December 7, 2023 • 24 mins
Frances Frei and Anne Morriss are the co-founders of a training and consulting company called The Leadership Consortium. Together they specialize in helping leaders build trust within their companies. They also co-host a podcast called Fixable, which is a TED show produced by Pushkin Industries. Also, Frances is a professor at Harvard Business School.
In today’s show, Frances and Anne share the story of their work with Uber. It started back in 2017, when a Harvard Business School alum who was working at Uber came to Frances and said the company needed her help.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. I recently talked with Francis Frye and Anne Morris.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm Francis Frye. I'm a professor at the Harvard Business School,
and I'm married to Anne. I'm Anne Morris.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I'm a company builder and a leadership coach, and the
marriage is mutual and consensual. Thank goodness, we're married to
each other.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Francis and Ann also work together. They are the co
founders of a training and consulting company called the Leadership Consortium.
They specialize in helping leaders build trust. They also co
host a podcast called Fixable. And there is this particular
project that they worked on. In fact, it's the project
that inspired them to start their company. And I found
(01:01):
this project so surprising and so illuminating that I wanted
to have them on the show to talk about it.
I'm Jacob Goldstein. This is What's your Problem? And Francis
and Ann are here today to tell the story of
their work with Uber. It starts back in twenty seventeen,
(01:22):
what was maybe the lowest point for the company. Francis
and Anne got involved when a Harvard Business School a
lum who was working at Uber came to Francis and
said the company needed her help.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
He said, will you come and meet my CEO, Travis
Kalnik And I said no. My first instinct was no,
and I was like, I read the newspapers. It sounds terrible.
And then she said, please, as a personal favor, he
is not the person that you're reading about. Will you
come and meet with him? And so it was entirely
as a favor that I flew out to meet Travis.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
And what was before you met him? What was your impression,
not having met him, of Travis Kalvinick.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
It sounded like he didn't care, was out of touch,
created a very horrific climate for women and not awesome
for others as well. So we help good people do
hard things, but we don't help bad people. And so
I was like, I'm not going to work with him,
but I'll come out and meet him as a favorite
(02:25):
to you.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
So you go fly out and what happens.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yes, it was a two hour meeting. It lasted three days,
and I found him thoughtful, rigorous, open, just I adored him.
By the end, I was down for the count.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
So that is truly surprising.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
You're not kidding because he came across very the two
things I really like are rigor and optimism and he
was super rigorous and super optimistic. And then he said,
and I need help. The last company I ran had
eight people.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
And how big is Uber at this point?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Thirteen thousand?
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Wow? Okay, and so so you're in.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Well he was like, you know, you need to come
and work here full time. And I was like, I'm
never leaving Harvard, but I'll consult for you. He's like, no, no, no,
we need all of you. So I left there and
came home and asked, you know, told Anne about it
and was like, what do you think about my taking
a leave from HBS and going and working there full time?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
And and what did you say?
Speaker 3 (03:39):
That's a ridiculous idea?
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Go on?
Speaker 3 (03:43):
I mean, I think we sat with it for a
good week or so. But where we got to is
if we can make it work at Uber, and if
we can make some of these ideas that we're kind
of batting around, if we can really test them at Uber,
and if they can work there, then they can work anywhere.
(04:04):
These kinds of issues tend to I don't think I'm
stating it that paralyze some entrepreneurs who are building great
companies and get really stuck on this stuff, and so
the opportunity to show the world not only how to
make progress on these issues, but that you can make
(04:25):
progress on these issues was also super energizing. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So okay, so you take the job and like, what
is the problem you're setting out to fix? Eduber or problems?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yeah, so two sides. The problems at any organization are
always only two things, achievement and or sentiment?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Is the business working and do people feel good about it?
Is that what that means? Yes?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And it had both problems, huh. And the sentiment was
really rough and the achievement was also they were magnificent
in some ways, but this was the era when costs
were greater than revenue.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
They were losing money.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, And that's that can seduce you into thinking all
kinds of things that are upside down are right side up.
And so that's where the strategy.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Going really fast? Right, is that complicated Silicon Valley thing
of like incredible growth, but like they're selling every dollar
for seventy five cents, and lots of people it turns out,
will buy a dollar if it costs seventy five.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Cents, yes, yeah, And I don't know if it's so complicated.
I don't think it's that complicated either. I think I
think that if you get venture capitalists that are willing
to take their money and put it in the pockets
of riders, it turns out that can last a long time.
