Five, stand back. And I think about what are my absolute most primary values. They are curiosity and relationships bills. Basic view of the world was the number one life is short. You never know what's going to go away. And in the end, what is that up to what is Meaningful? And Bill believe that people break into two buckets? There are those who kind of come at Life as a series of transactions and there are people who come at life as
Building relationships, they'll believe that the only way to have a great life, you can have a successful life doing transactions but the only way to have a really great life is on the relationship side.
Welcome to knowledge project. I'm your host Shane Parrish this podcast sharpened.
Mind by helping you master the best for other people have already figured out. If you're listening to this, you're not currently a supporting member. If you'd like special member only episodes access before anybody else, transcripts, searchable, transcripts across all the shows and other members only content you can join at f--, s dot blog, / podcast, check out the show notes for link today. I'm speaking with Jim Collins, author student teacher and researcher of what makes great companies tick.
His books include good to Great built to last. How did the Mighty Fall great by choice and most recently be 2.0 Beyond entrepreneurship 2.0. The ambitious upgrade of his very first book, Jim was on the show before episode 67 to be exact and it was one of the most downloaded and talked about episodes. We've ever had today. We cover all new ground, including what it means to be a mentor and a father why we should trust by default. Sustainable relationships, why we confuse living along
Life with living a great life. Why some people suffer from indecision and what to do about it risk aversion versus ambiguity at version pattern recognition and so much more grab a coffee. It's time to listen and learn
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For 30 years, admired leadership has been uncovering the habits routines and behaviors of the very best leaders, how they give feedback, make decisions build relationships, how they motivate and Inspire behaviors, any serious leader can learn and master better leaders. Make people better find out more at admired leadership.com. I think we're going to start with Bill is 0 and the role of great mentors that sort of change your life. You said he was the closest thing.
To a father for you. So I want to start there. What does it mean to be a father? Not the biological sense. Anyone can do that but the essence of what it means to be a father.
So let's just start. Let me let me I guess answer that question a little bit by talking about how I saw. Bill has a father a specific case and expand that out to what father is about in our in our last conversation I shared the story of going down to New Mexico, to try to connect with my real father or my biological father when he was living in the Adobe.
Up with the dirt floor. And actually, that was the first time I think I've publicly shared that story and so that was kind of like the recognition. There was no father, I was very fortunate to come across Bill ending up in his class the first time that he taught at Stanford and no one knew who he was. I didn't know who he was. He had had a successful entrepreneurial career and was taking this step of kind of a renewed path to invest in Young.
People. And and then shift from building companies to building young people, I think is, what was really happening, and Bill took this interest in me, I don't really know why he did it. So I mean, I truly can't give you an answer for that. I don't, I don't think I was a particular stand out on it, you know, and certain kinds of Dimensions, but I think that it starts there is a genuine interest interested. Without any agenda, there was no sense of what that bill felt you know, is it?
That he wanted me to like start a company. So we could invest in it or, you know, or is going to help him with research or he had no idea that eventually we write a book together or any of that bill just in this tremendous sense of generosity took an interest in me and he would start inviting Joanna, me over to his house and he would just begin asking questions and he was he just he just wanted the best for me, whatever that would turn out to be, but he also
Had this kind of faith and belief in that, if I found a way to deploy my energies, I could be effective in useful. He also had this real sense of guidance for me Bill would talk to me a lot about values commitment and about relationships and about what are you going to serve and and these sorts of things? And until I really started having conversations with something like Bill and Bill in particular in great depth in my 20s, I had never
Had a father figure who invested in trying to shape my character. I really was impoverished on that and then Bill stepped in and played that role of helping to shape. Not what I did career-wise. But who I was as a person and he would guide like, you know, he would, he would help me, try to see this image, I always had was, I was a super high energy propulsion machine but I kind of didn't have a guidance.
An ism. You want to get it just crashed into a cliff or something and Bill was helping me build, that guidance mechanism, that was both kind of indirection and in quality, he would invest to that way. So I think it has to do with being genuinely interested in without asking for anything in return and shaping who you are your character. At that point in my life, I was on a journey to create my own father. I mean, that's really what, you know, we mentioned that last time I really was trying to do that was like I didn't get one.
So I'll make one and Bill was one of the central people in that. I remember this coming up with this thing called the personal board of directors and I was back in the early 80s and and I made Bill, my honorary, chairman of my personal board of directors and when I chose members for my personal board of directors, they were not chosen for their success. They were chosen for their values and for their character.
Can you dive into that, a little more, I mean, that, what I'm thinking about here is that we're all born with parents, we didn't choose them, some of them are exceptional, some of them are average, and some of them are terrible. And that's not to place anybody in any of those buckets. But this is what you grow up and you get this environment. And you, you get these habits, you you assume these habits from your parents and that's the patterns that you learn as children, and then at some point you take over your life and you get to choose your habits and patterns whether you recognize it or not,
You can take control, you can pick your own personal board of directors, you can pick your mentors and we can choose to have the best mentors from history. What's the approach to pick the right
ones? First, in my own case, I had to start choosing early. I think my initial choosing was to get away the to to not have to depend on something like an undependable father. I mean, no one in my family gave me guidance about where or what I should do or how I should think about things. So
So, I think this question of sort of self-direction and self choice and she'll self molding. For me started - I was 13 or something. Probably when it was really conscious that it really began and there were some pivotal moments in that for me, where I just like, I'm just going to do, this is what I'm going to do. But then when I, when I entered my 20s, when I think about kind of choosing mentors and creating a father, I did I did three things.
The first was I just made a simple goal. I'm going to read a hundred biographies and I figured that by reading a hundred biographies, I would get a hundred lives and those lives would teach me something is beautiful beauty of biographies as you get entire Arc of people's lives, right? And so you don't just see Matt moments or incident and I sat down and one of the ones that shape me a lot was was Churchill's Memoirs of the
Second world war 4990, six pages, six volumes, it completely shaped. The way that I think about how you guide through tumultuous her rundas times. And, and I tried to take the best of, you know, Winston Churchill as a guide. And then that sort of led to the second part of the personal board of directors. And I remember, very vividly I was, I was driving down Alma Street in Palo Alto, and I was listening to an audio book called plain.
And plain speaking was basically transcripts and consolidations of interviews that a guy named I think, Merle Miller had done with Harry Truman and Truman had this one line in there, which was only thing I know for certain is, if you don't know the difference between right and wrong, by the time you're 30, you never will. And I like, literally made a right turn pulled off the side of the road and sat there. And thought to myself, I was in somewhere in my early to mid-20s. I got like five years to figure this out.
