The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:10 - 00:00:43:06
Kevin Eikenberry
The world is polarized, maybe more than any time in our lifetimes. The outrage that can erupt for a variety of the sources of polarization must be understood by leaders. But more importantly, as a leader, we need strategies to acknowledge and move past the outrage to create great organizational results. And that is our focus today. Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we are helping leaders grow personally and professionally, Lee, to lead more effectively and make a bigger difference for their teams, organizations and the world.

00:00:43:12 - 00:01:17:02
Kevin Eikenberry
If you are listening to this podcast, you could be with us live in the future or on your favorite social media channel, which would allow you to sort of get a jumpstart on all of this, right? You can find out when those are happening and how you can interact with us in that live setting, and see the information sooner by going to our Facebook or LinkedIn groups, two of the channels in which we provide these live streams and just go to remarkable podcast.com/facebook or remarkable podcast.com/linkedin for all of that info.

00:01:17:04 - 00:01:43:13
Kevin Eikenberry
And today's episode is brought to you by my latest book, Flexible Leadership. Navigate Uncertainty and Lead with Confidence. It's time to realize that styles can get in our way, and that following our strengths might not always be the best approach in a world more complex and uncertain than ever. Leaders need a new perspective and a new set of tools to create the great results that they, their organizations, and their team members want and need.

00:01:43:13 - 00:02:13:07
Kevin Eikenberry
And that's what flexible leadership provides you. Learn more and get your copy now at remarkable podcast.com/flexible. And now that we've got all of that good stuff out of the way, I'm going to bring my guest to the stage and introduce him. His name is Karthik Ramana. He's a professor of business and public policy at the University of Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government, where he has served as a director of one of the world's most diverse leadership programs.

00:02:13:12 - 00:02:38:18
Kevin Eikenberry
Previously a professor at Harvard Business School, Professor Ramana studies how organizations and leaders build trust with stakeholders. His scholarship has won numerous awards, including the Harvard Business School McKinsey Prize for Groundbreaking management thinking, and three times three times the International Case Studies Prizes for Outstanding case writing, which the Financial Times calls the Business School Oscars, which is pretty cool.

00:02:38:18 - 00:02:56:07
Kevin Eikenberry
We've never had an Oscar winner on the show. I suppose now, until now. He is the author of The Age of Outrage How to Lead in a Polarized World, which is, I suppose, the biggest reason why he's here, and I am so glad to invite him to join me. Karthik, thanks for being here.

00:02:56:08 - 00:02:57:17
Karthik Ramanna
Thank you for having me, Kevin.

00:02:57:19 - 00:03:24:14
Kevin Eikenberry
And you're not in London today, but you're in Washington DC. Indeed. So we're in the same time zone, which I wasn't necessarily expecting before we started. I'm glad you're here. Thank you. So let's talk a little. I mean, I gave the very high level background of, intro of your background, but I'm curious how you end up specifically doing the work that you do and then leading into this book.

00:03:24:16 - 00:03:28:17
Kevin Eikenberry
So tell us a little bit about that context and background to get us started.

00:03:28:19 - 00:03:57:13
Karthik Ramanna
Sure. So, Kevin, I trained as a fairly quantitative economist, over at MIT and my first job out of my PhD program was, as a professor at Harvard Business School. But I taught fairly, quantitative subjects like finance and accounting, and, I enjoyed it very much. And then the financial crisis hit, and it occurred to me that the great challenge of the world wasn't that there weren't enough MIT trained economists teaching Harvard MBAs how to make more money.

00:03:57:15 - 00:04:17:00
Karthik Ramanna
There were other, bigger challenges in the world. So my dean at the time actually encouraged me to teach the required course in leadership at, Harvard Business School. And it was quite the leap for someone like me, because, again, I was a very quantitative person that like to do math and things like that. And, and but I enjoyed it.

00:04:17:00 - 00:04:47:10
Karthik Ramanna
I enjoyed it very much. And I taught that course for many years. And then when the University of Oxford was building its new school of government, I, was quite surprised to be recruited to serve as the first director of its Master of Public Policy program. And in that role, Kevin, I was, suddenly in front of a group of, you know, prospective and and fairly, senior, public leaders from around the world over the course of the eight years that I let it, we had 1000 public leaders from 120 different countries.

00:04:47:12 - 00:05:01:03
Karthik Ramanna
And it occurred to me that I need to have some sort of approach to making sure that in convening all of these leaders, we leave them stronger for the experience. Or at the very least, I don't do more harm. So first, that's first.

00:05:01:03 - 00:05:02:03
Kevin Eikenberry
Do no harm, right?

