1
00:00:01,130 --> 00:00:03,070
Okay.

2
00:00:03,070 --> 00:00:04,260
Welcome back.

3
00:00:07,140 --> 00:00:11,010
This morning, you heard from
leaders in science and technology.

4
00:00:11,010 --> 00:00:13,200
You just heard from leaders across campus.

5
00:00:13,200 --> 00:00:16,220
And now we're going to turn
our attention to the world at large,

6
00:00:16,220 --> 00:00:20,120
and talk about the challenges of
¡°Leading Across Boundaries¡±.

7
00:00:20,120 --> 00:00:22,080
And we have with us Peter Senge,

8
00:00:22,080 --> 00:00:23,100
Jeremy Hockenstein,

9
00:00:23,100 --> 00:00:26,020
Frannie Leautier,
and Ronald O'Connor.

10
00:00:26,160 --> 00:00:28,250
So join me in welcoming them.

11
00:00:34,030 --> 00:00:36,210
So, welcome back.

12
00:00:36,210 --> 00:00:40,170
Let me say a few words about our intent today.

13
00:00:40,170 --> 00:00:44,210
And then I'd like to say just a word or
two to introduce the other folks here.

14
00:00:44,210 --> 00:00:48,060
This is a, as usual, an all-MIT gang,

15
00:00:48,060 --> 00:00:52,010
that have done a lot of pretty
remarkable things since leaving MIT.

16
00:00:53,170 --> 00:00:55,150
 Let me first say a word to introduce myself.

17
00:00:55,150 --> 00:00:59,170
I've been at MIT forever, almost.
I mean, it seems like it.

18
00:00:59,170 --> 00:01:02,180
I came in 1970 as a graduate student,

19
00:01:02,180 --> 00:01:06,160
and have been associated with the
Sloan School since that entire time.

20
00:01:07,090 --> 00:01:09,500
And my background is
in the system dynamics area.

21
00:01:09,730 --> 00:01:12,040
That's why I came to
MIT as a graduate student.

22
00:01:12,040 --> 00:01:16,120
But what really drew me
was trying to understand

23
00:01:16,120 --> 00:01:20,000
why it is we have
so much difficulty understanding,

24
00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:23,170
and really providing leadership
in the context of the complex,

25
00:01:23,170 --> 00:01:26,290
interdependent problems we face in the world.

26
00:01:27,140 --> 00:01:29,120
I was an undergraduate at Stanford.

27
00:01:29,120 --> 00:01:31,160
And I was actually at Stanford

28
00:01:31,160 --> 00:01:35,130
when a gentleman named Paul Ehrlich
wrote a book called ¡°The Population Bomb.¡±

29
00:01:35,130 --> 00:01:37,150
I was studying systems engineering.

30
00:01:37,150 --> 00:01:41,020
And I'll never forget one of my roommates
who worked with Ehrlick,

31
00:01:41,020 --> 00:01:43,160
who's a biologist,
a population biologist, said,

32
00:01:43,160 --> 00:01:46,030
¡°Gee, the biologists are running around
like they invented systems theory.

33
00:01:46,030 --> 00:01:48,010
Don't they ever talk to the engineers?¡±

34
00:01:48,010 --> 00:01:50,050
And of course, the answer was, ¡°No.¡±

35
00:01:52,170 --> 00:01:55,150
And so I came here with
this kind of vague idea

36
00:01:55,150 --> 00:01:57,090
that somehow I wanted to do something

37
00:01:57,090 --> 00:01:59,240
that would contribute to the
large systemic problems in the world,

38
00:01:59,240 --> 00:02:03,230
which seemed to me, were not
going to get any better

39
00:02:03,230 --> 00:02:07,890
in part, because of the fragmentation 
within our university system itself.

40
00:02:08,110 --> 00:02:11,120
The very thing that, kind of, Woody 
and his students were kind of pointing to.