So but that's what we went in is sort of
we when we talk about study the achievement.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Achievement problem is they're losing money. What specifically was the
sentiment problem?
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Oh goodness, the It was a culture of I'll give
you an example. If one person was going to give
someone else feedback at uber, it was an arms race
of how cutting the feedback could be. So they were mean,
they were they were Yeah, there was a but but
not with the intention of cruelty. But yes, it came
(06:15):
across as cruel it. Also, you know a lot of
people had their first job here, and so when I
got there and I would talk to women in particular,
the climate that they were enduring was something like the following.
Woman's the only woman on an engineering team. She's working
really hard. She's going to stay late to work on something.
(06:37):
She asks a colleague if he'll stay late with her,
and he'll say, yeah, as long as you sleep with me.
She reacts and he says, just kidding. You know that,
like the tyranny of just kidding. There was a lot
of just kidding there, and so no one had taught
(06:57):
anyone how to manage and how to lead. So if
I mean there were a thousand problems, literally one thousand complaints,
and more than ninety percent of them had to do
with the interaction between someone and their manager. There were
three thousand managers, so they were either three thousand bad
people or something systematically was going on that we were
(07:21):
not setting anyone up for success.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
So when do you start wearing the Uber shirt every day?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
So I got there and I was you know, Anne
and I were excited, and I was really proud of
the mission. I was proud of the work ethic. I
was proud of the intelligence of everyone, and so I
was proud to be there. And I got there and
everyone was ashamed to work there. There were all the
newspaper things like delete Uber, and there was videos on
(07:52):
the web of the CEO that weren't good, and so
people were embarrassed. They wouldn't when they got into an
Uber car, they wouldn't admit that they to the driver
they worked at Uber.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Oh so you're saying people who worked at Uber would
get into an Uber and wouldn't tell the driver they
worked at Uber because driver would think they're a bad
person for working at Uber.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yes, they would. They stopped going to parties because the
topic of conversation was always Uber and it was embarrassing
for them. So they had real shame. And so what
I said is, I'm so proud of what we're all
intending to do. I'm going to wear an uber t
shirt until everyone else regains his pride because there used
(08:33):
to be the pride in the organization.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And so you're wearing it Monday to Friday, you're wearing
it Saturday and Sunday. And tell me, tell me as
the partner of the person.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, this wasn't an ideal part of the commitment. I'm
not sure you had. I did not clear it with
this many moves ahead and a chessboard. Now, yeah, there
were a couple of awkward family moments. We went to
a fancy party where you had to dress up and
Francis woarren uber T shirt.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Underneath a jacket. But indeed I did no. I promised
to wear any like you could see it like, ah,
for sure, for sure the commitment was real.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
So okay, we've got the shirt, We've got the problems.
After the break, solving the problems and getting to the
point where Francis finally feels like she can stop wearing
an Uber shirt every single day. Now back to the show. So, okay,
(09:34):
you got your shirt, you're fired up. What's the first
sort of key thing you do to try and make
people like Uber better?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yes, So the first thing was to teach the entire
organization how to build and more importantly in their case,
rebuild trust and how to do it quickly. So in
the presence of trust, everything goes faster and higher. So
if you get trust, nobody's going to relitigate the decision afterwards,
you get to stay on one things, and in the
(10:06):
absence of trust, people are going to ask you to
compromise way more than you should otherwise. So when we're
teaching about trust, what we're doing is delivering on the
promise that you can go faster and further. So our
collaboration will be better, our innovation will be better. In
the presence of trust, everything is better. In the absence
(10:27):
of trust, it's a miserable place to be. It starts
it stops. We go one step forward, two steps back.
So trust is we find trust is the foundation for
all human progress.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
So that's the abstraction. What is a specific thing you
do to that end?
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Well, you determine is trust breaking down for one of
three reasons. Turns out there's three pillars of trust, and
in Uber's case, the reason was empathy at every turn.
So you can be awesome, but if you're not empathetic,
we're not going to trust you.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
And I mean, you say there's three pillars of trust,
I got to say, okay, if empathy is on, what
are the other two?
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Logic and authenticity.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
So if you think about it in terms of a
person's relationship to their manager, they are thinking, does what
my boss says make sense? Is it logical? Is my
boss a phony? Are they just giving me a smoke
screen that's authenticity? And does my boss care about me?
