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Alan Murray on What the World's Top CEOs Are Focused On · Get Real with Jim Weiss

0:00
Speaker 1: So Alan Murray, he's a legend in the reporting world,
0:02
Speaker 1: very important to this publication. that we all know and love,
0:07
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal, but it definitely was one I
0:09
Speaker 1: grew up with reading and continue to read and rely on.
0:13
Speaker 1: And it was good to hear it still is highly
0:16
Speaker 1: sought after by and trusted by, you know, particularly business people.
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Speaker 1: And the fact that I've been creating content my whole
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Speaker 1: career in life, so I've been a journalist of sorts,
0:26
Speaker 1: although they would argue that PR and marketing people are
0:28
Speaker 1: not journalists, but In the space that I grew up in,
0:32
Speaker 1: in healthcare and pharma, in terms of prevention and all
0:36
Speaker 1: the things we talk about at Get Real, a lot
0:38
Speaker 1: of the principles that drive the media business are things
0:43
Speaker 1: that will drive the marketing business as well. Alan and
0:48
Speaker 1: I talked about leadership is communications. Communications is leadership. I've
0:51
Speaker 1: said that forever. And this is just a reinforcement. And
0:56
Speaker 1: why does what he's doing at the Wall Street Journal
0:59
Speaker 1: now matter? That all CEOs and all C-suite executives have
1:04
Speaker 1: to be able to communicate effectively in order to lead
1:07
Speaker 1: an organization well. Welcome to Get Real. Thank you. So look,
1:12
Speaker 1: I always start when I do these things in Getting Real,
1:16
Speaker 1: I like to go back to more of the origin
1:18
Speaker 1: of things. So take me back to covering politics in Washington.
1:23
Speaker 1: Was there a moment where you felt the spark, where
1:25
Speaker 1: you knew this was the work you had to do?
1:27
Speaker 1: How'd you get into it?
1:28
Speaker 2: I've been a journalist literally since I was nine years old.
1:32
Speaker 2: I started my own little neighborhood newspaper when I was nine,
1:36
Speaker 2: edited the high school newspaper, the college newspaper. So I
1:39
Speaker 2: was into journalism. That was kind of inescapable by that point.
1:43
Speaker 1: You know why? I mean, what was it?
1:45
Speaker 2: I don't. I was nine years old. I mean, do
1:47
Speaker 2: you know why you do what you do when you're nine?
1:49
Speaker 2: I enjoyed it. I mean, I guess what I would
1:51
Speaker 2: say after the fact is just I've enjoyed the journalistic
1:54
Speaker 2: part of my life because you're always learning new things.
1:57
Speaker 2: You know, it just satisfies curiosity. It's so much fun
2:01
Speaker 2: to wake up every morning and have some completely new
2:04
Speaker 2: story thrown at you that you couldn't have imagined before.
2:08
Speaker 2: So that was always.
2:09
Speaker 1: Anything you covered in those that we know about today
2:12
Speaker 1: that are remarkable?
2:14
Speaker 2: I was going to talk about that. I ended up
2:15
Speaker 2: in Washington, not because I was dying to be in Washington,
2:18
Speaker 2: but I had gone to graduate school in economics at
2:21
Speaker 2: the London School of Economics. came back to D.C. because
2:25
Speaker 2: I went to graduate school in economics because the economy
2:28
Speaker 2: in those days wasn't doing particularly well. And I thought
2:31
Speaker 2: if I was going to write about society, I needed
2:33
Speaker 2: to understand economics because that was the driving force in
2:37
Speaker 2: so much of it. And that eventually ended me up
2:40
Speaker 2: at the Wall Street Journal, Washington Bureau. But the story
2:43
Speaker 2: that was really my training in Washington was the 1986
2:47
Speaker 2: Tax Act. And I ended up writing a book about it,
2:49
Speaker 2: The Showdown at Gucci Gulch, which amazingly is still in
2:53
Speaker 2: print because it got into classrooms. It's sort of how
2:56
Speaker 2: a bill becomes a law book that gets used in
2:59
Speaker 2: a lot of college classrooms. But I mention it because
3:02
Speaker 2: it's just, if you go back and look at it now,
3:05
Speaker 2: and there are still professors who use it in their classes,
3:08
Speaker 2: Washington was so different than it is today. So different.
3:12
Speaker 2: And the thing that made the 1986 tax reform bill
3:17
Speaker 2: such an interesting story. You had Ronald Reagan as president
3:21
Speaker 2: and Dan Rostenkowski, a Democrat, as head of the tax
3:25
Speaker 2: writing committee and Tip O'Neill as the head of Congress.
3:27
Speaker 2: The ideological difference between those two was as great as
3:31
Speaker 2: the ideological difference between Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi. But
3:35
Speaker 2: you had an infrastructure that was designed to try and
3:39
Speaker 2: find productive solutions that were good for people and meld
3:43
Speaker 2: them out of these partisan impulses. And that's what happened
3:47
Speaker 2: with the 86 tax bill. It was kind of a
3:49
Speaker 2: combination of, okay, the Republicans want lower tax rates. We
3:52
Speaker 2: can do that. The Democrats want to get rid of
3:55
Speaker 2: these tax breaks that are favoring business and the wealthy.
3:58
Speaker 2: We can do those two things. And getting rid of
4:00
Speaker 2: the tax breaks can pay for lower rates and everybody's happy.
4:03
Speaker 2: And that's a simple description of what was a Perils
4:07
Speaker 2: of Pauline year and a half story. But it's just
4:10
Speaker 2: a reminder of how everything has changed in Washington since then.
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Speaker 2: And there are very few people who are trying to
4:16
Speaker 2: get good solutions for the public. And a lot of
4:19
Speaker 2: people are just trying to score points for the next election.
4:21
Speaker 2: And it's sad.
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Speaker 1: You think it's fixable?
