Speaker A
Uh, let me just make sure my technology's working. If my slides could go up somewhere. Perfect. My microphone's on. I'm in Stockholm right today. Stockholm. All right, thanks for coming. So I live in New York, right near a fjord.
Seth Godin explores the crucial differences between leadership and management, emphasizing innovation and responsibility in changing times.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
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Key Takeaways
- Leadership is distinct from management and necessary for navigating change.
- Management is about efficiency and repetition but can fail in dynamic environments.
- Innovation and responsibility are core to leadership.
- Leaders inspire and engage, while managers command and control.
- Organizations must shift from managing to leading to thrive in modern times.
What the video covers
- Leadership and management are fundamentally different concepts with distinct roles and impacts.
- Management focuses on efficiency, repetition, and obedience, rooted in scientific management principles from Henry Ford and Frederick Taylor.
- Leadership involves innovation, taking responsibility, and guiding people through change rather than just maintaining systems.
- Management works well in stable environments but fails when rapid change or innovation is required.
- The analogy of a fjord illustrates how repeated effort carves a path, but innovation can change the course.
- Examples include bike racing aerodynamics, food business logistics in India, and orchestral conducting to highlight innovation versus routine.
- Leaders inspire and invite participation, while managers often rely on authority and top-down commands.
- The modern world demands leadership over management due to constant change and complexity.
- Meetings and organizational routines often serve to absolve responsibility rather than foster leadership.
- Taking responsibility and being willing to be wrong are essential traits of effective leadership.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
like you live near a fjord fjord is a tidal estuary saltwater going one way and the other brackish day by day year by year millennia by millennia it carves a hole through rock and that's how we got taught to run our
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Like you live near a fjord? A fjord is a tidal estuary, saltwater going one way and the other brackish. Day by day, year by year, millennia by millennia, it carves a hole through rock, and that's how we got taught to run our
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guy losing a bike race and he discovers that doing the same thing over and over again isn't really the best method and that perhaps if he tried to use aerodynamics a little differently to play by a different set
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organizations. Do it and then do it again and then do it again, and that hard work repeated over time consistently can build you a really big fjord. But I came today to talk about bike racing in Italy. Now, here's a video, actual footage of a
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next thinking that's confusing so i came to talk about the confusion i came to talk about the fact that we got a whole bunch of it wrong and that it's possible and there's an imperative that we think about it differently so
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guy losing a bike race, and he discovers that doing the same thing over and over again isn't really the best method, and that perhaps if he tried to use aerodynamics a little differently, to play by a different set
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things leadership is not management and vice versa management dates back to henry ford to scientific management to frederick taylor to the idea that if we could build a job where an obedient person can do it and create value we
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of rules, he could figure out how on the downhill he could get ahead of everybody else. And this idea that innovation might pay off now and then leads us to a whole bunch of thinking about management and what we ought to do
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i'll pay you a lot of money and that spread it spread to the idea that we could use it to make truffles and chocolates because as long as we get the system working efficiently we're fine right and it went from there to another
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next. Thinking that's confusing. So I came to talk about the confusion. I came to talk about the fact that we got a whole bunch of it wrong, and that it's possible and there's an imperative that we think about it differently. So
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one person took an innovation and then figured out how to make the system more efficient you might not notice because there's no sound but when he click when he hits when he's about to throw it he hits the
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I've only given this talk once before, so it's a little disjointed, but I hope it's going to plant some seeds under your skin and make you think about it. The first big idea is this: leadership and management are different
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all day to get from one side to the other that this idea that there's a top-down method not only works for cars it works for almost everything so this is a old slide eight years ago how far every person in the united
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things. Leadership is not management and vice versa. Management dates back to Henry Ford, to scientific management, to Frederick Taylor, to the idea that if we could build a job where an obedient person can do it and create value, we
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times to see what happens that the job of people at mcdonald's is to crank it out that cranking it out and doing what we're told again and again that works until it doesn't and when the world changes we're in trouble
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could pay people a lot. Henry Ford was able to go to the workers of Detroit and give them a 10x raise in one day because he said if you come on the assembly line and do what I tell you to,
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you used to work in newspaper publishing because you can see what happened it's not fine if you used to be a travel agent because you can see what happened it's not fine if you're one of the four million people who drive a truck in the
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I'll pay you a lot of money. And that spread. It spread to the idea that we could use it to make truffles and chocolates because as long as we get the system working efficiently, we're fine, right? And it went from there to another
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before so in the face of all of that change we're not going to be able to manage our way out of it we're gonna have to lead and leadership is not the same as management okay so the next idea