00:05:02:03 - 00:05:06:05
Karthik Ramanna
Indeed. Yeah. And that's what got into this topic.

00:05:06:07 - 00:05:26:14
Kevin Eikenberry
Well, I have to say we get we had all sorts of books, sent to us, pitched to us, for the show. And we're blessed that that happens. And and to to get a book in the mail. And I think it just showed up, as I recall. But it doesn't matter either way, when I see it, I see a book called The Age of Outrage, and I'm like, okay, the age of outrage.

00:05:26:16 - 00:05:45:13
Kevin Eikenberry
I need to learn. I need to see more about what's in here, because the title certainly took my grab my attention from the start and and I know that you and I, Karthick could have a whole conversation. This whole, this whole episode could be about what fundamentally is the first chapter in the book, which is what are the causes of the outrage.

00:05:45:15 - 00:06:01:08
Kevin Eikenberry
And I don't really want to do that because I want us to get to like, okay, we sort of all know that there is polarization and there are issues, and there is emotions and there is anxiety and there is outrage. So I don't really want us to spend time there because I think that's pretty much everybody gets it.

00:06:01:14 - 00:06:21:17
Kevin Eikenberry
But I have to say that in reading the book, that was the part that captivated me the most because you had like a good economist, had some really interesting data in there. So I don't want us to spend really much time. But if you could just give us a couple of thoughts as to why you think now, this is more of an issue maybe than it's been.

00:06:21:17 - 00:06:28:00
Kevin Eikenberry
Certainly, I guess I said earlier in our lifetimes, just give us a little there and then I want to dive into now what?

00:06:28:02 - 00:06:49:01
Karthik Ramanna
Sure. So look at its core, Kevin. It's really about a fear of the future, and it's about a sense that we've been somehow dealt a raw deal by those who've been in positions of power. What I mean by the fear of future is this sense that, you know, I mean, you think about how AI is disrupting our lives and how technology more broadly is changing the way the world works.

00:06:49:01 - 00:07:20:05
Karthik Ramanna
I mean, this the technological disruption we're likely to see over the next decade, from AI is, likely to exceed the disruption we saw from the Industrial revolution 200 years ago. I layer on to that, you know, issues around climate change and rising sea levels and issues around changing monsoon winds, shifting demographic patterns and the idea that, you know, most of our Western societies are getting older, these sorts of things got get people really anxious about the future.

00:07:20:07 - 00:07:44:02
Karthik Ramanna
Now, if you're simply anxious about the future and you really trust your leaders, maybe you'd be okay. But we also happen to be living in a time in history where perhaps trust in leadership is at the lowest it's been since before World War two, and the United States in particular is by some accounts of, the way political scientists measure this more polarized than it was since just before the Civil War.

00:07:44:04 - 00:08:01:15
Karthik Ramanna
So we're layering on this, fear of the future with this sense that the, elites in our society really haven't done very well by us the narratives on globalization, the narratives on immigration, all of these are coming back to, bite and haunt, us as a society.

00:08:01:16 - 00:08:23:20
Kevin Eikenberry
And I would just add, and you can comment, of course, that it isn't just political leaders, but that what's happening is, you know, all of us as sort of everyday leaders in organizations. And even if we're a CEO, like trust in in all of those levels is dropping not not forever one, but that's the climate in which we're starting.

00:08:23:20 - 00:08:47:05
Kevin Eikenberry
And in fact, I would argue, are used the wrong word. I would state that the rest of the book is about how do we deal with that reality and not just twiddle our thumbs or suck our thumbs, but say, now what do we do given that's the cards we've been dealt, to use your phrase. So. So you've got sort of a five part framework work.

00:08:47:07 - 00:08:51:14
Kevin Eikenberry
Why don't you just sort of lay that out? And then I want to dive into some of the pieces a little bit.

00:08:51:16 - 00:09:16:21
Karthik Ramanna
Sure. Yeah. So at the core of the five part framework is the notion of turning down the temperature. The idea there is, look, if you were in an, agitated state of mind or the people you're working with are in an agitated state of mind, you're going to do more harm than good. And I wrote that chapter very much from the perspective of managers turning down their own temperature rather than, you know, because there's this tendency to look at yourself as somehow above the fray and everybody else's.

00:09:16:21 - 00:09:19:08
Kevin Eikenberry
So it's not me, it's everybody else. The problem is not me.

