May 13, 2025 • 52 mins
Are the wrong people making the biggest decisions at your company?
Tara and Michelle talk to Jennifer Sundberg—co-founder of Board Intelligence and co-author of Collective Intelligence—about why most leadership teams are flying blind. They dive into how poorly framed questions and bloated reports sabotage decision-making, why writing is thinking, and how to fix broken systems from the inside out. With examples ranging from NASA to FTSE boardrooms, this episode is a masterclass on designing cultures where the smartest ideas, not the loudest voices, win.
In this exciting partnership series with Jaico Publishing House, we are featuring fascinating new authors and writers who captivate the audience and bring forth a revolutionary perspective to Indian literature.
‘Books and Beyond with Bound’ is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D’costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India’s finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms.
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Episode Transcript
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Tara Khandelwal (00:02):
Welcome to Books and Beyond. With bound I'm
Tara Khandelwal and I'm Michellenicotta, in this podcast, we
talk to India's finest authors
Michelle D'costa (00:11):
and uncover the stories behind the best
written book and
Tara Khandelwal (00:15):
dissect how these books shape our lives and
world views today.
Unknown (00:19):
So let's dive in. This episode is part of our brand new
series with Jaico publishinghouse. Hi everyone. Welcome back
to Books and Beyond. I'm reallyexcited about today's episode,
because you're going to beunpacking the concept of
collective intelligence, whereevery person in a team is given
(00:40):
the chance to contribute to thesuccess of the company. That
sounds really cool, right?
Because it's not just the CEOwho's behind the success, but
it's every single person. So thebook collective intelligence is
written by Jennifer Sundbergwith her long time business
partner and friend, PIPA beg SoJennifer, who's actually the co
founder of, you know, boardintelligence. It actually helps
(01:01):
boardrooms perform better. Shehas observed countless boardroom
interactions. You know, I reallywish I was a fly on the wall. So
she's a serial entrepreneur,and, you know, she's established
her business when she was in herearly 20s. So since then, I can
only imagine the kind ofexperiences she's been through.
(01:21):
And the book was such a very Iwould say the book was a really
entertaining ride.
Tara Khandelwal (01:29):
Yeah, one of the reasons I really like this
book was because it was just soentertaining. And as an
entrepreneur myself, I'm reallyinterested in these kind of
books, and it gave me a greatinsight into how different types
of businesses work, and some ofthe frameworks that, you know, I
can also apply to myprofessional life. So that was
really, really interesting forme. Yeah, and
Michelle D'costa (01:50):
actually, why I like the book Tara is because,
you know, like, it really mademe sort of think about how it's
not just the top managementthat's sort of, you know,
responsible for the success, andthe fact that everyone matters,
right? Everyone Counts. And Ithink for me, because I've
worked in different industries,you know, being an employee
sometimes you feel like you'renot seen, you're not heard, but
I like that, you know, Jenniferreally vouches for everyone to
(02:13):
be empowered, you know, and thatit's not just one person, is not
just a CEO, but it's a team, andthat ultimately, yes, the goal
is, you know, for theorganization to succeed, but how
will that happen? That will onlyhappen through every person's
contribution. So I'm reallyexcited to know more. Welcome.
Jennifer, we can't wait to getinside sort of, you know, these
companies and see how they tick.
Tara Khandelwal (02:33):
So anyone who is part of an organization, or
is it is even running anorganization, this book is for
you. It doesn't have to be thatyou know your CEO, or it's not
one of those business booksthat's very daunting. It's one
of those books that anyone canpick up. And I want to start
with just asking you, you knowabout collective intelligence,
(02:53):
can we hear about it from yourwords? And why this book? And
why now? Thank
Jennifer Sundberg (02:59):
you. Well, you're right. Most of my career
was spent advising boards at thevery top of an organization, and
I was drawn to that because Ithought that's where the power
lay, and that seemed to be theplace we could have most impact.
And it was a kind of rudeawakening that, you know,
there's truth in that, ofcourse, but that's not the whole
(03:20):
story. I was in a meeting oncewith a titan of British
Industry, a man called Sir JohnTimpson, who ran a very
successful chain of locksmithsaround the country. You'll find
one of his locksmiths on prettymuch every street corner around
the country. And he's known forbeing a pretty contrarian guy.
(03:41):
He runs a locksmith, but heemploys ex convicts, you know,
he does things his way, and hehas a board. And I managed,
probably a few years intorunning the business, managed to
get a meeting with him and anopportunity to pitch at him and
pitch the services of mybusiness, you know, help him
drive more effective board. Andhe's a polite guy. And he sat
(04:03):
there in our meeting room, bigburly man in this quite small
office that we had in the Cityof London, and he let us get to
about slide five in our pitch.
And this was a pitch that workedvery well for us, that he got us
into the boards of majorinternational investment banks
and government departments andall sorts. I was feeling pretty
confident he does get to aboutslide five, and he held up his
(04:23):
hand like he was trying to stopthe oncoming traffic. And he
said, stop. He couldn't take itanymore. And he said, I don't
need a better board. Theimportant decisions in my
business are not made in myboardroom. To me, this was
heresy. And you know, someonebuilding a business to help
boards work smarter, take betterdecisions. This was this was not
(04:46):
music to my ears. And he went onto explain the philosophy that
he subscribed to, what he calledupside down governance, and he
saw it as his job to putdecision making as close. To the
front line as possible, and hisjob in the boardroom was to make
sure that at every level therewere the skills and the
confidence to use that decisionmaking authority and use it
(05:09):
well. We didn't sell to Sir JohnTimson, but what he did was
planted a different perspectivein my mind. And it took a few
years for that, for the penny toreally drop and to really buy
into what he was saying there.
And it was only when I think westepped back and looked
ourselves at the impact we werehaving with our clients, and we
(05:29):
could see that, you know, we canimprove the productivity of the
board 100% we can double theirproductivity. But in a world
where the fast eat the slow,it's not just the big, the eat
the slow big, they eat the smallanymore. If all of the really
important decisions have toslowly work their way up to the
top, up to the boardroom, you'rejust not going to be able to
move fast enough. And we startedto realize that there was so
(05:50):
much truth in what Sir JohnTimson had explained to us that
day, and that maybe what weneeded to look at was how we
could better apply the playbookthat we built in the boardrooms
of many of the world's mostdemanding organizations, how we
could apply that playbook lowerdown through the organization,
so that everyone at every levelcould take decisions and take
them well, and that set us up onthe chain of collective
(06:11):
intelligence, which is where weare today, and the book that
we've written to share whatwe've learned, to share what
works, so that otherorganizations can also really
tap into the collective brainpower of everyone in the
organization move much fasterand take much better decisions.
Michelle D'costa (06:25):
Yeah, I totally agree. And I think this
is something I have beenthinking about, you know, more
recently, because something yousaid just now, Jennifer, that
really sort of resonated withme, as you said, you know,
sometimes all you need isconfidence to sort of even,
like, let's say, contribute anidea, right? So I have been
volunteering, sort of teachingEnglish to, you know, migrants
recently and and I realized thatthey know English, right? It's,
(06:49):
of course, like, probably, youknow, probably basic English.
But then even to sort of, let'ssay, string a sentence together,
sometimes all you need isconfidence, right? They have the
knowledge. They have everything.
But, yeah, it's a
Jennifer Sundberg (07:01):
very good point. I remember working we've
worked with organizationsbefore, who will say, you know,
we aspire to a more federated,delegated decision making model,
and then even say, you know,we've even decreed it thus, you
know, decisions are to be takenfurther down. But you know, what
keeps happening is people don'twant to the accountability that
(07:23):
comes with that is quitefrightening. It's quite scary.
And they found that, you know,that decisions keep coming up to
the top for ratification, andyou can't just delegate decision
making authority for tworeasons. One, it would be nuts.
It would be throwing caution tothe wind, you know, to throw out
(07:43):
decision making responsibilitylower down through the
organization, without firstbuilding the skills and the
capabilities to take thosedecisions Well, that would be
reckless. But also exactly toyour point, you've got to build
the confidence to then use thatauthority and use it well, and
that comes down to the habitsand the conventions that you
build into or the routines thatyou build into the organization,
(08:05):
to actually build new habits, tobuild new skills and to build
that confidence. And that's whatthe book sets out. It's really a
playbook for a whole set of newhabits and rituals that can
become a daily a daily activityin the organization. So that
what might sound verytheoretical actually becomes
very pragmatic, very practical,very quickly. I
Tara Khandelwal (08:24):
like how you showed that you know in the book
with the help of examples. Sothe book is divided into three
parts, thinking, communicationand focus. Annually show the
frameworks by which you know,organizations can foster this
collective intelligence by theseexamples. So one example in the
communication section that Ireally, really liked was the
(08:47):
example of the plane crash ofFlorida 90 plane, and it was
because of this miscommunicationthat actually the flight
crashed. So can you take us, youknow, inside what you were
trying to show with thisexample, like inside what went
wrong, and what can we learnfrom this? Sure,
Jennifer Sundberg (09:05):
so I'll dive into that. And just before I do,
I want to put that into a littlemore context. So what we point
out in this book is that if youwant to successfully tap into
the collective brain power ofthe people in your organization,
you've got to build threehabits, three independent
muscles that need to worktogether. One is critical
(09:28):
thinking. Got to help everyoneto think really deeply
analytically, to pull out signalfrom the noise, to identify
really smart solutions toproblems the critical thinking
number one. Number two,communication. It's no good
having brilliant insights,brilliant thoughts if you can't
transmit them, business is ateam sport, so you know,
(09:48):
brilliant thinking, poorlycommunicated, will wither on the
vine. So that's whycommunication matters. And
thirdly, the third muscle isfocus. If you're going to
delegate more. Freedom andresponsibility, you've got to
make sure that all of that greatthinking power is channeled in
the same direction, in the rightdirection, otherwise you'll just
(10:09):
be running off in 100directions, and all of the Great
thinking power will be pullingagainst each other. So critical
thinking, communication andfocus and right communication is
is critical, and businesses arenot known for doing it well, I
think in poor communication inlarge companies is called the
silent killer of big business.
One of the things as a somebodywho's specialized in working
(10:32):
with boards over the years, wehad about 5000 board clients as
at the end of last year, verylarge, mostly large
multinationals, but also somesmaller charities, schools,
hospitals, the full gamut,university across all
boardrooms, the state ofinformation and reporting is
pretty poor, and you see atclose quarters just how hard it
is to communicate clearly inbusiness, just how badly it's
(10:56):
done. And a lot of the reasonfor that goes back to our formal
education, right? An awful lotof what we're taught at school
and university, the tenets of socalled good communication, are
wrong. They don't work inbusiness. In fact, they do more
harm than good. So a lot of whatwe send out in the book, and a
lot of what I've spent the last20 years doing as a professional
(11:16):
is helping to helping executivesto unlearn what they were taught
and to consign to the dustbinthe so called tenets of good
communication and replace themwith five new principles that
work serious subjects demandformal writing generally. What
we think, right? You know, ifyou're writing for an audience
like the board, I'd better makesure my tone of voice is polite
(11:40):
and has sort of a sort of groutas to it, and we tend to adopt
this very formal, dry tone ofvoice. Well, put that in a bin.
Write like a human no matterwhat you're writing about. So
when we try to write in a formaltone of voice, we tend to use
very long words, very longsentences. But study after study
from Princeton University toJapanese universities, study
(12:04):
after study globally finds thatwhen we use a long word or a
long sentence where a short onewould have done makes us sound
stupid, it's also really hard todigest. And the people trying to
consume this stuff, they're onlyhuman, but perhaps more
importantly, when you adopt avery formal tone of voice, you
often find yourself using thepassive tense you know, sales
(12:26):
targets were missed, rather thanwe missed our sales targets. And
when you do that and you adoptthat tone of voice, it puts a
distance between you and yourmessage, a distance is the
opposite of accountability. Isthe opposite of ownership of the
message, and what people arelooking for is leadership.