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Speaker 2: I don't know. It goes so deep. I mean, one
4:26
Speaker 2: of the interesting things about that time when I was
4:30
Speaker 2: working on this was you had these nonpartisan professionals. Like
4:34
Speaker 2: there was a guy named Ron Perlman who was Ronald
4:38
Speaker 2: Reagan's top tax writing official in the Treasury Department and
4:43
Speaker 2: later left and became Dan Rostenkowski's head of the Joint
4:48
Speaker 2: Tax Committee. So the same guy worked on both sides
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Speaker 2: of the aisle. That was not uncommon then. You had
4:54
Speaker 2: professionals who were dedicated to good public service.
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Speaker 1: Not to be confused with Revlon's Ron Perlman, right? Not
5:02
Speaker 1: to be.
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Speaker 2: No, very different.
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Speaker 1: Today, he'd probably be there.
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Speaker 2: He probably would. They'd blown up the whole nonpartisan infrastructure
5:10
Speaker 2: of Washington and replaced it with massive partisanship. And this
5:14
Speaker 2: has been going on for a long time. I mean,
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Speaker 2: I left Washington in 2005, and I thought, I've been
5:20
Speaker 2: here for a long time, and it's been pretty much
5:22
Speaker 2: a downhill slide, and it can't get much worse. And
5:25
Speaker 2: it got so much worse. Yeah. It's going to be
5:27
Speaker 2: a hard climb to get out of the partisanship.
5:31
Speaker 1: Well, at that time, what did you see about how
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Speaker 1: businesses and government interacted that most people missed? Did you
5:37
Speaker 1: think CEOs understand Washington better today, or are many of
5:42
Speaker 1: them still learning the hard way?
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Speaker 2: Oh, I think they understood better then because, look, if
5:49
Speaker 2: you get to be CEO of one of these large companies,
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Speaker 2: you get there because you solve problems. You get there
5:55
Speaker 2: because you're practically minded. You get there because you're looking
5:59
Speaker 2: for ways to make things happen. And they could do
6:02
Speaker 2: that in the Washington of 1986. They can't do it today.
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Speaker 2: There are actually very few people in Washington these days
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Speaker 2: who are looking to make policy. Everybody's looking to score
6:14
Speaker 2: political points. And that's immensely frustrating to business people and
6:19
Speaker 2: alienating to business people. They have to play because Donald
6:23
Speaker 2: Trump has made it a transactional game. And if you
6:26
Speaker 2: don't play, you could pay a cost. It's not normal
6:29
Speaker 2: for them. I mean, the big change, Jim, is when
6:33
Speaker 2: I started in Washington, the business community more or less
6:38
Speaker 2: defined the right wing of the political spectrum. The American
6:42
Speaker 2: Enterprise Institute was funded by, run by business and pretty
6:46
Speaker 2: much defined the conservative end of the spectrum. And Ronald
6:50
Speaker 2: Reagan came into the office with massive business backing. Today,
6:54
Speaker 2: neither the right wing nor the left wing of the
6:57
Speaker 2: political spectrum are places where business feels comfortable. They're alienated
7:03
Speaker 2: from both. They may have something to get from one side.
7:06
Speaker 2: They'll take the tax cuts that come from the right.
7:09
Speaker 2: They will take the subsidies that come from the left.
7:12
Speaker 2: But the whole way of doing business, which is not
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Speaker 2: at all practical or not at all focused on solving
7:19
Speaker 2: problems is alien to most business people.
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Speaker 1: You don't go to Washington, you go to Mar-a-Lago. I mean,
7:24
Speaker 1: it's Florida.
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Speaker 2: There's that too.
7:27
Speaker 1: Is that kind of how it's happening now?
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Speaker 2: Well, a lot of business is being done at Mar-a-Lago
7:32
Speaker 2: for sure.
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Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to spend too much time
7:35
Speaker 1: on it, but I think obviously that is something that
7:38
Speaker 1: CEOs probably will continue to wrestle with in the next
7:42
Speaker 1: couple of cycles. But I don't know. I always talk
7:45
Speaker 1: about this concept of organizing versus agonizing. How do you
7:50
Speaker 1: think you all play a role in all of this?
7:53
Speaker 2: Well, define you all. If you mean the Wall Street... Oh,
7:55
Speaker 2: the Wall Street Journal.
7:56
Speaker 1: Yeah.
7:57
Speaker 2: You know, I spent a couple of years of my
7:59
Speaker 2: career running the Pew Research Center, which is the organization
8:02
Speaker 2: that does the annual poll of trusted media in America.
8:08
Speaker 2: You look at that poll, and this has been true
8:10
Speaker 2: for a couple of decades, but it's gotten more true
8:14
Speaker 2: over time. The Wall Street Journal is the only major
8:17
Speaker 2: media voice that is trusted on both sides of the
8:21
Speaker 2: great political divide that we live in right now. Now,
8:24
Speaker 2: some people say, well, they're reading different newspapers. The right
8:27
Speaker 2: wing is reading the editorial page and the Left-wing is
8:29
Speaker 2: reading the news pages. I think that's oversimplified. I think
8:34
Speaker 2: this paper is the best source of news in America regardless.
8:39
Speaker 2: And it's because it has worked assiduously to stay out
8:44
Speaker 2: of the great political divide.
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Speaker 1: Is that because its ownership is- A little bit. On
8:49
Speaker 1: the PR side of it, I've pitched reporters there. And
8:52
Speaker 1: for the most part, in our neck of the woods,
8:54
Speaker 1: it's been a great publication to work with.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, look, journalists are my tribe, so I can speak
9:01
Speaker 2: with some knowledge about my tribe. The kinds of people
9:04
Speaker 2: who go into journalism, the people who at some point
9:07
Speaker 2: in their college career say, you know what, I'm not
9:09
Speaker 2: going to be a banker or a consultant. I'm going
9:11
Speaker 2: to be a journalist. They tend to be to the
9:14
Speaker 2: left politically of the public generally. Not always.