00:09:19:09 - 00:09:53:08
Karthik Ramanna
Yeah, everyone else is captivated by the outcome, captured by the outrage, and you're somehow above it. But of course, we're all human. I'm just as likely to be prone to outrage as anybody else. And so that chapter is really about how do you put yourself in a mind state where you're not agitated by, you know, proximate triggers where you're not, somehow reacting, in a sort of in an impulsive way, where you're not you've put yourself in the context where, you know, you you just are not able to hear the things that you need to hear in order to make progress in a situation.

00:09:53:10 - 00:10:17:00
Karthik Ramanna
So, so that's really the first step. Then the, the, the, the framework moves into for, for, for further steps, the first of which is, really about, recognizing who are the constituents around you that you need to be listening to and how do you build trust in them to speak truth to you? Oftentimes, you will be engaging with them, in a position of power.

00:10:17:01 - 00:10:34:05
Karthik Ramanna
And maybe because they don't trust you, maybe because they're scared of you, they won't speak truth to you. And so how do you build that trust so that you hear the things you really need to hear? So that's that next stage of the framework. Once you've done that active listening, you need to think about what you do. What's your strategy?

00:10:34:07 - 00:10:58:16
Karthik Ramanna
As we talked about some of the causes of this age of outrage or so varied, there's so complex, they're so interwoven that you, as the head of one organization, whether it's a business or a non-for-profit or even a government agency, you're not going to be able to solve the whole problem. So what are the questions that you ask of yourself that help you understand when you want to lean in and when you want to say, whoa, this is not something I can make any kind of progress on.

00:10:58:16 - 00:11:17:19
Karthik Ramanna
So it's about that strategy, which is the next step. The next step takes us to how do you put that strategy in play? Right. How do you think about the nature in particular of your power in this organization? How do you drive outcomes in a way that, is in fact pro-social as opposed to depleted of that power?

00:11:17:21 - 00:11:40:01
Karthik Ramanna
And then the final step is recognizing that all of these other four steps are really hard. So how do you rebuild your resilience, both you as an individual but your organization? Because managing in the age of outrage is not managing outrage. It requires you in some sense to be constantly on. You can't just switch into PR mode or spin mode and then go back to business as usual.

00:11:40:07 - 00:11:49:08
Karthik Ramanna
Because as we've said, it's an age of outrage. So how do you build that ongoing resilience to take on this challenge? Those are the five steps of the framework.

00:11:49:10 - 00:12:13:14
Kevin Eikenberry
And I do want to dive into them. But but now that we've got that overarching idea, I want all of those of you who are watching or listening to make note of something. And that is that in every one of the steps. Karthik, you've said, there's there's some stuff that you have to do as the leader, but there's a bunch of stuff you have to do on yourself as the leader.

00:12:13:15 - 00:12:26:19
Kevin Eikenberry
Like there's an internal and an external piece in all of these. And that's actually, I think, one of the the great things about the book that unless you really are reading it, you're not going to get. So you want to make a comment on that before we go any further.

00:12:26:21 - 00:12:43:06
Karthik Ramanna
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is as much a book about, you know, your own personal development and professional development and your own growth as a human being as it is about trying to bring out the best in others. And in fact, that is the best, the best exam or the best, instantiation of that that I've heard is a metaphor.

00:12:43:11 - 00:13:00:15
Karthik Ramanna
We say, just as you don't want a surgeon to go from one operating theater to the next without having wash their hands, you don't, as a manager or a leader, want to go from one context to the next without being in a state where you have metaphorically, in this case, washed your hands. So a large part of the framework is about that personal growth and development.

00:13:00:18 - 00:13:02:22
Karthik Ramanna
Before you try to bring out the best in others.

00:13:02:23 - 00:13:32:05
Kevin Eikenberry
You use the word context. And I'm becoming more and more convinced. I mean, I mentioned earlier my next book in The Open and and it in many ways is about understanding context, because until we really get context right, like it's very difficult for us to be successful, because our decisions have to be in context. And, and so often if we operate just on like, like you said earlier.

00:13:32:05 - 00:13:43:05
Kevin Eikenberry
Well, I don't have the issue with the outrage. This is if you're if you're watching this, listening to this show, or thinking about getting a book about how I can fix the team, you're missing the point, right?

00:13:43:05 - 00:14:04:18
Karthik Ramanna
Would you say that's really right? That's absolutely right. Because you are part of the team. And, often you have to start with yourself and the nature of power in this kind of age of outrage, with the deep distrust, is that if people don't see you as, sort of, you know, living the values, if they don't see you walking the talk, why would they ever want to follow you?

00:14:04:18 - 00:14:07:19
Karthik Ramanna
Why would they ever want to believe you? This is the age of outrage. So.

00:14:07:19 - 00:14:08:18
Kevin Eikenberry
And you ask.