41
00:02:11,340 --> 00:02:17,110
Because we don't learn by doing,
because we don't engage effectively,

42
00:02:17,110 --> 00:02:20,020
or extensively as much as
we might in the real world,

43
00:02:20,020 --> 00:02:25,190
we stay within our academic departments
and structured bodies of knowledge.

44
00:02:25,190 --> 00:02:27,020
But of course, it's not just that.

45
00:02:27,020 --> 00:02:32,240
That's in a sense almost a metaphor
for the way much of the world works.

46
00:02:32,240 --> 00:02:36,080
A guy called me this morning
from the Washington Post,

47
00:02:36,080 --> 00:02:39,080
doing an article
which I hope will be a good article.

48
00:02:39,080 --> 00:02:41,170
It certainly sounds like
he's taking it very seriously,

49
00:02:41,170 --> 00:02:46,050
of why the United States has not learned
how to deal with disasters,

50
00:02:46,050 --> 00:02:47,140
natural disasters better.

51
00:02:47,140 --> 00:02:50,150
And he gave me a quick run down
of a series of reports on

52
00:02:50,150 --> 00:02:56,070
national reorganizations of
the administrative departments

53
00:02:56,070 --> 00:02:59,250
going back to major hurricanes
twenty years ago, and on and on.

54
00:02:59,250 --> 00:03:02,930
Saying, well, ¡°Why aren't we
any better then we were then?¡±

55
00:03:03,150 --> 00:03:06,060
Including one of the answers,
is¡°Nobody talks to each other.¡±

56
00:03:06,060 --> 00:03:08,190
The fragmentation within the government,

57
00:03:08,190 --> 00:03:14,230
the rigid boundaries within almost every
large organization you can think of,

58
00:03:14,230 --> 00:03:17,090
that people struggle to cross.

59
00:03:17,090 --> 00:03:21,230
And lastly, of course, the boundaries that
we need to cross today in the world,

60
00:03:21,230 --> 00:03:26,210
are not just intellectual, and they're not
just within a given institution.

61
00:03:26,210 --> 00:03:29,100
They are within the world.

62
00:03:29,100 --> 00:03:32,100
We live in this strange and paradoxical time

63
00:03:32,100 --> 00:03:36,050
where we do indeed live more
and more in each others' back yard.

64
00:03:36,050 --> 00:03:38,150
Decisions you and I make, everyday decisions,

65
00:03:38,150 --> 00:03:41,150
when we go to the store and just buy some food.

66
00:03:41,150 --> 00:03:45,240
The average pound of food
in America travels over 1500 miles.

67
00:03:45,240 --> 00:03:49,110
That was a Defense Department study in 1987.

68
00:03:49,110 --> 00:03:52,040
It's probably quite a bit more today.

69
00:03:52,040 --> 00:03:55,700
The global food system is probably
the single greatest cause of poverty

70
00:03:55,860 --> 00:03:58,240
and environmental destruction both,
in the world.

71
00:03:58,240 --> 00:04:01,000
As we keep driving prices lower and lower

72
00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:04,000
so farmers can't make a living
most any place in the world,

73
00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:07,070
and multinational corporations keep
driving production higher and higher,

74
00:04:07,070 --> 00:04:08,240
through throwing technology

75
00:04:08,240 --> 00:04:12,020
with absolutely no concept of what nature
itself might be able to produce

76
00:04:12,020 --> 00:04:14,060
in a given plot of land.

77
00:04:14,060 --> 00:04:16,820
I'm just using this to illustrate
in this extraordinarily

78
00:04:16,860 --> 00:04:22,090
interdependent world we live,
working across the boundaries is,

79
00:04:22,090 --> 00:04:25,170
you might say,
the defining challenge of our time.

80
00:04:25,170 --> 00:04:32,080
So, in putting together this group,
we got three terrific folks from MIT,

81
00:04:32,080 --> 00:04:35,270
very different backgrounds,
very different time periods,

82
00:04:37,110 --> 00:04:39,120
all of whom have kind of
just stepped into the world,

83
00:04:39,120 --> 00:04:42,960
with that kind of same spirit you saw
Woody's students this afternoon.

