.

They're allowed to do it. I don't like it. I think there are better ways to learn that are much lower cost. My guess is you could string together the majority of what you're going to learn here on Khan Academy, or there's a ton of online education courses. My company section, we charge a thousand bucks. And I would challenge you, and I don't know if you're taking courses around AI,

but there's a bunch of great online education companies that aren't trying to monetize the brand of larger institutions and charge a ridiculous upcharge. 30K is real cabbage. So I would just encourage you, and I'm sort of remiss to talk about specific offerings, but I just find it really gross and unfortunate that these universities have an opportunity to give back for continuing education. And instead, they've decided that's where they're going to make more money so they can continue to have 10 to 1 ratios of administrators and non-teaching faculty to faculty and the Rolexification of their campuses. But by the way, UCLA and Berkeley, when I went to

school, were just shitty. Overgrown lawns, outdated facilities, and guess what? It was just fine because as long as there was beer, sororities, fraternities, and decent education, actually great education and camaraderie, and the certification, the experience I got there, and I got to take courses from world-class professors. Thanks for tolerating the rant here. If you have the money and you think your organization would really value that certification and maybe they're going to pay for it, then fine. But if this $30,000 is real money for you, my brother, I would say find other ways. I mean, I'll give you an example. Aswad Damodaran puts all of his courses online on YouTube, but that doesn't stop NYU from trying

to whore him out and put him in some sort of program that someone else is running and then upcharge you a ton of money. I bet you would find that the majority of the courses offered in this offering are available somewhere else for a lot less money. Maybe you don't get the certification, and let's be honest, that's what of stress or you have better ways to spend that money, then investigate the specific courses, the top professor, the top thought leadership in that domain, and then find them on YouTube, find them on Khan Academy, find them in different industries. And you can string together the same intellectual property minus the whoring whorehouse costs that we charge. If that sounds a little bit judgmental and a little bit angry, trust your instincts. I appreciate the question and best of luck to you. Question number two. Hey, Scott. Alex here from Washington, D.C. A friend and I were talking about the He Gets Us campaign that has inundated the two major U.S. cities we live in. We were shocked to see not one, but two Super Bowl ads. And it made us think about the messaging they've used over the past few years.

We are both huge fans of yours and would love your take as a marketing expert on the following questions. Who do you think makes up the target audience of the He Gets Us campaign? What is the organization behind the campaign trying to accomplish? What are their goals here?

And what circumstances may lead them to pulling back on their investment in ad space? Thanks for all you do. Okay, so I just watched the ad. I have not watched any analysis of it or read anything about it. So this is my raw take. I was moved by this. I absolutely love it. And I went into it expecting not to love it. I'm an atheist, and I think I have a little bit of a bias against religion. A lot of the stuff I see in the news and I read about, good people do good things, bad people do bad things. But when good people do just horrible things, usually religion is at the center. So I think I have a little bit of a bias. I think of myself as a scientist,

and unfortunately, bifurcated people until you either are a scientist and don't believe in God, which isn't true. A lot of scientists believe in God or someone who believes in a super bang. But I found this absolutely wonderful, and I only watched it once, but it struck a note of inclusivity, of generosity, of being humble. I think there was a moment where there was what looked like a religious figure washing the feet of what I think was supposed to be a trans figure and someone else outside of a family. To me, this is a return to what my understanding of Jesus would have wanted. And I believe Jesus as a person, I think, is an unbelievable role model. I just don't buy his lineage. But I like the idea of, I would like my kids to learn more about Jesus. You know, love the poor. That's where he started. That just kind of made sense to me. And it's just,

it strikes me one of the most disappointing, in my view, things about the far right is that if Jesus actually did come back, he would find their deaths and fucking throw up on it. The people who most fervently right now use Jesus are the ones who are absolutely spitting in the face of Jesus in terms of what he would want to see happen or how he would want us to treat each other. So based on what I just saw, it looked like, you know, Jesus would have loved people and he would have loved people regardless of their situation, their economics, their sexual orientation, their role in society vis-a-vis your role. I just appreciate you just bringing to my attention. So the He Gets Us is a campaign to promote Jesus and Christianity. My producer just put in front of us that ran two ads during this year's Super Bowl game. The Super Bowl ads showed a series of images of one person watching another person's feet,

an oil rig worker washing the feet of a climate activist, a cop watching the feet of a black man, a priest washing the feet of a young gay man, etc. At the end of the commercial, words appear on the screen, Jesus didn't teach hate, he washed feet. How the fuck can you not like this? And I already know that these far right podcasters who are some of the most hateful, judgmental people in the world will probably weigh in and say, for some reason, this is a bad thing, right? That the idea of humility and washing the feet of

other people that aren't like you, that for some reason, somehow that's anti-American. I can already see it coming from these angry people on the right that got two turntables and a microphone to spread their vitriol and their venom. So there's some controversy here that he gets his campaign as connections to the anti-LGBT and anti-abortion laws. I didn't get that here. He gets this as a subsidiary of the Servant Foundation. And according to research from Jacobin, the Servant Foundation donated more than 50 million to the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is designated as an anti-LGBT hate group and leads policy fights over abortion and non-discrimination laws all over the U.S.