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food business. This is one of my favorites. This is somewhere in India. They didn't have enough room to put the place where the guy rolls next to the place where the guy cooks, and so this is brilliant management engineering because
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arturo toscanini you have to type in the great arturo toscanini you get all these pictures of the maestro he was the most famous and important music conductor uh of the 40s 50s in the united states he worked with disney he was the conductor
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one person took an innovation and then figured out how to make the system more efficient. You might not notice because there's no sound, but when he clicks, when he hits, when he's about to throw it, he hits the
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became the standard that's the way it's supposed to sound well my friend ben zander who is not the self-appointed great ben zander who has no fancy job who has no fancy orchestra he recorded a version of beethoven's fifth recently and it
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rolling pin, so the guy knows to get ready. Anyway, what we discovered then is that big factories are more efficient than little ones. Big organizations where people are doing what they're told work. The River Rouge plant that Ford built was so big it took
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authority the key is he's taking responsibility he's saying it's on me i did the math i did the research if you don't like it you don't have to follow but it's on me the great victor frankel said that one
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all day to get from one side to the other. That this idea that there's a top-down method not only works for cars, it works for almost everything. So this is an old slide, eight years ago, how far every person in the United
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that managers say do this because i said so and leaders are able to say let's go over there who wants to come that if you've got a special hat that says you're the boss you're probably a manager but that what leaders are able to do
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States lives from a McDonald's. Now you can imagine that now it's even more yellow and less dark because McDonald's figured out that management works. Then a McDonald's manager is not supposed to innovate, not supposed to start selling spaghetti during the slow
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actually means wrong that what it means to manage or lead or organize or do anything with lean is that you are willing to be wrong that's all it means so you know those meetings you complain about all the time the ones where
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times to see what happens. The job of people at McDonald's is to crank it out. That cranking it out and doing what we're told again and again, that works until it doesn't. And when the world changes, we're in trouble.
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take responsibility because if that's not what we're trying to do why don't we just send a memo there's nothing actually happening in the meeting other than people absolving themselves of responsibility we got taught this and a lot of other
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When the world changes, management always fails because we don't understand how to go forward. And that's fine. You say, I don't live on Easter Island. It's fine. I don't have a book depository. Well, it's not fine if, say, for example,
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we can go to the placement office and get picked by a company to do a steady job and go to those meetings and absolve ourselves of responsibility and then one day get authority so that we can be in
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you used to work in newspaper publishing because you can see what happened. It's not fine if you used to be a travel agent because you can see what happened. It's not fine if you're one of the four million people who drive a truck in the
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through the woods solving their own problems figuring out interesting stuff it's too hard to get that person to come to work for nine hours a day in a dark room doing the same thing over and over again so we invented school
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United States for a living because self-driving cars. And it's not fine if you live on the planet Earth and the weather changes because the thing is the world is changing whether you want it to or not, and it's changing faster than ever
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upset that you have to do that other stuff because we forgot to help you understand something else is going on here the alternative is to see what happens see what happens if you don't see what happens if you do when you
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before. So in the face of all of that change, we're not going to be able to manage our way out of it. We're gonna have to lead, and leadership is not the same as management. Okay, so the next idea
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would they miss you if you were gone what if you showed up as a human instead of a pawn in a giant corporate system what if you figured out how to take responsibility this is the hard part because you don't want to be wrong we
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is that responsibility and authority are different things. Managers need authority. They tell people what to do, but leaders, leaders need to take responsibility. So I'll give you a little example. If you do a Google search for the great
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learning from it taking responsibility and doing it again so i have a surprisingly large number of sports references in my talk i'm not exactly sure how they snuck in but here's one of them they play this game in the united states football this is
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Arturo Toscanini, you have to type in "the great Arturo Toscanini." You get all these pictures of the maestro. He was the most famous and important music conductor of the '40s and '50s in the United States. He worked with Disney. He was the conductor
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wrong they lose well he missed it and at the press conference afterwards bennett mooring did something stunning he said one it's my fault it's not the weather it's not the center it's nothing i just missed it and two
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of the NBC Orchestra. So when he recorded Beethoven's Fifth, he could record it like this: it's a dirge, it's slow, it's a chance for the great man to show everyone that he knows exactly what he's doing, and it
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figured out how to learn from what happens and that's what we can teach our kids and that's what we can teach our co-workers and yes that's what we can teach ourselves okay veering a little bit to the side
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became the standard. That's the way it's supposed to sound. Well, my friend Ben Zander, who is not the self-appointed great Ben Zander, who has no fancy job, who has no fancy orchestra, he recorded a version of Beethoven's Fifth recently, and it