9:17
Speaker 1: Well, my kid wants to do that, so yeah, that
9:19
Speaker 1: adds up. Yeah, you know. The one who's the electrician
9:21
Speaker 1: in Tahoe is on the right. There you go. Totally different.
9:26
Speaker 1: There you go.
9:26
Speaker 2: So you start out with a talent pool that clearly
9:29
Speaker 2: leans to the left, and it requires editors and organizations
9:34
Speaker 2: that lean against those natural tendencies to keep them in
9:38
Speaker 2: the right place. And that's actually what Rupert Murdoch brought
9:41
Speaker 2: to the Wall Street Journal. I mean, at the time,
9:43
Speaker 2: everybody was afraid that the Wall Street Journal would turn
9:46
Speaker 2: into Fox News, and that's not what happened. I think
9:48
Speaker 2: Rupert is smarter than that. He understood that The Wall
9:52
Speaker 2: Street Journal is written first and foremost for people who
9:55
Speaker 2: are making business decisions.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
9:58
Speaker 2: And they want their decisions to be based on somebody's
10:00
Speaker 2: ideological views. They want it to be based on fact,
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Speaker 2: on truth. And so I think all of that has
10:05
Speaker 2: helped keep it sane at a time when the media
10:09
Speaker 2: is generally going insane.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. Ron Enzo, Marilyn Chase, they covered our space. Good people.
10:15
Speaker 1: Really great people. Really solid. There were a few that
10:20
Speaker 1: I ran across that wanted the headline and the ambition,
10:23
Speaker 1: you know, and I think that's perhaps why there's a
10:25
Speaker 1: little of this mistrust. I mean, it seems like it's
10:28
Speaker 1: so about clickbait and stuff like that. So I think
10:32
Speaker 1: there's less trust. I think now we do podcasting. So
10:35
Speaker 1: news comes out of that. It's all evolving.
10:38
Speaker 2: And Jim, the metrics have gotten much more sophisticated there.
10:41
Speaker 2: We did go through a period where it was all
10:44
Speaker 2: you had to do was write a provocative headline. It
10:46
Speaker 2: didn't even matter what the story said. If you did
10:48
Speaker 2: a provocative headline and people click, you could collect your
10:50
Speaker 2: money and move on. Today, our economics depend heavily on
10:55
Speaker 2: people subscribing, on them being willing to actually pay us
10:58
Speaker 2: for the news. So it requires them to have trust
11:01
Speaker 2: beyond a clickbaity headline.
11:03
Speaker 1: I'm going to make sure mine's up to date. I
11:06
Speaker 1: have been subscribing. I just make sure of that before
11:08
Speaker 1: I come over. As a guy who built a business,
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Speaker 1: I absolutely used the Wall Street Journal over the years
11:14
Speaker 1: for that. But when you became CEO of Fortune, what
11:18
Speaker 1: were the most important decisions you had to make to
11:20
Speaker 1: turn it around, speaking of media?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, look, the problem at Fortune was no different than
11:26
Speaker 2: the problem I left at the Wall Street Journal, which
11:29
Speaker 2: was in the last half of the 20th century, journalists
11:34
Speaker 2: had a sweet deal. I mean, the newspapers were a
11:37
Speaker 2: monopoly pretty much. I always think about, this is going back,
11:41
Speaker 2: so I apologize, but I always think about Ward Cleaver.
11:44
Speaker 2: I don't know if you were ever a Leave it
11:45
Speaker 2: to Beaver fan or people have watched.
11:47
Speaker 1: People used to say I looked like the kid, the
11:50
Speaker 1: little kid. Eddie Haskell? Whatever that kid's name was. I
11:53
Speaker 1: don't know what his name was, but they used to
11:55
Speaker 1: call me that and I'd be like, what are you.
11:58
Speaker 2: If you look at that show, what you'll see is
11:59
Speaker 2: that the father, Ward Cleaver, is always sitting at the
12:02
Speaker 2: breakfast table and always reading the newspaper. It's not even
12:05
Speaker 2: clear he has a job. He's just sitting at the
12:07
Speaker 2: breakfast table reading the newspaper. You realize if you wanted
12:10
Speaker 2: to get any kind of a message to the Cleaver family,
12:12
Speaker 2: there was only one way to do it, and that
12:14
Speaker 2: was through the newspaper. And as soon as the newspaper
12:17
Speaker 2: got replaced by a computer screen, well, then there were
12:21
Speaker 2: thousands of ways to do it. It just became wide open.
12:25
Speaker 2: And But I think there was an arrogance that grew
12:28
Speaker 2: out of that monopoly in the later years of the
12:33
Speaker 2: 20th century that has been very hard to get rid of.
12:36
Speaker 2: So to your question. With Fortune, the magazine was the
12:41
Speaker 2: mode and people wrote 5,000-word stories for the magazine. And
12:47
Speaker 2: in their heads, they equated 5,000-word stories with quality. even
12:53
Speaker 2: though we were in a world that was rapidly turning
12:56
Speaker 2: to people taking bits of information on their phone and
13:00
Speaker 2: very seldom reading 5,000-word stories. So getting a bunch of
13:06
Speaker 2: journalists who had been trained to think that the highest
13:09
Speaker 2: form of quality was a 5,000-word story that you spent
13:13
Speaker 2: two months writing and then getting them to understand that
13:16
Speaker 2: that was not the way people were consuming information anymore
13:19
Speaker 2: and that you could write short but still be smart,
13:22
Speaker 2: And you could still inform people, but they needed to
13:24
Speaker 2: be informed for the most part in bits. And that
13:26
Speaker 2: the only case for a 5,000-word story was a really strong,
13:33
Speaker 2: compelling narrative that was going to pull them through in
13:36
Speaker 2: an armchair moment.
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Speaker 1: It's just hard.