The campaign is also funded by companies including Hobby Lobby, which has infamously been at the center of various controversies. The purpose of the campaign, Vandergrouw, the representative for He Gets Us, says, it's meant to appeal to younger people and those who view Christianity as divisive. I think this wins. I think this wins. I can't speak to the group and where else they're spending money. What I took from that is that we're all Jesus's children and he would want us to love each other. And that if you want to follow in his path, you wash the feet of other people who may not be like you. And I think we all need to be

generous with people that even if this group is supporting things you may not agree with and you don't have to agree with them, in isolation of everything else, a message that says we should be kind and generous and wash each other's feet. How can that be wrong? How can that be wrong? Anyways, thanks for the question and thanks for bringing this to my attention. Love the poor. Let's start there.

We have one quick break before our final question. Stay with us. Welcome back. Question number three. Hey, Professor Galloway. This is a listener from New York. Love your advice on being a man and being a leader both in life and in the workplace. My call is about an issue of, you know, having someone within a meeting, either someone in a position of power, project manager, things like that, who starts to raise their voice and starts yelling within the meeting. Personally, you know, I've never had the issue happen to me because I'm an imposing figure in these meetings, but I see how it affects different people on my team. And I've usually just diffused

the situation by letting the person, you know, blow their load, so to speak, or by, you know, diffusing it with humor. Is this something that I should bring up within the meeting to the person as it's happening and say, hey, look, let's tone it down, blah, blah, blah. Or is this something that I, you know, bring up to them after the meeting and say, like, look, you know, this is negatively affecting people on the on the team. And maybe this can be remedied through HR. What's your what's your take on that? Thanks for the question.

Anonymous from New York. In general, there really isn't much. I think there's very few places for yelling professionally, especially, you know, yelling intimidates people, obviously. And when you're yelling, you're basically ramping up the emotions. And to a certain extent, you're sort of physically threatening people, especially if you're a man, because you're bigger, you have a deeper voice. And I think it's, I think it's in almost all instances, probably inappropriate. Now, having said that, I'm guilty of this. I've yelled at people at work.

I usually yell at groups. A couple of times I would try and get across a point. And I remember once at, I think it was a profit. There was a typo in a proposal we put out and errors littered all over it. I put it up and I basically at some point said, you know, why the fuck are, am I, how the fuck are we going to have a firm survive when we're putting out shitty work like this? And I was, I was basically yelling, but I wasn't yelling at an individual. I don't, I think to yell at an individual is just, especially if you're in a

position of power, is pretty abusive. I got yelled at a lot when I started investment banking. It was sort of in vogue, this kind of abused children syndrome and a lot of macho, a lot of weirdness, a lot of abuse or kind of emotional abuse, a lot of yelling, you know, whatever. That was fine. I think probably in some ways maybe it toughened me up. I don't know. Anyways, I just don't think there's much place for it in a corporate setting. Now, as to how you respond to it, I think you're smart to try and diffuse it. I would probably circle back with that person and say, you're like, I don't think that was productive.

And maybe even appeal to their ego and say, I don't think you realize what an outsized impact you have when you get angry like that. But there's stories of Jeff Bezos yelling in meetings. I think it's okay. Let me put yelling in meetings. I think it's okay. Let me put it this way. I think it's never okay to yell at someone much junior than you. I think that is just rattling and ruins their day. And that's just abusive in my view. I've occasionally yelled at my colleagues and peers, and I don't know, that's probably not appropriate either. That's a lack of control of your emotions. And also it signals weakness. If you can't control

your emotions, then why would they follow you if that's one thing you can't control? Now, there is a place for anger as long as it's planned. I love the image of Nikita Khrushchev, the former prime minister, head czar, whatever it was, of Russia. And he's giving a speech, I think it's at the UN, and he's banging his shoe on the table. And then the great part about the image, though, is that you can see his feet and he's still wearing both shoes. So this guy showed up with a stunt shoe that he was planning to use to bang on the table, which means that his anger was planned.

And I've gone into meetings and thought, OK, I think a little bit of anger here is going to be productive. I think we need to recalibrate the situation or I need to communicate exactly how disappointed or upset I am. And I get angry. But it's planned. But an outsized reaction, it shows you I have a lack of control of emotions. And yelling or expressing real anger to someone much junior to you is just abusive. I can't handle it. And I hate to admit this. I've been guilty of this a couple of times. I cannot handle it

when people are mean or abusive to service workers. That is literally, that means there's something broken in you. And occasionally I'm stressed on the way to the airport and my Uber driver decides to, you know, that he, he is smarter than ways and takes a side route off of in fucking Queens and I go ape shit. And then I, and then I regret it. I'm just feel terrible that I'm like, look at my life, look at this guy's life. And I'm sitting here in the back getting angry at him because he decided that he was the organic ways. Anyways, point is, it is in almost every situation inappropriate. Two, I think you are smart to try and diffuse it through humor. And three, I would circle back to that person and say,

that is upsetting for that person. I don't think it's productive. Thanks so much for the question. That's all for this episode. Again, if you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehoursatproropgmedia.com. This episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Drew Burrows is our technical director.

Thank you for listening to the PropGPod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn, and on Monday with our weekly market show.