84
00:04:42,990 --> 00:04:45,110
¡°Well, what can we do here?¡±

85
00:04:45,220 --> 00:04:49,080
And some of them, like Ron,
have been at it like thirty-plus years.

86
00:04:49,210 --> 00:04:52,100
And in Frannie's case,
not quite that long.

87
00:04:52,100 --> 00:04:55,040
And in Jeremy's case, five or so.

88
00:04:55,290 --> 00:04:57,180
But all with that same spirit of,

89
00:04:57,180 --> 00:05:00,280
we have to kind of deal
with the problems as they are,

90
00:05:00,280 --> 00:05:06,020
with the system as it is, not within
some predetermined boundaries,

91
00:05:06,020 --> 00:05:09,010
either in our heads
or in our institutions.

92
00:05:09,010 --> 00:05:12,150
Hence, the term,
¡°Working Across the Boundaries¡±.

93
00:05:12,150 --> 00:05:16,040
I'm going to be quiet and let each
of them introduce themselves a little.

94
00:05:16,040 --> 00:05:19,090
We'll just start and work around the circle,
starting here with Ron.

95
00:05:19,090 --> 00:05:20,250
Is that the order up there?

96
00:05:20,250 --> 00:05:23,020
No, it would be from the bottom,
just so you can keep track.

97
00:05:23,020 --> 00:05:24,270
So Ron O'Conner will speak first.

98
00:05:24,270 --> 00:05:27,230
He's sitting here on your right.

99
00:05:27,230 --> 00:05:30,030
And I've just asked him
to start off really simply.

100
00:05:30,030 --> 00:05:37,000
Tell us a little bit about what you do,
and kind of, how you got drawn into it.

101
00:05:37,000 --> 00:05:40,080
You know, what led you along your path?

102
00:05:40,080 --> 00:05:44,120
Now, I asked them to take, like,
five minutes each to get us started.

103
00:05:44,120 --> 00:05:49,000
So it's not exactly an easy question,
but I'm kind of looking forward to hearing

104
00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:51,070
what they have to say.  Ron?

105
00:05:51,070 --> 00:05:52,040
Thanks Peter.

106
00:05:52,040 --> 00:05:55,290
First thing, I've got to take my hat off
to Woody and his colleagues.

107
00:05:55,290 --> 00:05:58,080
I mean, if Barbara Stone
of the Development office

108
00:05:58,080 --> 00:06:01,800
doesn't milk these guys
for all they're worth, they're crazy.

109
00:06:01,830 --> 00:06:03,200
That's just so inspirational.

110
00:06:05,240 --> 00:06:09,240
I think in a small way, that kind of
inspiration was helpful to me too.

111
00:06:09,240 --> 00:06:13,180
I had the good fortune when I was
a first year medical student,

112
00:06:13,180 --> 00:06:17,120
to spend the summer working in a
very remote hospital in Nepal,

113
00:06:17,120 --> 00:06:19,220
and sort of get off the beaten track,

114
00:06:19,220 --> 00:06:22,270
and see a little bit about health
problems in other parts of the world,

115
00:06:22,270 --> 00:06:27,070
and sort of had me come home and
appreciate a little bit better that,

116
00:06:27,070 --> 00:06:30,180
you know, in a lot of parts of the world,
at that time, perhaps half the world,

117
00:06:30,180 --> 00:06:32,150
women and children were dying at

118
00:06:32,150 --> 00:06:36,170
something like 20 to 200 times
the rates that they needed to,

119
00:06:36,170 --> 00:06:39,220
for problems that were largely preventable.

120
00:06:39,220 --> 00:06:41,270
And that was a real shock,
that was an eye opener.

121
00:06:41,270 --> 00:06:44,120
And it caused me,
in my medical training,

122
00:06:44,120 --> 00:06:49,050
to keep looking at that issue as I went
through a more clinically oriented training,

123
00:06:49,050 --> 00:06:52,230
and increasingly got excited
as I could see that,

124
00:06:52,230 --> 00:06:55,120
many of those kinds of problems were

125
00:06:55,120 --> 00:06:58,060
problems for which we had,
there were answers.