13:39
Speaker 2: It was very hard. And a lot of people never
13:41
Speaker 2: got to the other side. The reason I write a
13:44
Speaker 2: top to a daily newsletter, now I probably do it
13:46
Speaker 2: one or two times a week. For a while, I
13:48
Speaker 2: was doing it five days a week. It's only 300 words.
13:51
Speaker 2: The reason I started doing it, I started doing it
13:53
Speaker 2: when I was at Fortune, was to show the journalists there,
13:58
Speaker 2: this is journalism. This is valuable. People read it. You
14:01
Speaker 2: can be smart. You can convey information. And so don't
14:05
Speaker 2: tell me the only honorable way to do journalism is
14:09
Speaker 2: to write 5,000-word stories. And that was a transition at
14:12
Speaker 2: The Wall Street Journal, and it was a transition at Fortune.
14:15
Speaker 2: And it's just, it's been hard for journalists to get
14:18
Speaker 2: used to.
14:20
Speaker 1: So you're as popular as Barry Weiss sometimes?
14:23
Speaker 2: I'm sure there are people out there who would equate
14:24
Speaker 2: me with Barry Weiss. And it makes me, frankly, very
14:28
Speaker 2: sympathetic to Barry Weiss and not terribly sympathetic to Scott Pelley.
14:31
Speaker 2: And it has nothing to do with the ideology of
14:34
Speaker 2: the whole thing. It has to do with this sort
14:37
Speaker 2: of proud arrogance that's ignorant of the economics. There was
14:42
Speaker 2: a moment, this was now a while ago, Bill Keller
14:44
Speaker 2: was the executive editor of the New York Times. Raju Narasetti,
14:49
Speaker 2: who's now at McKinsey, was the digital editor at the
14:51
Speaker 2: Washington Post. Somebody did a story about the metrics. Do
14:54
Speaker 2: you look at the metrics? And Raju unwisely said, I
14:57
Speaker 2: look at the metrics to determine which reporters to keep
15:00
Speaker 2: and which reporters to fire, which was not the smartest
15:05
Speaker 2: thing to say at the time publicly. Bill Keller was
15:08
Speaker 2: asked the same question and he said, we don't look
15:10
Speaker 2: at the numbers at all. He said, people pay us
15:13
Speaker 2: to tell them what news is important. And my response
15:16
Speaker 2: at the time was, I don't know how you can
15:19
Speaker 2: run a business and not be interested in what your
15:23
Speaker 2: customers want. How can you say that? But that was
15:26
Speaker 2: a hard transition for a lot of journalists. Yeah.
15:28
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know Barry Weiss, but I
15:30
Speaker 1: have met her and I, I mean, I get the
15:32
Speaker 1: sense that she's sincere here and trying to just make
15:37
Speaker 1: them in this show relevant well into the future. We'll
15:40
Speaker 1: see how it shakes out.
15:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know her, and I wouldn't even want
15:45
Speaker 2: to begin to take sides in the ideological battle, but
15:48
Speaker 2: I think there's something to that. It doesn't make any
15:49
Speaker 2: sense that 60 Minutes should go on forever in exactly
15:53
Speaker 2: the same form when every other media that we deal
15:55
Speaker 2: with is consumed in very different ways than it was
15:59
Speaker 2: 20 years ago.
16:00
Speaker 1: So if you were taking the fortune roll now, how
16:03
Speaker 1: would you lead that media business if you were starting over?
16:06
Speaker 2: It's only been two years since I left. What I
16:08
Speaker 2: did here and what I did there and the reason
16:12
Speaker 2: that I'm in the job I'm in now is I've
16:14
Speaker 2: spent most of the last 20 years saying, what are
16:18
Speaker 2: other ways that we can provide quality information to our
16:23
Speaker 2: audiences and also make money to shore up the business model?
16:28
Speaker 2: I did digital. I did video. I did a lot
16:31
Speaker 2: of different things, but the thing that stuck largely because
16:34
Speaker 2: of its profitability is executive conferences. So at Fortune, the
16:43
Speaker 2: executive conferences were maybe a third of the total revenue.
16:48
Speaker 2: But if you really did the numbers right, probably all
16:51
Speaker 2: the profit, all the profit. I mean, here's the thing.
16:53
Speaker 2: Let me throw you some numbers that just help you
16:56
Speaker 2: understand what's happened in the last 25 years to media.
16:58
Speaker 2: In the year 2000, the print Wall Street Journal sold
17:03
Speaker 2: a billion dollars in advertising. Now, I don't know that
17:07
Speaker 2: we precisely disclose what we sell in print advertising now,
17:12
Speaker 2: but it's probably one-tenth of that. At Fortune, in the
17:15
Speaker 2: year 2000, the magazine sold 300 million in print advertising.
17:20
Speaker 2: And I know the year I left two years ago,
17:22
Speaker 2: it was closer to 7 million, so 300 to 7.
17:25
Speaker 2: So that's what happened to print. And the challenge has
17:28
Speaker 2: been okay, can you build a digital business that makes money?
17:32
Speaker 2: That's why paywalls are so important. And are there other
17:35
Speaker 2: things you can do that make money? And at Fortune,
17:38
Speaker 2: it was the executive conference business.
17:40
Speaker 1: And here.
17:41
Speaker 2: It is too, but they've done a bunch of other things,
17:43
Speaker 2: kind of B2B information.
17:45
Speaker 1: Can you build a profitable journalism business without being dependent
17:48
Speaker 1: on the social platforms, or do you have to have that?
17:52
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, you can. The Wall Street Journal and Dow
17:55
Speaker 2: Jones is a very good business today, a stunningly good business,
18:00
Speaker 2: and social platforms are a very small piece of that business, tiny.
18:04
Speaker 1: Very small. Okay, that's good to know. We've watched every
18:07
Speaker 1: trend unfold, but now we're in the AI era. Is
18:11
Speaker 1: this different or does it remind you of some of
18:14
Speaker 1: the past technology revolution? And how is it affecting how
18:18
Speaker 1: you think about your business?