00:14:08:20 - 00:14:09:06
Karthik Ramanna
What's the.

00:14:09:06 - 00:14:10:16
Kevin Eikenberry
Outrage at that point?

00:14:10:18 - 00:14:10:21
Karthik Ramanna
Yeah.

00:14:10:23 - 00:14:34:20
Kevin Eikenberry
So yeah. So let's take that sort of opening piece. And talk just a little bit about that. What are a couple of things. And again, the other thing I want to highlight here is that even though everybody this is written by a really smart guy that worked at Harvard and now is at Oxford, it's not written only this is not only written for CEOs, it's written for any leader at any level.

00:14:34:22 - 00:14:59:22
Kevin Eikenberry
And it's not just written for written for people in governmental agencies and leaders there, which is the context that we talked about earlier. This is written for any of us. So give us a couple of ideas that can help us when we know we're walking into the context of there's outrage, there's there's emotion, there's issues, there's how can we start to turn down the temperature, whether it's for ourselves and or for the team?

00:15:00:00 - 00:15:19:09
Karthik Ramanna
That's right. So I actually started that chapter by doing a lot of work in understanding the the neuroscience of outrage. Where does outrage come from in the brain? And in trying to understand that, I said, okay, what are therefore some simple tips or tricks that us as human beings can be able to pull off that signs in order to be better versions of ourselves?

00:15:19:11 - 00:15:40:21
Karthik Ramanna
So, the first and most important thing to recognize is that ambient conditions, or just like the situation around you, can either trigger you to outrage or not. So let's say you're returning back from church and your rear ended in a car. Chances are you'll be less prone to outrage than if you were coming back from bar, from a bar, or, say, from a metallica concert or something like that.

00:15:40:23 - 00:16:09:05
Karthik Ramanna
Right? So the way our brains work is that that that contextual setting plays a huge role in, in how we respond. And so recognizing, for instance, if you are trying to defuze the situation, but you've got bright lights shining on you and the temperature in the room is hot and people are really crowded and jostling each other, and they're drinking lots of caffeine and they've been deprived of food, then, you know, all of that is going to trigger everyone, including yourself, into an aversive state.

00:16:09:06 - 00:16:30:18
Karthik Ramanna
So how do we start? By just putting ourselves in a cooler room, maybe getting, you know, you might have often heard this from your parents when they say, well, first you eat, then we talk. Right? Let's just get people to a place where, biologically, they're comfortable before they start talking about the really difficult things. So that's a simple tip that we can pull off from the.

00:16:30:18 - 00:16:57:16
Kevin Eikenberry
Science and, I love I love all that. And I just was reflecting as I read the book, about, a situation I was in last week as a facilitator, consultant, slash facilitator with a group. And there was not outrage, but there was, there was high level discussions going on in this leadership team. And we got to a point, and I kind of have a general belief that we should take a break about once an hour.

00:16:57:18 - 00:17:15:03
Kevin Eikenberry
But at this point, it hadn't been quite an hour, but it was just for the kinds of reasons you're just describing. It was the right time. People needed to stretch their legs. They needed to go get a snack. They needed to do something else. And we could come back and they'd be better prepared. So it's it's it's the big things, but it's the little things.

00:17:15:05 - 00:17:27:16
Kevin Eikenberry
And being the other thing that I take from that section is and the words that I wrote down in my notes here, being self-aware, just being more self-aware of it ourselves, is an awfully good starting point. Take a deep breath. Right?

00:17:27:18 - 00:17:28:12
Karthik Ramanna
That's right.

00:17:28:14 - 00:17:47:03
Kevin Eikenberry
That's so the second, the second piece or the next piece is about making sense of the moment. I love that phrase. First of all, and I, I want you to comment on it, but I want to read something from the book first. I'm not going to say, hey, tell me the story on page 68. I'm going to read it.

00:17:47:05 - 00:18:03:15
Kevin Eikenberry
And I want to read this because I think it's really interesting. And it comes from an example in your class. Sometimes my students do not realize why we are not diving right into the big problems. They ask why we are playing with make believe rowboats, and not talking about the real stuff racism, police oppression, urban poverty and the like.

00:18:03:15 - 00:18:30:18
Kevin Eikenberry
The answer is that if we work together first on trivial tasks like a mock rowing Olympics, to experience what it's like to agree on differences in strategy and implementation, we are better set up to collaborate on the big wicked problems when they come to us. So talk about that, I love that, I mean, I love that the trainer in me love that, but the but the leader in me loves that as well because we so often want to go tackle it, even if we're scared of it.