I mean it was a cruel eclipse from owners like a. How am I going to do that? Right? Because I really didn't want to get. I really wanted that. And so that's when this idea of, I'm going to create a personal board of directors and I'm going to put people on that board who I admire for their character, right? They're the sorts of people, I wouldn't want to let down and so I drew a little diagram of a, like a board table and put seven seats around it. And of course, Joe
We had one Bill had one. Bill was my first sort of non Joanne Choice, and then I filled out the rest. I put that, that piece of paper above my desk and whenever I'd be in situations, I'd look up to that piece of paper and there would be those seven seats. I mean, literally, like their names were there and it was like this guidance mechanism and it didn't look to it for, you know, how to be successful. That wasn't what the personal board was about. It was this, like, moral
Compass and this sense of what's a richer values-based life based on these people. So then that was the second part. So biographies then the personal board of directors and then the third was really, really growing from mentor moments if I had a wonderful Mentor moment. It might have only been a day or an hour, or it might be like with Bill where it was day after day, after day, after day for.
Years but those Mentor moments, they were like sapphires. They're just pure drops of gold and I wanted to have those be like the seeds, these kernels that would would affect me for the rest of my life. And, and I have sought mentors. It's evolved and I, and so, I have the person board directors. And then, as I got older,
Most of my personal board members are now deceased including Bill and and so I started thinking now that I'm in my 60s, how do I begin to also have that same mechanism and I I've evolved it's no longer a personal board of directors, have them at different stages of life. I have my personal Band of Brothers, some of them are are are women but it's sort of this Band of Brothers idea. And there's of these people in my life that again, I wouldn't want to let down
Over younger than me quite a bit younger. Some of them are about my age and and I what I text them, you know, it's brother, Tom, Brother, Kyle, right? My personal Band of Brothers, the people who would hold me to account the people, I would not want to let down
their powerful approach. I want to dive into some of those Mentor moment specifically with Bill and some of the the lessons that you've he helped instill in you one was relationships, not
transactions.
so, you know, Bill and we write about this in this, be on entrepreneurship 2.0, which co-authored with Bill and big part of the reason why we're talking about Bill is, I re-released this book with a chapter about Bill to really honorable and extend his legacy and he died in 2004 and I knew I wanted to write something about him and the profound impact he had on me by stand back and I think about what are my absolute most primary values
And particularly ones that I got from Bill. They are curiosity and relationships. And the Curiosity, I think is kind of been with me all the way along, but the relationships when I got from Bill bills, basic view of the world was number one, life is short, you never know when it's going to go away. And in the end, what does that up to what is Meaningful? And Bill believe that people break into two buckets? There are those who kind of come at Life as a series of transactions.
Yes. And there are people who come at wife as building relationships. They'll believe that the only way to have a great life. You can have a successful life doing transactions, but the only way to have a really great life is on the relationship side. And so Bill just pounded in me, instilled in me modeled for me in the end. It is really deep relationships and doing things. You love with people, you love and those connections. And so we got into this conversation though about relationships one day.
And I asked bill. So, okay, so what makes for a great relationship and Bill said, oh, a really great relationship is one where you if you ask each person independently, who benefits more from the relationship? They would each say, well I do and I said well isn't that a little bit of a selfish way to look at it? And you said well no let's think about this for a minute. Jim, let me ask you Jim. Who do you think benefits more from our relationship? I said, well.
Clearly I do. I mean what everything you've done for me, he said well, isn't that just great because I would answer that I do and he said see the reason both people can answer that way is because both people are putting into the relationship, not for what they're going to get from it. But for what, they can give to it and because both people are doing that.
Both people would feel that they are the ones who are the ultimate beneficiary because of how much the other person gives everything we do here at the good to Great project is relationship-oriented. I mean, there's not a single day that goes by that, we don't think about what is the relationship element of this decision of how we handle something, of, whether we say, how we say, yes or no, everything goes back to relationships.
One of the other lessons you learned from Bill,
What's the trust, wager? Talk to me about that,
bill had this really interesting stance on trust that ultimately affected me. And so, let's make this, both human and and intellectual when I left Stanford to launch out on my own and in our last conversation, I described launching out on my own, in the fear of that and the commitment and so forth. And, and, and when I sort of left, the relatively cloistered world of a place like Stanford, you kind of hit a broader world and
Certain assumptions about how trustworthy people are. Might get - five events, and I don't want to call people out on this, but just suffice it to say that to my great shock. I discovered that some people do actually, genuinely, weren't trustworthy. I was just naive in some some level, right? But you know what I've had people like you know, build his ear in my life or had met people like Jim Stockdale or you know, Peter Drucker. People people that just do they're just such a character caliber that I
Was in a very rare group of folks. And so I asked Bill, have you ever had your trust abused and said, oh yeah, of course. I've been, I've had my trust abused, it's just part of life but then he gave me this was one of those great mentor moment. He said this is Jim, this is one of now that you're starting to have this experience from really experience. It, you need to decide what is your opening bid? When you are establishing a relationship with someone when you're interacting with the
Hope is your opening bid to assume trust to assume that someone is trustworthy and to grant them the full benefits of that? That's your opening bid and that trust can be lost. But the bid is trust or is your opening bid to not trust but the trust can be earned. So many aspects of your life will be affected by which Fork on that you take.