18:19
Speaker 2: It is different because it's so all pervasive and all invasive.
18:25
Speaker 2: I mean, there's some similarities in that what you don't
18:29
Speaker 2: want to do is let yourself get disintermediated. You don't
18:33
Speaker 2: want everybody getting their news through an LLM that's consuming
18:37
Speaker 2: all your content. That's why at the Wall Street Journal,
18:39
Speaker 2: we have both made a deal with OpenAI, but also
18:44
Speaker 2: sued Perplexity for using our content. So at minimum, if
18:48
Speaker 2: you're going to base your service on our content, you're
18:51
Speaker 2: going to pay us for it. And I think we
18:53
Speaker 2: have to be smart about how we use AI in
18:57
Speaker 2: order to provide information to people the way they want it.
19:01
Speaker 2: But I sort of cling to the belief that, and
19:04
Speaker 2: you said this at the beginning, that at the end
19:07
Speaker 2: of the day, There's going to be an audience that
19:09
Speaker 2: is willing to pay for quality journalism and quality information.
19:13
Speaker 2: And that's what we cling to here. And that's proven
19:18
Speaker 2: to be true so far.
19:19
Speaker 1: I'll be out there advocating for it. That's why I
19:21
Speaker 1: wanted to do the podcast, because I think as a
19:24
Speaker 1: CEO and chairman and someone who's advising CEOs, I think
19:28
Speaker 1: this publication in particular, Fortune 2 to a large degree,
19:33
Speaker 1: taught us a lot. And helped us a lot. So
19:35
Speaker 1: you wrote the CEO Daily every week for close to
19:38
Speaker 1: a decade. Over time, did you notice patterns in what
19:42
Speaker 1: concerns CEOs and where they place their focus? Are there
19:46
Speaker 1: things CEOs discuss when the microphone is off? that you
19:50
Speaker 1: wish they spoke about when the mic is on?
19:53
Speaker 2: If I had to start at the highest level, the
19:55
Speaker 2: macro trend over the course of my career covering business
20:00
Speaker 2: is that the CEO job has become much less about
20:04
Speaker 2: telling everybody what to do. I mean, the old model
20:07
Speaker 2: was You have this big corporation. There are a bunch
20:09
Speaker 2: of people out in the field who see what's going on.
20:11
Speaker 2: They get information. The information goes up the chain. It
20:14
Speaker 2: gets to the top. The executive team sits down in
20:17
Speaker 2: a room, comes up with a strategy, and then the
20:19
Speaker 2: orders fall back down from the top, right? Nobody runs
20:22
Speaker 2: a company. No one can run a company that way
20:25
Speaker 2: today because the world moves too fast. Information travels in
20:29
Speaker 2: all directions. And so the CEO job has become much
20:34
Speaker 2: less about telling people what to do And much more
20:38
Speaker 2: about creating the framework and defining the mission and creating
20:43
Speaker 2: the values and creating the guardrails and providing inspiration to
20:47
Speaker 2: the teams to get the right work done. And so
20:50
Speaker 2: it's become much more about people, about culture. And I
20:56
Speaker 2: can tell you all the interviews I've had in the
20:59
Speaker 2: last two or three years focus on that. Now, there
21:03
Speaker 2: was a point five, six, seven years ago where the
21:06
Speaker 2: fact that they were trying to create culture led a
21:10
Speaker 2: lot of CEOs to talk much more about social issues,
21:13
Speaker 2: whether it was climate, diversity.
21:15
Speaker 1: Inclusion, et cetera. Especially through COVID, I had to do it.
21:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, as a culture tool, basically. But then there was
21:22
Speaker 2: the backlash, and that was seen as political, and you
21:24
Speaker 2: were called woke CEOs. And so everybody sort of ratcheted
21:27
Speaker 2: that down a little bit. but still the basics of
21:32
Speaker 2: the job. I'll just give you an example. In December,
21:34
Speaker 2: I interviewed John Stanky, who is the CEO of AT & T.
21:39
Speaker 2: And one of the questions I ask, and I ask
21:40
Speaker 2: a lot of CEOs this question, I said, what have
21:43
Speaker 2: you learned as CEO? that surprised you, that you didn't
21:48
Speaker 2: know when you began five years ago was going to
21:51
Speaker 2: be as big a part of the job as it was.
21:53
Speaker 2: And he, without hesitation, said, oh, it's the culture piece.
21:57
Speaker 2: He said, I mean, I knew culture was important, but
21:59
Speaker 2: I really thought I had the strategy in place. I
22:02
Speaker 2: knew what we needed to do. And I thought I
22:03
Speaker 2: was going to get into the job and tell everybody
22:05
Speaker 2: this is what we need to do. And they don't
22:07
Speaker 2: fall in line and actually do it. And what I
22:09
Speaker 2: discovered was that's not the way the world works. that
22:13
Speaker 2: getting people aligned, getting people on your side, getting people
22:17
Speaker 2: to understand how to deal with the barriers to getting
22:21
Speaker 2: things done was just a much, much, much bigger part
22:25
Speaker 2: of the job. And I've heard versions of that story
22:28
Speaker 2: from dozens of CEOs, almost every CEO I talked to.
22:31
Speaker 2: So I think that's the That's the really big change.
22:35
Speaker 2: I mean, I interviewed Shaq Welch, who was Fortune Magazine
22:38
Speaker 2: called him the manager of the century. I interviewed him
22:41
Speaker 2: a number of times at the end of his career,
22:44
Speaker 2: you know, around 25 years ago. He cared about his people,
22:48
Speaker 2: but he didn't talk about, I mean, he thought he
22:50
Speaker 2: had the answers, a lot of the answers. And I
22:54
Speaker 2: think what you find in CEOs, the good CEOs today
22:57
Speaker 2: is much more humility and much more of a sense
22:59
Speaker 2: of how do I engage and inspire people and motivate
23:04
Speaker 2: my people.