00:18:30:18 - 00:18:36:22
Kevin Eikenberry
We want to dive right in, and it's not always the best place. So say more about that and then say more about making sense of the moment.

00:18:37:03 - 00:19:02:23
Karthik Ramanna
Yeah, so making sense of the moment really does require active listening. It requires understanding why really smart people, can look at the same set of facts that you do and come to a different set of conclusions. Right? And that's part of the beauty of the kind of community of leaders we put together at Oxford. These are incredibly bright people of each year of 120 people, one third of them, about 40, tend to be Rhodes Scholars right at the top of their game.

00:19:02:23 - 00:19:37:20
Karthik Ramanna
And some of the senior people will be running workforces and close to a half a million people. So these are some very, very serious people. And then they disagree about matters of policy. Looking at the same set of facts, you say, okay, well, why is that the case? That's what you're really trying to get at here. Now, in order to get to that, you need to get people to a place where they will trust you to be able to have those conversations with you, where they will not be performative in their, relationship with you, but they will be substantive in their relationship with you, that they will be incremental yet authentic in the

00:19:37:20 - 00:19:58:16
Karthik Ramanna
way they engage on these subjects. And that's where these kinds of exercises matter. You know, you take something like, you know, our the composition of our current Congress or you take something like, you know, how, say, maybe, business, or the C-suite of a particular large fortune 500 company is trying to deal with its activist stakeholders.

00:19:58:18 - 00:20:24:07
Karthik Ramanna
Almost every instantiation of those, conversations tend to be adversarial in nature. They, we've gotten to a place where, those teams that we really need to work together have never really experienced a collective sense of success together. You know, it used to be that members of Congress would live in DC during the times when Congress was in session, and so they'd have their kids there.

00:20:24:07 - 00:20:43:03
Karthik Ramanna
And then, you know, on the weekends, the kids would all go play, baseball or softball on the same team. And so members of Congress would have other contexts in which they would interact with each other. They might have been, on opposing parties or on opposing sides of a legislation. But then, you know, on the weekend, their kids would be in the same team.

00:20:43:05 - 00:21:09:02
Karthik Ramanna
We've lost that. So we lost the ability to experience each other in the context where it may be a trivial setting, but where we win together. And that's really important to make these things work. So when I bring together the Or in my prior role, when I used to bring together these leaders, to the public leadership program at Oxford, the first thing we do is put them in these, mock rowing boats, you know, on the which are in these modified swimming pools.

00:21:09:04 - 00:21:34:03
Karthik Ramanna
And we'd say we want you to run a little rowing race, you know, so you randomly assign eight, eight people to a rowing boat because that's how long the rowing boat is. And you say, we want you to run a race against, another randomly selected group of eight. And, you know, they would ask, but came here to talk about all the grand issues, like, you know, Israel and Palestine and and you know, what to do about abortion and what to do about taxing the rich.

00:21:34:03 - 00:21:50:22
Karthik Ramanna
And I said, well, there'll be time for all that. Let's just play this little game for now. Why wait? You want eight? You want them to sweat together. Because when people sweat together, they learn how to be vulnerable with each other. And when they learn how to be vulnerable with each other, they can start trusting each other and be.

00:21:50:22 - 00:22:08:11
Karthik Ramanna
And rowing is a really good metaphor for this, because if you're in a boat with eight people, it doesn't matter where you're from, the U.S. or China or Israel of Palestine or Russia, Ukraine, you can't be the fastest person in that boat. The boat will go around in circles. You need to pace yourself with all seven other people in the boat.

00:22:08:13 - 00:22:17:22
Karthik Ramanna
So you're sending them a message about, well, we're not going to make any progress unless we learn how to work together. And that's where it starts. That's what we mean by making sense of the moment.

00:22:18:00 - 00:22:37:21
Kevin Eikenberry
I love it because the two things that you and you talked a lot about trust here, which I think is key and, and a lot of folks, and we've certainly had guests on the show and we've talked about the idea of psychological safety, and you just talked about it without using those two words together, which I think is, is useful in and of itself, that it doesn't just get labeled that.

00:22:37:21 - 00:23:01:01
Kevin Eikenberry
But that's exactly what you were talking about. You're talking about creating the situations such that that can happen. And because we can't get to the perspective, half of this of people sharing their perspective. So we have the chance to see a different one until we have built that is a really critical thing. And that, of course, applies not just in matters of outrage, but in matters of family and 100 other things.

00:23:01:03 - 00:23:11:06
Kevin Eikenberry
The second or the next pieces, maybe we might call it a strategy piece of this, that scoping organizational response. What what do we mean here?