Jake that's a stance on life and I said, well, it seems to me Bill. You've chosen the trust bit as the opening bit and he said, yes, I have, I said, but Bill brutal facts. Not everyone is trustworthy. And the brutal fact is some people abused that trust. So have people abuse. You trumpet? Trust me. He said of course they have and he went on and he described a situation of somebody who was quite close to him who had abuses
Rust and it had cost him enough that he said it hurt, right? Not just emotionally, but financially as well. And then there's this little kind of cul-de-sac on the whole thing that bill has, which is the notion of you don't leave yourself exposed to a catastrophe in such a way that if you if you trust your, let's say your CFO and you never look at the books and then you discover one day that you had a problem and your company is bankrupt. You always pay attention to the
The cash flow, you always watch the numbers, you always keep an eye on things like you don't sound like you become disconnected from reality but you said but you know I never left myself. Open to catastrophe beyond that. Yeah, that that one hurt. I said, well did it change your approach to trusting people? He said, no, it's just part of the cost of living and then he went on and he described it as upside and downside and this is it sort of gets into the it just simply hard-headed. This was a hard-headed view, he said I've come
inclusion, when I think across the iterative relationships and interactions and aspects of life, that there is far more upside in an opening bid of trust, and there is far more downside in an opening bid of mistrust, if all goes to, the question of people, if you really basically want to have your life, whether the people in your company, whether they people in your life, whether they be your friends, whether the people you rock climb,
With whatever it is the very very best. People will respond to the bid of trust, the best people will be attracted to that. And and you want the best people to be attracted and the second is he said, have you ever considered the possibility Jim that your opening bid affects how people behave? If you trust people, you're more likely that they will act in a trustworthy way. So it's a double win, it's the
People and they'll behave in a trustworthy way. The flip side is if you have an opening bid of mistrust, the best people will not be attracted to that. If you have this opening sense of you have to earn my trust. Now, you may have to earn my trust how good you are at something right or earn my respect for your performance or that sort of thing. But if you have I basically like, I don't trust you have to earn it. Well, some of the best people are going to be like I don't need it, put up with that. I'll go do something else and for bill was always about again.
People and relationships, right? That's where the trust trust comes from and and he just came at it as a, as a very hard-headed and warm-hearted approach to the world. And that's why I think there were so many people, whose lives were affected by bill has, are he trusted them? And they responded in very trustworthy ways in the world. The other thing though that on an intellectual front on this is I as I think, you know, I'm a huge fan of this thing called the Great Courses series.
Get college-level courses, 60 lecturers, 40 lectures, whatever. They've been doing them for years and years. There's one called games people play and it's a course on Game Theory and of course, I know, you know, game 30 well
If I remember right, the essence of it was that the best strategy is an opening bid of cooperation. Now, the game can unfold from there, right? But that that is a good place to start. So I was very sort of like Bill had this sense of game theory that was in his approach to relationships and Humanity. I don't know if he ever took a course in Game
Theory, I think that's a really interesting way to approach it and I definitely agree with with that.
Me and my friend Toby has this concept that I think might help people, it's very visual, it's called the trust battery. And you can do things that increase your trust or decrease your trust. But if you start that trust battery at the say the 75th percentile then you know you're starting from a different place than if it's the fifth you know your five percent, your trust battery is full and it's been my experience that the benefits of reciprocal trust and the speed and not living with your guard up all the time, as more than worse.
With letting yourself occasionally get screwed, another friend of mine had this really good concept about when to forgive and when to sort of like and he said, as long as it's not malicious, just always forgive
one of the things that bill always emphasized. Was that sometimes? You don't know the whole story. He said, sometimes it may not be real intent. It could just simply be a misunderstanding or it could be just incompetence. Somebody might not actually be untrustworthy, they might just be in competition.
Or they made a mistake, right? And so be careful. There's this, this moment I call it seeing the Hat. It's a weird thing, but driving down a road and Bolder, and imagine a car. All of a sudden, veers into your lane from the lane next to you, your, but you're both going the same direction you're like, you know, idiotic driver or whatever. And then you notice that what had happened was when you went on past further as somebody's hat, head blown off in the middle of the road and they
Going to maybe step out and grab it. And what you couldn't see that I think Joanne had this experience and you sort of think about it as like well wait a minute you know, maybe you don't see the whole situation. You're jumping to a conclusion about why somebody is doing something when actually, if you can see the Hat forgiveness, what do you think it means to forgive and do you find it harder to forgive yourself? Or to forgive others?
Definitely harder to forgive me. I think, you know, forgiveness just means letting it go, right? And if you don't assume malicious,
Intent on people. It's a lot easier to let it go and we create these stories in our head about how people are, you know, doing things to get us at work and, you know, it's just nobody really cares, you know, nobody's walking around trying to hurt you and maybe there is the occasional person but it's not worth living life like that. And I think that when people in your life that are close to you that you trust and You're vulnerable with, do let you down in some way then you know, the default should be to forgive them unless it's
Intentionally trying to hurt you and it's malicious. I'm probably the same as most of my listeners. I mean, I have exceptionally high standards of myself. I can't go listen to our past conversation because, you know, like you, I'm like, oh my God, I could have worded that so much better. I could have said that more succinctly, or I'm just always sort of like, the inner critic in me is out of control in some ways. And I think that, you know, I find it really hard to forgive myself when I have lapses in judgment. And we all do, we're all human. I mean, that's part of what it means to.
Human. And I think that we need to understand that in perspective helps us see that. Not only do we do that on occasion and we hope that other people would forgive us because we're not maliciously, trying to get them, but other people have they're in the same boat. I mean, we're especially right now. We're all just trying to do the best we can nobody's at their best the tolerance for, you know what other people are going through, just has to be higher and you have to put yourself in other people's shoes. You can realize that the reason I asked
about forgiveness is that one of the
Ernest things for me is we talked about before, my dad died, when I was 23. And when I went to Santa Fe and left that time, that the Albuquerque rather, is it where I realize there is no Dad here. It's like that scene in Apocalypse. Now, you know, there ain't no CEO here with it, there's no doubt here and I carried a lot of anger and resentment and judgment about that. And then, because my father died,
I never had a chance to like reconcile. I had to learn how to forgive somebody who's no longer here and to let that go. The act of forgiveness is something I had to go through even though my father is no longer here and that was enormously liberating, right? I do not need to be judging somebody and be fueled by that and that I like your idea of the word letting go. It's letting it's like letting that go. I don't need that, I can let that
disappear.
One of the things that I get out of reading the updated version of, this was how we confuse living a long life with living a great life, you want to talk to me about that. So long life in short
life, this is another great lesson from Bill. And in the book, I wrote it, as put the butter on your waffles, but because it really captures a crystalline moment and always seem to find a way to be smiling which isn't necessarily my my Approach To The World.
And I would often take things very seriously and very intensely. And so we were writing the original version of be an entrepreneurship together and on that original version. It was the very first book I ever wrote and I was struggling to write my working on the writing part of it and I would basically get to the end of the day and I draw a bunch of pages in The wastebasket apps. I'm totally inadequate at this and this is so hard. And of course, what you realize, anybody who writes tries to write.
Even if over the course of decades, you become a better writer. Is it the only reason writing becomes easy to read is because it's hard to write and writing is just hard. I think of writing as is like running. If you're going to run your best, it's always Gonna Hurt.
