Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - How To Build Unshakable Trust | Dr. Rajiv J. Shah - President at The Rockefeller Foundation

Transcript

Lessons - How To Build Unshakable Trust | Dr. Rajiv J. Shah - President at The Rockefeller Foundation · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  In this lessons episode, discover the power of zooming in and out to drive change,
• 0:05
  the art of building trust in a skeptical world, and the importance of simplifying complex
• 0:10
  issues to inspire action. Learn actionable insights to tackle big challenges,
• 0:14
  foster collaboration, and make a lasting impact at scale.
• 0:26
  So I'm aspirational. I want to make the world a better place. I'm an entrepreneur. What are
• 0:32
  the lessons you're going to teach me? How do I avoid this aspiration trap? Well, I think it starts
• 0:38
  by being able to zoom in and zoom out, right? So great entrepreneurs can zoom out, see the forest
• 0:45
  for the trees, understand how their vision is going to affect change at massive scale, whether
• 0:50
  that's transforming an industry or building a new one or innovating technology that changes
• 0:57
  the way people live. But then to make it practical, real, and to build the flywheel of progress,
• 1:02
  you have to zoom in tremendously and be super detailed oriented about as you point out,
• 1:08
  making payroll, delivering product, generating the next bit of revenue. And it's shocking.
• 1:14
  The same skill set is required in taking on big public sector or social sector efforts.
• 1:20
  You have to be able to kind of, I had teams at USAID that were leading and I was helping to
• 1:27
  lead the effort to overcome the earthquake crisis in Haiti right when it happened in 2010.
• 1:33
  And it was a massive tragedy. 250,000 people died very little visibility on the ground.
• 1:39
  You had to be able to kind of go all the way down to the ground and understand, okay, our women,
• 1:44
  is there enough lighting in a community to keep girls safe at night? Is there enough?
• 1:48
  Oh, Mike Road is such a micro. So micro, but then you had to zoom all the way out and say, okay,
• 1:53
  we've got 56 countries seeking to be part of this response. The whole thing might cost $4 billion.
• 1:59
  How are we going to allocate resources? How are we going to move fast? How are we going to set a
• 2:02
  results framework that allows us to measure and respond to that whole cohort of actors that are
• 2:08
  going to be part of what was the largest civil, military, cooperative, humanitarian response in
• 2:13
  history? So you just have to be able to do both. And I think that's a skill set for entrepreneurs.
• 2:18
  I think it's a skill set for people in charge of projects and in government. I think it's a skill
• 2:22
  set for people in the social sector that really want to make change happen at scale.
• 2:27
  When you were thinking of, you know, sort of compiling all your learnings and your knowledge
• 2:33
  into big bets, do you feel like it was knowledge that was based on, like, sort of retroactive
• 2:41
  responses? Or were you hoping to put this book out into the world in hopes of saying,
• 2:45
  this is more of a proactive framework that I want you to take on?
• 2:50
  Well, I think a little bit of both. When I, you know, I did the book in part because when,
• 2:55
  honestly, when I was a young kid kind of starting out in my career, I kind of knew I didn't want
• 3:01
  to be a practicing doctor. I'd, we'd lost a presidential election. I found myself unemployed
• 3:06
  and I just had no idea what to do with myself. And I didn't believe in a million years you could
• 3:11
  have a career where you help Bill Gates deploy billions of dollars and save tens of millions of
• 3:16
  lives and then have a career where you work with President Obama and large global humanitarian
• 3:21
  and development priorities. And then you run a kind of really historically unique foundation
• 3:28
  that kind of created the movement of philanthropy before any of it existed. So I wanted readers to
• 3:34
  have confidence that in fact, there's a path here if you want to take it and there are set of tools
• 3:40
  and skills you can hone to be someone who has a successful career making change happen at scale
• 3:48
  if you kind of learn and apply these lessons. And I wrote it largely because I didn't have that when
• 3:53
  I was starting out and I thought it would be helpful to others. I also want to ask a tough
• 3:59
  question that's going to set the framework for how we can be effective as people that want to
• 4:04
  give back, that want to take big bets for people to take big bets or to even bet in institutions
• 4:11
  that can take on these challenges. There's a very important thing that I'd like you to speak on
• 4:15
  because I think I was looking back like three years ago you made a very good point how people don't
• 4:21
  trust institutions as much as they should. They don't trust governments and trust is a big thing
• 4:27
  because a lot of the issues that are big bets that are taken on by the Rockefeller Foundation
• 4:34
  world governments the gates foundation these are things that should be nonpartisan. They are
• 4:40
  humanity improving initiatives. But for some reason there's a trust factor there's there's
• 4:46
  discord there. So I don't think trust in institutions has gotten better since COVID I'm pretty
• 4:52
  sure it's just gotten way worse. So how do we solve for this because right now I think trust
• 4:58
  is at an all time low across the aisle with any group that you speak to. Yeah trust is at an
• 5:05
  all time low in in almost any kind of institution. And so what I was hoping is that this big bet mindset
• 5:12