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doesn't mean fanciness it doesn't mean expensive quality means meeting spec doing what it's supposed to do exactly what it's supposed to do that's what managers do managers make sure we meet spec and i gotta tell you quality is now the
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sounded like this. And people say, "That's wrong. It's too fast. How dare you?" Well, Ben can point out that's the way Beethoven wrote it. But the thing is the "how dare you" part is really interesting because he has no
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down that you get on an airplane and you know it's not going to crash that we've solved so much of what used to be a giant issue that we built management around you can thank this guy edwards deming
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authority. The key is he's taking responsibility. He's saying, "It's on me. I did the math. I did the research. If you don't like it, you don't have to follow, but it's on me." The great Viktor Frankl said that one
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together and the reason for that is the way you make the cars and i can help you and so ford and chrysler and gm said to him go away so he went to japan and that's why toyota cars are the best
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of the problems with the United States is that we have a Statue of Liberty but we don't have a Statue of Responsibility. And this is the reason why people have trouble stopping being managers and starting to do leadership.
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because he figured out something really important an idea that has been stolen by the lean management movement and the idea is pretty simple the way it used to work is there's a hundred parts in the bin the car's coming down the assembly line
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That managers say, "Do this because I said so," and leaders are able to say, "Let's go over there. Who wants to come?" That if you've got a special hat that says you're the boss, you're probably a manager, but what leaders are able to do,
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get rid of all the extra parts there's only one piece in the bin maybe two every time the worker picks out a piece the person from the factory next door that makes the piece runs over and puts another one in so if the piece doesn't
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what leaders are required to do, is not ask or demand authority but insist on taking responsibility. So when we talk about lean, and we've been talking about it a lot, it's sort of a failure parade today. The word lean
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it takes about a day and now the parts fit perfectly and so management got really good at this quality thing but we don't need to be really good at anymore because we have ai because we have robots because we have low paid
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actually means wrong. What it means to manage or lead or organize or do anything with lean is that you are willing to be wrong. That's all it means. So you know those meetings you complain about all the time, the ones where
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my friend tom peters coined it of course and in search of excellence excellence is this if a human who cared were here what would she do in this customer service setting in this setting where we're making a decision in
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everyone has to wear color-coded clothes and sit there pretending that they are paying attention for hours in a row? Why do we have those meetings? We have those meetings so that we can just wait out everybody else until someone else will finally
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not about management leadership is solving interesting problems seeking them out and deciding to solve them even if they're not on your agenda because managers are the ones who are slaves to their agenda an education story for you guy gets a
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take responsibility. Because if that's not what we're trying to do, why don't we just send a memo? There's nothing actually happening in the meeting other than people absolving themselves of responsibility. We got taught this and a lot of other
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racist it's completely irrelevant he says to the students give me back the textbooks and he takes them away not on his agenda not even his problem he then buys a bunch of cheap black and white cameras and sends the kids home
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things about management in school. Education is not the same as school. It used to be similar, but now they are very different, right? That we go to school to take standardized tests, to get good grades, to get into a famous college so
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stories and the kids say to him we don't know how to write and so they learn because they want to the idea of writing our own story without an agenda being the designers of what happens next not being a pawn in the system
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we can go to the placement office and get picked by a company to do a steady job and go to those meetings and absolve ourselves of responsibility and then one day get authority so that we can be in
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the nordic countries is you understand design i mean just drinking out of this glass is better than drinking out of a typical glass but to understand what it is to do design it's not about being pretty you can design software you can design
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charge. School was invented by industrialists, by the very people you work for. It was invented 100 years ago, 150 years ago because we didn't have enough compliant factory workers. It's too hard to get somebody who's grown up running
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seeking to make this journey you want the customer to go on whether the customer is a co-worker or someone who's buying from you or a student who's it for and what's it for and now that we live in a world where
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through the woods, solving their own problems, figuring out interesting stuff. It's too hard to get that person to come to work for nine hours a day in a dark room. Do
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change you seek to make the more likely it is that people will find you so this is george heilmeier he invented the lcd screen and he was the head of darpa and he put together this list years ago that i'll share with you you
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can take a quick picture if you want to look at it later here are questions you can ask yourself as a designer right we get to do it with intention we get to do it on purpose if we want to