And so if you can run a five-minute mile and then you get it down to 4:30. Well if you run a 4:30 and that's your best time, it's going to hurt as bad as when you used to run the five-minute Mile and it was your best time. You're just faster but it's going to hurt and writing is kind of like that. It's like you know it never gets easier. You only get better so I'm struggling and I'm throwing things away and I'm just really Miserable as opposed to just kind of like this is just what writing is and I go to Bill and and I and I sort of wine.
About my suffering and and I expected Bill to give me a lecture on now. This is like this is the time to really grit through and it's really going to it's really going to hurt but this is just something you have to endure and you know it's kind of
like you two got to keep going
and that sort of like the hardest thing and instead what I got was this this response where he just said oh well okay well if this isn't fun we should stop doing it. Say what do you mean?
We're right. We're writing a book. Nowhere in the contract. Does it say have fun? Yeah. What are you talking about? So he says, do you seriously? Says, look at this. Just isn't fun. If we can't find a way to make it fun. We should just not do it. It was so perfectly bill because he just keeps so deeply. Believe that if you can't find a way to make something fun and enjoyable, you'd sort of missed the point. Because along the way, there just aren't that many days in years and life. Anyways, and then the day after we,
Turned in the manuscript for the original edition of Beyond entrepreneurship. Bill had a quintuple bypass surgery, he had a heart attack.
And a few months after that, we were having our Saturday morning, waffle Fest. We would go to Peninsula Creamery in Palo Alto. And we would meet there at noon Saturday morning and we would have waffles. We just talk about whatever it was, just bill, continuing to invest in shape, and care. He puts butter and syrup on his waffle like the big piece of butter. And and then the puts the warm syrup on it all kind of mixes together. I mean, it's
That's really great. Right? But I look at it kind of in horror and I go Bill Bill, you hit quintuple. Bypass what are you doing? And he just continues to put the butter on his waffles and enjoy his waffle, and has a smile. And he says to me, you know, Jim, when I was being wheeled into the operating room, I think I had a smile on my face because I realized, right at that moment, I'd had a really great life.
And if this happened to be like the end and I don't come out of this Dorothy and I have had a great run. Everything from here is going to be gravy on top of that because I really had this sense of this complete sense of common acceptance. Like if this is it man it was a great run. I've had a great life. He said to know that to really know that when you're being wheeled in and they're going to have the quintuple bypass and that was my feeling, I wasn't afraid. I
Just grateful for my life. That's the moment. I knew I'd really had a great life and so I'm putting the butter on my waffles and what Bill believed was one, is this notion that time just goes by really, really fast?
And it goes faster and faster. Now someday I'd love to hear on your show a psychologist or somebody who can explain to me why it's the same 24 hours but they're always faster and Bill. And I put this little story in the in the chapter as I said the bill one day. I said bill, you know, said time's going by faster and he said, well what do you mean? I said we I just noticed that garbage days when I have to put the garbage out. Seem to be coming quicker and quicker as the. Oh, my goodness is garbage.
Again, I know it's the same seven days but manager seems like a faster seven days when I was there, when I was young and he said, ah, well, why do you get to my age? I'm Christmas is start coming around as fast as garbage days, but, but that notion, he said, your time accelerates. And so, actually, I don't know what the psychology of it is. I have a weird little theory on it. But nonetheless, this notion that, you know, that the days seemed they're the same 24 hours. But they go by faster and this the same month and it goes by faster in the same year.
It goes by fast for click. Click click, click click, and he just said he said, what? That really teaches me is it's going to be over in an instant. I don't care if you get a hundred years or a hundred and ten years or 70 years, it's over in an instant and I don't care how many years you get, it is short, and it is gone in the blink of an eye given that reality Bill said, I think, in terms of a great life. So the integral write summation of all the moments of your life, integrated from birth to death experience T DT it
The summation of those moments.
and bill was like, however, many you get is the quality of
And that he lived with to the end and then he woke up from a nap December of 2004 and he was walking across to the bathroom and he fell dead from congestive heart failure. And Dorothy said he had a smile on his face. That was it and I lost bill as did hundreds of other people.
But he had absolutely a great life and his impact on all those people. So immense whose lives he changed not just mine but hundreds and hundreds of other people's lives that he change.
Creates that he did more through those people with his life that almost anyone I've ever met.
And he's still touching people and changing lives. I want to switch gears a little bit here and talk about decision making, which is something we didn't really dive into you. Last time we spoke which I was really surprised when I searched our transcript just Lightly for decision making, there was no queries I was like oh my God how could I have Jim Collins on the line for a few hours and not talk about decision making so well why do so many Executives suffer from indecision? But leaders who build great companies, don't seem to. How do we
Event analysis, paralysis from sort of preventing us from making a
decision. So we know quite a bit about that's from our research and just to review for for everyone. Maybe, if you haven't heard the previous podcast, are our research method, is we study the history. We do matched pair, we find pairs of companies, or in the same spot, same time, same resources, in potential that then had different trajectories and then we study them in slices of History.
The overtime to try to really understand what separated one from another particularly during the arrow on one was great and the other was not the key to that is historical, right? You try to go back in time you don't, you don't read just later accounts of why until decided to do the 1103 memory chip, you have to try to go back and sort of see what did the world look like to the people at Intel when they were making that decision, right? So, that you can then sort of follow through this iterative, it's like an
Rated movie, right watching through stuff is okay, let's Freeze Frame here. Here they are in 1972, here's the context, here's the environment. And then you look over the comparison company and you say, what were they doing? They were looking at the same context, same environment, how did they make the decision different Etc and then you you replicate that and you picture it that that if you if you think about our research and something that Martin Jansen, one of my great colleagues taught me is the power of breaking things into events. What we have is okay, it could have say 11 pairs of companies, well, you don't actually own
We have 11 things to look at, or 11 pairs to look at if you then disaggregate them across time, right? And you take their entire history. Well, now you can do something. Now, you can have hundreds or thousands of decision offense. All right, so now you've got buckets where you've got much larger numbers to work with. Let's look at all the decision events over time and will get how they turned out, how they made them to the extent that we can see that. How is it different In the comparison company and you can begin to do things so that
Ocean of event analysis. Through a historical Massacre method is very much how we come at her work and Morton's ability to be able to say which we use in Great by choice a lot, which is how to break things into these discrete events that you can look at, you know many, many incidents for doing really good analysis and what are things we looked at, in our research over X is decisions big decision, small decisions, processes of
Decisions and so forth. Let me share a story. It's actually one that we used in Great, by choice about Andy Grove. So, Andy Grove gets this prostate cancer, diagnosis and I don't remember all the details of it, but at the time as I understand it, there was some degree of ambiguity and maybe still today. I'm not an expert in prostate cancer, or prostate, cancer treatments, but there weren't the all these different things. I mean, there's the implant seeds and surgeries
And radiation and all these different things that you could you could do. And so you talk about getting now you got a decision to make
What am I going to do? I have to decide what I'm going to do about this diagnosis and you're a negro, right? You probably one of the best corporate decision makers in history. One approach would be, I'm just going to follow my doctor say, or I'm going to follow the standard of care.