Tara Khandelwal (12:43):
Yeah, I really like the chapter on writing
because, you know, we arewriters ourselves. And I was
very interested in all theexamples that you gave about how
companies can adopt a narrativedriven business and adopt a
writing culture. And one of theexamples that you gave, which I
really liked about, you know, bea human was example of Joey and
friends, and when he has towrite a letter for Monica and
(13:06):
Chandler, who own a doctor baby,and he's a character reference,
and he wants to sound reallysmart, so he ends up using a
thesaurus and the letter doesn'tmake any sense, versus, if he
was just sort of heartfelt anduse his own words, would convey
so much more than What you said,right when, when we sit and
write sometimes, and I we knowthis because we're writers and
editors, and when we work withpeople, often times, you know,
(13:30):
they think the first draftshould be the last draft, and
that hinders a lot of thewriting process. Versus I always
say, Okay, explain it to me likea five year old. Explain it to
me like, What exactly are youtrying to say? Just forget about
whoever was reading this, whatexactly you're trying to
communicate. And then once wehave those ideas, and then when
we have all that, then we will,sort of, you know, put it into a
structure and all of thosethings. But I think that gets
(13:53):
confused. And I really like theway that you portray that, no
Jennifer Sundberg (13:56):
Exactly. And I think until you can
communicate it to a five yearold, or let's say, a 10 year
old, maybe until you cancommunicate it so clearly that
they could understand you don'treally understand yourself what
you're trying to say. And Ithink once it's understood that
that's how it comes across, itgives people, again, the
confidence to speak plainly andclearly and to write like a
human
Tara Khandelwal (14:16):
Yeah, I think I'm a big proponent of saying
complex things in simplelanguage. And yeah, we work on a
lot of books also thatdemystify, you know, these
concepts for a general audience.
But coming back to the examples,you know, I really, really loved
all of the examples in the book.
I think there were, you know,you have so much theory of so
much research and theseframeworks, but they came alive
(14:39):
to me because of the very reallife examples that you gave. So,
yeah, so for example, Imentioned the flight crash one.
And you know how you actuallyshowed us what went on inside
that cockpit and howmiscommunication, and if they
just communicated a differentway, and they just spoken
plainly, like you said that,hey, this is a problem, they
might have a voted it. Sort ofgoing out in circles. And then
(15:02):
another example that I reallylike, which was in the thinking
section, was how Gatorade cameto be, and it's because the
founder asked the rightquestions, you know? So, yes.
Jennifer Sundberg (15:12):
So the American football coach was
looking out at his footballplayers, and he asked himself
the question, How come theydon't urinate more? Isn't it
kind of weird that in the courseof an American football match,
which is quite a few hours,nobody needs to take a toilet
break. Even in the what do youcall it intermission? I got the
word right in the book, and Ican't remember what you call it
(15:32):
half time. Even at half time,the locker rooms would go
strangely unused. And he justthought this was kind of weird.
But instead of leaving it there,he really pursued that question
doggedly, and his curiosityabout this question took him
into all sorts of biochemistryand led to the discovery of
electrolytes and therelationship between
(15:54):
electrolytes and performance onthe pitch. And he created his
drink in mixture of lemons andsugars and salts and all sorts,
and experimented on the team andsaw that this concoction of his,
that his wife helped him flavor,that this mixture seemed to have
a real direct impact on theperformance of the players. And
(16:14):
this indeed was the origins ofthe Gatorade story, which became
a multi billion dollar drinkscompany, and the beginnings of a
multi billion dollar energydrinks or sports energy drinks
market. But it all began withthe humble question, because at
the heart of critical thinkingis questioning. Questions are
the catalyst of criticalthinking. They're the spark and
(16:35):
the fuel of creativityinnovation, and most of us lose
the habit right through ourschool and university careers
and life beyond the emphasis isbased on knowing the right
answers to the questions thatother people have presented, and
not just not any old answer, butspecifically the answer in the
back of the examiner's booklet.
Right go find a scope forcreativity or originality in
(16:58):
that so you know, we have ournatural questioning instincts
that we're born with. We havethem pretty much beaten out of
us as we work our way throughour formal education. By the
time we reach the workplace,we've all but forgotten how to
do it. And so a lot of what thebook sets out is how to rebuild
this questioning, how to get ourquestioning mojo back and and
(17:22):
how to help everyone in yourorganization to do that too?
Yeah,
Michelle D'costa (17:28):
I just it, you know, sort of what you mentioned
about, sort of how, you know, Ithink as kids, questioning comes
very naturally to us. You don't,you know, there's no
embarrassment, there's nothing.
And even if you ask like, a 50questions, you know, sort of
like, you know, adults orparents would ever be tired and
they would just, like, answeryour questions. But I think as
you grow up, and especially youknow, when you're sort of, you
know, when you're in school, youknow, most of the time, rote
(17:48):
learning is sort of encouraged,you know, like, don't ask any
questions, just sort of learnthings by heart. And it's just,
I think you're right. I thinkit's often, it's we're sort of
conditioned to not questionanything. And I think that's the
reason why I really loved thatchapter. So in the thinking
section, I think questions was,you know, this chapter, I sort
of, I think I read it threetimes. I loved it, and I and
sort of my favorite example wasabout the architect, Gary,
Jennifer Sundberg (18:14):
yeah, and he asked the question, why didn't
he like? Why exactly,
Michelle D'costa (18:18):
exactly, and, and I was just thinking, how
many of us would do that? So hewas actually commissioned to
sort of transform the sort ofwarehouse into a modern art
gallery in Spain, right? Andlet's say someone's given this
huge project that will sort of,I would say, completely
overturn, you know, an economy.
It will change the way peoplelook at a country and all of
that with such hugeresponsibility, right? I think
(18:38):
they would just do that, but he,I would say, ask the right
question, and and he was able tosort of, you know, do it in just
in less than four years, and hewas even well under the budget.
And I think that was so cool.
And you have sort of comparedthat with the Sydney Opera
House, which obviously is morefamous, and, you know, everyone
(19:00):
talks about it, but that wasactually created nine years
later, and it went over thebudget like 15 times. So that
really surprised me. And, and Ithink this is sort of like a
lesson in project management,you know, it's not just the
architecture, it's not just thecreativity or the design, but
more like, I think, Gary'sproject management skills. So I
was very curious to sort of askyou about why you chose to, you
(19:22):
know, include this example, andwhy did it sort of appeal to
you? Yeah,
Jennifer Sundberg (19:26):
I think it probably appealed to me because
of two things, firstly, thesimplicity of the question. And,
you know, I think there's amistake that I certainly made
myself with of thinking thatthere's something clever about
the clever question. You know,when actually, there's more
power, usually, in the simplequestions. You know, the how and
(19:47):
why questions, or the So whatquestions, and helping, again,
to build confidence in askingthose simple questions and
habits. You know, quite often,you might think, Well, I'm not
going to ask such an old.
Obvious question is that, butactually, that's often where the
real the real discoveries getmade. How, why? So what? Now,
what questions like that. Sohave the confidence of your
(20:10):
convictions to ask those basicquestions, because they will
often reveal huge truths thatwere otherwise going to go
untapped, just as Frank Gehrydiscovered when he asked why
they really wanted to build thisnew this new institution, and
uncovering the real reasonhelped him to see that the brief
he'd been given was wrong. Theother thing that I think
(20:32):
appealed to me about the FrankGehry example is, I think you
often hear that there's thisidea of analysis paralysis, and
you don't want to overthink.
You've got to, in fact, youknow, if you would start to get
everybody thinking all the time,you know who you need to create
a bias for action, right? Andyou want to get some stuff done.
(20:53):
Don't sit in your ivory towerall day scratching your chin. Go
and do something right? And, ofcourse, that's not that's not
daft. But what the Frank Gehryexample illustrates is the cost
of getting out there andstarting to execute before
you've thought your planthrough. And actually a lot more
(21:14):
time can be wasted frommissteps, needless missteps, but
if you'd spent a little bit moretime thinking and planning you
could have prevented so I guess,as with most things in life, any
position taken to the extremetends to be wrong. You know, of
course, there's a point ofparalysis, analysis paralysis.
But of course, you know thatbias for action can lead you to
(21:36):
trip over yourself when youdidn't need to. And generally in
business, I would say the buyerfor action brigade have probably
been, have probably won out, andthere's a lot of scope for more
thinking to be done,particularly at all levels. As I
say, the old model of, you know,just get the person at the top
to do the thinking, andeverybody else's job is just to
execute. I think that's that mayhave bred that idea that there
(21:58):
isn't a need for greater, youknow, time invested in more more
thinking at every level.
Tara Khandelwal (22:05):
Yeah, I think, I think that resonates a lot
with me, because I think there'sa fine balance, right? You want
to act. You don't want to loseout, but at the same time you're
absolutely right. Like I'veexperienced it personally in my
own business, the cost of notthinking before acting is a lot.
But then, if you don't act, thenagain, you're moving very
slowly. You need to move at acertain speed.
Jennifer Sundberg (22:29):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No. It's because
I remember an old, an old clientof ours who was an ex Army
General, and he used to say, youknow, if you're crossing a bog
and you discover that you knowyou're just you find you're just
you're fine, you're surprised,you're on a bog. Don't stop.
Analyze the situation. You willsink, for certain if you're
running across a bog. Keepmoving, right? So there is a
(22:51):
time and a place, of course, butaction. But equally, the Sydney
Opera House example, apparentlyit was little more than a doodle
when they broke ground. Youknow, they were so keen to show
progress and to, you know, toevidence that stuff was
happening, that they gotcracking before they had
anything like the level ofdetailed plans in place to give
(23:13):
themselves a fighting chance ofactually delivering that project
on time and on
Tara Khandelwal (23:16):
budget. Yeah, so it's all about that balance.
It's also knowing when enough isenough. It's like, oh, when
you've not done a little less.
And having that framework andintuition, another thing I
really liked about the book is,again, you know, as an
entrepreneur, I'm constantlyhiring people and training them,
right? And oftentimes, you know,yeah, the decision making does
always like, come after the top,where it feels like, okay, you
(23:39):
know me and like Michelle and myother colleague, we are the one
sort of like making all of thedecisions and sort of driving
the entire strategy, whereaswe'd want everybody else to be
involved as well. So I thinkthis framework is really
interesting to inculcate thatand everything, because I think
it's a universal problem, nomatter how big or small the
organization is. So that'sanother thing that really
(24:01):
resonated with me in terms ofthe examples. As I mentioned, we
really loved the example, so Iwanted to actually know what was
your process of gathering theseexamples, and which is what that
one example that really standsout to you the most? Thank you.
Jennifer Sundberg (24:18):
So yes, it was. It was really hard trying
to so I have a terrible memoryat the best of times. You know,
I can hardly remember what I didlast weekend, so trying to delve
back through 20 years of workingwith clients and boardrooms.
Yeah, I wasn't naturally suitedto it, and I had to. It took me
quite a long time to to dig outmemories and the far recesses of
(24:41):
my mind and and to organize it,but it was also a lot of fun,
and, and, and I think it for me,I actually very much enjoyed the
process of just as we say in thebook, it's only when you write
something down that you veryoften discover whether it stands
up to inspection or. Doesn'tand, you know, I'd be pretty
(25:02):
clear what I wanted to say. Idraft it. I'd read it, and it
was gobbledygook, and, you know,and I'd have to start again. And
so I found the process ofwriting the book very cathartic.
