The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Office Hours: Robo-advisors, Team Design, and the Consequences of Innovation

Episode Date: June 7, 2021

Dr. Sara Beckman of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business joins Scott to answer a question about innovation in the robo-advisor space. They also share their thoughts on the costs and benefits of blockchain, how to structure successful teams, and why it’s crucial to have mentors you trust.  Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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NMLS 1617539. Welcome to a special episode of the Prop G Show's Office Hours. professor at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. As a matter of fact, in my second year of business school, taught my manufacturing class and was awarded best professor at the Haas School of Business. At Berkeley, she runs its product management and customer-obsessed design programs. Customer-obsessed design programs. That sounds so groovy. Anyways, Anne is widely regarded

as an expert on innovation. We brought Sarah on to answer your questions on innovation, building teams and mentorship. She'll also be teaching an upcoming sprint on innovation at our higher education startup section four. You can learn more about that by visiting section four dot com slash innovation. Again, that's section four dot com slash innovation. Sarah, welcome to the Prop G Show. What a thrill for you. What a thrill for you. Great to be here, Scott.

My gosh. We literally, we haven't seen each other in probably 25 years, and we're like four kids and grandkids, and I've got two kids, no grandkids, but it's just crazy to see you. Time goes by. It does, doesn't it? It does that. All right, let's bust right into it. First question. Hi, Professor Beckman. This is Ryan from Lafayette, California.

I was actually in your introduction to innovation and entrepreneurship class during my sophomore year in the Haas undergrad program, and I just graduated from Haas in May 2020. So go bears. I had a question regarding building innovative and entrepreneurial teams in private wealth. So there's a lot of technology with robo advisors and whatnot. So I was wondering if you had any advice on combining technology and also the human relationships that private wealth is built around.

Professor Beckman, RoboAdvisors versus EQ. So, Ryan, good to hear your voice and thanks for calling in. So, it turns out that I happen to have done work in this sector, working with private wealth managers as well as companies that do private wealth management. And one of the things that I've learned a lot from what the wealth managers get involved in is that it goes way beyond investment advising. And I know, Scott, you've talked about your own family dynamics,

but the stories that you hear from some of these wealth managers about having to create wills that allocate estates, quote unquote, fairly among kids from current marriages and past marriages, or coming up with business partnerships that consider potential dissolution of the business partnership. These are very personal in many cases and very messy kinds of situations. So one of the models, Ryan, that we would have talked about in that class that I think is super helpful in these situations is to think about the jobs to be done by your target customer, right? There are functional, social, and emotional jobs to be done. And we tend to focus our technology choices often on those functional jobs to be done. I will optimize your investment portfolio for you and neglect the associated social and emotional jobs to be done. And so to me, when you're designing a product for product wealth managers,

you're really designing both for that functional job to be done of investment optimization, but also for social and emotional jobs. And I think you can go sort of to the other end of the spectrum. So what was the deal, Scott, with Reddit and GameStop? Oh, gosh. I would argue that that is the incendiary there is the young people have seen their wealth or percentage of the wealth in this nation cut from 20% to 9%, people under the age of 40. And when that happens, they'll create their own volatility and their own asset classes. And they see that the traditional mutual funds, stock purchasing, the way that you and I built wealth no longer works for them. So they're going to invent their

own asset classes. And the pump and dump or the honest pump and dump is no different than what Bill Ackman or other hedge funds have done in the past. They've just done it with different mediums, right? Instead of using Barron's and CNBC, they use Reddit and Twitter. But I see it as kind of what I'll call a generational small revolution that we're going to invent new asset classes because we feel like the game is rigged or tilted. Your thoughts? Well, so totally. So what you just named are a bunch of social and emotional jobs to be done, right? They have an agenda to disrupt fintech to get their own share of returns, etc., right? I mean, I could write a robo-advisor for them, but that dynamic and social interaction on Reddit, the conversations that they're having with one another, the creating of a shared agenda and sharing information was a very different game than I can sell you a wealth management app that