Well, what what he did was, he got good advice from different doctors that are. But then he became like, he really analyzed. He became he said, he described his like his second PhD. He really analyze it. This is a, this is a significant life-altering decision. So he's not just going to be like, I just need to decide, you know. And if I make a mistake, I'll self-correct. Well look, if you do certain kinds of surgery, you can't self correct, but if you just sort of wait forever, well, then maybe the cancer will get you, right? So, you've got this.
Between the two. So he does his his sort of self-directed PhD in this stuff and eventually chooses a course, I forget what the exact courses is in great. By choice, we wrote about in a little bit, but in there is something that really illustrates because once he made his decision, it was a very clear and unambiguous decision of what he did Morton. And I observed was that it's not a choice between like analysis and hold fast decision, making, it's about using really good empirical evidence.
And really good analysis as the basis for clear and decisive decision and that's what he did notice. There's something else though, there's a really critical aspect of the decision making and so Morton. And I got very, very curious about something which is we got curious. We were studying companies that went from start up to 10 times better than their Industries for the book. Great, by choice in the most turbulent Industries, we could find, so that's why I looking semiconductors mmm.
Software and biotechnology and early days. Etc. And one of the questions that we really wanted to understand was speed and pace of decisions. What would the evidence say is the correlation between speed of decision, making and quality of outcome? And what we found was that the 10x leaders
Had a much wider range of ability between slow medium and fast.
And sometimes they made really big decisions quickly. As soon as they made really big decisions slowly and there wasn't really seem to be a pattern and often the comparison companies would often act very quickly. This sense of like we got to do something, we got to move, we've got right what more than I observed was this, is that the first question in decision, making is how much time before our risks change so we Randy Groves
Cancer situation. Is he understood it going to change in a matter of days? His risk profile was going to be the same a week. Or even six months later, he had, he had he didn't have years.
But he had months and so he used the time he had before. His wrists would likely change to be able to make a better decision, Our member when the fires broke out here in 2009, we got a call from a friend of ours, was in the mountains. It's just like we got to get out of here. Now, it's coming over the hill so there are some situations where it's literally minutes or maybe days and the risks are going to change, right? Or it could be something where it's it could be years.
And your wrists aren't going to change you the risk of missing an opportunity or the risk of getting it wrong. My friend George Apollo, Layman grew up, in Latin America and was very successful in the tumult of Latin America. Said something to me. He said you know people have such a need to resolve ambiguity and uncertainty that they often act quicker than they need to because it's dealing with their own need to make the uncertainty go away.
And what we learned in building companies in Latin America is the uncertainty never goes away. So often we learn to like, if we can let events unfold without our wrist changing, we will let them unfold.
But when we need to act, we will act what really Morton and I found in our research is the question is not fast decision or slow decision, you know, as sort of proxies for decisive or not it how much time before your wrist changes and then make your decision within that time frame. Another big thing we learned as near as I can tell, there is no correlation between consensus decisions and Intelligent Decisions in the history of corporate history. Most great.
Enter taken whether still substantial disagreement still in the air and they are taken without a need. For consent. Has the culture is one of of disagreement dialogue, debate, argument pounding on tables whatever leading to a point of clarity. Then in a corporate setting, followed by executive decision, followed by unified commitment behind it. That's the pattern that tends to more correlate with our better results.
I like that. There's a couple different directions
I want to go there with with consensus. I think it's really interesting groups, search for consensus, especially if you have group decision-making. Instead of individuals individuals, search for truth. Groups tend to want to go towards consensus. That way, everybody can tell their own story within the group. If the decision successful, you go back to your tribe in the organization and you you can say that it was because of you, you influence the group. And if the decisions unsuccessful, you can go back to your tribe. In the story, you can tell is that
You tried to persuade them not to do it and nobody's really accountable for those decisions. Whereas if you have your name on it you're searching for truth. You're searching for the best decision
possible. Yeah, I think that's really interesting actually, and I think that there's this thing that we call autopsies Without Blame. Not all decisions have good outcomes. So just because you got an adverse outcome and you know, when you're in your poker interview, for example, you just because you can
An adverse outcome doesn't mean you made the wrong decision and indecision often happens because you begin to create a culture as what we see in our comparison companies where when you get adverse outcomes or things, don't go as well as you'd like or that decision turned out to be what boy, if we'd known X Y and Z, we would have done something different then instead of an autopsy Without Blame to understand to gain understanding to assume that people did their best and so forth. But let's really understand what actually happened. So we can make better decisions in the future or
In our process. You search for somebody to blame the moment that you introduced autopsies with blame as opposed to autopsies Without Blame the more you are going to begin to create an environment was like, man, the upside downside here making a decision is you've got upside downside for the company, an agency problem, right? If everybody becomes indecisive, that's bad for the company, but it might be very good for their careers. So, how do we
build this uncertainty muscle? Like, how do we develop our ability to live?
With ambiguity. What are what are the patterns to that? Like how do we go about doing
that? So I remember a student came to me once and said, you know, I hear what you say in your class. You really are challenging us to go do something on our own and to create our own companies. And I understand that, just because I want to be in business, doesn't mean I have to work for Exxon or IBM or hedge fund that successful or whatever. I could carve my own path and really be able to do it my own way, but, you know, I just don't have the risk profile for
Doing doing something at the burial. And I said, well, what's one of the first things you learn in investing? One of the first things you learn is, don't put all your eggs in one basket because that's high risk, right? Me, ask you a question. What's a job? It's all your eggs. In one basket. You basically have made a highly undiversified portfolio bet oh and by the way, you have very little control over it, you're exposed to, if it turns out that the people running the company or it yet, or they make it,
Early, bad decisions. You've made a bad bet that other people are making bad decisions that are affecting your bet and so in an entrepreneurial world, there's risk, but maybe there are more clear, right? What your risks are, there is this Market risk of financial account inside organizations. There's this thing called political risks. Those of us who are not good at that, and I am one of these people is not good at that. You can get blindsided because you just don't understand how the politics work. The now you got that risk in there and as Earth grows back, one of my other mentors who I am.