By the time I'd finished it, Ifelt clear what I was trying to
say, but I thought I knew at thestart that I really didn't know
until I'd gone through themental exercise and the rigor of
(25:24):
trying and failing andeventually figuring it out. So
so that was rewarding, but yeah,trying to actually recall and
hunt down the stories. In fact,I remember one of the stories
that they tell is about a clientof ours who used to run a part
of the immigration service andin the UK, and I remembered him
(25:46):
telling me a story in a meetingroom years ago about his
experience going up against theselectivity hearing who wanted
to take him to task in a verypublic, you know, kangaroo court
type exercise to hammer him overthe extraordinary waiting lists
that and backlog for immigrationapplications. And he described
that experience to me, and youknow about what would have you
(26:09):
know how all the questions wereused as a they were used as a
weapon, rather than as a meansto understand and uncover and
explore and and how, when youuse weapons in that way, trying
to catch you out. You canactually, if you're a pretty
skilled opponent, you can buythem back again. You know, you
can duck and dive and No, nogreater revelations or truths is
(26:32):
uncovered in that process,because it's a misuse and abuse
of questions. I remembered himtelling me that story, but I
needed to get the details right,and so it was quite nice having
an excuse. To call people up andtake that for lunch and have a
chat, to dive back into thestories that had intrigued me.
And gives you license to becurious, and it gives you
license to be, you know, tolearn about other people's
(26:56):
stories in the under the bannerof writing a book, right? So,
no, it was
Tara Khandelwal (27:00):
fun. And what about like, the second example?
So there's a lot of, like,primary research that, you know,
comes beyond clients, but then,for example, like the Gatorade
example, sort of like processaround finding about those,
Jennifer Sundberg (27:14):
yeah, I suppose it's a combination of
mainly talking to people.
Actually, I'm probably one ofthose people that I think
through talking and throughwriting. So for me, it is a
fairly collaborative process.
And some of them were storiesthat I'd heard over the years
that I hang somewhere in theback of my mind. And otherwise
it was talking to during theperiod where we were thinking
about writing the book, and thenwhen we were writing it, you
(27:35):
know, it becomes the thing onyour mind, and you chat about
it. And it's that funny thing,when you're, you know, when
you're looking for something,you see it everywhere, don't
you? It's just like when youhear a new word, you learn a new
word, suddenly you find it popsup everywhere. And probably it
was there before, but youweren't looking for it, so you
didn't see it. And similar,similar thing, a sort of recency
(27:56):
bias, isn't it? So, yeah, Ithink I was just on the lookout
to the stories, and then youfind they're everywhere. And I
guess if what you're saying addsa truth to it, then you will
find it played out all over theplace. Yeah,
Michelle D'costa (28:10):
I think, I think your process sounds
really, really cool. Um, andlike you said, you know earlier,
when I used to sort of learn anew word and I would notice it
everywhere, honestly, I thoughtit was just me. It's good to
know that it happens witheveryone. But you know, what I'm
also curious about is, I reallyloved how, you know, you sort of
gathered this, you know,experience over all these years,
and it's, you know, that you goback interview them and all of
(28:31):
that. So I'm very curious about,how did you sort of, you know,
reach the point of, let's say,publication, or even decide that
you want to publish in India,and that too, with djco, and
sort of, you know, what has thereaction been like, like Tara,
and I really, really love thebook. And we were actually
discussing about, you know, howsort of this could really apply
to, like, Indian companies andIndian boardrooms as well. But
we wanted to know, sort of, whydid you pick India?
Jennifer Sundberg (28:55):
Thank you.
Well, honest truth, and you guysapproached us, and we were
thrilled. So we, we publishedthe book originally in the UK
and in the US, where we havemost of our experience. And Jaco
approached us, and when we whenwe learned more about your
organization, your extraordinaryhistory and heritage, and the
fabulous authors that you'vepublished, we felt ridiculously
(29:17):
lucky and and utterly thrilledto be associated with you and to
have the opportunity to reach anew audience, a huge audience.
And there is nothing parochialabout our message. If anything,
you know, we draw an awful loton ancient examples of you know,
from the ancient philosophers,and what I think we're
(29:41):
uncovering in this book arefundamental human truths around
human behavior that transcendsgeography, it transcends
cultures and nation states andno matter where in the world we
are. Well, high qualitythinking, well, communicated and
focused on the things thatmatter most. Again, it make a
(30:03):
difference. But I would bethrilled to hear from your
readers what the culturalnuances are that you would add
to this book. You know, wherewould you feel it would fit
best, and where would you findit would not, you know, I think
it'd be really interesting tolearn more about that.
Tara Khandelwal (30:21):
Yeah, actually, that would be very interesting,
because there's a lot of talkright now in India about, you
know, work life balance, howcompanies operate. This is full
controversy right now about alot of senior leaders saying you
have to work 70 hours a week, 90hours a week. So yeah, I would
love to know about more of yourreaders reactions, if you have
(30:42):
them, yeah,
Jennifer Sundberg (30:43):
I think when it comes to bigger social
themes, I think the other fieldI'm really interested in at the
moment is around the way that wehelp the next generation to
think critically, Given the veryadverse conditions that I think
they're walking into, by whichI'm talking about social media,
(31:06):
misinformation, disinformation,some pretty autocratic regimes
in the world. I mean, we'll tryand keep this out of politics,
right, but I think we are allone of the things that you know
my corporate life was basedaround, was that we are only as
good as the informationavailable to us, right? No
(31:28):
matter how smart we are. Youknow, if we're presented with
poor quality information, we'lltake poor quality decisions. But
there is one defense againstthat, which is, I suppose, a
healthy cynicism and the abilityto ask the right questions and
questioning, building thatquestioning muscle back into
kids, and making sure that, youknow, unlike, I think my
(31:49):
experience, it's not beaten outof them. I think that's probably
the only defense I can think ofagainst a pretty dystopian
future in which next generationinhabit a world that is shaped
for them by social media or bypolitical the political elite
(32:09):
and the message that they wantto communicate. So I think it
really matters. I think the waythat we I think if you know, if
I, if I could wave a magic wandand if I could engage in a
bigger social discourse rightnow, beyond corporate boardrooms
and corporate decision making,it would be that it would be
looking at how we help childrento hold on to and and really
(32:30):
nurture that decision making,that that, sorry, that
questioning instinct thatthey're given at birth. No,
definitely.
Tara Khandelwal (32:37):
I think nurturing that questioning
instinct is so important, andI've seen it in my own
organization. You know, the morethat people question, the more
that I don't want you know themto say that, Oh, you know you
are right all the time, becauseI don't have all the answers.
Most of them, I don't even know.
You know what's happening, whatI'm doing. It's all sort of like
trial and error, or you'retrying out different things, you
know, new products, whatever.
(33:00):
And it's really helpful whenpeople are on that journey with
you. And you know, can havethose critical thinking skills,
it actually helps theorganization way better. And
what I really liked, and yousaid, you know, it's universal.
And so some of the psychologicalframeworks that you explain were
very interesting. And I've, I'ma student of psychology as well.
So you explain things like bias,group thing, all of these things
(33:23):
that can hamper collectiveintelligence. And one thing that
I know, which I learned fromthis book, is something called
belief perseverance, which Ihadn't heard of before. And you
said that you give the exampleof Bernie Madoff, who we all
know is running huge Ponzischeme. And you said that you
know somebody even showed proofof it to the SEC, but because he
(33:43):
was so big in the field, andbecause everybody believed that
he's in a more investmentmanager, all of that proof fell
to death yours. And I think thatwas a very interesting sort of
fact. You asked
Jennifer Sundberg (33:56):
me what was my favorite story in the book,
and it probably would be thatone, which is ironic, because so
what the book sets out is aplaybook that I hope is is
persuasive. It's you know, thisplaybook that you know, if you
can help everybody think morecritically, communicate more
clearly, and focus it where itmatters most, that you will
achieve a lot, that you willmove mountains, that you will be
wildly, wildly successful as acollective. But then the
(34:21):
inconvenient truth is, you lookthrough history, and history is
peppered with examples where allthose things were present and
yet good things did not follow.
And how can that be right? Andit's, it's either just deeply
inconvenient or there's a lessonin it. And I, I think it's the
latter. So the story that wetell in the book is, as you say,
(34:42):
it's all about Harry Markopolos,who was a fund manager. He was
being challenged by his bossesto up his game. And they were
pointing at this competitor oftheirs, Bernie Madoff, and
saying, you know, can't you,can't you deliver results a bit
more like him? And you know,he's really nailing it. I. Think
we need a bit of that. Go findout what he's up to, and let's,
let's copy it. So he did. SoHarry took his instructions and
(35:05):
looked closer at what was goingon with this fund run by this
guy, Bernie Madoff. And he says,you know, it took me four
minutes to figure out that thiswas a fraud. He said it took me
another four hours tomathematically prove it was a
fraud, and he wrote a letter tothe SEC, as you said, he titled
this letter, the world's largesthedge fund is a fraud. So we've
(35:26):
got, you know, really clearcommunication. Tick got really
good critical thinking. Tick,it's focused on something that
really matters. Did it work? No,it didn't work, because it turns
out that, as you say, you knowthe SEC, they couldn't hear it.
They couldn't imagine thatBernie Madoff, who was one of
(35:48):
them, who's part of theestablishment, they couldn't
imagine the possibility that hecould be a person being
described in this letter. And soI think what this reveals is
that great thinking, wellcommunicated. That lands on deaf
ears. Won't achieve anything.
The other side have to belistening. And the point of
(36:10):
that, and I think the usefullesson in that, is that you
can't apply these principles inpockets. You can't I'm not
saying you shouldn't try, butyou know, if one person decides
to try adopting all of theprinciples set out in the book.
I'm not going to suggest itwon't be helpful, but hopefully
would be, but it won't beanything like as helpful as if
(36:30):
you can create the culture in anorganization or a team where
everybody is engaged in the samelearning journey of critical
thinking, communication andfocus, and everybody is open to
the principle of questioning,deep questioning and challenge,
and only then do you have theculture and the environment
(36:50):
around you where others are opento hearing the value that you
can then bring to the table. SoI suppose it's because back also
to my point about education andthe next generation. This stuff
matters at scale. It mattersindividually. But it really is
about getting everybody to dothis together, to create both an
organization that can moveforward together, as much as as
(37:14):
much as a community and anation.
Tara Khandelwal (37:18):
Yeah, and that, that brings me to the point
about focus, which is your lastsection in the book. And you
know, you've already explainedhow that's so important. So how
does it actually happen? Becausewe've spoken about empowering
people to think communication.
You know, everybody's thinkingit's, it's a recipe for chaos,
right?
Jennifer Sundberg (37:35):
So how does it, yeah, yeah. And it also
sounds like a bit of acontradiction in terms, so we're
going to try, you know, we'regoing to tell everyone to think
more, and then we're going totell them what to think about
that. You know, it kind of feelslike we're giving freedom with
one hand and taking it away withthe other, but it's really
important. So if I Yeah, sothere's a Roman military history
(37:55):
example that we share. The quotefrom a man called vegetius. He
was a Roman military historian,and He is quoted as saying, The
Romans were poorer, weaker,shorter and less intellectually
astute than their neighbors, andyet they conquered all of them.
They conquered all of thembecause they were organized.
(38:18):
They were focused. They werealigned. So focus alignment, the
ability to organize around acommon destination, it's a
superpower, but how do you doit? Was your question. How do
you get everyone to think in ain a focused manner, without
clipping the wings that requirethat are required for the
thinking to be done? The personwho asks the questions controls
(38:41):
the conversation. So one of theways that you can do it in a
large organization is for someof the questions that permeate
an organization to be top down.
The answers are not given, butthe questions are I'm going to
give you a very concreteexample. One of our clients was
a FTSE 100 airline, and thechief exec had just taken it on,
and this was an airline that hadbeen very successful, but was
(39:02):
not currently successful. Theywere still in the FTSE 100, but
only just, and they had been runon a low cost, budget model, and
cost had been chipped away, butthe competitors had started to
do the same thing, and the edgethat they'd had had been eroded,
and it was now just tablestakes. Everyone ran low cost.