will tell you how to allocate your assets into different categories. So I think this notion of bringing together functional and social and emotional jobs to be done and recognizing what it takes to do each, I think you can connect that again to any technology. In this case, you're talking robo-advisors, but robo-advisors is one technology. What needs does it fulfill? And then how do I complement that with other services that allow me to really bring together an offering that people want? Question two. Hi, Prof G and Dr. Beckman. This is Dom from the Isle of Man, originally from South Africa. In financial services and many other industries, blockchain and environmental social governance have been themes of focus. Bitcoin, which has served as the first proof of concept of blockchain technology,

has understandably got much negative media attention or flake due to energy requirements needed for the mining process. Looking at the other side of this double-edged sword, the shared technology enabler allows for greater trust, efficiency, and security of solutions. What are the areas of innovation that blockchain can be used to solve environmental issues? technology enabler, allows for greater trust, efficiency, and security of solutions. What are the areas of innovation that blockchain can be used to solve environmental issues? Use cases I've seen for this would be in the provenance of food supply, peer-to-peer renewable energy distribution, and carbon plastic offsets, as well as climate creative tracking. Thanks for

the opportunity to ask this question. Love the show. So, Sarah, is your sense that Bitcoin, this is sort of the, it almost feels like a religious war, whereas some people think that, okay, if crypto is consuming more electricity than Argentina, it can't be good for the environment. And then the crypto bulls will say,

no, it's actually good for the environment because it's the purchaser of the incremental last gigawatt and actually subsidizing the development of alternative energies. What say you? Well, Scott, let me ask you a question. Do you ever watch the Netflix series Black Mirror? I have. Yes. Yeah.

What do you think? It draws on sentimental feelings for me because I was a big Twilight Zone fan. So I have an affinity for it and enjoy it. So for a lot of people, it's kind of a dystopian view of the future with technology in it, right? It's taking life one step too far. So I like to use Black Mirror as an example of the question, when we start to apply technologies like Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, particularly in the way that Dom is suggesting, which is beyond their purely financial applications, I think we have to do two things. One is we have to think about this notion of introducing technology just for technology's sake. And to me, that's what Black Mirror tries to portray. It tries to say, we introduce these technologies because they seem awesome in the moment, but they have repercussions, right? And so the question is, how does one think through those repercussions? And I think Dom is asking us to invert that question and to think through the repercussions with a purpose. And

so there are two questions that I would put to Dom. I think it's really important that we anchor what we're doing with technology around what problem are we solving for whom? Or another way to put it is what outcome am I aiming to help people create? As Dom is listing here, a number of outcomes he would like to potentially create, right? The renewable energy distribution or carbon plastic offsets. Today, we're designing more than products and services. We're actually designing entire experiences. We're designing transformations for people. And that implies making wholesale systems changes. So what are the most immediate things you think about, Scott, when you think about self-driving cars? What is the impact of self-driving cars? Oh gosh, I think a lot. I

think about its impact on the people, the costs go down, but also there's fewer jobs for drivers. And also mostly, I think it's a big head fake. I don't buy into autonomous driving. I don't think it's going to happen nearly as fast as people would like us to believe. Certainly hasn't. I thought it would happen in time for my kids not to have to have driver's licenses. I was hopeful, but Uber has saved us through those years of alcohol consumption and learning about it. But so those are the most immediate things people tend to think about, right? Drivers being out of jobs, not having to waste all this time getting to and from places. But I've also asked people that, oh, well, safety will go up. And then somebody says, yeah, and organ donations will go down. Or the real fear comes from people saying, well, people hack into cars and use them as weapons. So you start to think about this product that embeds a technology. So Dom is talking about a technology, right, the blockchain technology, and asking the question of what do I embed it in, and beginning to open

up the question of what are the systems dynamics that I'm trying to create by employing that technology. So for each of Dom's examples, like provenance of food supply, the question is, what outcome are you aiming to achieve? For whom? Am I trying to get people to eat better? Am I trying to have them make a different buying decision? In effect, what Dom's talking about is creating behavior change. And I can't understand behavior change unless I understand the system dynamics that sit underneath that, right? Yeah, this is, it's going to be, it's really, I mean, I find that crypto just in general, it'd be interesting to try and break it down into some sort of... I can't even come up with analogies for crypto. I feel as if I understand crypto better than 99% of the general population, and I don't understand crypto.