00:23:11:08 - 00:23:33:01
Karthik Ramanna
That's the part about determining what, about this, outrage you're going to own as an organization and what you're not. Right. So let's take the example. I use this in the book of Disney, right. So Disney got into a lot of trouble. And the way they responded to, the don't say gay legislation that was making its way through the Florida House of Congress.

00:23:33:03 - 00:24:06:12
Karthik Ramanna
Disney, of course, operates deeply within Florida. It's a large part of the Florida economy, particularly in Orlando. And, you know, Disney, as part of its strategy, has taken a very, sort of engaged view on LGBT issues. So it hosted gay days at Disney at its theme parks. It has, create a creator community that's very that leans in very strongly on LGBT issues, etc. so it has implicitly created an expectation that it would stand up for LGBT communities in that context.

00:24:06:14 - 00:24:41:17
Karthik Ramanna
Now, when, you know, governor DeSantis was running for the Republican nomination for president, he was effecting this, so-called don't say gay bill through the Florida House. And Disney's response was, oh, we don't do politics. Now that comes across as hypocrisy. That comes across as really difficult for people to deal with. Because the wait a minute, when it came time to selling us access to the theme park or selling us, you know, movies about Disney princes and princesses, then, you know, you were totally fine with us.

00:24:41:19 - 00:25:04:14
Karthik Ramanna
Sorry. You know, with leaning into the LGBT issues. But now when we're dealing with this sort of don't say gay bill, you're saying we don't do politics, but the very nature of Disney's product. You know what Disney princes and princesses do in their movies is political. You know, what happens in culture today shapes politics tomorrow. So it's just impossible for Disney to suddenly say, oh, we don't do politics, right?

00:25:04:14 - 00:25:24:13
Karthik Ramanna
So part of this is for an organization to understand how its strategy is tied into a given issue. The same answer would be different. Say, if you were Chevron or Exxon or an oil company, because an oil company does not, by the very nature of its business, take a view on LGBT issues. So this doesn't mean every company needs to take a view on this.

00:25:24:13 - 00:25:35:04
Karthik Ramanna
It means that if you're Disney, you can't afford to lean out of certain things. Just like if you're Chevron or Exxon, you can't afford to lean out on environmental issues, right? So it's understood.

00:25:35:04 - 00:25:38:20
Kevin Eikenberry
Again, regardless of what your response will be exactly, you have to have one.

00:25:39:01 - 00:25:57:00
Karthik Ramanna
Exactly. It doesn't matter whether you're pro or anti etc. that's going to depend on your values. That's going to depend on your. But the point is you have to understand what is your business strategy and how does that business strategy connect to what's happening in the world around you, which is causing this outrage and then having a coherent response?

00:25:57:03 - 00:26:14:15
Karthik Ramanna
So this is not a book so much about what to do. It's not a book about saying, well, these should be your values. And this is I'm not I'm certainly not in a position to preach or pontificate about what is right or wrong, but it's a it's a book about strategy. It's a book about tactics. It's saying if you have a business strategy, here's how to do it.

00:26:14:17 - 00:26:15:21
Kevin Eikenberry
It's the how to have.

00:26:15:23 - 00:26:16:15
Karthik Ramanna
It's the how.

00:26:16:21 - 00:26:33:04
Kevin Eikenberry
A how about me? Yeah. I'm looking at our time and I would love for us to spend time on the understanding. The next piece is understanding the leader's power. And there's a we could have done a whole show on this one. Again, power, influence and all that. And that's actually where I want to spend time the last.

00:26:33:04 - 00:26:58:08
Kevin Eikenberry
Well, actually, I want to go to the last one, which is building organizational and personal resilience. And lots has been said, here on the show and other places about personal resilience. I actually would like us to sort of wrap our time before we get it kind of really wrap about what you mean by organizational resilience, because I don't think that's something that people think about very much.

00:26:58:08 - 00:27:05:17
Kevin Eikenberry
That's as much has been written about. So why don't you spend a few minutes there on organizational resilience? What do you mean by that?

00:27:05:21 - 00:27:36:16
Karthik Ramanna
Yeah, that means that you cannot build an organization to cope with this age of outrage, not just cope, but to thrive in this age of outrage with doubt having, cultivated in everyone that works for you or cultivated in the teams that contribute to the organization's performance, the kind of skills or the capabilities we're talking about. Just like you won't build an organization where you say, you know, we don't know how to read balance sheets or we don't know how to do marketing or we don't know, you can't build an organization that isn't active, actively leaning into this problem.