126
00:06:58,060 --> 00:07:01,270
Not we individually, but collectively,
the world experience had answers.

127
00:07:01,270 --> 00:07:04,080
There were things that could
be done about a lot of them,

128
00:07:04,080 --> 00:07:07,210
to save those kinds of lives,

129
00:07:07,210 --> 00:07:11,260
and to give people a reasonable
chance to have a brighter future.

130
00:07:11,260 --> 00:07:14,100
And I think, we certainly know today

131
00:07:14,100 --> 00:07:18,190
how important it is for everybody to feel
they have some prospect of hope

132
00:07:18,190 --> 00:07:21,250
for a better future
for their own children.

133
00:07:21,250 --> 00:07:26,700
This led me, as I sort of got through
my training, to feel that the gap,

134
00:07:26,740 --> 00:07:29,180
if it really wasn't
principally a technical one,

135
00:07:29,180 --> 00:07:31,190
or a managerial or leadership problem,

136
00:07:31,190 --> 00:07:37,240
to eventually come to Sloan for
some training in management and leadership.

137
00:07:37,240 --> 00:07:43,090
And then in turn, to look around to see
how can I apply those kinds of skills?

138
00:07:43,090 --> 00:07:47,160
And that led me to the NGO sector,
at least at that time,thirty years ago,

139
00:07:47,160 --> 00:07:50,610
the public sector institutions
as well as the for-profit ones

140
00:07:50,640 --> 00:07:54,230
were not so interested in those kinds
of problems in the developing world.

141
00:07:54,230 --> 00:07:58,270
So basically I went the NGO route,
which has turned out to be,

142
00:07:58,270 --> 00:08:03,170
I think, a fairly fortuitous choice.

143
00:08:03,270 --> 00:08:09,090
But even today, all NGOs are playing
an important role in a lot of places.

144
00:08:09,090 --> 00:08:12,250
It is still challenging and pretty complex,

145
00:08:12,250 --> 00:08:15,150
in part because there aren't any
clean slates out there anymore.

146
00:08:15,150 --> 00:08:21,070
You know, we've messed up in every country,
one place or another, in a lot of ways.

147
00:08:21,070 --> 00:08:25,190
And secondarily, frankly, our own foreign
policy is not helping very much,

148
00:08:25,190 --> 00:08:29,010
organizations based in the United States,
when we've re perceived increasingly

149
00:08:29,010 --> 00:08:34,110
as the big gorilla knocking over
small harmless countries from time to time.

150
00:08:34,110 --> 00:08:36,210
That is not very helpful.

151
00:08:37,120 --> 00:08:39,060
But there are underlying threads,

152
00:08:39,060 --> 00:08:42,190
I think, in how NGOs can work,
which are important,

153
00:08:42,260 --> 00:08:43,980
and which have been very important to me,

154
00:08:44,010 --> 00:08:46,610
which sort of were really 
brought home to me most

155
00:08:46,670 --> 00:08:50,280
by the experience
I had initially as a medical student.

156
00:08:50,280 --> 00:08:54,130
I worked with a Japanese doctor in Nepal,

157
00:08:54,130 --> 00:08:59,230
who turned out to have been working
as a high school student in a summer job

158
00:08:59,230 --> 00:09:06,040
in a concrete basement filing papers
in August of 1945 in Hiroshima,

159
00:09:06,040 --> 00:09:11,070
about 500 meters from Ground Zero which was,
in some ways, not a very good place to be.

160
00:09:11,070 --> 00:09:15,240
But he was the only survivor
of his high school class.

161
00:09:15,240 --> 00:09:20,030
And he turned his life to trying to create
some sort of a more positive image for himself

162
00:09:20,030 --> 00:09:22,200
and for Japan in other
parts of the world,

163
00:09:22,200 --> 00:09:25,040
and he became a very
effective development leader

164
00:09:25,040 --> 00:09:28,290
who I had the chance to just
sort of observe in passing.