Speaker 3 (11:30):
I mean it's not exactly okay, and care about my
success in this job.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
And so the people at Uber, in your estimation, in
your finding, were logical and authentic. They just didn't care
about the people they worked with.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
And it was for the employees, it was also for
the regulators. It was also for the investors, so they are.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Caring about the regulators. Was sort of Uber's brand, right,
like that was I don't quite want to say their
secret sauce, but kind of right. Well, it was going
into cities where, you know, to be fair to Uber,
it seemed like the taxi cab cartels had the regulators
kind of in their pockets in a lot of places.
So in a way, being not empathetic to the regulators
(12:22):
there was a logic to it.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
From absolutely, and so the question is is what got
you here, what's going to take you there? And they
were magnificent at not being empathetic to the regulators. And
that's spilled over to many aspects of the organization.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
So you've identified now in more detail. Okay, this is
what's wrong. How do you fix it?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, So two things. One, we created a curriculum, So
I got friends of mine from Harvard and we created
a remote curriculum. Half of it leadership, half of its
strategy to teach people how to do things. And it
was for the three thousand managers. We thought, you know,
maybe five hundred people would show up. People took it.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Six thousand out of three thousand mandagers, so all of
the managers basically and a lot of other people. Yes, Okay,
that's interesting, Like it seems like the problem is everybody
was being mean essentially to each other. How does like
online courses actually get people to not be mean?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Like?
Speaker 1 (13:29):
It seems weird to me. Maybe I've just had bad
online courses in my work life.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Well, let me let me, let me add a little
let me add a little context, which I think is
material here into a lot of the organizations we work in.
It was very clear to the organization that plan A
wasn't working, Yeah, and that they had not collectively built
a culture where people were thriving. And so the motivation
(13:55):
for behavior change is partly why we like. We like
working with organizations that are at this point in their
life cycle there's some kind of crisis because people are
really leaning into changing and are very in touch with
the potential payoff.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Huh. Is there a particular time you remember and when
you were talking to Francis about what was happening, Like
any specific conversations come to mind.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yeah, Francis had do you remember the robot we had
experimented with an It was actually called the Wanatron. It's
difficult product name, but the Wanatron was the height of
a human sitting in a chair essentially, so it would
wheel up to the dinner table. Francis would join us
for dinner, and then we would.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
And it had a little like a like an iPad
for a face or something.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Exactly, so Francis would could could be there friends.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, it would take maybe three minutes for you and
the boys to stop interacting with like a robot, and
it was as if I was there.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Yeah. I do remember coming home, you know, a little
bit late at night, keeping the babysitter a little late,
cats away Jacob, you know, uh, and pulling into the driveway,
the wanatron was just waiting in the waiting in the window.
And but you were super excited. I mean I can
(15:17):
I can remember the image. You were super excited and
you had just finished a class and it had gone
really well, and you can tell, I mean, you can
tell in the classroom when there's an the energy of
engagement and that can get really infectious, even in these
digital classrooms. And it had worked, and you basically were like,
(15:42):
you know, honey, I think we're onto something.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
That's when I knew it was it was fixable.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
So at some point Travis Kalanick gets I don't know
if he was fired pushed out. He definitely gets pushed
out of the company.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Nine days in.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
So say that again. Nine days in, nine days after
you took the full time job, he sweet talked to
you and that he was gone.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
It wasn't his idea to leave, No, it was it
was really of a sudden and a surprise. And he
said to me, he said, you know, in my absence,
please do this act in the best because I was like,
what can I do to be helpful to you? And
he said, you can be helpful to me by doing
things in the best interest of Uber. And so that's
(16:26):
what I did.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
So let's talk about what else you did. There's there's
the course. There was one detail that I read about
that was really interesting to me, and it was about
how people behaved in meetings. Yeah, tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Yeah, And I think this was illustrative of the large
empathy wobble we would say at the organization. So in
the senior team, it was not a safe place. And
by that I mean when people were speaking, they were
like nervous and looking around and I.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Couldn't been in like c Sweitel people even in C suite.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
No, no, no, even in C suite. Then what I
found out is that they were texting one another about
the person who was speaking.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
In the room, in the room, and they all knew
that they were doing it.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
And they all knew it, which was creating, Like, if
you want to create an environment that's not safe, just
start doing that. That's that guaranteed to make it not safe.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
That it was shocking, super common you came to discover.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yeah, super common.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Wait, and super tech industry.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Everybody does that and everybody knows everybody's doing that.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
I don't think that's an unfair statement. It was at
that time, at.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
That time, it.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
That's so weird, it's so weird.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I have to say I had exactly the reaction that
you did. So set a norm because I was facilitating
the senior team. The board asked me to do it
in between the CEOs, and I said, for our meetings,
we're gonna have technology off in a way. Now we
do that in the.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Harvard classroom, meaning no phones, no laptops.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
It turned out that when you remove the distraction, we
actually got an unprecedented amount of work done. Like we did.