Have you thought about... Do you see it as disruptive? You think a lot about innovation. Do you think crypto is the innovation that's going to disrupt the financial industrial complex? Or do you see it as something that one of those technologies that might be overhy suggests a number of them, that may well be very, very valuable. I know less than you for sure about crypto. I don't know. It's certainly playing a role. It's playing a role in ransomware.

It's playing a role in all kinds of behaviors that probably belong in a Black Mirror episode. And so the question is, for me, this broader question of how do we stop jumping on a technology like crypto and saying it's the end all and be all without thinking a little bit about what the implications are. We have one quick break before our final two questions. Stay with us. The Capital Ideas Podcast now features a series hosted by Capital Group CEO, Mike Gitlin. Through the words and experiences of investment professionals, you'll discover what differentiates their investment approach, what learnings have shifted their career trajectories, and

how do they find their next great idea? Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. we do can be radically changed by the tools we use to do it. So what is enterprise software anyway? What is productivity software? How will AI affect both? And how are these tools changing the way we use our computers to make stuff, communicate, and plan for the future? In this three-part special series, Decoder is surveying the IT landscape presented by AWS. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. Question number three. Hey, Prof G. This is Amy from Hoboken, New Jersey. I've heard you talk a lot about the future of work and how remote and hybrid offices are evolving, especially from a physical office and real estate perspective. I was wondering what your thoughts are on the future of how teams are organized.

There's definitely a movement toward companies flattening their orgs and removing middle manager type roles, which I think makes a lot of sense. As someone who has worked in marketing for the past 15 years, I've experienced a lot of restructuring of teams and a really obsessive focus on naming and categorizing different marketing functions, plus slotting people into hierarchies, which I would love to see change. With that said, I'd love to hear your take on how businesses and also individuals can be successful through this time of change. And if you ultimately agree that a flatter, more equal opportunity team structure will

be better for everyone. So I have some thoughts on this, but Professor Beckman has written on how diversity affects the dynamics and success of a team and how to facilitate a balanced communication and how to effectively give and receive feedback. Sarah, do you have any thoughts on this? Yeah, Scott, I'll jump in. I'd love to hear what you have to say as well. The book that I most like about this,

and he's done TED Talks as well, is called Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal. And he talks about how he basically converted the military in Afghanistan to be able to more fluidly and rapidly respond to the changing dynamics on the ground there. In short, he talks about how he began to facilitate conversations that cut across silos in the organization and how we push decision-making as close to the front lines as possible. And so these structures may not suit everyone, by the way, per your question about would everyone like them, but they're required in a fast-changing world. So in our product management courses,

what we talk about often is that the network structure that product managers work in, where rarely do they have direct reports, and their job is to bring a product or a customer experience to market, which means they have to cut across all the different functions in the organization to do that. They are living in this team of teams kind of structure that McChrystal proposes. So, at the heart of making these structures work, and Scott raised this point, is having a shared goal. So, in McChrystal's case, this was defeat Al-Qaeda. There was no doubt about the shared goal of the team. What we find in the work I've been doing with students, for example, and student teams, is that when you measure the congruence,

when you ask everybody on the team to tell you what their goal is, then you look at those goals, they're not telling you the same thing. You would think this would be quite simple. I'm in a class where we have to produce labs and turn them in, and yet somebody on the team will say get an A, and somebody on their team will say learn manufacturing tolerancing, and somebody on the team will say something else. This is true in industry as well. So, if you go talk to the participants on a new product development team, you'll get five, six, seven different agendas on the part of the members on that team. And so that's where I kind of go with all of this. I think we are gravitating, Amy, to your point, to this notion of teams of teams.