165
00:09:28,460 --> 00:09:32,110
And I asked him, finally, after some years

166
00:09:32,110 --> 00:09:35,290
the man is still alive,
by the way, after all these years

167
00:09:35,290 --> 00:09:40,710
I asked him, what was it that motivated him,
and how did he see it?

168
00:09:40,740 --> 00:09:48,760
And he said, he simply tried to follow
a Taoist poem that made sense to him

169
00:09:48,790 --> 00:09:52,040
which sort of closed with the phrase,

170
00:09:52,040 --> 00:09:55,050
of the best leaders
when their work is accomplished,

171
00:09:55,050 --> 00:09:56,220
when the task is done,

172
00:09:56,220 --> 00:10:00,290
the people will all say,
¡°We have done it ourselves.¡±

173
00:10:00,290 --> 00:10:06,250
And I think there really is something to
that in cross-cultural settings.

174
00:10:06,250 --> 00:10:12,470
If one is able to convey a sense
of respect for others, you've got to start.

175
00:10:12,500 --> 00:10:14,180
You can get going.

176
00:10:14,180 --> 00:10:19,110
But the thing that conveys most readily
I think, in most cross-cultural settings,

177
00:10:19,110 --> 00:10:24,140
is any semblance of condescension or
of not treating others with respect.

178
00:10:24,140 --> 00:10:26,210
And if you start there, you're dead.

179
00:10:26,210 --> 00:10:29,060
If you start treating people with respect,
you've got a chance.

180
00:10:29,060 --> 00:10:32,260
So in a sense,
that's the route that we followed,

181
00:10:32,260 --> 00:10:35,050
and what brings me here today.

182
00:10:35,050 --> 00:10:38,110
Say just a word more,
Ron, about what you guys do.

183
00:10:39,140 --> 00:10:41,180
Oh, MSH. Okay, sorry.

184
00:10:42,160 --> 00:10:45,870
We're MSH, Management Sciences for Health,

185
00:10:45,900 --> 00:10:49,150
located up the river
in the old Polaroid Building.

186
00:10:50,100 --> 00:10:53,270
We basically try to help
local leaders and local institutions

187
00:10:53,270 --> 00:10:56,120
get stronger on issues
of management and leadership,

188
00:10:56,120 --> 00:10:59,170
how to use what they
have more sensibly, more effectively.

189
00:10:59,170 --> 00:11:02,240
Given that resources for
public health are always very limited,

190
00:11:02,240 --> 00:11:06,070
it's important to try and help them
figure out how to do it better.

191
00:11:06,070 --> 00:11:08,010
And that's changing, obviously,
over the years.

192
00:11:08,010 --> 00:11:09,190
We used to try to go do it ourselves.

193
00:11:09,190 --> 00:11:11,040
That never worked.

194
00:11:11,040 --> 00:11:12,140
Or didn't work very well.

195
00:11:12,140 --> 00:11:15,000
And increasingly as there are more
talented people around the world,

196
00:11:15,000 --> 00:11:19,040
who want to solve their own problems,
we have to find new ways to be useful

197
00:11:19,040 --> 00:11:21,180
and constructive in
that kind of environment.

198
00:11:22,130 --> 00:11:25,000
And in what parts of the world do you work?

199
00:11:25,000 --> 00:11:27,110
Well, we work pretty
broadly across the world,

200
00:11:27,110 --> 00:11:29,800
maybe at any time,
maybe thirty to forty countries.

201
00:11:29,830 --> 00:11:33,280
There's more than a thousand people
in the organization now,

202
00:11:33,280 --> 00:11:37,450
from about fifty or sixty
different nationalities, spread around.

203
00:11:37,480 --> 00:11:43,230
So we're, in our little field,
making a contribution.

204
00:11:43,230 --> 00:11:46,070
But it's still a little field.

205
00:11:46,070 --> 00:11:47,200
Thank you, thank you.