We I don't think Uber ever got more done than
over that summer, so it started an incredible improvement trajectory.
So I'll give you another example of something that we did.
(18:26):
They were not very good at giving each other feedback,
and that I know as an operations professor, if I
give you effective feedback, you will improve at a dramatically
improved rate. So my ability to give you feedback is
actually going to be a great, big influence on your improvement.
The way they gave feedback often made people worse. So
(18:47):
not only did it not make them better, well once
we taught them how to do it, and not only
did it help other people improve, but it improved the
culture what we did.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Is there an example of helping people give better feedback?
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, yeah, like one specific thing.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Sure. So if I want you to improve the ideal
ratio of positive reinforcement, that is, do more of this
to constructive advice, do it differently. The ideal ratio is
five to one, huh.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
So you say five good things that the person did
and one thing they could improve on, and.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
At uber it was zero to ten. And so by
doing that it unleashed all of this amazing improvement and
we were catching people doing things right in sincere and
specific ways. It can't be performed at ever you lose
that authenticity thing. So the culture improved and the improvement improved,
(19:50):
and this happens overnight.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Was there a moment when you felt like you had
done it? Was there a moment when you took off
the shirt? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
I took off the shirt nine months in.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And was there some thing? Was there? What was the
last thing? What was the thing that why didn't you
take it off eight months? What was the last thing
you had to do to take off the shirt?
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
I mean the thing that was most gratifying to you,
if I recall, is seeing uber t shirts on this
everywhere of San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Everywhere, everywhere you just walk in, and it would have
to be like a nighttime horror story to tell people
what it used to be like, because you couldn't imagine
it being like that anymore.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
You didn't need to wear the shirt anymore because everybody
else was worthing.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Everybody else did everyone. And that, by the way, is
when I stopped working their full time because I also
didn't need to be there full time anymore.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
And what'd you think when what do you think when
Francis first took off the shirt, there was Jacob.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
There was great relief.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
As her spouse, as her collaborator, which I think it
was by the end of this story that you had
sold me, and about midway through that you were really
putting the pressure on we should go and do this together.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
I was intrigued.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Tell me more about that. So you're saying this story
when Francis was working at uber was when and you
really decided that you and Francis should go work together
as consultants.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Yeah, Well, we started a company that was very informed
by this experience, that was focused on removing barriers to
impact and advancement for people, particularly in tech, and the
mission has expanded and so that and particularly.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
For women, people of color, LGBTQ, like the people for
whom the harms were most likely to be done. What
we decided to do is instead of going and helping
one company at a time, we started a company where
we could bring people in and help many companies at once,
and that exists until today, all focusing on the education part,
(22:02):
and has been enormously successful in unleashing individuals and the organizations.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
That's the end of the ads now we're going back
to the show. Let's do a lightning round.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Okay, what's one tip for teaching your kid how to fish?
Speaker 2 (22:32):
If the birds aren't there, go come back another day.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
A good one, because the birds eat the fish, and
if there's no fish, there won't be birds. Fish where
there are fish, A fisherman told male.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Fish where there are fish.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
I know you talk on your show about the lesbian
can do attitude, which is an attitude that I would
love to have. So, like, tell me one thing I
need to have the lesbian can do attitude.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Yeah, Well, it's our it's our affectionate way of saying
getting in touch with the fixer inside you.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
And I think it's.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Fundamentally about mindset. So it's getting in touch with the
agency you have to solve problems.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
That's it. That's your inner lesbian. We all have one. Yeah,
And you know this is interesting. I don't know if
I've ever taught anyone how to have can do lesbian spirit.
What I do is encourage people to surround themselves with
people that have this inner spirit. So it's quite infectious.
I think the answer, I think that's the answer, which
is be around people who in the presence of a
(23:43):
problem walk towards it. They neither freeze nor do they
walk away.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
What's the best thing about working with your spouse?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
I get to know her more every day, and I
fall in love with her more every day.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Francis Fry and Anne Morris are the co founders of
the Leadership Consortium and the host of the Fixable podcast.
If you want a chance to be on their show,
call their hotline at two three four Fixable. That's two
three four three four nine two two five three, and
you can leave a voicemail for Annon Francis with your
(24:27):
workplace problem. Today's show was produced by Edith Russolo, edited
by Karen ch Kergie, and engineered by Amanda k. Wall.