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we can make change happen and the only reason you're not making more change happen is because you're afraid and you're afraid because you don't want to take responsibility and that can lead to writer's block writer's block of course is just a
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variation of leader's block i don't have any good ideas i don't know what to do next i don't have a voice inside of me i don't know well i got to tell you a little bit of the background of writer's block some of
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you have heard of percy shelly sort of a hack poet not very good poet who lived about 150 years ago percy shelley had a wife her name was mary she was an amazing writer mary shelley gave us frankenstein which
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lives on to this day but back to percy percy invented writer's block he wrote a poem about sometimes the fact that the muse doesn't speak to you that it's not up to the poet to write poetry it's up
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to the gods to speak to the poet and maybe he'll write some poetry this is a stupid idea and it spread from percy to other poets who were looking for a way to hide and then it's spread to
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novelists and then it's spread to surfers and everybody else in the world and this idea of writer's block is insane because plumbers don't get plumber's block you know how to talk write down what you want to say you're done there's no such
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thing as talker's block so there's no such thing as writer's block and when it comes to being a leader what you need to understand is it's not something you're born with it's something you choose to do so why
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is everyone so afraid of jeff bezos and the next thing he's going to do and the next thing he's going to do and the next thing he's going to do it's simple he doesn't have leader's block he figured out a cycle and he just does
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it over and over and over again and the same thing's true for the career of steve jobs he just decided to do it he moved forward past the fear and did it and i understand this is hard this is a real
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sign who else's risk are you supposed to play at exactly so it's the only picture of me in the presentation i'll let you guess which one's me i'm the least happy person who's ever played hockey in my life now
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in in the history of the world so i had hair the the thing is there are two things you need to know about hockey the first one is to be good at hockey you need to know what to do
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next you need to figure out where the puck is going you need to be smart i confess i was sort of good at that but the second thing much to my dad chagrin he was coach the second thing is you got
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to be willing to get hit that hockey doesn't work if every time someone else is going for the puck you run away i was that was me right the point is leadership is similar that's why i began with this idea of being wrong
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and leading of taking responsibility because you're gonna get hit if you don't care enough to get hit you can't be a leader management on the other hand has constantly drilled into your three emotions because that's how it controls
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you beginning in first grade fear shame and anger that managers use fear shame and anger to get you to do what they want you to do and we don't have to live that way anymore we've been brainwashed to live
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that way but it's not required and in fact it's essential for the future of this nation this economy this world that we figure out how to lead instead so i said brainwashed i don't take it lightly how many of you heard the story
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of icarus and daedalus everyone right you banished to a desert island by the gods to live out their lives but daedalus is an inventor he gets a bunch of feathers he fashions them into wings he puts him on the back of icarus with
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wax he says my son we're flying out of here but don't fly too high don't disobey your father do what you are told because if you fly too high the wax will melt and you will surely perish and we all know the punch line
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icarus gets uppity icarus has hubris icarus disobeys management flies too high and dies except that wasn't the story in 1700 or 1500 or 1200 or for a thousand years before that they changed it you can look it up i'm not making this
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up they changed it the original story was just like that and had one more sentence at the end but more important my son said daedalus don't fly too low because if you fly too low the water and the mist will weigh down your wings and
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you will surely perish and we are guilty of flying too low we are flying too low because we believed the managers we believe the industrialists we think it's not our turn and we are afraid we are afraid to bring our humanity and
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our excellence to work so there's this term soft skills i hate this term because it diminishes them they should be called real skills that what we need when we are hiring people isn't the fact that they can code one
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percent better or that they can lift one more pound we're looking for something else so my late friend and teacher zig ziglar in 1970 postulated something that may sound familiar zig said i want you to imagine that there's this
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computer somewhere and you could type in it all the attributes you're looking for in a new hire for a new boss for a new co-worker for someone to work for you even for a spouse what attributes you looking for if you
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typed them into this magical computer it could find somebody for you yes zig ziglar invented the internet and linkedin so let's try it if you could come up with the attributes what would you pick i'll give you a
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couple loyal fearless connected engaged yell out a couple for me attributes you're looking for in the perfect boss co-worker employee keep going creative trustworthy keep going excellent one more fantastic so i got them all right there for you
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and i'm sure we could come up with 40 more and if we came up with all of them i hope we could agree that if you could find someone like that they'd be awesome they'd be fabulous totally amazing
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so here's the question this list are those gifts attitudes or skills let's look again gifts attitudes or skills gifts lets us off the hook if you're not born with it you're out of luck attitudes are skills well it turns out most of them are