206
00:11:48,080 --> 00:11:51,260
I want to just continue now and invite
Frannie Leautier from the World Bank

207
00:11:51,260 --> 00:11:55,290
to say just a bit about the work
that she does, the work you do now,

208
00:11:55,290 --> 00:11:58,160
and again, what sort of
drew you into this.

209
00:11:59,220 --> 00:12:05,030
I come from the World Bank Institute
which is the part of the World Bank

210
00:12:05,030 --> 00:12:08,240
that's supposed to be thinking
about the next ten, twenty years,

211
00:12:08,240 --> 00:12:11,230
and the kind of capacities
that countries will need

212
00:12:11,230 --> 00:12:16,040
to manage the problems that
they would face in ten, twenty years.

213
00:12:16,040 --> 00:12:19,190
I arrived there by way of infrastructure.

214
00:12:19,190 --> 00:12:22,230
I was a civil engineering student at MIT.

215
00:12:22,230 --> 00:12:25,210
I came to MIT from Tanzania.

216
00:12:25,210 --> 00:12:29,540
I was shocked on my first visit here,
when I went to the museum,

217
00:12:29,580 --> 00:12:32,120
the MIT museum, and I found
the slide rule in the museum.

218
00:12:32,120 --> 00:12:35,110
I was using the slide rule in high school,

219
00:12:36,130 --> 00:12:40,090
and was shocked to find
it was a museum item at MIT.

220
00:12:41,170 --> 00:12:44,130
And so that was a major cultural shock,

221
00:12:44,130 --> 00:12:49,070
to first get used to the high level
of technology that I found at MIT.

222
00:12:49,070 --> 00:12:52,120
And from there then,
going to study civil engineering

223
00:12:52,120 --> 00:12:57,100
and going to practice in an organization
that works in economics and finance.

224
00:12:57,100 --> 00:13:02,050
So, the shocks, two major shocks to me,
and that's why I ended up,

225
00:13:02,050 --> 00:13:04,160
in a sense, at the World Bank Institute where,

226
00:13:04,160 --> 00:13:07,140
how do you very quickly
take engineering knowledge,

227
00:13:07,140 --> 00:13:13,170
and engineering ideas, and help them
be relevant in a development setting?

228
00:13:13,170 --> 00:13:15,090
What do we do?

229
00:13:15,090 --> 00:13:20,850
We work to help countries develop
leadership in their own settings.

230
00:13:20,890 --> 00:13:23,090
So, ministers, heads of state,

231
00:13:23,090 --> 00:13:26,080
heads of companies,
heads of organizations,

232
00:13:26,080 --> 00:13:27,620
leaders of NGOs,

233
00:13:27,650 --> 00:13:32,250
so that they can create the products
and services that they need to develop.

234
00:13:32,250 --> 00:13:36,740
And that requires us to
think about whom we work with,

235
00:13:36,780 --> 00:13:39,680
how we work with them,
over what period of time,

236
00:13:39,710 --> 00:13:40,250
with what methods,

237
00:13:40,250 --> 00:13:44,010
because they are not students,
they are practitioners,

238
00:13:44,010 --> 00:13:48,150
they are people who are quite advanced
in the way in which they make decisions

239
00:13:48,150 --> 00:13:50,260
and the way in which they function.

240
00:13:50,260 --> 00:13:54,070
They are also from very different
backgrounds and cultures.

241
00:13:54,070 --> 00:13:57,240
The World Bank is about ten thousand people.

242
00:13:57,240 --> 00:14:03,000
We have about 140 nationalities
represented in the organization.

243
00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:07,120
So how do you get a team that is made up of
so many different nationalities,

244
00:14:07,300 --> 00:14:12,150
to go and work in a country,
and actually listen, understand the issues,

245
00:14:12,150 --> 00:14:16,080
and behave in a way that can
help the countries move forward.

246
00:14:16,080 --> 00:14:21,200
That's the day to day management challenge
that we have to face.

247
00:14:21,200 --> 00:14:26,230
And the second big thing that
we need to worry about on a daily basis,

248
00:14:26,230 --> 00:14:31,040
is whether we actually know what
the development process is like.