00:27:36:16 - 00:27:55:04
Karthik Ramanna
That's so that's what I mean by that. Now, firstly, and most importantly, it means creating an organization where you've delegated to the right level of the organization the capacity to respond. Often what happens with crisis management is you get pushed up to the top and said, look, this is the crisis. Mr. CEO or madam CEO, can you take care of this?

00:27:55:09 - 00:28:15:06
Karthik Ramanna
But because of the scope of this, this is like every day there's going to be an outrage issue. You've got to be able to drill it down to the organization. So people are at the coalface of it, are able to respond. But often companies make mistakes where they delegate things down to organizations, to people in the organization without training them how to exercise good judgment.

00:28:15:11 - 00:28:38:18
Karthik Ramanna
So delegation is just part one. The second part is training people to have great judgment to respond in this. That means that they need to understand and own your values. They need to understand and own your strategy, and they need to be schooled in the kind of processes we've been talking about. And the third and most important step of this is, look, the very nature of these problems is such that people are going to make mistakes from time to time.

00:28:38:23 - 00:28:59:05
Karthik Ramanna
That's why it's it's judgment. I mean, if it was this sort of thing that that was the right answer, you'd write a computer program to execute on it. So that's not what this is. This is about judgment. And the nature of judgment is sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong. Now when you get it wrong, you as a manager need to have the capacity to basically allow your team to fail.

00:28:59:07 - 00:29:22:03
Karthik Ramanna
Because if you don't allow your team to fail, if you punish them for having, you know, made the wrong judgment call in a particular situation, you never get the kind of delegation that you ever you sought out again. So. So it's all three things delegating this information, building great judgment in people. And then, of course, importantly, allowing people to fail, and, and grow from those failures.

00:29:22:05 - 00:29:24:15
Karthik Ramanna
That's necessary for organizational resilience.

00:29:24:20 - 00:29:32:10
Kevin Eikenberry
And the book, you call them honest mistakes, right? Yes. Dealing with honest mistakes. Not not right. Yeah. Not flippant or whatever. So, yeah.

00:29:32:12 - 00:29:33:18
Karthik Ramanna
I negligence or.

00:29:33:18 - 00:29:54:13
Kevin Eikenberry
Yes, exactly, exactly. So, avoidance or whatever. So, I really appreciate all this as you were just describing the stuff around organizational resilience. I was reflecting on the fact that this morning I wrote an article that will be on our blog. So if you're watching, listening to this on the, on the podcast, it'll be a long time from now, but, it will be there.

00:29:54:15 - 00:30:21:08
Kevin Eikenberry
But I was writing about how we support leadership wisdom, and to me, what you just described, all three of those things are inside of that idea of creating leadership wisdom, and not just from the sea in this case, not just at the CEO level, but throughout the organization. Is there anything that I didn't ask that you wish I would have or something that you want to make sure we talk about, that we haven't.

00:30:21:10 - 00:30:42:17
Karthik Ramanna
So I leave, our listeners with to final thoughts. One is, you know, no matter what you do as a manager or a leader in this context, you're not going to be able to solve the whole problem in front of you. So have a sense of perspective, you know, about this is a complex age we're living in is we're living in a very polarized world.

00:30:42:19 - 00:31:03:00
Karthik Ramanna
So, you know, have a sense of perspective about what you can genuinely address. And starting from that, you say, okay, well, let me deliver some authentic success, that authentic success becomes the basis of trust on which you can then buy more of the problem. And, and therefore. So change will be incremental rather than, you know, over promise and under deliver.

00:31:03:02 - 00:31:22:00
Karthik Ramanna
The second thing I leave you with is the notion that no matter what you do, you will, as a manager or leader, be seen as part of the problem. So, you know, don't try. Treat this as a popularity contest. Don't try. Treat this as I'm going to be able to somehow, you know, unite everyone together and everyone will see me as the great leader that I am.

00:31:22:06 - 00:31:37:16
Karthik Ramanna
No, because the nature of mistrust and the nature of polarization, you're going to make some judgment calls that you know are going to leave some people disappointed. Again, have a sense of perspective on that and and be confident and comfortable in the kind of decisions you're making.

00:31:37:18 - 00:31:55:01
Kevin Eikenberry
I love that. So thank you. And thank you for that summary of those two important things for us to remember in an age of outrage or not, but especially in this, in this age that we live. I have a couple of other questions, I guess three more. Really. Before we go, and I'm shifting gears for you.

00:31:55:03 - 00:31:59:12
Kevin Eikenberry
The next one is what do you do for fun?