It's like a network of teams that are running the organization. And as we migrate there, we get forced to think about what do we want those teams to do and how do we fluidly move information among the teams in order to make that happen. One piece of feedback we get from the product managers in our product management programs, we've surveyed thousands of them now, they very often say that they can't get information about the customer, that it's not shared across the organization. And if you don't have a shared understanding of the customer and what you're doing for them, it's really hard to execute and generate innovations, good products, good services for them. Yeah, I think of sort of my evolution or devolution as a manager or leader is

at first I thought it was my job to make bold decisions and then advocate for those decisions. And that was leadership. And then I evolved to, well, actually your job is to be a better listener and then make more informed decisions. And now I've sort of come to this point where I'm like, well, actually, your job as a leader is, A, you talked about this North Star, right? You do need to get everybody rowing the same direction. So at L2, it was, if we're the definitive benchmark for digital competence, everything else will fall into place. So the most robust methodology, the most sophisticated technology or tools to collect and scrape the data and then advocate or promote that benchmark that if we are the premier benchmark, everything else will fall

into place. But beyond that, I think being a leader is to say, all right, how do I provide resources so people can make better decisions where the decision-making needs to happen? And sometimes that's them calling you and asking for your advice around a decision. But generally speaking, you want to align decision-making authority with kind of who's responsible and accountable for it. You know, they've got to own the decision because they're the ones that have to execute against it. But again, this notion of you do have to establish that true North Star. In terms of remote work, I actually believe today, it's interesting this morning,

was the first time I was in a year, I was back in Midtown in a meeting in an office. And I wonder if we're ever really going back to where we were. My advice to young people though, is to get to HQ. I do think that your career trajectory is on a greater slope

if you are at the office, because I think relationships are a function of proximity and promotions are a function of tiebreakers, which are often decided by relationships. So if you're in a position or have the luxury to get back into the office, I would suggest you do that. Question four. Hey, Scott. Matt here from Seattle. So much of brand strategy and the difficult business dilemmas you navigate boil down to leadership. As someone who's had the opportunity to play mediocre college football and serve in our military, I've been exposed to a lot of different flavors of leadership that's really shaped me as an individual. Now that I'm a few years out of service, I've worked hard to rebrand myself at the value out of the tech space

and add the title of dad to my portfolio. I'm perpetually aware of the leadership and the culture around me with a deep appreciation for EQ. You've been remarkably introspective about the familial impacts in your life with a rock hander that I marvel at. But as you've stated before, company and family should not be confused. My question for you is, as a top tier leader in the corporate space, do you have any professional mentors that shaped your leadership style and developed your EQ specific to the business ecosystem, separate from your experiences as a son, father, husband, et cetera? So I'll go first, and I something that I've come to or a decision or something that's been a huge asset for me is I do think greatness is in the agency of others. And I no longer make any real decision of any importance personally or professionally without calling two, three, sometimes four people.

Because it's just very hard to read the label from inside the Coke bottle. And no matter how smart you are, and by the way, you can always decide to ignore people's advice, but no matter how, how good your judgment is, when stuff happens to you and you're in the center of it, the fog of war, the fog of decision-making just kind of takes over. And you, I don't know anyone who isn't capable of making really bad decisions, regardless of how smart they are. I have a lot of friends who are exceptionally smart professionally, and then just continue to make a series of just disastrous decisions personally. And then other people who are fantastic at one part of their job and are just terrible at managing people. And I think if they just recognize some of those weaknesses and

checked in with other people. So I have a lot of mentors. Something, and everyone's got to develop their own approach. I've found that in terms of business, there is a difference between business and family. I went to the board of Gateway Computer and they said, welcome to the Gateway family. And they were saying, we're a family in Q&A with all the directors. I'm like, we're not a family. I'm not going to drive you to school. We're not a family. You know, we're probably going to, if we don't hit our numbers, we're going to have to lay

off 20% of the workforce. So we're a team, but we're not a family. And I've always thought that that's important to discern. What I have found, though, is that loyalty is a function of appreciation. And it just makes a lot of sense for you and your shareholders to get people, identify the best people and make them loyal to the organization and to you. And appreciation is taking the time to understand what they value. And one of the mistakes I made as a younger manager was assuming that everyone wanted to be like me. Everyone wanted the same thing as me. And what I wanted to do is to be

ridiculously rich and really fucking awesome. Those were the two goals in my life. And so I assumed everybody else wanted the exact same thing. And then what you realize is that people have different objectives. Some people want to manage people. Some people want more flexibility in their life. Some people want to be sole contributors and do really interesting research and not be bothered by anybody else. And if you take the time to try and understand somebody, they recognize that maybe the next place I go, people aren't going to make the same investments in trying to understand who I am and what makes me happy. So it's really, I find that EQ and really trying to establish trust with people and also being very transparent with them. I'm a big believer, everyone talks about strategic hires. I'm a big believer in