Airlines were very common now,and they chopped away so much
(39:25):
cost already that there reallywas nothing left to chop. So the
new chief exec actually usuallyhad to do something different.
So up until that point, the veryclear focus of the organization
had been, had been profit,first, then customers, and then
the people, the team, and shewanted to flip that round,
because what she realized is sheneeded to transform the customer
experience. The customerexperience had been so cost
(39:47):
driven that it had become prettyunpleasant, and if your
customers start to hate you,it's going to be hard to build a
successful business. So she hadto win back the love of her
customers, and to do that, sherealized that what she needed
to. Put at the top was not thecustomer, but the team, the
people. You can't have amiserable, demoralized team
delight customers. It's notgoing to work. So she flipped a
model around, and instead ofprofit, customer people, she
(40:09):
went people, customer, profitpeople. And the well being,
happiness and the engagementlevels of her team would be
preeminent. So number one, mostimportant thing that would, in
turn, drive great customerexperience, and that, in turn
she believed, and she was goingto, she was willing to punt it.
This would drive the profits.
But she needed to change theconversation quite radically.
(40:31):
She needed to shift the focus. Imean, it's hard enough to
achieve focus. It's a whollydifferent challenge and even
bigger one, to shift focus of alarge multinational, right? But
she did it by changing theconversation in her
organization, by stipulating, bydictating a question that was to
become the question thateveryone would grapple with in
every meeting. You can't be inevery meeting, controlling every
(40:55):
conversation all the time as achief exec, no matter how hard
you work, no matter how manyhours, you can't be everywhere
all at once, but you can requirea few things, and this was one
thing she she mandated thequestion of, how do our people
feel, and what can we do tobetter support and enable our
people? Those two questionsbecame evergreen in every
meeting, every board meeting,every leadership team meeting,
(41:15):
you know, every every sitemeeting, those two questions. So
she was encouraging thinking,because she wasn't setting out
the answers. It was up toeverybody in the team to engage
with those questions, thinkdeeply about them, but she had
the right to insist that thosequestions be taken very
seriously, and that created thefocus, and that drove the
results. And she had six yearsof continued growth, and she
(41:37):
doubled the market share of theorganization in that time.
Tara Khandelwal (41:39):
Wow, that's a wonderful example. And I think,
yeah, I'm learning a lot, and Ilearned a lot through the book,
and a lot, you know, in thisconversation as well, especially
Michelle D'costa (41:50):
because you mentioned the team, how sort of
the team took precedence, right?
Like, how the people matter. Ithink one example that really
comes to mind, which I really,really like, because I think
you've covered many differentindustries. Like you've covered
sports, you've coveredhospitality. So the one that I
really like is, you know, youshare this anecdote about
working in the kitchen, and how,sort of, you know, you wanted to
(42:10):
sort of reduce wastage, right? Ithink you've adopted the Kaizen
basis, sort of, you know, whichis a, you know, Toyota way. And
I really liked how, sort of, youknow, every person in the
kitchen was, sort of like, youknow, asked to contribute ideas.
So, for example, the kitchenhand. So the kitchen hand is a
person who, sort of, you know,washes the dishes, creates prep
work, and does all of that. AndI think when the kitchen hand
(42:33):
suggested that, you know, if youactually ordered frozen salmon
impacts of 10 instead of 100,you wouldn't be throwing out
around 50 or 60 salmon, youknow, on the days where you just
needed to defrost a few. Andthat, that's actually a
brilliant idea. And sort of,like another person in the
kitchen, also sort ofrecommended, you know, moving
the cheese shelf away from thewall. Because what used to
(42:55):
happen is they would alwaysreach out for the cheese, which
is like, obviously easier toreach out to, and the ones
behind would go rotten. And thenhe's like, Yeah, but it's just
because the shelf is placed thatway. Why don't you just move the
shelf away from the wall, andthen you can reach out to the
cheese from both the sides. Ithought that was, like, really
cool. And And how often do youactually, you know, sort of
listen to these ideas, or howoften do you sort of think that
(43:17):
they would add value? But it'sreally cool, and I really love
that you sort of highlightedthat.
Jennifer Sundberg (43:24):
And I think it's a I think those examples
illustrate the point that, youknow, no matter how smart the
person at the top of theorganization is or the board,
they don't know everything. Theydon't have all the answers, they
don't have all the information,and they never can. Back to what
Sir John Timson said, you know,the people who are going to
determine the fate of myorganization, they're the people
(43:45):
on the front line dealing withour customers every day, and my
job is to empower them to makeabsolute best use of all of
those extraordinary data pointsthat they're getting that I'm
never going to get, and givingthem the skills and the
authority to respond to theinformation in real time. If I
can build a workforce that'scapable of doing that, doing
that, well, I'm going to besuccessful. And that's what he
(44:06):
put his energies into, makingthat so and, yeah, those
examples really make the point.
At the top of an organization,particularly a multinational,
you get, you know, theinformation is a summary of a
summary of a summary of asummary. You're never going to
understand those kinds ofdetails, but collectively, those
details can, can really move theneedle.
Michelle D'costa (44:25):
Yeah, and I think that sort of, like,
reminded me of one of themeetings we recently had at
bound where we're sort of, likeall of us, I think, like, you
know, unmuted at the same time,and we sort of like shared our
ideas. I really like, I sort ofreally enjoy, you know, sort of,
let's say, workplaces, whichsort of encourage you to speak
right at the end of the day,sometimes your idea might not
(44:46):
make it, because I believe thebest idea always wins. So it
doesn't matter who gives theidea. It can sort of like, you
know, I mean, it doesn't matter,but the fact that you can speak
out and then you can actuallycontribute an idea is really
cool. So, yeah, I think, I thinkit's super fun when. Sort of,
you know, like, like, I think,as you mentioned, it's sort of,
you feel empowered, yeah. And
Jennifer Sundberg (45:04):
perhaps it's an elephant in the room. That we
should mention is that, youknow, you might be thinking,
hang on, I know about successfulbusinesses, and they're not what
you're talking about here. Whenyou look at the large Silicon
Valley behemoths, they aremostly led by superstar chief
executives, right? Superstarchief execs who are famous for
(45:26):
taking big bets, big calls,making the big decisions and and
I think I had this idea that youknow that if you want to build a
really successful business, youknow, kind of Silicon Valley
style, you need a superstarchief exec, and you need to get
out of their way and let themmove fast and break things. And
everybody else's job is to rowbehind them and help execute on
(45:49):
their brilliant ideas andstrategies. That's what I
assumed was the case. That'swhat I thought was going on, and
I had an experience recently.
The Chairman that we recentlyhired of our business used to be
the chief of staff to JeffBezos, and after that, Eric
Schmidt for about 20 years, andshe shared first hand how very
(46:10):
different in reality, theseorganizations are to what's
presented on the tin. When youpeel the onion and you look
below the surface, what you seethat's going on is something
quite different, as she pointedout, the iPhone was not the
invention or the idea of SteveJobs. He didn't want to go into
the mobile market. He gotdragged there by colleagues who
thought better. Warren Buffettdidn't decide to back apple. He
(46:33):
didn't want to back or invest inApple, but one of his left
tenants did, and he gave themthe authority to make that call,
to make that bet. And it turnedout to be the best bet that
Warren Buffett and BerkshireHathaway have ever made. Jeff
Bezos didn't come up with theidea for Amazon Prime. Again, it
was a it was a junior engineerat Amazon who came up with that.
(46:55):
And what, what our chairman andHyatt has said is that, you
know, the vision and theconfidence of these larger than
life chief executives isincomparable. But what has made
them as successful as they areis their commitment to helping
everybody to think well andunquestionably, that is why they
have been so successful. Becausethey can't be everywhere all at
(47:16):
once, solving every problem, andbecause they also know that the
end of the day, too much powerconcentrated in one person or
one group doesn't just corrupt,it makes you stupid. I
Tara Khandelwal (47:30):
think that really resonated with me as
well, because when you'releading company, oftentimes,
like, I always want to hirepeople who are much smarter than
me. Like, I want to be the,like, dumbest person in the
field always, because that iswhen, like, you have that, that
is when you can learn, otherwiseyou're just so stagnant. And
since I don't have a boss aboutme, right? Yeah, the market is
(47:52):
my boss. My employees are myboss, my clients are my boss.
And I think that's reallyimportant for, you know, as a
leader, also, to keep growing.
So I really like this wholeframework that you've come up
with, because even as a leader,you're constantly then getting
input and taking it forward andlearning. Thank
Jennifer Sundberg (48:10):
you. And I think the the message of the
book is that, you know, we alltry our best to hire the best
and smartest people that we can.
What we don't all try, but weshould all try, and many of us
do, but just hiring brilliantpeople isn't enough. And in
fact, one of the things youlearn very quickly working with
boards is that you can take agroup of very intelligent,
individually, very intelligent,capable people, and when you put
(48:30):
them into the boardroom,something weird happens, and the
sum of the parts is less thanthe individual pieces.
Environment Matters. Contextmatters, and creating the
environment that's conducive toeveryone that you've bought into
your team, everyone you'vebought into your business,
making sure that environment isconducive to them, using their
brains and using them well, thatdoesn't happen by itself. And
(48:53):
what the book sets out is, Isay, hopefully, very practical,
very simple, pragmatic thingsthat you can do to create the
right conditions for people touse their brains
Michelle D'costa (49:03):
Absolutely.
Okay, cool. So this brings us tothe last round of the interview.
Jennifer, so it's a rapid fireround. You'll have to you'll
have to be rapid you can answerin only one word, a few words or
a sentence, okay, and nothinking allowed. I know your
book sort of propagatesthinking, but no thinking aloud.
(49:23):
Here, you have to be rapid.
Okay. So the first question,what are your top two leadership
books to go
Jennifer Sundberg (49:34):
to? Oh, I would pick top two books,
sapiens and any one of Plato'sdialogs?
Tara Khandelwal (49:42):
Wow, it's very different. Yeah, I've read
Sapiens, but not yet read anyPlato. Okay, would you ever
consider writing a memoir onyour life? I
Jennifer Sundberg (49:53):
wouldn't. I find talking about myself really
uncomfortable. I don't know why.
What movie do? You
Michelle D'costa (50:00):
think depicts boardrooms and entrepreneurs the
best?
Jennifer Sundberg (50:04):
Oh, oh, great, sorry. I mean, I recently
watched succession, that's agood one, isn't it?
Tara Khandelwal (50:10):
Yeah, that's one, one. I think that does
like, I mean, it's full ofdrama, yeah? So that's a good
one. Egos, yeah, yeah. Okay, onething you and your co writer
agree on, even on a bad writingday, on
Jennifer Sundberg (50:24):
a bad writing day, two heads are better than
Michelle D'costa (50:27):
one. Oh, lovely. Okay, what's next?
What's
Jennifer Sundberg (50:31):
next? Well, for me, that's actually a
massive question, because I havehanded on the reins of running
broad intelligence to my cofounder, Pippa beg who is
extraordinary individual, andshe is taking the business
global, and she's taking it tothe next level. And I'm right
behind her, cheering her all theway, but I have chosen to step
(50:53):
back and to spend more time withmy kids and to chew on what I
might do next. But the thing I'mthinking about at the moment is
this question of, how do we helpthe next generation to be
critical thinkers so that it'snot just applied to executives,
but more to society at large? Ithink you can't take it for
granted, and without it, it's afairly scary future that's
Tara Khandelwal (51:17):
a really great problem to be solving and super
relevant, and can't wait to seewhat you write next, or
definitely read, you know,anything that comes up next. So
thank you so much for thisinterview. It was really
interesting. I think I havelearnt a lot, as I mentioned in
the book, and all of theseconcepts have really got
(51:38):
crystallized for me even morespeaking to you. Thank you so
much. Thank you
Jennifer Sundberg (51:42):
very much.