00:31:59:14 - 00:32:23:07
Karthik Ramanna
So, you know, I'm very fortunate that I'm the sort of person who's been able to find that work, which for me, play, so, you know, a lot of what I do, in, in my professional life of being a professor and being able to work with organizations, whether in government or business or the not for profit sector, to make them more effective, is the sort of thing that personally is very fulfilling to me.

00:32:23:09 - 00:32:50:06
Karthik Ramanna
So, you know, yeah, that that is in some sense the source of, greatest joy for me. But I'd also sort of suggest that, you know, one of the most powerful quotes I, I have ever come across is something that is apocryphal, attributed to Marilyn Monroe. And she says, don't underestimate the value of being able to come home at the end of the day, knocking on your door, knowing that the person on the other side awaits your return.

00:32:50:08 - 00:33:08:18
Karthik Ramanna
And and that's really important, having a wonderful, family life, having a wonderful, sort of, personal life where you are able to sort of, celebrate it with, whoever is close to you, you know, for different people, it might be a spouse, a partner, kids, parents, dogs, cats, whatever it is. But that's really important to resilience.

00:33:08:20 - 00:33:22:13
Kevin Eikenberry
I love that, the wisdom of Marilyn Monroe right here on the Remarkable Leadership podcast. And so the only thing you knew, I was going to ask you, which is this. What are you reading? Something or something you've read recently?

00:33:22:15 - 00:33:53:09
Karthik Ramanna
Yes. Well, as an academic, much of the reading I do, unfortunately, is very technical reading. I don't know if it's unfortunate. I actually enjoy it, but, so I tend to read lots of primarily, scientific articles and, you know, primary data on scientific studies, etc., which is what keeps me motivated and keeps me engaged. And quite recently, what I've been reading is, sort of, you know, the articles that won the Nobel Prize in physics, because I, you know, it's just I want to understand what is the cutting edge of the frontier in that space.

00:33:53:11 - 00:33:57:08
Karthik Ramanna
And and how might be able to learn from those.

00:33:57:10 - 00:34:19:16
Kevin Eikenberry
And there you go, everybody. That's the first time we've ever gotten that item from one of our guests. 460 some episodes in, So, so Karthick, now, the question that you've been wanting me to ask, which is how can people learn more about the book and where where they can get connected with you and or the book? I'll hold the book up for the video version of this, tell people where they can find you, get the book, etc..

00:34:19:18 - 00:34:34:22
Karthik Ramanna
Sure. So the book is called The Age of Outrage, and if you just Google the age of Outrage, with Oxford, it should be the first thing that comes up. And that will take you to my website with all of the resources, not just the book, how to buy it, but also all of the other stuff I'm writing and working on.

00:34:35:00 - 00:34:57:00
Kevin Eikenberry
The Age of Outrage How to Lead in a Polarized World. Now, I have a question for all of you who are listening or watching. If you've been with me before, you know I'm going to ask this question now. What what what action will you take as a result of this conversation? Chances are, I mean, some of you are listening because you're subscribed, which I hope all of you will become.

00:34:57:05 - 00:35:14:15
Kevin Eikenberry
And so this is next instance which you listen to. But some of you have been drawn to this, whether it was from the live stream or the recording, a live stream, or you were scanning through this set of episodes and said, hey, I this is what I, I was drawn to this. And so regardless of whether you just heard it next or you were drawn to it, what action will you take as a result?

00:35:14:15 - 00:35:37:05
Kevin Eikenberry
What could you do to perhaps build some new perspective? What can you do to help create greater safety and trust? To allow people to share? What what could you do, to turn down the temperature on your team? Like there were very actionable, practical things that we talked about. And ultimately, if all you do is take this in and then move on, it will maybe have been entertaining, but not much more.

00:35:37:11 - 00:35:51:13
Kevin Eikenberry
It's my hope that you start to connect what you learned here or heard here, and turn it into something actionable for you and your team. If you do that, then this was of great, much greater value. So Karthik, thanks so much for being here. It's a pleasure to have you.

00:35:51:15 - 00:35:53:17
Karthik Ramanna
Thank you for having me, Kevin and everybody.

00:35:53:17 - 00:36:15:06
Kevin Eikenberry
I hope that you enjoyed this enough to come back next week because we'll be back next week. So that means if you're not subscribed wherever you're listening, make sure you subscribed. That also means that share this with someone else because that makes everybody happy. It makes Karthik happy. It makes Kevin happy. It makes you seen by that other person as kind and open and sharing.

00:36:15:06 - 00:36:30:00
Kevin Eikenberry
And so maybe this whole issue is something that's, been weighing on your organization and maybe it's useful for the whole organization. Feel free to share is my point. And then make sure you come back next week for another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast. We'll see you all then.