Special thanks today to Isabelle Carter, Constanza Gayardo, and Sarah Yis.
You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm.
(24:47):
I'm Jacob Goldstein and we will be back next week
with another episode of What's Your Problem.
Pushkin. I recently talked with Francis Frye and Anne Morris.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm Francis Frye. I'm a professor at the Harvard Business School,
and I'm married to Anne. I'm Anne Morris.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
I'm a company builder and a leadership coach, and the
marriage is mutual and consensual. Thank goodness, we're married to
each other.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Francis and Ann also work together. They are the co
founders of a training and consulting company called the Leadership Consortium.
They specialize in helping leaders build trust. They also co
host a podcast called Fixable. And there is this particular
project that they worked on. In fact, it's the project
that inspired them to start their company. And I found
(01:01):
this project so surprising and so illuminating that I wanted
to have them on the show to talk about it.
I'm Jacob Goldstein. This is What's your Problem? And Francis
and Ann are here today to tell the story of
their work with Uber. It starts back in twenty seventeen,
(01:22):
what was maybe the lowest point for the company. Francis
and Anne got involved when a Harvard Business School a
lum who was working at Uber came to Francis and
said the company needed her help.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
He said, will you come and meet my CEO, Travis
Kalnik And I said no. My first instinct was no,
and I was like, I read the newspapers. It sounds terrible.
And then she said, please, as a personal favor, he
is not the person that you're reading about. Will you
come and meet with him? And so it was entirely
as a favor that I flew out to meet Travis.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
And what was before you met him? What was your impression,
not having met him, of Travis Kalvinick.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
It sounded like he didn't care, was out of touch,
created a very horrific climate for women and not awesome
for others as well. So we help good people do
hard things, but we don't help bad people. And so
I was like, I'm not going to work with him,
but I'll come out and meet him as a favorite
(02:25):
to you.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
So you go fly out and what happens.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yes, it was a two hour meeting. It lasted three days,
and I found him thoughtful, rigorous, open, just I adored him.
By the end, I was down for the count.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
So that is truly surprising.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
You're not kidding because he came across very the two
things I really like are rigor and optimism and he
was super rigorous and super optimistic. And then he said,
and I need help. The last company I ran had
eight people.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
And how big is Uber at this point?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Thirteen thousand?
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Wow? Okay, and so so you're in.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Well he was like, you know, you need to come
and work here full time. And I was like, I'm
never leaving Harvard, but I'll consult for you. He's like, no, no, no,
we need all of you. So I left there and
came home and asked, you know, told Anne about it
and was like, what do you think about my taking
a leave from HBS and going and working there full time?
Speaker 1 (03:37):
And and what did you say?
Speaker 3 (03:39):
That's a ridiculous idea?
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Go on?
Speaker 3 (03:43):
I mean, I think we sat with it for a
good week or so. But where we got to is
if we can make it work at Uber, and if
we can make some of these ideas that we're kind
of batting around, if we can really test them at Uber,
and if they can work there, then they can work anywhere.
(04:04):
These kinds of issues tend to I don't think I'm
stating it that paralyze some entrepreneurs who are building great
companies and get really stuck on this stuff, and so
the opportunity to show the world not only how to
make progress on these issues, but that you can make
(04:25):
progress on these issues was also super energizing. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So okay, so you take the job and like, what
is the problem you're setting out to fix? Eduber or problems?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yeah, so two sides. The problems at any organization are
always only two things, achievement and or sentiment?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Is the business working and do people feel good about it?
Is that what that means? Yes?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And it had both problems, huh. And the sentiment was
really rough and the achievement was also they were magnificent
in some ways, but this was the era when costs
were greater than revenue.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
They were losing money.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, And that's that can seduce you into thinking all
kinds of things that are upside down are right side up.
And so that's where the strategy.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Going really fast? Right, is that complicated Silicon Valley thing
of like incredible growth, but like they're selling every dollar
for seventy five cents, and lots of people it turns out,
will buy a dollar if it costs seventy five.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Cents, yes, yeah, And I don't know if it's so complicated.
I don't think it's that complicated either. I think I
think that if you get venture capitalists that are willing
to take their money and put it in the pockets
of riders, it turns out that can last a long time.
So but that's what we went in is sort of
we when we talk about study the achievement.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Achievement problem is they're losing money. What specifically was the
sentiment problem?