  you know gives gives people the capacity to trust others and to build trust and to be an optimist
• 5:19
  when it would be very very easy to be cynical. You know it's very easy to say well government
• 5:24
  government shuts down it's not effective it's not going to work. It takes more effort and you
• 5:30
  got to have a different kind of mindset to be able to say hey if we really want to tackle hunger
• 5:35
  at scale globally we need food companies working together with humanitarian partners working together
• 5:41
  with governments at scale. And here's a playbook for how to bring that partnership together one of
• 5:46
  the elements of building trust is reaching across the aisle and making your relationships really
• 5:53
  personal. And I write in the book about efforts we pursued after 2008 when there was a horrific
• 6:00
  food crisis around the world related to the financial collapse and the financial crisis 100
• 6:06
  million people had pushed back into deep deep hunger kids eating mud cakes in in very poor communities
• 6:12
  just to feel satiety. And we built a bipartisan coalition in the United States to pass something
• 6:18
  called the Global Food Security Act and move 100 million people out of hunger and poverty. And
• 6:22
  that happened because I had the good fortune of getting to know some really conservative Republican
• 6:30
  senators who on television didn't quite seem like they were going to be our partners and friends
• 6:36
  but in private when you got to know their families and you got to know their values and you got
• 6:41
  to know their faith and you got to know what they really cared about. They became real champions
• 6:47
  for fighting hunger whether it was in Ethiopia or India or Indiana and they held hands with progressive
• 6:54
  partners and made it happen at scale during a really tough political environment and so I really
• 7:00
  think it's about building those personal relationships and you can only have trust if you know
• 7:05
  people and you know their values and to know their values you have to talk about your own you have
• 7:09
  to share what your vulnerabilities are and you have to be very real with people that sometimes you
• 7:15
  just met. I love that though I think that's so important because I think that everyone being
• 7:20
  locked away and assuming that somebody's entire personality is their Twitter feed is it's a very
• 7:26
  dangerous game to play right and I think that I mean some of these some of these ideas should not
• 7:31
  be partisan should not be polarizing then I think this is actually you know there's a few points
• 7:36
  I think that trust is is monumental I think the way you build trust across styles is very important
• 7:41
  another point it was literally your first point in in this book the ask a simple question but
• 7:47
  there's a there's a there's a quote a Bill Gates quote and the barrier to changes to little
• 7:53
  caring it's too much complexity I think complexity causes confusion and confusion creates distrust so
• 8:00
  talk to me about simplicity simplifying these issues educating on these issues that we can
• 8:05
  actually move the needle and stop worrying about the the banter back and forth. Yeah that's a great
• 8:11
  point I think it's very easy for people to be put off by complexity and it's super how many times
• 8:19
  of you asked a question well why are so many people homeless the answer is well it's very complex
• 8:25
  why do we allow 40% of American kids to grow up in child poverty well that's that's super
• 8:32
  complex you know why why are there still droughts and famines that are actually killing people
• 8:40
  in large numbers when food is relatively abundant and pretty cheap it's very complex
• 8:46
  complexity is a way to kind of keep people out and Bill actually told this great story once he
• 8:51
  was like you know Davos is something the world economic forum all these leaders private sector
• 8:55
  public sector go to the Swiss Alps and have this big conference and and he said you know you can
• 9:00
  go to Davos and sit and listen to a meeting about saving tens of millions of children's lives
• 9:07
  and it can feel a little dry like everyone's using big words and it's all very technical and complex
• 9:14
  and very low energy and then then you can go across the street where a software company is like
• 9:21
  launching a new game or a new piece of software and their lights and cameras and smoke and
• 9:27
  dancing and music and it's very lively and you're just like why why do we try to tackle the toughest
• 9:33
  problems in the world use with the language and a work style that is off putting to so many
• 9:38
  people like we have to make this simple to bring people in and I saw that over and over when we
• 9:43
  did the Haiti earthquake you know more than more American families contributed in some form to
• 9:49
  relief around the Haiti earthquake then watch the Super Bowl that year which shows you how good
• 9:54
  American families are how how much they want to be on the side of right morally and they did
• 10:01
  it because we created a text thread and you could text a small contribution very quickly they did
• 10:05
  it because lots of our partners had other ways to be a part of the solution instead of saying well
• 10:11
  it's very complex just just sit this one out you got to reach out and give people and trust
• 10:16
  that people want to be on the side of right if you make it possible and you make it easy for them to
• 10:20
  do so thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe button
• 10:26
  so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out the
• 10:30
  links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one