strategic firing. I think you know, typically when someone isn't working out, you sit them down, you say, I'm worried this isn't working out. Here's what needs to happen. And you put a timeline on it. And if it doesn't happen, and it usually doesn't, you let them go. So I'm fairly Darwinian and harsh. I learned this from Howard Lester, who started, who actually, Professor Beckman knows, who was the CEO of Williams-Sonoma. And then once you make that decision, you're very Darwinian. I'm sorry, you're very generous. And that is, I'm Darwinian about the decision, but then very generous. Stay as long as you need to. You know, be upset or be angry at me, but you don't need to be scared. We're going to pay you. I mean, I've given severance of six, 12 months plus, because you want people, keep in mind, everybody that comes in contact with you and your company becomes an evangelist or a non-evangelist for you.

So it's okay to make decisions. It's okay to let go of people. But I find that a company and just as individuals, once you make those decisions, you want to approach it from generosity. And a lot of that's dependent upon resources. But the bottom line is you got to develop a kitchen cabinet. You got to have people on your shoulder who you can call around key decisions to save you from yourself. Professor, any thoughts? Yeah, Scott, I just build on that.

I think those are all great things that there are lots of different styles of leadership. I've actually been co-authoring a series of blog posts with a colleague of mine, David Slocum, about systems leadership and trying to unpack what it takes to be a leader today. And I think you have to, Matt, figure out, you have to look at a lot of different leaders. Scott is one great example. He has a particular style. There are other examples out there. So when you're looking for mentors, coaches, you need to, first of all, look around and see which styles suit you. And to Scott's point, understand whether your agenda is similar or different to them. But one of the things we unpack in those blog posts is this notion of, we call it self-making to complement sense-making and solution-making, which is a whole other conversation. But the ability to be introspective,

to toggle between the dance floor and the balcony. So you're spending time on the dance floor with people. That's Scott's empathy notion. I'm paying attention to those people and understanding who they are, but also being able to take that step back into the balcony and say, wait a second, there's some stuff going on here. There's some bigger patterns. There's some bigger issues that I need to grapple with. But in the end, developing your own leadership skill, not necessarily mimicking others, but learning from others, as Scott is suggesting, and building yourself into the kind of leader that you want to be. Yeah. And when we look back on great leaders, they're people who make difficult decisions and know it's not knowing what is the right thing to do. It's your willingness to make sacrifices

in short-term pain. And when we talk about military leaders, that's generally what we're talking about is people who demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice short-term pain because they think what they are doing is the right decision for those around them. Thanks for your questions. That's all for this episode. Dr. Sarah Beckman teaches Section 4's upcoming Innovation Strategy Sprint and is an award-winning professor

at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business where she runs its product management and customer-obsessed design programs. You can learn more about the Innovation Strategy Sprint by visiting section4.com slash innovation. Again, that's section4.com slash innovation. Again, that's section4.com slash innovation. Professor Beckman, winner of the 1992 Best Professor Award. Congratulations.

Thanks for the memory, Scott. It's been a hot minute. She's back. It's great to catch up with you, Sarah. I look forward to seeing you at Section 4 in your course. Thanks, Scott. Our producers are Caroline Shagrin and Drew Burrows. Claire Miller is our assistant producer. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe.

Thank you for listening to The Prop G Show from the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you'd like to submit a question for Office Hours, please email a voice recording to officehoursatpropertymedia.com. Again, that's officehoursatpropertymedia.com. We'll catch you on Thursday. So, have you ever downloaded, Scott, an app that promised you some long-desired outcome you have? Things like weight loss or exercise or meditation, right? Yeah, I downloaded the Calm app and it just stressed me out, so I got rid of it. So that wasn't what it intended to do, right? That's right. No, it didn't intend to stress me out, I don't think.

Hopefully not. Hey, it's Scott Galloway. And on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the tools are right for you, and what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for. And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts.

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