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Oh goodness, the It was a culture of I'll give
you an example. If one person was going to give
someone else feedback at uber, it was an arms race
of how cutting the feedback could be. So they were mean,
they were they were Yeah, there was a but but
not with the intention of cruelty. But yes, it came
(06:15):
across as cruel it. Also, you know a lot of
people had their first job here, and so when I
got there and I would talk to women in particular,
the climate that they were enduring was something like the following.
Woman's the only woman on an engineering team. She's working
really hard. She's going to stay late to work on something.
(06:37):
She asks a colleague if he'll stay late with her,
and he'll say, yeah, as long as you sleep with me.
She reacts and he says, just kidding. You know that,
like the tyranny of just kidding. There was a lot
of just kidding there, and so no one had taught
(06:57):
anyone how to manage and how to lead. So if
I mean there were a thousand problems, literally one thousand complaints,
and more than ninety percent of them had to do
with the interaction between someone and their manager. There were
three thousand managers, so they were either three thousand bad
people or something systematically was going on that we were
(07:21):
not setting anyone up for success.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
So when do you start wearing the Uber shirt every day?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
So I got there and I was you know, Anne
and I were excited, and I was really proud of
the mission. I was proud of the work ethic. I
was proud of the intelligence of everyone, and so I
was proud to be there. And I got there and
everyone was ashamed to work there. There were all the
newspaper things like delete Uber, and there was videos on
(07:52):
the web of the CEO that weren't good, and so
people were embarrassed. They wouldn't when they got into an
Uber car, they wouldn't admit that they to the driver
they worked at Uber.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Oh so you're saying people who worked at Uber would
get into an Uber and wouldn't tell the driver they
worked at Uber because driver would think they're a bad
person for working at Uber.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yes, they would. They stopped going to parties because the
topic of conversation was always Uber and it was embarrassing
for them. So they had real shame. And so what
I said is, I'm so proud of what we're all
intending to do. I'm going to wear an uber t
shirt until everyone else regains his pride because there used
(08:33):
to be the pride in the organization.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And so you're wearing it Monday to Friday, you're wearing
it Saturday and Sunday. And tell me, tell me as
the partner of the person.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, this wasn't an ideal part of the commitment. I'm
not sure you had. I did not clear it with
this many moves ahead and a chessboard. Now, yeah, there
were a couple of awkward family moments. We went to
a fancy party where you had to dress up and
Francis woarren uber T shirt.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Underneath a jacket. But indeed I did no. I promised
to wear any like you could see it like, ah,
for sure, for sure the commitment was real.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
So okay, we've got the shirt, We've got the problems.
After the break, solving the problems and getting to the
point where Francis finally feels like she can stop wearing
an Uber shirt every single day. Now back to the show. So, okay,
(09:34):
you got your shirt, you're fired up. What's the first
sort of key thing you do to try and make
people like Uber better?
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yes, So the first thing was to teach the entire
organization how to build and more importantly in their case,
rebuild trust and how to do it quickly. So in
the presence of trust, everything goes faster and higher. So
if you get trust, nobody's going to relitigate the decision afterwards,
you get to stay on one things, and in the
(10:06):
absence of trust, people are going to ask you to
compromise way more than you should otherwise. So when we're
teaching about trust, what we're doing is delivering on the
promise that you can go faster and further. So our
collaboration will be better, our innovation will be better. In
the presence of trust, everything is better. In the absence
(10:27):
of trust, it's a miserable place to be. It starts
it stops. We go one step forward, two steps back.
So trust is we find trust is the foundation for
all human progress.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
So that's the abstraction. What is a specific thing you
do to that end?
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Well, you determine is trust breaking down for one of
three reasons. Turns out there's three pillars of trust, and
in Uber's case, the reason was empathy at every turn.
So you can be awesome, but if you're not empathetic,
we're not going to trust you.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
And I mean, you say there's three pillars of trust,
I got to say, okay, if empathy is on, what
are the other two?
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Logic and authenticity.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
So if you think about it in terms of a
person's relationship to their manager, they are thinking, does what
my boss says make sense? Is it logical? Is my
boss a phony? Are they just giving me a smoke
screen that's authenticity? And does my boss care about me?
Speaker 3 (11:30):
I mean it's not exactly okay, and care about my
success in this job.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
And so the people at Uber, in your estimation, in
your finding, were logical and authentic. They just didn't care
about the people they worked with.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
And it was for the employees, it was also for
the regulators. It was also for the investors, so they are.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Caring about the regulators. Was sort of Uber's brand, right,
like that was I don't quite want to say their
secret sauce, but kind of right. Well, it was going
into cities where, you know, to be fair to Uber,
it seemed like the taxi cab cartels had the regulators
kind of in their pockets in a lot of places.