23:05
Speaker 1: You didn't ask me, and maybe you'll have me on
23:07
Speaker 1: to talk about it. I was more of a founder type, right?
23:11
Speaker 1: And I know you know Richard Edelman, you know, who's
23:13
Speaker 1: built similar type of business. What surprised me was how critical,
23:19
Speaker 1: and I say it now, communications is to the whole bit, right?
23:23
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't create a culture without it. And
23:26
Speaker 1: great communicators, people who really can communicate well, can create
23:30
Speaker 1: that leadership position. It's just so important. And that's where
23:35
Speaker 1: journalism and storytelling and I just don't see a way
23:39
Speaker 1: of replacing that very readily.
23:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. Because stories are
23:45
Speaker 2: how you build culture. And if people don't understand the story,
23:48
Speaker 2: you're lost.
23:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, that context, you got to align everyone around the context.
23:52
Speaker 1: So your career spans politics, business, and media. How much
23:57
Speaker 1: has how we consume media and the pace at which
24:00
Speaker 1: it's released changed how CEOs make decisions? I've heard Warren Buffett,
24:06
Speaker 1: I think, was saying, you know, it takes 20 years
24:08
Speaker 1: to build a reputation and 10 seconds for a tweet
24:11
Speaker 1: to destroy it.
24:12
Speaker 2: Social media has had a profound impact on both how
24:17
Speaker 2: CEOs act, how they, to your point, how they think
24:21
Speaker 2: about communication. You used to be able to sort of
24:24
Speaker 2: silo your communications, one message for your employees, one message
24:29
Speaker 2: for your investors, a different message for your customers. Social media,
24:34
Speaker 2: omnipresent media has blown all that up. My favorite moment was,
24:39
Speaker 2: let's see, this was now seven years ago, eight years ago,
24:43
Speaker 2: when Dr. David Dow was dragged off of a United
24:47
Speaker 2: Airplane in Chicago. I think it was. You remember this?
24:50
Speaker 1: Right. I sure did. Yeah, I worked on it.
24:52
Speaker 2: And somebody on the plane had their phone out and
24:55
Speaker 2: took a video and put the video online. And within
24:58
Speaker 2: 48 hours, you had people on the other side of
25:00
Speaker 2: the globe in Japan canceling United Airlines flights because of
25:06
Speaker 2: what they had seen. And the interesting thing about that
25:09
Speaker 2: moment was The people who dragged Dr. Dow off the
25:13
Speaker 2: plane were not United employees. They were security employees, whatever
25:18
Speaker 2: the precursor of the TSA or not. I was part
25:22
Speaker 2: of the TSA or whatever. They were security employers who
25:24
Speaker 2: dragged him off. And the CEO at the time, Oscar Munoz,
25:28
Speaker 2: and he's written about this, was in the middle of
25:30
Speaker 2: labor negotiations with his pilots. And so he was totally
25:34
Speaker 2: focused on the pilots and the employees. And so he
25:37
Speaker 2: put out a message to them saying, just want to
25:41
Speaker 2: make sure everybody understands that no one on our team
25:44
Speaker 2: did anything wrong. And maybe that was the right message
25:47
Speaker 2: for the employees, but it... obviously instantly went out on
25:51
Speaker 2: social media as well and was the exact wrong message
25:53
Speaker 2: for the public. It sounded so tenured that it only
25:57
Speaker 2: exacerbated the problem. So I just mentioned that because that
26:01
Speaker 2: was a moment when it became clear that we live
26:05
Speaker 2: in a world where media, where information can travel everywhere,
26:10
Speaker 2: anywhere in a nanosecond, and that you can't segment your
26:14
Speaker 2: message because you'll get sniffed out in a minute. And
26:17
Speaker 2: authenticity became so much more important in the way you communicate.
26:23
Speaker 2: I'll just give one other example. One of the most
26:26
Speaker 2: effective uses of social media I saw came in, I
26:30
Speaker 2: guess it was March of 2020, right when the pandemic hit.
26:34
Speaker 2: And Arne Sorensen was then the CEO of Marriott, was
26:38
Speaker 2: also undergoing a pretty serious chemotherapy for cancer, which he
26:43
Speaker 2: ultimately died from. But it instantly became clear when the
26:46
Speaker 2: pandemic hit, I mean, vacancy rates at Marriott's went to 98%, 99%.
26:51
Speaker 2: It instantly became clear that he was going to have
26:56
Speaker 2: to furlough the vast majority of his employees because he
26:59
Speaker 2: had no source of revenue and you didn't have any
27:01
Speaker 2: other choice. And you can still see this video. So
27:04
Speaker 2: he communicated that message via a Twitter video. That was
27:09
Speaker 2: about five minutes long and was just out there for
27:12
Speaker 2: everyone to see. And it's so compelling in part because
27:15
Speaker 2: the evidence of his own personal health care trials were evident,
27:20
Speaker 2: which added to the authenticity. But, you know, it's very
27:24
Speaker 2: hard to watch that and be angry at your CEO
27:27
Speaker 2: because he had just fired you. Well.
27:29
Speaker 1: I can relate. I had to do it and get
27:31
Speaker 1: people through it. And then we launched the Pfizer vaccine
27:33
Speaker 1: through that period and getting people to be involved in that.
27:38
Speaker 1: I think everything changed in communications through that process because
27:44
Speaker 1: we all essentially were on a social platform when you
27:47
Speaker 1: were doing digital meeting. It did change how we did everything.
27:52
Speaker 1: Can you recall a conversation with a leader where you thought, wow,
27:55
Speaker 1: this person sees the world differently? than everyone else, and
27:59
Speaker 1: I want to learn from them. I mean, you mentioned
28:01
Speaker 1: Jack Welch, but is there someone that really stands out
28:05
Speaker 1: or a couple of someones?