249
00:14:31,040 --> 00:14:35,160
Because over the last fifty years,
there have been a lot of lessons learned,

250
00:14:35,160 --> 00:14:37,190
particularly from the 1990s,

251
00:14:37,190 --> 00:14:42,270
that many of the theories that we had
were actually not proven to be right.

252
00:14:42,270 --> 00:14:46,160
So, the question is,
what do you do, what do you advise,

253
00:14:46,160 --> 00:14:49,080
when you actually don't know the answers?

254
00:14:49,080 --> 00:14:51,220
And how do you work in a setting where,

255
00:14:51,220 --> 00:14:56,060
the people you work with know a lot more
about the problem than you do.

256
00:14:56,060 --> 00:14:59,540
And that humility of being able
to sit down and say,

257
00:14:59,570 --> 00:15:04,230
¡°I really don't know exactly
where this country is going to go,

258
00:15:04,230 --> 00:15:08,210
I don't know exactly what the issues are,
I don't know what the problems are,

259
00:15:08,210 --> 00:15:13,070
but I'm here to listen and be helpful,
and also to learn.¡±

260
00:15:13,070 --> 00:15:19,180
And that's the environment in which we work,
over 200 countries, a thousand,

261
00:15:19,180 --> 00:15:22,130
what we call ¡°learning events¡±a year,

262
00:15:22,130 --> 00:15:25,550
because we cannot structure them
as seminars or courses

263
00:15:25,590 --> 00:15:31,090
or programs where you come and learn
the way you would in a university.

264
00:15:31,090 --> 00:15:36,210
And we do that with partners
because we cannot possibly teach,

265
00:15:36,210 --> 00:15:39,260
so you have to, yourselves, be learning.

266
00:15:39,260 --> 00:15:45,020
And I think that, in a way explains
what we do on a daily basis.

267
00:15:45,020 --> 00:15:47,030
We are also the part
of the World Bank Group

268
00:15:47,030 --> 00:15:51,220
that cannot influence through
money or positionality conditionality.

269
00:15:51,220 --> 00:15:54,090
So we can only influence through ideas.

270
00:15:54,090 --> 00:15:57,160
And that's another challenge that we face,

271
00:15:57,160 --> 00:16:03,060
where we cannot rely on much more
than having people talk to each other,

272
00:16:03,060 --> 00:16:07,240
make decisions together, and move forward.

273
00:16:07,240 --> 00:16:10,160
Thank you, Frannie. Thank you.

274
00:16:11,020 --> 00:16:15,200
Jeremy Hockenstein got a masters degree
at the Sloan School,

275
00:16:15,200 --> 00:16:17,130
about five years ago, as we said,

276
00:16:17,130 --> 00:16:21,210
and then found himself
starting a very interesting business.

277
00:16:21,210 --> 00:16:22,290
Thanks.

278
00:16:22,290 --> 00:16:25,350
Well, it's humbling to be here,
and it feels like just a couple years.

279
00:16:25,360 --> 00:16:26,780
It is five or six now but,

280
00:16:26,820 --> 00:16:29,780
to be part of this program with
my colleagues and people this morning

281
00:16:29,810 --> 00:16:33,030
is really inspiring and a privilege.

282
00:16:33,030 --> 00:16:35,040
I'll tell you how I got to sit here.

283
00:16:35,040 --> 00:16:40,070
I guess the ten years after college,
I had this feeling in my arms the whole time,

284
00:16:40,070 --> 00:16:43,250
would I really find work that
was challenging and meaningful.

285
00:16:43,250 --> 00:16:46,150
And it turned out
to be harder than I expected.

286
00:16:46,150 --> 00:16:48,090
I worked at a couple of consulting firms,

287
00:16:48,090 --> 00:16:52,070
including McKinsey and Company
where I learnt a lot of very good skills,

288
00:16:52,070 --> 00:16:55,120
but working on problems
of maximizing shareholder value,

289
00:16:55,150 --> 00:16:56,220
that didn't matter much to me.