Thanks for having me.
Tara Khandelwal (51:44):
Hope you enjoy this episode of Books and Beyond
with bound.
Michelle D'costa (51:48):
This podcast is created by bound, a company
that helps you grow throughstories. Find us at bound India
on all social media platforms.
Tara Khandelwal (51:57):
Tune in every Wednesday as we peek into the
lives and minds of somebrilliant authors from India and
South Asia. So.
Welcome to Books and Beyond. With bound I'm
Tara Khandelwal and I'm Michellenicotta, in this podcast, we
talk to India's finest authors
Michelle D'costa (00:11):
and uncover the stories behind the best
written book and
Tara Khandelwal (00:15):
dissect how these books shape our lives and
world views today.
Unknown (00:19):
So let's dive in. This episode is part of our brand new
series with Jaico publishinghouse. Hi everyone. Welcome back
to Books and Beyond. I'm reallyexcited about today's episode,
because you're going to beunpacking the concept of
collective intelligence, whereevery person in a team is given
(00:40):
the chance to contribute to thesuccess of the company. That
sounds really cool, right?
Because it's not just the CEOwho's behind the success, but
it's every single person. So thebook collective intelligence is
written by Jennifer Sundbergwith her long time business
partner and friend, PIPA beg SoJennifer, who's actually the co
founder of, you know, boardintelligence. It actually helps
(01:01):
boardrooms perform better. Shehas observed countless boardroom
interactions. You know, I reallywish I was a fly on the wall. So
she's a serial entrepreneur,and, you know, she's established
her business when she was in herearly 20s. So since then, I can
only imagine the kind ofexperiences she's been through.
(01:21):
And the book was such a very Iwould say the book was a really
entertaining ride.
Tara Khandelwal (01:29):
Yeah, one of the reasons I really like this
book was because it was just soentertaining. And as an
entrepreneur myself, I'm reallyinterested in these kind of
books, and it gave me a greatinsight into how different types
of businesses work, and some ofthe frameworks that, you know, I
can also apply to myprofessional life. So that was
really, really interesting forme. Yeah, and
Michelle D'costa (01:50):
actually, why I like the book Tara is because,
you know, like, it really mademe sort of think about how it's
not just the top managementthat's sort of, you know,
responsible for the success, andthe fact that everyone matters,
right? Everyone Counts. And Ithink for me, because I've
worked in different industries,you know, being an employee
sometimes you feel like you'renot seen, you're not heard, but
I like that, you know, Jenniferreally vouches for everyone to
(02:13):
be empowered, you know, and thatit's not just one person, is not
just a CEO, but it's a team, andthat ultimately, yes, the goal
is, you know, for theorganization to succeed, but how
will that happen? That will onlyhappen through every person's
contribution. So I'm reallyexcited to know more. Welcome.
Jennifer, we can't wait to getinside sort of, you know, these
companies and see how they tick.
Tara Khandelwal (02:33):
So anyone who is part of an organization, or
is it is even running anorganization, this book is for
you. It doesn't have to be thatyou know your CEO, or it's not
one of those business booksthat's very daunting. It's one
of those books that anyone canpick up. And I want to start
with just asking you, you knowabout collective intelligence,
(02:53):
can we hear about it from yourwords? And why this book? And
why now? Thank
Jennifer Sundberg (02:59):
you. Well, you're right. Most of my career
was spent advising boards at thevery top of an organization, and
I was drawn to that because Ithought that's where the power
lay, and that seemed to be theplace we could have most impact.
And it was a kind of rudeawakening that, you know,
there's truth in that, ofcourse, but that's not the whole
(03:20):
story. I was in a meeting oncewith a titan of British
Industry, a man called Sir JohnTimpson, who ran a very
successful chain of locksmithsaround the country. You'll find
one of his locksmiths on prettymuch every street corner around
the country. And he's known forbeing a pretty contrarian guy.
(03:41):
He runs a locksmith, but heemploys ex convicts, you know,
he does things his way, and hehas a board. And I managed,
probably a few years intorunning the business, managed to
get a meeting with him and anopportunity to pitch at him and
pitch the services of mybusiness, you know, help him
drive more effective board. Andhe's a polite guy. And he sat
(04:03):
there in our meeting room, bigburly man in this quite small
office that we had in the Cityof London, and he let us get to
about slide five in our pitch.
And this was a pitch that workedvery well for us, that he got us
into the boards of majorinternational investment banks
and government departments andall sorts. I was feeling pretty
confident he does get to aboutslide five, and he held up his
(04:23):
hand like he was trying to stopthe oncoming traffic. And he
said, stop. He couldn't take itanymore. And he said, I don't
need a better board. Theimportant decisions in my
business are not made in myboardroom. To me, this was
heresy. And you know, someonebuilding a business to help
boards work smarter, take betterdecisions. This was this was not
(04:46):
music to my ears. And he went onto explain the philosophy that
he subscribed to, what he calledupside down governance, and he
saw it as his job to putdecision making as close. To the
front line as possible, and hisjob in the boardroom was to make
sure that at every level therewere the skills and the
confidence to use that decisionmaking authority and use it
(05:09):
well. We didn't sell to Sir JohnTimson, but what he did was
planted a different perspectivein my mind. And it took a few
years for that, for the penny toreally drop and to really buy
into what he was saying there.
And it was only when I think westepped back and looked
ourselves at the impact we werehaving with our clients, and we
(05:29):
could see that, you know, we canimprove the productivity of the
board 100% we can double theirproductivity. But in a world
where the fast eat the slow,it's not just the big, the eat
the slow big, they eat the smallanymore. If all of the really
important decisions have toslowly work their way up to the
top, up to the boardroom, you'rejust not going to be able to
move fast enough. And we startedto realize that there was so
(05:50):
much truth in what Sir JohnTimson had explained to us that
day, and that maybe what weneeded to look at was how we
could better apply the playbookthat we built in the boardrooms
of many of the world's mostdemanding organizations, how we
could apply that playbook lowerdown through the organization,
so that everyone at every levelcould take decisions and take
them well, and that set us up onthe chain of collective
(06:11):
intelligence, which is where weare today, and the book that
we've written to share whatwe've learned, to share what
works, so that otherorganizations can also really
tap into the collective brainpower of everyone in the
organization move much fasterand take much better decisions.
Michelle D'costa (06:25):
Yeah, I totally agree. And I think this
is something I have beenthinking about, you know, more
recently, because something yousaid just now, Jennifer, that
really sort of resonated withme, as you said, you know,
sometimes all you need isconfidence to sort of even,
like, let's say, contribute anidea, right? So I have been
volunteering, sort of teachingEnglish to, you know, migrants
recently and and I realized thatthey know English, right? It's,
(06:49):
of course, like, probably, youknow, probably basic English.
But then even to sort of, let'ssay, string a sentence together,
sometimes all you need isconfidence, right? They have the
knowledge. They have everything.
But, yeah, it's a
Jennifer Sundberg (07:01):
very good point. I remember working we've
worked with organizationsbefore, who will say, you know,
we aspire to a more federated,delegated decision making model,
and then even say, you know,we've even decreed it thus, you
know, decisions are to be takenfurther down. But you know, what
keeps happening is people don'twant to the accountability that
(07:23):
comes with that is quitefrightening. It's quite scary.
And they found that, you know,that decisions keep coming up to
the top for ratification, andyou can't just delegate decision
making authority for tworeasons. One, it would be nuts.
It would be throwing caution tothe wind, you know, to throw out
(07:43):
decision making responsibilitylower down through the
organization, without firstbuilding the skills and the
capabilities to take thosedecisions Well, that would be
reckless. But also exactly toyour point, you've got to build
the confidence to then use thatauthority and use it well, and
that comes down to the habitsand the conventions that you
build into or the routines thatyou build into the organization,
(08:05):
to actually build new habits, tobuild new skills and to build
that confidence. And that's whatthe book sets out. It's really a
playbook for a whole set of newhabits and rituals that can
become a daily a daily activityin the organization. So that
what might sound verytheoretical actually becomes
very pragmatic, very practical,very quickly. I
Tara Khandelwal (08:24):
like how you showed that you know in the book
with the help of examples. Sothe book is divided into three
parts, thinking, communicationand focus. Annually show the
frameworks by which you know,organizations can foster this
collective intelligence by theseexamples. So one example in the
communication section that Ireally, really liked was the
(08:47):
example of the plane crash ofFlorida 90 plane, and it was
because of this miscommunicationthat actually the flight
crashed. So can you take us, youknow, inside what you were
trying to show with thisexample, like inside what went
wrong, and what can we learnfrom this? Sure,
Jennifer Sundberg (09:05):
so I'll dive into that. And just before I do,
I want to put that into a littlemore context. So what we point
out in this book is that if youwant to successfully tap into
the collective brain power ofthe people in your organization,
you've got to build threehabits, three independent
muscles that need to worktogether. One is critical
(09:28):
thinking. Got to help everyoneto think really deeply
analytically, to pull out signalfrom the noise, to identify
really smart solutions toproblems the critical thinking
number one. Number two,communication. It's no good
having brilliant insights,brilliant thoughts if you can't
transmit them, business is ateam sport, so you know,
(09:48):
brilliant thinking, poorlycommunicated, will wither on the
vine. So that's whycommunication matters. And
thirdly, the third muscle isfocus. If you're going to
delegate more. Freedom andresponsibility, you've got to
make sure that all of that greatthinking power is channeled in
the same direction, in the rightdirection, otherwise you'll just
(10:09):
be running off in 100directions, and all of the Great
thinking power will be pullingagainst each other. So critical
thinking, communication andfocus and right communication is
is critical, and businesses arenot known for doing it well, I
think in poor communication inlarge companies is called the
silent killer of big business.
One of the things as a somebodywho's specialized in working
(10:32):
with boards over the years, wehad about 5000 board clients as
at the end of last year, verylarge, mostly large
multinationals, but also somesmaller charities, schools,
hospitals, the full gamut,university across all
boardrooms, the state ofinformation and reporting is
pretty poor, and you see atclose quarters just how hard it
is to communicate clearly inbusiness, just how badly it's
(10:56):
done. And a lot of the reasonfor that goes back to our formal
education, right? An awful lotof what we're taught at school
and university, the tenets of socalled good communication, are
wrong. They don't work inbusiness. In fact, they do more
harm than good. So a lot of whatwe send out in the book, and a
lot of what I've spent the last20 years doing as a professional
(11:16):
is helping to helping executivesto unlearn what they were taught
and to consign to the dustbinthe so called tenets of good
communication and replace themwith five new principles that
work serious subjects demandformal writing generally. What
we think, right? You know, ifyou're writing for an audience
like the board, I'd better makesure my tone of voice is polite
(11:40):
and has sort of a sort of groutas to it, and we tend to adopt
this very formal, dry tone ofvoice. Well, put that in a bin.
Write like a human no matterwhat you're writing about. So
when we try to write in a formaltone of voice, we tend to use
very long words, very longsentences. But study after study
from Princeton University toJapanese universities, study
(12:04):
after study globally finds thatwhen we use a long word or a
long sentence where a short onewould have done makes us sound
stupid, it's also really hard todigest. And the people trying to
consume this stuff, they're onlyhuman, but perhaps more
importantly, when you adopt avery formal tone of voice, you
often find yourself using thepassive tense you know, sales
(12:26):
targets were missed, rather thanwe missed our sales targets. And
when you do that and you adoptthat tone of voice, it puts a
distance between you and yourmessage, a distance is the
opposite of accountability. Isthe opposite of ownership of the
message, and what people arelooking for is leadership.