28:06
Speaker 2: I get little bits of that from everyone I talk to,
28:11
Speaker 2: but I mean, one of the ones that stands out
28:13
Speaker 2: of the current CEOs is Doug McMillan, who was CEO
28:18
Speaker 2: of Walmart. We were talking just a minute ago about
28:21
Speaker 2: the woke CEO. Well, Doug did a lot of the
28:25
Speaker 2: things that people called woke. I mean, he cared about
28:28
Speaker 2: the planet and got Walmart suppliers to do an amazing
28:32
Speaker 2: effort to take a gigaton of carbon emissions out of
28:36
Speaker 2: the environment. He broke with the history of Walmart by
28:40
Speaker 2: spending billions of dollars to increase the pay of associates,
28:44
Speaker 2: even though it wasn't really required by the marketplace just
28:48
Speaker 2: because he thought it was the right thing to do.
28:51
Speaker 2: He continued to do it in spite of the backlash.
28:54
Speaker 2: from politicians. 10 years ago, if I had asked you
28:57
Speaker 2: or surely if you would ask me, where's Walmart going
28:59
Speaker 2: to be in 10 years, I would have said they'd
29:01
Speaker 2: be toast in a world of Amazon. And Instead, they
29:05
Speaker 2: were able to adopt technology. And what Doug McMillan will
29:08
Speaker 2: tell you is if we beat Amazon or if we
29:11
Speaker 2: can keep pace with Amazon, it won't be because we
29:14
Speaker 2: have better technology. It will be because we treat our
29:17
Speaker 2: people better, that it's the people policies that give us
29:19
Speaker 2: the edge. Amazon will always have the technology edge. And
29:22
Speaker 2: I thought that was pretty compelling. The other great example
29:25
Speaker 2: of our times is Satya Nadella, who turned to Microsoft
29:28
Speaker 2: and completely upside down and saved it.
29:31
Speaker 1: In my view. Well, I mean, I say it a
29:33
Speaker 1: lot relative to AI, you know, without people, we're not
29:37
Speaker 1: going to be able to leverage AI. And it's all people.
29:40
Speaker 1: intelligence that we're leveraging anyway, as you said, right, which
29:43
Speaker 1: should be paid for.
29:44
Speaker 2: Yeah. And Jim, I spend an awful lot of my
29:47
Speaker 2: time moderating conversations that are purportedly about AI, because that's
29:51
Speaker 2: what everybody wants to talk about. And so we have
29:53
Speaker 2: AI conversations with executives and CEOs and others. And invariably,
29:58
Speaker 2: 10 minutes into those conversations, you look around the room
30:01
Speaker 2: and say, we're not talking about technology anymore. We're talking
30:04
Speaker 2: about people. We're talking about culture. We're talking about systems.
30:07
Speaker 2: It's like, how do I get my organization to take
30:10
Speaker 2: advantage of this technology?
30:12
Speaker 1: So that's what's on Peter's minds other than AI, right?
30:15
Speaker 1: When you bring these guys together in the Wall Street
30:17
Speaker 1: Journal Leadership Institute, what's keeping them up at night are
30:20
Speaker 1: those things.
30:21
Speaker 2: Yeah. They say they want to talk about AI, but
30:23
Speaker 2: it's not really AI. It's culture.
30:25
Speaker 1: It's organization.
30:26
Speaker 2: Look, these big companies, and you know this better than
30:28
Speaker 2: I do, these big companies, it's a form that was
30:32
Speaker 2: built in the 20th century, are not built to change.
30:36
Speaker 2: They're actually built to do just the opposite. They're built
30:38
Speaker 2: to resist change. They're built to provide continuity. And so
30:42
Speaker 2: in a world where you to change so fast, they
30:46
Speaker 2: can be a huge liability. And so I think what
30:48
Speaker 2: everyone is struggling with is, okay, how do we make
30:51
Speaker 2: this form work in a world where things are moving
30:55
Speaker 2: as fast as they are in this one?
30:57
Speaker 1: So everyone's in the same boat as the media business, right?
31:00
Speaker 2: That's right.
31:01
Speaker 1: Now everyone's problem, right? All this tech is what it's about.
31:04
Speaker 1: And just like media, how to adapt. so do all
31:08
Speaker 1: these corporations. What are your feelings about a future dependent
31:11
Speaker 1: on AI? Is there a word that comes to mind?
31:13
Speaker 1: Are you excited, scared, in awe, optimistic? Does it matter?
31:18
Speaker 2: I am by nature mostly excited and mostly optimistic. I mean,
31:22
Speaker 2: we had Joaquin Duato, the CEO of Johnson & Johnson,
31:26
Speaker 2: at an event in London last week, and he said
31:30
Speaker 2: he thinks there is a good chance, given the technology
31:33
Speaker 2: advances that he's seen, there's a good chance that we
31:36
Speaker 2: can eliminate cancer or at least make it the equivalent
31:40
Speaker 2: of a chronic disease within a decade. That's amazing. And
31:43
Speaker 2: when you look at some of the other things, healthcare
31:46
Speaker 2: is always used as the outstanding example, but some of
31:49
Speaker 2: the other ways in which technology is empowering people's lives,
31:54
Speaker 2: I think it's pretty exciting. Now, is it going to
31:56
Speaker 2: be disruptive for the workforce? Well, for a lot of people,
31:59
Speaker 2: it's going to be disruptive. Are we going to have
32:01
Speaker 2: massive unemployment? I don't think so. That's not the way
32:05
Speaker 2: history has worked so far. We may find all sorts of, well,
32:09
Speaker 2: we see it in healthcare, home health aides, and there's
32:12
Speaker 2: all sorts of stuff going on in healthcare that requires
32:15
Speaker 2: human beings.
32:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have a healthcare shortage of people. We need
32:19
Speaker 1: more people.
32:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, or is it going to be physical trainers, or
32:23
Speaker 2: is it going to be home chefs, or who knows?
32:26
Speaker 2: But I think as long as As long as the
32:28
Speaker 2: economy is producing value and people are making money, the
32:31
Speaker 2: other people will find ways to serve them.
32:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you're 100% right. And that's where I
32:37
Speaker 1: sit with it, especially in and around healthcare. Can we
32:39
Speaker 1: make cancer a chronic disease? I think in some cancers,
32:43
Speaker 1: there's a lot of possibility. But I mean, that's where
32:46
Speaker 1: I spend a lot or most of my time. And
32:48
Speaker 1: J & J is a great client and partner. And
32:52
Speaker 1: I think I share that excitement, but there's probably lots
32:55
Speaker 1: of other industries that will benefit.
32:57
Speaker 2: I think that's right.
32:59
Speaker 1: But that's probably the biggest one. So I always ask
33:02
Speaker 1: as we come toward the end of the discussion, what
33:05
Speaker 1: you're getting real about right now, either personally or with others.
33:09
Speaker 2: What I'm getting real about. Look, I had to go
33:13
Speaker 2: undergo major surgery for prostate cancer last year. Definitely changes
33:18
Speaker 2: your perspective. You're forced to confront the fact that you're
33:21
Speaker 2: on the back end of life. And so family and
33:24
Speaker 2: how you, the value of your time and how you
33:27
Speaker 2: use your time becomes incredibly important. Now it's not pushing
33:32
Speaker 2: me to leave my job. In fact, quite the opposite.
33:35
Speaker 2: It's made me realize I do what I do because
33:37
Speaker 2: I love what I do. I'm going to keep doing
33:39
Speaker 2: it as long as I am able.
33:41
Speaker 1: That's great.
33:42
Speaker 2: But it certainly forces you to make more careful calculations
33:46
Speaker 2: about how you spend your time.
33:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, we hear that a lot, and I can relate. Now,
33:50
Speaker 1: more fun ones. You started our conversation around a vacation.
33:54
Speaker 1: What is your favorite vacation that you can think of?
33:57
Speaker 2: I travel a lot for my job. We have events
33:59
Speaker 2: all over the world. And not only do I travel
34:02
Speaker 2: a lot, but most of our events, particularly our CEO events,
34:06
Speaker 2: are at five-star hotels. And because I'm the president of
34:09
Speaker 2: the Leadership Institute, somebody at the check-in desk usually decides
34:13
Speaker 2: to put me in one of the nicest suites in
34:15
Speaker 2: the hotel. So I travel and I travel well when
34:18
Speaker 2: I travel. If I were traveling on my own, I'd
34:21
Speaker 2: be staying in, I don't know, residence inns, who knows.
34:24
Speaker 2: And so actually when I'm not working, I don't want
34:27
Speaker 2: to be traveling around the world. I've got a little
34:30
Speaker 2: place on the water in Madison, Connecticut, overlooking the Long
34:33
Speaker 2: Island Sound I can walk, I can run, I can kayak,
34:37
Speaker 2: I can cook, I can be with my family, I
34:40
Speaker 2: can have a great time, and that makes me happy.
34:43
Speaker 1: On Golden Pond, that's great. I hear you. A good
34:45
Speaker 1: way to spend it, I have a place in Tahoe,
34:47
Speaker 1: so I can relate. It's the same. Nothing like going
34:50
Speaker 1: with your son fishing on the river. If there was
34:53
Speaker 1: an album that's a soundtrack of your life, what would
34:56
Speaker 1: that be? Oh, wow. Oh, wow.
34:59
Speaker 2: I don't know that I have a good answer to
35:00
Speaker 2: that question. It's funny you say that because I'm taking
35:03
Speaker 2: a music appreciation course when I'm running now from the
35:06
Speaker 2: great courses. It has brought me back after a long
35:09
Speaker 2: absence to the Brandenburg concertos. So I'm sure you're expecting
35:13
Speaker 2: me to pull some ancient rock band out of my list.
35:15
Speaker 1: But everyone has a different answer. Yeah. I mean, I
35:18
Speaker 1: had a wild one yesterday around disco, which I thought
35:21
Speaker 1: was pretty cool.
35:23
Speaker 2: Actually, my daughter lives in Denver and just got us
35:26
Speaker 2: tickets to go see Darius Rucker at Red Rocks, which
35:28
Speaker 2: I'm very excited.
35:29
Speaker 1: Have you ever been to Red Rock? I've been to
35:31
Speaker 1: Red Rocks. I've never been. And we were talking literally
35:34
Speaker 1: with my friends yesterday about a road trip to go there. Spectacular. Yeah.
35:39
Speaker 2: It's a spectacular venue.
35:40
Speaker 1: It's just beautiful.
35:41
Speaker 2: And Darius Rucker is one of my favorite country artists.
35:45
Speaker 2: And my daughter and I danced to Darius Rucker on
35:48
Speaker 2: our father-daughter dance at her wedding. So I'm looking forward
35:51
Speaker 2: to it. Wow.
35:51
Speaker 1: Well, that's pretty cool. We'll take that too. You said
35:54
Speaker 1: you love your work. If there was any other line
35:57
Speaker 1: of work, what would you be doing?
35:59
Speaker 2: I've tried that, you know? I started when I was
36:01
Speaker 2: nine and I'm still basically involved in it. I don't
36:04
Speaker 2: think there's anything else I could do.
36:06
Speaker 1: I'd say the same thing. I guess I started in
36:09
Speaker 1: PR at nine too, yeah, when I think about what
36:12
Speaker 1: I was up to. But yeah, you come to this
36:14
Speaker 1: by nature. I can accept that answer easily. Thank you
36:17
Speaker 1: so much for spending time with me. We could talk
36:20
Speaker 1: for hours and I'm sure we'll talk again in other forums.
36:24
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, thanks for watching. I really appreciate that you
36:27
Speaker 1: take the time to listen to this and tune in.
36:30
Speaker 1: So please subscribe, follow. I've got a lot of amazing guests.
36:35
Speaker 1: You're going to learn a lot and you're going to
36:36
Speaker 1: feel a lot better because you did it.