Are greatly always used to say? Yes, there are risks entrepreneuring but never forget their equal risk. May be even higher risks to not entrepreneuring is. So, if you really want to be risk, averse, why would you throw all your eggs in one basket? That you don't even control and has all this political risk within it. Why would you take a job? See, if you take an entrepreneurial path, okay? Of product is not working. Product bees, not working. I can do. See, I can do d as long as they stay alive. I can't keep, you know, doing hands at the table till something does get working. Then I can get the flywheel going. I can build a portfolio of clients.
Giants, right, I've got diversification, I've got different revenue. Streams I can do all this kind of stuff and I can do more to control it. That strikes me as lower risk. And oh and by the way, what if you wake up at age 55 and the company that you through your whole life, in turns out to all of a sudden be going to one of these huge downsizings and at age 55 you're out that strikes me as horrifyingly risky then it began to dawn on me. They're actually taking increased risk in order to reduce ambiguity if you have a job.
You kind of know what you're doing, right? It's much less ambiguous. It's much less. It's the paint by numbers of Kit approach to life. And I follow the paint by numbers of Kit. As opposed to, I go out on my own is a blank canvas. It's a lot more ambiguous. What do I do? What do I start with colors? Do I use? What kind of painting? Do I want to make? And what I realized is that people, my students anyways would take increased risk in order to reduce ambiguity. So I think people are
Very ambiguity averse and and that's part of why they don't do an entrepreneurial path and I used to come into my classroom and I put up a little equation. I would say what are the probabilities of being successful as an entrepreneur and let's suppose if it's kind of a multiplicative probability thing and one probability is the end result is probability of success as an entrepreneur. And but then you can break that into two parts that lead to that probability.
The first part of that is probability that you will find a way to be successful. If you start times probability that you will actually start and then I would turn to my students and I would say tell me about the risks on these. Well, most of those students would look at and say if I really through my whole life into it, probabilities that I will be successful if I start and I do it in a really smart way or actually not that low. I could find a way especially if I can be persistent long enough to
To find a result that will work probabilities that you will start. Well, as you go, let two years go by five years. Go by then you have houses and commitment and all these things. And at some point as more and more of the sort of, accouterments of Life, build up the probabilities of that, you'll start go down.
Because now you have loss
aversion a huge loss of version.
And when you're young, you have nothing to lose. But the further along, you get that probability goes down. It's a rare person who decides it 55 to say. I'm launching the entrepreneurial path. Some do we talked about George rathmann? Last time there are some that do. So what that really means is the real swing variable in being an entrepreneur, is the probability that you will start, not the probability that you will succeed. If you
start want to come back to something you said about ambiguity of
And that makes me think of one of the reasons that we have all these procedures and organizations is because we want to avoid ambiguity. If we follow the procedure, we're always right, we don't have to exercise a ton of judgment. Even if the outcome is wrong, we did what we were supposed to do. We can't get in trouble. What do you think?
So so on the one hand in order who really build and make a fly will go really far, you need to have some replicable recipes that you're going to be staying with more or
us for quite some time. If you take, for example, Southwest Airlines which amazingly became the best performing stock over a 30-year period, from 1970 to 2000 to startup company, three airplanes, and they originally copied the recipe from Pacific, Southwest Airlines is actually an amazing startup story, because you're back in the late 1960s early 1970s and their original business plan was copy PSA in Texas.
Esa was Pacific, Southwest Airlines they were based in California people, who from that error, may remember, the, the company that had the planes that were the sort of point-to-point commuter planes that have little smiley faces on the bottom. On the front part of the fuselage made, it look like a smiley face in the sky. That was PSA and Southwest Airlines. Basically flew out there and copied their model and took it back to Texas as pre deregulation. So PSA gladly, shared with them,
how they do things so much. So that in fact, if you ever wondered why Southwest Airlines called Southwest Airlines based in Texas. Well, you know, if you, if you basically have the entire recipe and all you do is cross out the word Pacific, you get Southwest Airlines. I mean it's not it's like a photocopy of the original idea, but here is the difference. PSA, after a certain point, the recipe kind of became wrote. Nobody could explain to you. Well, why do we do fun things in the cabin? Why do we, you know, keep
Certain kind of aircraft. Why do we try to turn the planes fairly quickly, right at some point, the sort of real understanding of why this recipe, why do we put raisins in the oatmeal cookies? It gets turned into mindless procedure at, Southwest, Airlines, herb, Kelleher, and Roland King. And those folks, they really emphasize and trying to people this is why we do the recipe.
Why do we fly only 737s? Let's go through like ten reasons why we only flies 737s once had a part, every pilot can fly every aircraft in our system. One set of training manuals, one set of flight simulators, once it right there, the entire standardized system and then they're perfect for point-to-point and they're really reliable aircraft and do not know. That's why we're going to bet on the 737. We're going to replicate that. Why do we not do first class seats? Why do I everything you could go through? And they could say their reasons. Why we have this recipe, this is
We have the oatmeal. Why we have raisins in this oatmeal? Why do we turn the planes, really fast? Not because, like ten minute turns, cool, or 20-minute turn schools, because our economic engine is based upon having the planes in the air and the longer, they're at the gate, the more, they're not earning money, the more, they're in the air. The more they're earning money, turn the plane to turn the planes, turn the planes, and what's the recipe for a plane coming in? Getting a turned? Get it back out again, right? We bake the cookies. When we know how to bake the cookies and then we expand out across the country.
See there's this you know they're baking the cookies now we're baking the cookies. In Kansas were baking the cookies to Las Vegas or baking. The cookies out to Kansas City or baking the cookies out to, right? And and they've got this recipe and we did this interesting analysis Morton and I we asked ourselves a simple question in turbulent environments. It's not that the really successful companies. Had a recipe and the other company didn't the folks at Southwest understood the reasons and rationale behind.
Recipe. So that if they're ever came a time when that rationale was no longer supported, you could change a piece of the recipe based upon that rationale. If for example, you say Luke, we only do short-haul. Well, why do we only short haul? Because 737s have a two hour range and there's a lot of reasons why we do 7:30 sentence. Well, what if something changes, where 737 still have a three hour range or for our range? Oh, well, then that rationale doesn't apply. We could do a four hour rate.