Tara Khandelwal (12:43):
Yeah, I really like the chapter on writing
because, you know, we arewriters ourselves. And I was
very interested in all theexamples that you gave about how
companies can adopt a narrativedriven business and adopt a
writing culture. And one of theexamples that you gave, which I
really liked about, you know, bea human was example of Joey and
friends, and when he has towrite a letter for Monica and
(13:06):
Chandler, who own a doctor baby,and he's a character reference,
and he wants to sound reallysmart, so he ends up using a
thesaurus and the letter doesn'tmake any sense, versus, if he
was just sort of heartfelt anduse his own words, would convey
so much more than What you said,right when, when we sit and
write sometimes, and I we knowthis because we're writers and
editors, and when we work withpeople, often times, you know,
(13:30):
they think the first draftshould be the last draft, and
that hinders a lot of thewriting process. Versus I always
say, Okay, explain it to me likea five year old. Explain it to
me like, What exactly are youtrying to say? Just forget about
whoever was reading this, whatexactly you're trying to
communicate. And then once wehave those ideas, and then when
we have all that, then we will,sort of, you know, put it into a
structure and all of thosethings. But I think that gets
(13:53):
confused. And I really like theway that you portray that, no
Jennifer Sundberg (13:56):
Exactly. And I think until you can
communicate it to a five yearold, or let's say, a 10 year
old, maybe until you cancommunicate it so clearly that
they could understand you don'treally understand yourself what
you're trying to say. And Ithink once it's understood that
that's how it comes across, itgives people, again, the
confidence to speak plainly andclearly and to write like a
human
Tara Khandelwal (14:16):
Yeah, I think I'm a big proponent of saying
complex things in simplelanguage. And yeah, we work on a
lot of books also thatdemystify, you know, these
concepts for a general audience.
But coming back to the examples,you know, I really, really loved
all of the examples in the book.
I think there were, you know,you have so much theory of so
much research and theseframeworks, but they came alive
(14:39):
to me because of the very reallife examples that you gave. So,
yeah, so for example, Imentioned the flight crash one.
And you know how you actuallyshowed us what went on inside
that cockpit and howmiscommunication, and if they
just communicated a differentway, and they just spoken
plainly, like you said that,hey, this is a problem, they
might have a voted it. Sort ofgoing out in circles. And then
(15:02):
another example that I reallylike, which was in the thinking
section, was how Gatorade cameto be, and it's because the
founder asked the rightquestions, you know? So, yes.
Jennifer Sundberg (15:12):
So the American football coach was
looking out at his footballplayers, and he asked himself
the question, How come theydon't urinate more? Isn't it
kind of weird that in the courseof an American football match,
which is quite a few hours,nobody needs to take a toilet
break. Even in the what do youcall it intermission? I got the
word right in the book, and Ican't remember what you call it
(15:32):
half time. Even at half time,the locker rooms would go
strangely unused. And he justthought this was kind of weird.
But instead of leaving it there,he really pursued that question
doggedly, and his curiosityabout this question took him
into all sorts of biochemistryand led to the discovery of
electrolytes and therelationship between
(15:54):
electrolytes and performance onthe pitch. And he created his
drink in mixture of lemons andsugars and salts and all sorts,
and experimented on the team andsaw that this concoction of his,
that his wife helped him flavor,that this mixture seemed to have
a real direct impact on theperformance of the players. And
(16:14):
this indeed was the origins ofthe Gatorade story, which became
a multi billion dollar drinkscompany, and the beginnings of a
multi billion dollar energydrinks or sports energy drinks
market. But it all began withthe humble question, because at
the heart of critical thinkingis questioning. Questions are
the catalyst of criticalthinking. They're the spark and
(16:35):
the fuel of creativityinnovation, and most of us lose
the habit right through ourschool and university careers
and life beyond the emphasis isbased on knowing the right
answers to the questions thatother people have presented, and
not just not any old answer, butspecifically the answer in the
back of the examiner's booklet.
Right go find a scope forcreativity or originality in
(16:58):
that so you know, we have ournatural questioning instincts
that we're born with. We havethem pretty much beaten out of
us as we work our way throughour formal education. By the
time we reach the workplace,we've all but forgotten how to
do it. And so a lot of what thebook sets out is how to rebuild
this questioning, how to get ourquestioning mojo back and and
(17:22):
how to help everyone in yourorganization to do that too?
Yeah,
Michelle D'costa (17:28):
I just it, you know, sort of what you mentioned
about, sort of how, you know, Ithink as kids, questioning comes
very naturally to us. You don't,you know, there's no
embarrassment, there's nothing.
And even if you ask like, a 50questions, you know, sort of
like, you know, adults orparents would ever be tired and
they would just, like, answeryour questions. But I think as
you grow up, and especially youknow, when you're sort of, you
know, when you're in school, youknow, most of the time, rote
(17:48):
learning is sort of encouraged,you know, like, don't ask any
questions, just sort of learnthings by heart. And it's just,
I think you're right. I thinkit's often, it's we're sort of
conditioned to not questionanything. And I think that's the
reason why I really loved thatchapter. So in the thinking
section, I think questions was,you know, this chapter, I sort
of, I think I read it threetimes. I loved it, and I and
sort of my favorite example wasabout the architect, Gary,
Jennifer Sundberg (18:14):
yeah, and he asked the question, why didn't
he like? Why exactly,
Michelle D'costa (18:18):
exactly, and, and I was just thinking, how
many of us would do that? So hewas actually commissioned to
sort of transform the sort ofwarehouse into a modern art
gallery in Spain, right? Andlet's say someone's given this
huge project that will sort of,I would say, completely
overturn, you know, an economy.
It will change the way peoplelook at a country and all of
that with such hugeresponsibility, right? I think
(18:38):
they would just do that, but he,I would say, ask the right
question, and and he was able tosort of, you know, do it in just
in less than four years, and hewas even well under the budget.
And I think that was so cool.
And you have sort of comparedthat with the Sydney Opera
House, which obviously is morefamous, and, you know, everyone
(19:00):
talks about it, but that wasactually created nine years
later, and it went over thebudget like 15 times. So that
really surprised me. And, and Ithink this is sort of like a
lesson in project management,you know, it's not just the
architecture, it's not just thecreativity or the design, but
more like, I think, Gary'sproject management skills. So I
was very curious to sort of askyou about why you chose to, you
(19:22):
know, include this example, andwhy did it sort of appeal to
you? Yeah,
Jennifer Sundberg (19:26):
I think it probably appealed to me because
of two things, firstly, thesimplicity of the question. And,
you know, I think there's amistake that I certainly made
myself with of thinking thatthere's something clever about
the clever question. You know,when actually, there's more
power, usually, in the simplequestions. You know, the how and
(19:47):
why questions, or the So whatquestions, and helping, again,
to build confidence in askingthose simple questions and
habits. You know, quite often,you might think, Well, I'm not
going to ask such an old.
Obvious question is that, butactually, that's often where the
real the real discoveries getmade. How, why? So what? Now,
what questions like that. Sohave the confidence of your
(20:10):
convictions to ask those basicquestions, because they will
often reveal huge truths thatwere otherwise going to go
untapped, just as Frank Gehrydiscovered when he asked why
they really wanted to build thisnew this new institution, and
uncovering the real reasonhelped him to see that the brief
he'd been given was wrong. Theother thing that I think
(20:32):
appealed to me about the FrankGehry example is, I think you
often hear that there's thisidea of analysis paralysis, and
you don't want to overthink.
You've got to, in fact, youknow, if you would start to get
everybody thinking all the time,you know who you need to create
a bias for action, right? Andyou want to get some stuff done.
(20:53):
Don't sit in your ivory towerall day scratching your chin. Go
and do something right? And, ofcourse, that's not that's not
daft. But what the Frank Gehryexample illustrates is the cost
of getting out there andstarting to execute before
you've thought your planthrough. And actually a lot more
(21:14):
time can be wasted frommissteps, needless missteps, but
if you'd spent a little bit moretime thinking and planning you
could have prevented so I guess,as with most things in life, any
position taken to the extremetends to be wrong. You know, of
course, there's a point ofparalysis, analysis paralysis.
But of course, you know thatbias for action can lead you to
(21:36):
trip over yourself when youdidn't need to. And generally in
business, I would say the buyerfor action brigade have probably
been, have probably won out, andthere's a lot of scope for more
thinking to be done,particularly at all levels. As I
say, the old model of, you know,just get the person at the top
to do the thinking, andeverybody else's job is just to
execute. I think that's that mayhave bred that idea that there
(21:58):
isn't a need for greater, youknow, time invested in more more
thinking at every level.
Tara Khandelwal (22:05):
Yeah, I think, I think that resonates a lot
with me, because I think there'sa fine balance, right? You want
to act. You don't want to loseout, but at the same time you're
absolutely right. Like I'veexperienced it personally in my
own business, the cost of notthinking before acting is a lot.
But then, if you don't act, thenagain, you're moving very
slowly. You need to move at acertain speed.
Jennifer Sundberg (22:29):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No. It's because
I remember an old, an old clientof ours who was an ex Army
General, and he used to say, youknow, if you're crossing a bog
and you discover that you knowyou're just you find you're just
you're fine, you're surprised,you're on a bog. Don't stop.
Analyze the situation. You willsink, for certain if you're
running across a bog. Keepmoving, right? So there is a
(22:51):
time and a place, of course, butaction. But equally, the Sydney
Opera House example, apparentlyit was little more than a doodle
when they broke ground. Youknow, they were so keen to show
progress and to, you know, toevidence that stuff was
happening, that they gotcracking before they had
anything like the level ofdetailed plans in place to give
(23:13):
themselves a fighting chance ofactually delivering that project
on time and on
Tara Khandelwal (23:16):
budget. Yeah, so it's all about that balance.
It's also knowing when enough isenough. It's like, oh, when
you've not done a little less.
And having that framework andintuition, another thing I
really liked about the book is,again, you know, as an
entrepreneur, I'm constantlyhiring people and training them,
right? And oftentimes, you know,yeah, the decision making does
always like, come after the top,where it feels like, okay, you
(23:39):
know me and like Michelle and myother colleague, we are the one
sort of like making all of thedecisions and sort of driving
the entire strategy, whereaswe'd want everybody else to be
involved as well. So I thinkthis framework is really
interesting to inculcate thatand everything, because I think
it's a universal problem, nomatter how big or small the
organization is. So that'sanother thing that really
(24:01):
resonated with me in terms ofthe examples. As I mentioned, we
really loved the example, so Iwanted to actually know what was
your process of gathering theseexamples, and which is what that
one example that really standsout to you the most? Thank you.
Jennifer Sundberg (24:18):
So yes, it was. It was really hard trying
to so I have a terrible memoryat the best of times. You know,
I can hardly remember what I didlast weekend, so trying to delve
back through 20 years of workingwith clients and boardrooms.
Yeah, I wasn't naturally suitedto it, and I had to. It took me
quite a long time to to dig outmemories and the far recesses of
(24:41):
my mind and and to organize it,but it was also a lot of fun,
and, and, and I think it for me,I actually very much enjoyed the
process of just as we say in thebook, it's only when you write
something down that you veryoften discover whether it stands
up to inspection or. Doesn'tand, you know, I'd be pretty
(25:02):
clear what I wanted to say. Idraft it. I'd read it, and it
was gobbledygook, and, you know,and I'd have to start again. And
so I found the process ofwriting the book very cathartic.
By the time I'd finished it, Ifelt clear what I was trying to
say, but I thought I knew at thestart that I really didn't know
until I'd gone through themental exercise and the rigor of
(25:24):
trying and failing andeventually figuring it out. So
so that was rewarding, but yeah,trying to actually recall and
hunt down the stories. In fact,I remember one of the stories
that they tell is about a clientof ours who used to run a part
of the immigration service andin the UK, and I remembered him
(25:46):
telling me a story in a meetingroom years ago about his
experience going up against theselectivity hearing who wanted
to take him to task in a verypublic, you know, kangaroo court
type exercise to hammer him overthe extraordinary waiting lists
that and backlog for immigrationapplications. And he described
that experience to me, and youknow about what would have you
(26:09):
know how all the questions wereused as a they were used as a
weapon, rather than as a meansto understand and uncover and
explore and and how, when youuse weapons in that way, trying
to catch you out. You canactually, if you're a pretty
skilled opponent, you can buythem back again. You know, you
can duck and dive and No, nogreater revelations or truths is
(26:32):
uncovered in that process,because it's a misuse and abuse
of questions. I remembered himtelling me that story, but I
needed to get the details right,and so it was quite nice having
an excuse. To call people up andtake that for lunch and have a
chat, to dive back into thestories that had intrigued me.