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attitudes because you can just decide which makes them a skill because it can be taught and so the question we got to ask ourselves as we go forward to build these teams as we go forward to become the leader we
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seek to be is will you decide will you put in the effort to learn these skills which are a lot easier to learn than pearl or php or apache right that going forward what's going to differentiate a worker
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we want to hire versus a robot we're going to get to work for us for free are these attitudes these soft skills they're real skills and they're a choice one of the skills we're going to need is an understanding about decisions
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because that's what leaders make what we do all day most of us don't dig ditches most of us don't organize latrine duty most of us don't peel potatoes what we do is make decisions so my friend annie duke world's greatest
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female poker player made four million dollars in one year just came out with a book next month on decision making here's the question she asks think really hard right now about a good decision you made in 2017.
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did you all make at least one good decision last year think about that decision you don't have to tell me what it is but here's the thing that decision that you made was it that you picked something that
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worked as opposed to picking something that didn't work that's what almost everyone does they don't tell me a good decision they tell me a good outcome but i didn't ask you for a good outcome i asked you for a good decision and
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outcomes and decisions are unrelated odds are good decisions lead to good outcomes but if you have a great outcome that doesn't mean it was a good decision if you buy a lottery ticket and you make 50 million dollars that's
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not a good decision that was a stupid decision only idiots buy lottery tickets you got lucky congratulations but don't tell me you made a good decision because you didn't right so that if you say well i bought bitcoin there not there you can say that
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was a good outcome but it wasn't a good decision you had no new data you just got lucky so going forward we need to learn how to get better at making actual good decisions and not getting hung up on the idea that the
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outcome is the point one thing that hangs us up is sunk costs sunk costs are our enemy because they weigh on us they keep us from innovating they keep us from going to the next thing what's the sunk cost a sunk cost is a gift from
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the you of yesterday to the you of today and you don't have to accept that gift if you don't want to so if 10 years ago you went to harvard and you have a harvard law degree which talks cost you
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a lot of money and a lot of time and now you don't want to be a lawyer anymore the fact that it cost you a lot of time and money is irrelevant that costs the old you a lot of time and
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money and the old you is giving you the degree today and if you don't want it say no thank you because its purpose is to help you get to where you want to go so these two clues outcomes
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and some costs i think help you understand that decisions are difficult and decisions are important so please don't waste your time making decisions about things that don't matter there's a big difference between a choice and a decision choices don't really matter vanilla or
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chocolate i don't know i don't need to spend a lot of decision making time on that it's a choice if it makes you happy make the choice when you come to a fork in the road you should take it for sure
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but you shouldn't get yourself all hung up on making decisions all day the decisions you make should you quit this job should you launch that product should you fire this person should you hire that person these decisions about investments of time and money and
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effort and brand and trust they matter a lot and we're ignoring them all because we're so busy deciding who to follow on facebook instead that's a choice it's not a decision okay next big idea that we miss a lot is
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quitting quitting is for winners not losers i wrote a book called the dip a bunch of years ago here's the quick summary at the beginning when we do a project there's a lot of excitement we're launching a new division we're doing
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this we're doing this everyone's on board it's january i joined the gym yay but then inevitably it starts to suck it gets worse everyone quits the gym in march right almost nobody's left by april you're pre-med you get a your parents
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take you out for dinner the first day but then you got to take organic chemistry and it's during organic chemistry that everyone quits this is the dip and if you make it through the dip at the other end then you can win
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so there are two times you should quit and there's one time you should never quit you should never quit in the dip that's for fools you should either quit before you start because you see the journey and you say
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i don't have the resources to do that or you should quit at the end because you've made it through the dip and it wasn't worth it but too often our organizations oh it's 1995. let's start an internet division
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and they do it for a couple years and then the bubble fades so they stop they quit in the dip over and over and over again that's what we do in institutions next big idea this is a marketing one which is empathy
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empathy is the path to customer traction here's the deal everyone else doesn't know what you know doesn't want what you want doesn't believe what you believe that what we get the chance to do is not say if i were you i would do
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blank because i'm not you all you have to do is imagine what that other person needs so jk rowling is not 12 years old but she figured out how to write the best-selling book series of books of all
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time for 12 year olds that john wooden most successful basketball coach of all time was only 5 10.