Change the understanding of the recipe. Now, we did an interesting analysis.
We basically said, okay, if every successful company has recipe of some things they do over and over again, thinks they replicate 20-minute turns, whatever it is. How much do those recipes change over time? One set of companies changes, the recipe about 80% over, say, 30 years and the other changes, the recipe about 20% Which group is the more successful companies. The 20% change, which surprised us. We thought that what you would find is that the companies that
Are the most successful are going to change the most in a changing world. That's not what we found. They don't have it as change or not. Change a change. World's changing, we have to change, we have to change fast, we have to Pivot and we have to write no.
Very deliberate thing. We understand a recipe and then the question always is, what's the, what's in the right, 20% to change? And why you were people get in trouble? Is when you have everybody in, everybody knows the recipe but they can't explain to you the rationale behind the recipe. And then that begins to correlate with their Decline. And then when they get in trouble, because they don't understand the rationale they pack, but there's one other piece. One of my favorite things that came from built to last
Was in chapter 6 and it was about the development of Nordstrom over its greatest years. We put reporter replica of Nordstrom's employee manual in chapter 6 of built to last Jerry porras that I worry did this and basically what it said was welcome to Nordstrom, you're part of a customer service machine and so forth. But then it said, Nordstrom rules, rule number one, use your best judgment in all.
Situations.
There will be no additional rules. So how do we put these two together? What we really found makes a great flywheel, a great company go, is you've got an incredible replicable, scalable recipe as an overall corporate approach to the world and you really know how that works and you really understand why it works and people can explain why it works and you multiply your success by baking the cookies with 20% Evolution like amending a
Ian over time, but on the other hand, you have people who you trust, who you can say in the context of our system, which we all understand how it works, because you're the kind of person would like to understand it. You can say to them to the person on the aircraft. If you have an unruly passenger, use your best judgment in all situations. We trust you. And so, when you put the right people who you trust, who were selected for their values, in their judgment next to a highly replicable disciplined,
Soupy and you put the two of those together. Now you have the genius of and that better explains a Southwest Airlines.
Relative to a PSA over time. A big part of the answer, not the only answer but a big part.
How do you distinguish the people who are copying and don't understand why there are CP works from the people who copy. How do you determine the difference between the two as a casual Observer? What are the ways? The signals the who really understands it because it in Good Times they're probably both getting really good results but in bad time
And so you're going to get massively different outcomes as we saw with your examples here.
One of the things that George Apollo Layman, who is a dear friend of mine?
Said to me once he said you know I think of myself as a teacher ultimately when I think about the great folks who really are The Real McCoy is they so deeply understand what it is that they're doing that, they are great teachers of it and let's take Jack Bogle. As you know from the flywheel monograph I've been close to Vanguard for some time and help them get their flywheel right? Or they got their flywheel, right by me, just asking them to get it, right? I guess is really what happened? And I've always admired Jack Bogle is a
So I was at this thing in New York we were we were both being inducted into something and I noticed Bogle was there. I was like Wow, chat bubbles are so I go up to him and he was kind of on his Cane and you know, you had a heart transplant, many years ago and I said, hey, I don't mean to intrude on your space, I just want you to know how much I admire you and what you built at Vanguard and he looks up. And he says, his warm smile and he says, Jim. Yes, I've read your books and we should talk sometime. Do you ever get to Philadelphia? We
We should talk. So, now, this point, he's like, 87 or 88, right? And so, I get home and I told you antibiotic. I met Jack Bogle and how he invited me out to come out to Malvern and, and have a conversation. And then I started thinking and I started hesitating because I kept thinking how many Jack Bogle days are left. I don't want to steal one. So I hummed and hawed, and hesitated. And finally Joanne said to me, she said, you know, make it easy for him to say no, but reach back out to him, he asked you to
I sent him this emails, dear mr. Vogel, we, you know, we met in New York, Etc. And then I just sort of went through this long description of giving him all these. I know you're busy. You're probably working a next book and wouldn't really fit in, but I just wanted to say I was nice to meet you etcetera, etcetera and sent the email off, giving him every opportunity to say he's too busy, right? Or was going to work. I get this email back, dear Jim first. It's Jack. That mr. Vogel, I'm so glad you followed up.
I so much wanted to have a conversation with you and I wanted to follow up with you but I didn't want to seem pushy, please come to Melbourne so I meet Bogle is 88 and we sit there. I mean, it was real me the real conversation and you got a picture like he had done his Princeton thesis on. I think mutual fund essentially in the early days of that in decades and decades earlier, right? What was it six decades earlier and he still incredibly engaged and passionate and energized.
About this. When you look into Jack Bogle size, they are burning with an 18 year. Olds intensity just coming right out of his eyes and into the room. We just have this like you would have no thought I'm talking to somebody who's 88 who had a heart transplant. Now notice what bocal did Bogle had their incredible recipes that make Vanguard go the mutual structure, right? The the cost on the mutual funds, the highly Diversified the low tax efficient and high tax efficiency because you don't
Trade that much. The weight indexing is done all these things, right? That are part of serving their clients and and the fight would have different model, not saying it's a, there are multiple types of investment models that can work but that's their right. And it's a recipe, when you sit down you follow bocal, what did he do? He became a great teacher of it. His books are lessened, his conversations. They're not sales.
Their teachings. And when you find someone who is able to teach versus giving you wrote lessons, I think that's how you one indicator of the real difference.
I love that. I think that's such a great answer because it shows the depth and the nuance and the sophistication and and the Simplicity that sort of comes out on the other side of it. But it dives into why I want to come back to something. You said
said, which is you've learned a lot about the flywheel since we talked last? What have you learned
one thing I've learned is that there's tremendous power and thinking very hard about what is the 12 o'clock point on the flywheel because it has tremendous signaling. So is your opening point about, you know, creating something like creating the next great bicycle helmets or the next great generation of chips or biotech drugs or whatever or is it about. Does it start with getting a certain kind of medical?