So in a way, being not empathetic to the regulators
(12:22):
there was a logic to it.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
From absolutely, and so the question is is what got
you here, what's going to take you there? And they
were magnificent at not being empathetic to the regulators. And
that's spilled over to many aspects of the organization.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
So you've identified now in more detail. Okay, this is
what's wrong. How do you fix it?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, So two things. One, we created a curriculum, So
I got friends of mine from Harvard and we created
a remote curriculum. Half of it leadership, half of its
strategy to teach people how to do things. And it
was for the three thousand managers. We thought, you know,
maybe five hundred people would show up. People took it.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Six thousand out of three thousand mandagers, so all of
the managers basically and a lot of other people. Yes, Okay,
that's interesting, Like it seems like the problem is everybody
was being mean essentially to each other. How does like
online courses actually get people to not be mean?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Like?
Speaker 1 (13:29):
It seems weird to me. Maybe I've just had bad
online courses in my work life.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Well, let me let me, let me add a little
let me add a little context, which I think is
material here into a lot of the organizations we work in.
It was very clear to the organization that plan A
wasn't working, Yeah, and that they had not collectively built
a culture where people were thriving. And so the motivation
(13:55):
for behavior change is partly why we like. We like
working with organizations that are at this point in their
life cycle there's some kind of crisis because people are
really leaning into changing and are very in touch with
the potential payoff.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Huh. Is there a particular time you remember and when
you were talking to Francis about what was happening, Like
any specific conversations come to mind.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yeah, Francis had do you remember the robot we had
experimented with an It was actually called the Wanatron. It's
difficult product name, but the Wanatron was the height of
a human sitting in a chair essentially, so it would
wheel up to the dinner table. Francis would join us
for dinner, and then we would.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
And it had a little like a like an iPad
for a face or something.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Exactly, so Francis would could could be there friends.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, it would take maybe three minutes for you and
the boys to stop interacting with like a robot, and
it was as if I was there.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Yeah. I do remember coming home, you know, a little
bit late at night, keeping the babysitter a little late,
cats away Jacob, you know, uh, and pulling into the driveway,
the wanatron was just waiting in the waiting in the window.
And but you were super excited. I mean I can
(15:17):
I can remember the image. You were super excited and
you had just finished a class and it had gone
really well, and you can tell, I mean, you can
tell in the classroom when there's an the energy of
engagement and that can get really infectious, even in these
digital classrooms. And it had worked, and you basically were like,
(15:42):
you know, honey, I think we're onto something.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
That's when I knew it was it was fixable.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
So at some point Travis Kalanick gets I don't know
if he was fired pushed out. He definitely gets pushed
out of the company.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Nine days in.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
So say that again. Nine days in, nine days after
you took the full time job, he sweet talked to
you and that he was gone.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
It wasn't his idea to leave, No, it was it
was really of a sudden and a surprise. And he
said to me, he said, you know, in my absence,
please do this act in the best because I was like,
what can I do to be helpful to you? And
he said, you can be helpful to me by doing
things in the best interest of Uber. And so that's
(16:26):
what I did.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
So let's talk about what else you did. There's there's
the course. There was one detail that I read about
that was really interesting to me, and it was about
how people behaved in meetings. Yeah, tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Yeah, And I think this was illustrative of the large
empathy wobble we would say at the organization. So in
the senior team, it was not a safe place. And
by that I mean when people were speaking, they were
like nervous and looking around and I.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Couldn't been in like c Sweitel people even in C suite.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
No, no, no, even in C suite. Then what I
found out is that they were texting one another about
the person who was speaking.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
In the room, in the room, and they all knew
that they were doing it.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
And they all knew it, which was creating, Like, if
you want to create an environment that's not safe, just
start doing that. That's that guaranteed to make it not safe.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
That it was shocking, super common you came to discover.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yeah, super common.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Wait, and super tech industry.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Everybody does that and everybody knows everybody's doing that.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
I don't think that's an unfair statement. It was at
that time, at.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
That time, it.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
That's so weird, it's so weird.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I have to say I had exactly the reaction that
you did. So set a norm because I was facilitating
the senior team. The board asked me to do it
in between the CEOs, and I said, for our meetings,
we're gonna have technology off in a way. Now we
do that in the.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Harvard classroom, meaning no phones, no laptops.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
It turned out that when you remove the distraction, we
actually got an unprecedented amount of work done. Like we did.