And gives you license to becurious, and it gives you
license to be, you know, tolearn about other people's
(26:56):
stories in the under the bannerof writing a book, right? So,
no, it was
Tara Khandelwal (27:00):
fun. And what about like, the second example?
So there's a lot of, like,primary research that, you know,
comes beyond clients, but then,for example, like the Gatorade
example, sort of like processaround finding about those,
Jennifer Sundberg (27:14):
yeah, I suppose it's a combination of
mainly talking to people.
Actually, I'm probably one ofthose people that I think
through talking and throughwriting. So for me, it is a
fairly collaborative process.
And some of them were storiesthat I'd heard over the years
that I hang somewhere in theback of my mind. And otherwise
it was talking to during theperiod where we were thinking
about writing the book, and thenwhen we were writing it, you
(27:35):
know, it becomes the thing onyour mind, and you chat about
it. And it's that funny thing,when you're, you know, when
you're looking for something,you see it everywhere, don't
you? It's just like when youhear a new word, you learn a new
word, suddenly you find it popsup everywhere. And probably it
was there before, but youweren't looking for it, so you
didn't see it. And similar,similar thing, a sort of recency
(27:56):
bias, isn't it? So, yeah, Ithink I was just on the lookout
to the stories, and then youfind they're everywhere. And I
guess if what you're saying addsa truth to it, then you will
find it played out all over theplace. Yeah,
Michelle D'costa (28:10):
I think, I think your process sounds
really, really cool. Um, andlike you said, you know earlier,
when I used to sort of learn anew word and I would notice it
everywhere, honestly, I thoughtit was just me. It's good to
know that it happens witheveryone. But you know, what I'm
also curious about is, I reallyloved how, you know, you sort of
gathered this, you know,experience over all these years,
and it's, you know, that you goback interview them and all of
(28:31):
that. So I'm very curious about,how did you sort of, you know,
reach the point of, let's say,publication, or even decide that
you want to publish in India,and that too, with djco, and
sort of, you know, what has thereaction been like, like Tara,
and I really, really love thebook. And we were actually
discussing about, you know, howsort of this could really apply
to, like, Indian companies andIndian boardrooms as well. But
we wanted to know, sort of, whydid you pick India?
Jennifer Sundberg (28:55):
Thank you.
Well, honest truth, and you guysapproached us, and we were
thrilled. So we, we publishedthe book originally in the UK
and in the US, where we havemost of our experience. And Jaco
approached us, and when we whenwe learned more about your
organization, your extraordinaryhistory and heritage, and the
fabulous authors that you'vepublished, we felt ridiculously
(29:17):
lucky and and utterly thrilledto be associated with you and to
have the opportunity to reach anew audience, a huge audience.
And there is nothing parochialabout our message. If anything,
you know, we draw an awful loton ancient examples of you know,
from the ancient philosophers,and what I think we're
(29:41):
uncovering in this book arefundamental human truths around
human behavior that transcendsgeography, it transcends
cultures and nation states andno matter where in the world we
are. Well, high qualitythinking, well, communicated and
focused on the things thatmatter most. Again, it make a
(30:03):
difference. But I would bethrilled to hear from your
readers what the culturalnuances are that you would add
to this book. You know, wherewould you feel it would fit
best, and where would you findit would not, you know, I think
it'd be really interesting tolearn more about that.
Tara Khandelwal (30:21):
Yeah, actually, that would be very interesting,
because there's a lot of talkright now in India about, you
know, work life balance, howcompanies operate. This is full
controversy right now about alot of senior leaders saying you
have to work 70 hours a week, 90hours a week. So yeah, I would
love to know about more of yourreaders reactions, if you have
(30:42):
them, yeah,
Jennifer Sundberg (30:43):
I think when it comes to bigger social
themes, I think the other fieldI'm really interested in at the
moment is around the way that wehelp the next generation to
think critically, Given the veryadverse conditions that I think
they're walking into, by whichI'm talking about social media,
(31:06):
misinformation, disinformation,some pretty autocratic regimes
in the world. I mean, we'll tryand keep this out of politics,
right, but I think we are allone of the things that you know
my corporate life was basedaround, was that we are only as
good as the informationavailable to us, right? No
(31:28):
matter how smart we are. Youknow, if we're presented with
poor quality information, we'lltake poor quality decisions. But
there is one defense againstthat, which is, I suppose, a
healthy cynicism and the abilityto ask the right questions and
questioning, building thatquestioning muscle back into
kids, and making sure that, youknow, unlike, I think my
(31:49):
experience, it's not beaten outof them. I think that's probably
the only defense I can think ofagainst a pretty dystopian
future in which next generationinhabit a world that is shaped
for them by social media or bypolitical the political elite
(32:09):
and the message that they wantto communicate. So I think it
really matters. I think the waythat we I think if you know, if
I, if I could wave a magic wandand if I could engage in a
bigger social discourse rightnow, beyond corporate boardrooms
and corporate decision making,it would be that it would be
looking at how we help childrento hold on to and and really
(32:30):
nurture that decision making,that that, sorry, that
questioning instinct thatthey're given at birth. No,
definitely.
Tara Khandelwal (32:37):
I think nurturing that questioning
instinct is so important, andI've seen it in my own
organization. You know, the morethat people question, the more
that I don't want you know themto say that, Oh, you know you
are right all the time, becauseI don't have all the answers.
Most of them, I don't even know.
You know what's happening, whatI'm doing. It's all sort of like
trial and error, or you'retrying out different things, you
know, new products, whatever.
(33:00):
And it's really helpful whenpeople are on that journey with
you. And you know, can havethose critical thinking skills,
it actually helps theorganization way better. And
what I really liked, and yousaid, you know, it's universal.
And so some of the psychologicalframeworks that you explain were
very interesting. And I've, I'ma student of psychology as well.
So you explain things like bias,group thing, all of these things
(33:23):
that can hamper collectiveintelligence. And one thing that
I know, which I learned fromthis book, is something called
belief perseverance, which Ihadn't heard of before. And you
said that you give the exampleof Bernie Madoff, who we all
know is running huge Ponzischeme. And you said that you
know somebody even showed proofof it to the SEC, but because he
(33:43):
was so big in the field, andbecause everybody believed that
he's in a more investmentmanager, all of that proof fell
to death yours. And I think thatwas a very interesting sort of
fact. You asked
Jennifer Sundberg (33:56):
me what was my favorite story in the book,
and it probably would be thatone, which is ironic, because so
what the book sets out is aplaybook that I hope is is
persuasive. It's you know, thisplaybook that you know, if you
can help everybody think morecritically, communicate more
clearly, and focus it where itmatters most, that you will
achieve a lot, that you willmove mountains, that you will be
wildly, wildly successful as acollective. But then the
(34:21):
inconvenient truth is, you lookthrough history, and history is
peppered with examples where allthose things were present and
yet good things did not follow.
And how can that be right? Andit's, it's either just deeply
inconvenient or there's a lessonin it. And I, I think it's the
latter. So the story that wetell in the book is, as you say,
(34:42):
it's all about Harry Markopolos,who was a fund manager. He was
being challenged by his bossesto up his game. And they were
pointing at this competitor oftheirs, Bernie Madoff, and
saying, you know, can't you,can't you deliver results a bit
more like him? And you know,he's really nailing it. I. Think
we need a bit of that. Go findout what he's up to, and let's,
let's copy it. So he did. SoHarry took his instructions and
(35:05):
looked closer at what was goingon with this fund run by this
guy, Bernie Madoff. And he says,you know, it took me four
minutes to figure out that thiswas a fraud. He said it took me
another four hours tomathematically prove it was a
fraud, and he wrote a letter tothe SEC, as you said, he titled
this letter, the world's largesthedge fund is a fraud. So we've
(35:26):
got, you know, really clearcommunication. Tick got really
good critical thinking. Tick,it's focused on something that
really matters. Did it work? No,it didn't work, because it turns
out that, as you say, you knowthe SEC, they couldn't hear it.
They couldn't imagine thatBernie Madoff, who was one of
(35:48):
them, who's part of theestablishment, they couldn't
imagine the possibility that hecould be a person being
described in this letter. And soI think what this reveals is
that great thinking, wellcommunicated. That lands on deaf
ears. Won't achieve anything.
The other side have to belistening. And the point of
(36:10):
that, and I think the usefullesson in that, is that you
can't apply these principles inpockets. You can't I'm not
saying you shouldn't try, butyou know, if one person decides
to try adopting all of theprinciples set out in the book.
I'm not going to suggest itwon't be helpful, but hopefully
would be, but it won't beanything like as helpful as if
(36:30):
you can create the culture in anorganization or a team where
everybody is engaged in the samelearning journey of critical
thinking, communication andfocus, and everybody is open to
the principle of questioning,deep questioning and challenge,
and only then do you have theculture and the environment
(36:50):
around you where others are opento hearing the value that you
can then bring to the table. SoI suppose it's because back also
to my point about education andthe next generation. This stuff
matters at scale. It mattersindividually. But it really is
about getting everybody to dothis together, to create both an
organization that can moveforward together, as much as as
(37:14):
much as a community and anation.
Tara Khandelwal (37:18):
Yeah, and that, that brings me to the point
about focus, which is your lastsection in the book. And you
know, you've already explainedhow that's so important. So how
does it actually happen? Becausewe've spoken about empowering
people to think communication.
You know, everybody's thinkingit's, it's a recipe for chaos,
right?
Jennifer Sundberg (37:35):
So how does it, yeah, yeah. And it also
sounds like a bit of acontradiction in terms, so we're
going to try, you know, we'regoing to tell everyone to think
more, and then we're going totell them what to think about
that. You know, it kind of feelslike we're giving freedom with
one hand and taking it away withthe other, but it's really
important. So if I Yeah, sothere's a Roman military history
(37:55):
example that we share. The quotefrom a man called vegetius. He
was a Roman military historian,and He is quoted as saying, The
Romans were poorer, weaker,shorter and less intellectually
astute than their neighbors, andyet they conquered all of them.
They conquered all of thembecause they were organized.
(38:18):
They were focused. They werealigned. So focus alignment, the
ability to organize around acommon destination, it's a
superpower, but how do you doit? Was your question. How do
you get everyone to think in ain a focused manner, without
clipping the wings that requirethat are required for the
thinking to be done? The personwho asks the questions controls
(38:41):
the conversation. So one of theways that you can do it in a
large organization is for someof the questions that permeate
an organization to be top down.
The answers are not given, butthe questions are I'm going to
give you a very concreteexample. One of our clients was
a FTSE 100 airline, and thechief exec had just taken it on,
and this was an airline that hadbeen very successful, but was
(39:02):
not currently successful. Theywere still in the FTSE 100, but
only just, and they had been runon a low cost, budget model, and
cost had been chipped away, butthe competitors had started to
do the same thing, and the edgethat they'd had had been eroded,
and it was now just tablestakes. Everyone ran low cost.
Airlines were very common now,and they chopped away so much
(39:25):
cost already that there reallywas nothing left to chop. So the
new chief exec actually usuallyhad to do something different.