Professional like a Cleveland Clinic. Is it start with lowering costs as as vanguard's was like, where's the flywheel start? Even though it's a repeating Loop, is there something very powerful about asking that? So that's one thing I've learned but second thing I've learned there's sort of a right side and a left side in the flywheel. So when you look at a flywheel going around the clock,
I like to think of it is that they're sort of the twelve o'clock to a 6 o'clock part of the flywheel and then there's a six o'clock to the 12 o'clock part of the flywheel. And if you really study the best flywheels, they have a different role on the right hand side of the flywheel, the 12 o'clock to 6 is really about what you do in the world. What you do to contribute what you do, that makes people's lives better. What you do? That is kind
Your net, add right in some way, delivering, great, health outcomes, whether it be the next powerful generation of chips that multiply Moore's Law over time, whether it's biotech drug, that's going to be able to solve a meat and anemia it. You're doing something in the world and then as you come up, the other side of the flywheel. What you find is that it's about generating fuel. It's how you convert the 12 to 6
The six to twelve takes that and converts it into fuel. So let's go back to that. Vanguard one we were talking about earlier, you get to the, you know, you're generating returns, you grow assets under management, but then that allows you to get a condom. He's of scale assets under management. Economies of scale, become fuel to pop down the other side of the flywheel. Again, if you get the right medical professionals, that then deliver really great health outcomes for your patience and then you begin to attract folks from around the world and then that generates, you know, services that you
Get cash flow, which then you can invest as fuel back into the flywheel again. And so if you really get your flywheel right, it's like a 2-piston machine piston one. Is, what are you doing? That's useful. What are you doing? It makes a difference. What are you doing? That's contributing to your customers. What are you doing? That's you know, making the health outcomes better. It's like it's your ad in the world and the other is fuel capture, fuel generation, fuel capture to go back into the top of the flywheel and then spinning around again. And one of the things that I think is deeply
essential is when you do the fuel part, what's that about? So first of all, there's just the logic of fuel than just then accelerates the flywheel around again, right? So how do you get the fuel up? But you have to think of it as fuel. And one of the great battles that we continue to have, is the basic battle between. Are you ultimately built to last or built to flip?
If you see that the point of the flywheel is to generate resources that gets siphoned out of the flywheel. They're really, the purpose is to have that flywheel generate cash to other people to allow you to cash out to sell the company to somebody else that siphoning fuel and if that's really the point, then you ultimately are on the built. The flip side.
If the point is the built to last site, then all that is about taking as much of that fuel as possible to fuel the next clicks on the flywheel. Next clicks on the flywheel and the fundamental existential question, people talk about purpose, we discovered purpose, many years ago in our research, but this is sort of the operational version of that. Where's the fuel going? Is the truth that you want to generate a flywheel that generates fuel that you siphon off?
Or use as a flip or you generating fuel to ultimately make the flywheel bigger more powerful greater momentum doing better things in the world and lasts a really long time.
You said you're at the mid point in your career and you've spent some time, consolidating it onto a map, and I think we've covered, you know, a large part of that map on last time we were on the podcast but last one thing we didn't hit on was the Stockdale Paradox and I think that's critically important.
And to think about right now what is it and why is it
important Admiral James? Stockdale he was the highest ranking Naval officer in the Hanoi. Hilton prisoner of war camp in North Vietnam. He was shot down in the late 1960s and he spent seven years in the camp and he had leadership responsibilities as that officer in a camp.
I had the tremendous privilege to get to know Admiral Stockdale a bit when he was studying stoic philosophy across the street at the Hoover Institute and I was teaching my entrepreneurship and small business class across the street at the Stanford Business School through a student who actually written a paper on, Stockdale kind of led to me having this chance to have this really life-changing conversation without most octet. We're going to go for a walk on the Stanford campus and have lunch together and talk about whatever in preparation for that. I
Read his book in Love and War, which is alternating chapters written by himself. And his wife about his years in the camp.
And I found myself as I began to read the book felt like this sort of cold, penetrating missed was coming in. And I began to feel this encroaching sense of just despair and because what it wasn't just the horror of what he lived through. Right. I mean you can take you out and torture you at any time and they would do that and put you in leg irons, it would do that right? But what struck me as so unbelievably oppressive was
The idea that when you're going through it, you have no idea how long this is going to be or even if it will ever end. It's like, we can all endure something. If we know the end point I was only a 26-mile marathon. I've been imagine you're at Mile 20. Ever marathon in. You're really suffering but you have no idea if it's a hundred mile race, a 300-mile race or a 25 mile race, but you've no idea, that's what struck me as you see. Its sheer overwhelming ambiguity of the suffering of how of the extent of
Of the suffering. How long will it be? And then, it dawned on me, does this sort of flash of realization? Hit me. Oh my goodness. I'm feeling this. And I'm only reading about it and I know the end of the story. How did he not completely capitulate to despair? Living it and not knowing whether or when it would ever end and when I asked him, now he said, ah, I never capitulated to despair.
Because I never wavered in my faith, that not only that I would get out, but I would turn that into the defining event of my life. Then in retrospect, I would not trade. I remember exactly when we were standing, when he said that, and we walked all the way over the next, you know, while towards across campus, we didn't talk at all. I mean, it was interesting. Somebody like Admiral, Stockdale feels no need to fill the air with conversation.
And finally, as we're getting close to where we're going to have lunch, I said that will Stockdale I'm curious who didn't do as well as you who didn't make it out of strong as you and he said, oh it's easy. It was The Optimist so I'm confused. I mean you sounded that optimistic fact. I said no I was not optimistic that we explain to you what I mean by optimistic. What I mean, the optimists are the ones who said we're going to be out by Christmas and Christmas would come and it would go. And then we're going to be out by Thanksgiving and it would come and it would go and
Another Christmas would come and it would go and they suffered from a broken heart. When I learned this lesson from Admiral Stockdale, if this Duality must never confuse the need on the one hand for absolute unwavering faith that you can and you will prevail in the end with the need. On the other hand for the discipline to confront the most brutal facts.
As they actually are right now, we're not out of here by Christmas. We came to call that the Stockdale Paradox and the way it popped out as I was doing the research for good to great and one day, I just shared that story with the research team.
As I just keep thinking about this conversation I had with Admiral Stockdale and then essentially what happens is that triggered right there in the discipline thought. So he disciplined people but then in the discipline fought part of the framework, all of our leaders who led their companies, through these often very desperate times, they actually had both sides of that Stockdale Paradox. They had this unwavering faith that they would find a way to get to the other side and the discipline to confront the brutal facts as they actually are.
We're in a Stockdale time. I think we're always going to Stockdale time somewhere in our lives, but this is like a global Stockdale time and yet the idea is so Timeless that even if somebody's listening to this post covid, this is an idea to take away for life.
I as a great place to end this conversation Jim I really appreciate you taking the time and explaining it and I think it's perfect. Perfect point to leave on till next time.
Thank you again really really joyful to spend time with you.
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