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and i guarantee you if he went head to head with an nba player he'd die but he understands how to coach a 20 year old or he understood the person who designed legs pantyhose was a man these are three examples
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of bringing a level of empathy to what we do to be able to finally say i know what i need you to do but you don't care about me i need to understand what you want to do i need to understand the way you see the
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world because it's up to you to decide what to do next and if i can't be in your shoes enough to give you good choices you're not going to pick me and therefore i'm unable to lead so back to this idea of mvp and creating
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innovation if failure is not an option then neither is success so what we need is a process a process not about i know the right answer it's this big arrow it's i know the right answer it's a process and the process if i turn it
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enough times will work i just don't know how that what leaders do is find processes what managers do is find roads and what you're looking for is a process that you can do over and over again and the fuel you need for that
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is possibility possibility helps us realize that we can get past i'm not responsible because if we can see in our head that it's possible it's easier to own it so the extraordinary steve wozniak will be on stage with me later
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steve saw the apple ii in his head before he knew how to make it once you can see it even if you're wrong you can embrace the loops i want to give you a specific computer example about this that i learned about four weeks ago
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this is the other father of computing bill atkinson if you use a computer with windows on it that's everybody mac or pc it exists because bill atkinson figured out in a caffeine-fueled rage how to make certain parts of the windows thing
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work here's the extraordinary story most of you know that they developed a lot of the graphical interface at a place called xerox park and that some people at apple got tours of xerox park well bill atkinson got a 90-minute tour
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of this device at xerox he went back to apple and months later he was tasked with writing the code for making windows work he remembered on his tour of xerox park that he saw two overlapping windows where the bottom window was computing
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and re-formatting behind the front window and since he had seen it he knew it could be done and weeks later he pulled it off and it worked you ready he didn't see it they couldn't do it at xerox he was
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mistaken he was wrong he thought he had seen it but he hadn't but because he thought he had seen it he knew it was possible and because it was possible he got it done so we don't need people in the nordic
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countries to be fast followers because other places are going even faster we need you to be leaders we need you to figure out what's going to happen next this is my favorite slide of all the slides i'm going to show you today this is the
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solvay conference every three years physicists come together to talk physics this is the best one 1927. there are 29 people in this photo there's albert einstein marie curie niels bohr it said that heisenberg was there but it's not
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certain but the key to the whole thing is that 17 people in this photo won the nobel prize in physics and almost all of them won it after the photo was taken you didn't win a nobel prize and then get
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invited to solve a you won the nobel prize because you got invited to solve a that you sat there and you looked to your left and you looked your angle whoa this is possible and once it's possible then you can be
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responsible and once you can be responsible then you can build a process so i'm asking for a level of mindfulness a level of mindfulness to be able to say yup that just happened not oh my god i'm going to lose my job
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that just happened that what industrialists trained us to do is want the world to be exactly one way they've hypnotized us to go to spec to figure out some level of perfect this leads to a buddhist term called
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dukkha which means the suffering the suffering that happens when the world doesn't turn out the way we hoped when our story of how the world is supposed to be doesn't match the way the world is so if you sign up for a process if you
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sign up for understanding sometimes there's going to be round holes and square pegs what should i do now you get rid of all the drama and you can go back to being a leader and as a leader what you're seeking is enrollment
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because sooner or later the people who work for you the people who follow you it's voluntary in the wizard of oz two wizard of oz references in one day in the wizard of oz when dorothy was talking to the lion and
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the tin man she didn't say i command you to come with me to oz she got volunteers people to raise their hand people to go for the ride that what we're asking you for aren't tactics tactics are easy managers
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love tactics we're asking you for goals and for strategy where there is no manual where there is no map but there is a compass and that helps a compass to help us get from here to there a compass that says when we are