So up until that point, the veryclear focus of the organization
had been, had been profit,first, then customers, and then
the people, the team, and shewanted to flip that round,
because what she realized is sheneeded to transform the customer
experience. The customerexperience had been so cost
(39:47):
driven that it had become prettyunpleasant, and if your
customers start to hate you,it's going to be hard to build a
successful business. So she hadto win back the love of her
customers, and to do that, sherealized that what she needed
to. Put at the top was not thecustomer, but the team, the
people. You can't have amiserable, demoralized team
delight customers. It's notgoing to work. So she flipped a
model around, and instead ofprofit, customer people, she
(40:09):
went people, customer, profitpeople. And the well being,
happiness and the engagementlevels of her team would be
preeminent. So number one, mostimportant thing that would, in
turn, drive great customerexperience, and that, in turn
she believed, and she was goingto, she was willing to punt it.
This would drive the profits.
But she needed to change theconversation quite radically.
(40:31):
She needed to shift the focus. Imean, it's hard enough to
achieve focus. It's a whollydifferent challenge and even
bigger one, to shift focus of alarge multinational, right? But
she did it by changing theconversation in her
organization, by stipulating, bydictating a question that was to
become the question thateveryone would grapple with in
every meeting. You can't be inevery meeting, controlling every
(40:55):
conversation all the time as achief exec, no matter how hard
you work, no matter how manyhours, you can't be everywhere
all at once, but you can requirea few things, and this was one
thing she she mandated thequestion of, how do our people
feel, and what can we do tobetter support and enable our
people? Those two questionsbecame evergreen in every
meeting, every board meeting,every leadership team meeting,
(41:15):
you know, every every sitemeeting, those two questions. So
she was encouraging thinking,because she wasn't setting out
the answers. It was up toeverybody in the team to engage
with those questions, thinkdeeply about them, but she had
the right to insist that thosequestions be taken very
seriously, and that created thefocus, and that drove the
results. And she had six yearsof continued growth, and she
(41:37):
doubled the market share of theorganization in that time.
Tara Khandelwal (41:39):
Wow, that's a wonderful example. And I think,
yeah, I'm learning a lot, and Ilearned a lot through the book,
and a lot, you know, in thisconversation as well, especially
Michelle D'costa (41:50):
because you mentioned the team, how sort of
the team took precedence, right?
Like, how the people matter. Ithink one example that really
comes to mind, which I really,really like, because I think
you've covered many differentindustries. Like you've covered
sports, you've coveredhospitality. So the one that I
really like is, you know, youshare this anecdote about
working in the kitchen, and how,sort of, you know, you wanted to
(42:10):
sort of reduce wastage, right? Ithink you've adopted the Kaizen
basis, sort of, you know, whichis a, you know, Toyota way. And
I really liked how, sort of, youknow, every person in the
kitchen was, sort of like, youknow, asked to contribute ideas.
So, for example, the kitchenhand. So the kitchen hand is a
person who, sort of, you know,washes the dishes, creates prep
work, and does all of that. AndI think when the kitchen hand
(42:33):
suggested that, you know, if youactually ordered frozen salmon
impacts of 10 instead of 100,you wouldn't be throwing out
around 50 or 60 salmon, youknow, on the days where you just
needed to defrost a few. Andthat, that's actually a
brilliant idea. And sort of,like another person in the
kitchen, also sort ofrecommended, you know, moving
the cheese shelf away from thewall. Because what used to
(42:55):
happen is they would alwaysreach out for the cheese, which
is like, obviously easier toreach out to, and the ones
behind would go rotten. And thenhe's like, Yeah, but it's just
because the shelf is placed thatway. Why don't you just move the
shelf away from the wall, andthen you can reach out to the
cheese from both the sides. Ithought that was, like, really
cool. And And how often do youactually, you know, sort of
listen to these ideas, or howoften do you sort of think that
(43:17):
they would add value? But it'sreally cool, and I really love
that you sort of highlightedthat.
Jennifer Sundberg (43:24):
And I think it's a I think those examples
illustrate the point that, youknow, no matter how smart the
person at the top of theorganization is or the board,
they don't know everything. Theydon't have all the answers, they
don't have all the information,and they never can. Back to what
Sir John Timson said, you know,the people who are going to
determine the fate of myorganization, they're the people
(43:45):
on the front line dealing withour customers every day, and my
job is to empower them to makeabsolute best use of all of
those extraordinary data pointsthat they're getting that I'm
never going to get, and givingthem the skills and the
authority to respond to theinformation in real time. If I
can build a workforce that'scapable of doing that, doing
that, well, I'm going to besuccessful. And that's what he
(44:06):
put his energies into, makingthat so and, yeah, those
examples really make the point.
At the top of an organization,particularly a multinational,
you get, you know, theinformation is a summary of a
summary of a summary of asummary. You're never going to
understand those kinds ofdetails, but collectively, those
details can, can really move theneedle.
Michelle D'costa (44:25):
Yeah, and I think that sort of, like,
reminded me of one of themeetings we recently had at
bound where we're sort of, likeall of us, I think, like, you
know, unmuted at the same time,and we sort of like shared our
ideas. I really like, I sort ofreally enjoy, you know, sort of,
let's say, workplaces, whichsort of encourage you to speak
right at the end of the day,sometimes your idea might not
(44:46):
make it, because I believe thebest idea always wins. So it
doesn't matter who gives theidea. It can sort of like, you
know, I mean, it doesn't matter,but the fact that you can speak
out and then you can actuallycontribute an idea is really
cool. So, yeah, I think, I thinkit's super fun when. Sort of,
you know, like, like, I think,as you mentioned, it's sort of,
you feel empowered, yeah. And
Jennifer Sundberg (45:04):
perhaps it's an elephant in the room. That we
should mention is that, youknow, you might be thinking,
hang on, I know about successfulbusinesses, and they're not what
you're talking about here. Whenyou look at the large Silicon
Valley behemoths, they aremostly led by superstar chief
executives, right? Superstarchief execs who are famous for
(45:26):
taking big bets, big calls,making the big decisions and and
I think I had this idea that youknow that if you want to build a
really successful business, youknow, kind of Silicon Valley
style, you need a superstarchief exec, and you need to get
out of their way and let themmove fast and break things. And
everybody else's job is to rowbehind them and help execute on
(45:49):
their brilliant ideas andstrategies. That's what I
assumed was the case. That'swhat I thought was going on, and
I had an experience recently.
The Chairman that we recentlyhired of our business used to be
the chief of staff to JeffBezos, and after that, Eric
Schmidt for about 20 years, andshe shared first hand how very
(46:10):
different in reality, theseorganizations are to what's
presented on the tin. When youpeel the onion and you look
below the surface, what you seethat's going on is something
quite different, as she pointedout, the iPhone was not the
invention or the idea of SteveJobs. He didn't want to go into
the mobile market. He gotdragged there by colleagues who
thought better. Warren Buffettdidn't decide to back apple. He
(46:33):
didn't want to back or invest inApple, but one of his left
tenants did, and he gave themthe authority to make that call,
to make that bet. And it turnedout to be the best bet that
Warren Buffett and BerkshireHathaway have ever made. Jeff
Bezos didn't come up with theidea for Amazon Prime. Again, it
was a it was a junior engineerat Amazon who came up with that.
(46:55):
And what, what our chairman andHyatt has said is that, you
know, the vision and theconfidence of these larger than
life chief executives isincomparable. But what has made
them as successful as they areis their commitment to helping
everybody to think well andunquestionably, that is why they
have been so successful. Becausethey can't be everywhere all at
(47:16):
once, solving every problem, andbecause they also know that the
end of the day, too much powerconcentrated in one person or
one group doesn't just corrupt,it makes you stupid. I
Tara Khandelwal (47:30):
think that really resonated with me as
well, because when you'releading company, oftentimes,
like, I always want to hirepeople who are much smarter than
me. Like, I want to be the,like, dumbest person in the
field always, because that iswhen, like, you have that, that
is when you can learn, otherwiseyou're just so stagnant. And
since I don't have a boss aboutme, right? Yeah, the market is
(47:52):
my boss. My employees are myboss, my clients are my boss.
And I think that's reallyimportant for, you know, as a
leader, also, to keep growing.
So I really like this wholeframework that you've come up
with, because even as a leader,you're constantly then getting
input and taking it forward andlearning. Thank
Jennifer Sundberg (48:10):
you. And I think the the message of the
book is that, you know, we alltry our best to hire the best
and smartest people that we can.
What we don't all try, but weshould all try, and many of us
do, but just hiring brilliantpeople isn't enough. And in
fact, one of the things youlearn very quickly working with
boards is that you can take agroup of very intelligent,
individually, very intelligent,capable people, and when you put
(48:30):
them into the boardroom,something weird happens, and the
sum of the parts is less thanthe individual pieces.
Environment Matters. Contextmatters, and creating the
environment that's conducive toeveryone that you've bought into
your team, everyone you'vebought into your business,
making sure that environment isconducive to them, using their
brains and using them well, thatdoesn't happen by itself. And
(48:53):
what the book sets out is, Isay, hopefully, very practical,
very simple, pragmatic thingsthat you can do to create the
right conditions for people touse their brains
Michelle D'costa (49:03):
Absolutely.
Okay, cool. So this brings us tothe last round of the interview.
Jennifer, so it's a rapid fireround. You'll have to you'll
have to be rapid you can answerin only one word, a few words or
a sentence, okay, and nothinking allowed. I know your
book sort of propagatesthinking, but no thinking aloud.
(49:23):
Here, you have to be rapid.
Okay. So the first question,what are your top two leadership
books to go
Jennifer Sundberg (49:34):
to? Oh, I would pick top two books,
sapiens and any one of Plato'sdialogs?
Tara Khandelwal (49:42):
Wow, it's very different. Yeah, I've read
Sapiens, but not yet read anyPlato. Okay, would you ever
consider writing a memoir onyour life? I
Jennifer Sundberg (49:53):
wouldn't. I find talking about myself really
uncomfortable. I don't know why.
What movie do? You
Michelle D'costa (50:00):
think depicts boardrooms and entrepreneurs the
best?
Jennifer Sundberg (50:04):
Oh, oh, great, sorry. I mean, I recently
watched succession, that's agood one, isn't it?
Tara Khandelwal (50:10):
Yeah, that's one, one. I think that does
like, I mean, it's full ofdrama, yeah? So that's a good
one. Egos, yeah, yeah. Okay, onething you and your co writer
agree on, even on a bad writingday, on
Jennifer Sundberg (50:24):
a bad writing day, two heads are better than
Michelle D'costa (50:27):
one. Oh, lovely. Okay, what's next?
What's
Jennifer Sundberg (50:31):
next? Well, for me, that's actually a
massive question, because I havehanded on the reins of running
broad intelligence to my cofounder, Pippa beg who is
extraordinary individual, andshe is taking the business
global, and she's taking it tothe next level. And I'm right
behind her, cheering her all theway, but I have chosen to step
(50:53):
back and to spend more time withmy kids and to chew on what I
might do next. But the thing I'mthinking about at the moment is
this question of, how do we helpthe next generation to be
critical thinkers so that it'snot just applied to executives,
but more to society at large? Ithink you can't take it for
granted, and without it, it's afairly scary future that's
Tara Khandelwal (51:17):
a really great problem to be solving and super
relevant, and can't wait to seewhat you write next, or
definitely read, you know,anything that comes up next. So
thank you so much for thisinterview. It was really
interesting. I think I havelearnt a lot, as I mentioned in
the book, and all of theseconcepts have really got
(51:38):
crystallized for me even morespeaking to you. Thank you so
much. Thank you
Jennifer Sundberg (51:42):
very much.
Thanks for having me.
Tara Khandelwal (51:44):
Hope you enjoy this episode of Books and Beyond
with bound.
Michelle D'costa (51:48):
This podcast is created by bound, a company
that helps you grow throughstories. Find us at bound India
on all social media platforms.
Tara Khandelwal (51:57):
Tune in every Wednesday as we peek into the
lives and minds of somebrilliant authors from India and
South Asia. So.
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