We I don't think Uber ever got more done than
over that summer, so it started an incredible improvement trajectory.
So I'll give you another example of something that we did.
(18:26):
They were not very good at giving each other feedback,
and that I know as an operations professor, if I
give you effective feedback, you will improve at a dramatically
improved rate. So my ability to give you feedback is
actually going to be a great, big influence on your improvement.
The way they gave feedback often made people worse. So
(18:47):
not only did it not make them better, well once
we taught them how to do it, and not only
did it help other people improve, but it improved the
culture what we did.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Is there an example of helping people give better feedback?
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, yeah, like one specific thing.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Sure. So if I want you to improve the ideal
ratio of positive reinforcement, that is, do more of this
to constructive advice, do it differently. The ideal ratio is
five to one, huh.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
So you say five good things that the person did
and one thing they could improve on, and.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
At uber it was zero to ten. And so by
doing that it unleashed all of this amazing improvement and
we were catching people doing things right in sincere and
specific ways. It can't be performed at ever you lose
that authenticity thing. So the culture improved and the improvement improved,
(19:50):
and this happens overnight.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Was there a moment when you felt like you had
done it? Was there a moment when you took off
the shirt? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
I took off the shirt nine months in.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And was there some thing? Was there? What was the
last thing? What was the thing that why didn't you
take it off eight months? What was the last thing
you had to do to take off the shirt?
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
I mean the thing that was most gratifying to you,
if I recall, is seeing uber t shirts on this
everywhere of San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Everywhere, everywhere you just walk in, and it would have
to be like a nighttime horror story to tell people
what it used to be like, because you couldn't imagine
it being like that anymore.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
You didn't need to wear the shirt anymore because everybody
else was worthing.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Everybody else did everyone. And that, by the way, is
when I stopped working their full time because I also
didn't need to be there full time anymore.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
And what'd you think when what do you think when
Francis first took off the shirt, there was Jacob.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
There was great relief.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
As her spouse, as her collaborator, which I think it
was by the end of this story that you had
sold me, and about midway through that you were really
putting the pressure on we should go and do this together.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
I was intrigued.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Tell me more about that. So you're saying this story
when Francis was working at uber was when and you
really decided that you and Francis should go work together
as consultants.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Yeah, Well, we started a company that was very informed
by this experience, that was focused on removing barriers to
impact and advancement for people, particularly in tech, and the
mission has expanded and so that and particularly.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
For women, people of color, LGBTQ, like the people for
whom the harms were most likely to be done. What
we decided to do is instead of going and helping
one company at a time, we started a company where
we could bring people in and help many companies at once,
and that exists until today, all focusing on the education part,
(22:02):
and has been enormously successful in unleashing individuals and the organizations.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
That's the end of the ads now we're going back
to the show. Let's do a lightning round.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Okay, what's one tip for teaching your kid how to fish?
Speaker 2 (22:32):
If the birds aren't there, go come back another day.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
A good one, because the birds eat the fish, and
if there's no fish, there won't be birds. Fish where
there are fish, A fisherman told male.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Fish where there are fish.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
I know you talk on your show about the lesbian
can do attitude, which is an attitude that I would
love to have. So, like, tell me one thing I
need to have the lesbian can do attitude.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Yeah, Well, it's our it's our affectionate way of saying
getting in touch with the fixer inside you.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
And I think it's.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Fundamentally about mindset. So it's getting in touch with the
agency you have to solve problems.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
That's it. That's your inner lesbian. We all have one. Yeah,
And you know this is interesting. I don't know if
I've ever taught anyone how to have can do lesbian spirit.
What I do is encourage people to surround themselves with
people that have this inner spirit. So it's quite infectious.
I think the answer, I think that's the answer, which
is be around people who in the presence of a
(23:43):
problem walk towards it. They neither freeze nor do they
walk away.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
What's the best thing about working with your spouse?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
I get to know her more every day, and I
fall in love with her more every day.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Francis Fry and Anne Morris are the co founders of
the Leadership Consortium and the host of the Fixable podcast.
If you want a chance to be on their show,
call their hotline at two three four Fixable. That's two
three four three four nine two two five three, and
you can leave a voicemail for Annon Francis with your
(24:27):
workplace problem. Today's show was produced by Edith Russolo, edited
by Karen ch Kergie, and engineered by Amanda k. Wall.
Special thanks today to Isabelle Carter, Constanza Gayardo, and Sarah Yis.
You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm.
(24:47):
I'm Jacob Goldstein and we will be back next week
with another episode of What's Your Problem.
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