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off track here is where the loop is right i can't give you a map even a fictional map because if i give you a fictional map it's not going to help your job as a leader is to draw the map
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and then to find the volunteers you need to build the tribe tribes pioneered by charlton heston 5 000 years ago are groups of people who are connected by a culture by a way of being in the world by a costume we had tribes for
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spiritual reasons and tribes for work reasons we had community tribes the red hat ladies and hundreds of cities the red hat guys who pay fifteen thousand dollars to enter the triathlon in hawaii even though they know they're gonna lose
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why do they go because the other red hat guys are there these red hat guys the white hat guys the star trek guys it's deep within us so i'm going to time you let's see if you can do better than they did which
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they did really well in oslo go okay stop that was excellent five seconds they beat you by one second in oslo but five seconds every group claps at a different rhythm you're slow clappers some groups are fast clappers how did you know
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i made no eye contact turns out people like doing what other people are doing we like being in sync so what's your job your job as a leader is simple connect us challenge us build a culture communicate to us be clear about it
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commit to where we are going you don't have to invent these people the beatles didn't invent teenagers they just showed up to lead them bob marley did not invent the rastafarians he showed up to lead them simple marketing advice people like us
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do things like this that's all that's all you need to remember who's going to decide who the people like us are what the things like this are it's up to you so every single one of you is prepared
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i'm sure of it and none of you are ready you can't be ready because ready means you're sure it's going to work and you can't be sure so i didn't show you the end of that video tape that we started with in italy
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here we go he's doing great he's in first place keep it up manage that process baby it's working super you're going to go to the what do they call that the tour de france except someone copies you and then you know what you got to do you
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got to start all over again that's what you're signing up for we have no room for sheep here you're signing up for a loop for a process for vulnerability you may remember the great movie singing in the rain this is the
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key scene gene kelly dancing up a storm what you didn't know until this moment is he had an umbrella the whole time but it's not called singing with an umbrella it's called singing in the rain the rain is the point the vulnerability is the
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point leonard bernstein famously said i don't know what the question is but the answer is yes so here we are in this world with all these rules all these expectations and now you see it now you see that there's an alternative
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some people you give them a mile and they take an inch but that's not you now that you see it you can do something about it so the last story i want to tell you actually happened to me about five years
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ago at an amazon event it was extraordinary i was with my family playwrights authors some really cool folks friends new mexico five degrees outside celsius it's freezing they give everyone a blanket we go up on this mesa they build a big fire
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as the sun is setting standing at the campfire is neil armstrong neil armstrong's standing there telling us the story of his epic journey and as he's talking the moon rises over his shoulder and he turns and he says
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i've been there ladies and gentlemen there are footprints on the moon there are footprints on the moon we sent a ship up with a computer so primitive to the one that steve wozniak invented and we got there and we came back
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50 years ago footprints on the moon so given what you've got the connection to so many people the trust the resources the fact that there's a roof over your head and a safety net given that you've got that
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and there's this generation coming after us what are you going to do for them where are you going to take them do you care enough care enough to lead us where we need to go so in a second i'm going to take your
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questions either by device or for brave people who want to speak up but i just want to leave you with this every time i come to the nordic countries i am thrilled i'm thrilled at the design i believe and love the
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weather but mostly the people the people here are so positive and are so caring and connected and what your audience is saying to you what your people are saying to you what your customers are saying to you is
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simple we need you to lead us i hope you will thank you for your attention [Applause] [Music]
Topics:Seth Godinleadershipmanagementinnovationresponsibilitybusiness leadershiporganizational changeNordic Business Forummanagement vs leadershipbusiness strategy