290
00:16:56,220 --> 00:16:58,980
I tried to work in some NGOs
that work on important problems,

291
00:16:59,010 --> 00:17:01,200
but there wasn't a challenging
approach and environment.

292
00:17:01,650 --> 00:17:03,070
So it was hard.

293
00:17:03,070 --> 00:17:04,860
And it really left me with this feeling,

294
00:17:04,900 --> 00:17:09,140
would I ever find this satisfaction and
meaning that was up on the board before.

295
00:17:09,140 --> 00:17:13,130
I came to Sloan believing in what it said,
it's a School of Management,

296
00:17:13,130 --> 00:17:15,690
thinking about really trying to learn,

297
00:17:15,730 --> 00:17:19,160
how do people get things
done together that matter.

298
00:17:19,160 --> 00:17:22,290
And I was fortunate to be here,
as Professor Ancona  had said,

299
00:17:22,290 --> 00:17:24,260
when some of the courses
that were leading

300
00:17:24,260 --> 00:17:26,290
to come together in this Center
more formally were percolating.

301
00:17:26,290 --> 00:17:29,470
And I know, I'm sure over the years
there were many similar ones,

302
00:17:29,500 --> 00:17:32,130
and so on, but they were
getting some steam around here.

303
00:17:32,130 --> 00:17:35,410
And so I hope I can be a mini beta-tester

304
00:17:35,450 --> 00:17:40,130
of some of the ideas that came out of
the potential in all of us in the room.

305
00:17:40,130 --> 00:17:45,090
And a year after I graduated Sloan,
I found myself in Hong Kong for a week,

306
00:17:45,090 --> 00:17:47,560
just on a consulting project
that I was doing for someone.

307
00:17:47,590 --> 00:17:49,120
I'd never been to Asia before,

308
00:17:49,120 --> 00:17:51,130
and I asked them
where should I go for the weekend.

309
00:17:51,130 --> 00:17:53,090
And they said I should go visit Angkor Wat,

310
00:17:53,090 --> 00:17:54,240
which I have to admit,
I'd never heard of,

311
00:17:54,240 --> 00:17:55,910
but it's one of
the wonders of the world,

312
00:17:56,020 --> 00:17:59,070
these beautiful Buddhist temples
in the north of Cambodia.

313
00:17:59,070 --> 00:18:00,620
And so I went for three days.

314
00:18:00,660 --> 00:18:04,340
I found a guide by looking on Yahoo,
someone met me at the airport,

315
00:18:04,370 --> 00:18:05,230
and I spent three days.

316
00:18:05,230 --> 00:18:07,630
And the temples really are outstanding.

317
00:18:07,670 --> 00:18:09,190
It's something everybody here should see.

318
00:18:09,190 --> 00:18:11,850
What struck me the most
were the people that I met,

319
00:18:11,880 --> 00:18:14,720
in particular, internet cafes
and English schools that I met

320
00:18:14,760 --> 00:18:19,130
on almost every corner in Phnom Penh
which surprised me six years ago to see,

321
00:18:19,130 --> 00:18:22,120
and my driver who was driving me
around who earns $2.00 a day,

322
00:18:22,120 --> 00:18:26,000
who spends 50 cents every morning very early
at 5:00 in the morning learning English.

323
00:18:26,000 --> 00:18:27,070
Because he sees the CNN,

324
00:18:27,070 --> 00:18:30,030
and the influence that English
and computers really are the future.

325
00:18:30,030 --> 00:18:32,530
And so there's this real
promise of globalization that I saw.

326
00:18:32,560 --> 00:18:36,030
But when I started to talk to people,
I realized that there weren't jobs.

327
00:18:36,030 --> 00:18:39,010
I'd met some really inspiring
NGOs of local people

328
00:18:39,010 --> 00:18:40,440
who'd organized themselves,

329
00:18:40,480 --> 00:18:44,160
organized very poor people
to teach themselves computers,

330
00:18:44,160 --> 00:18:46,650
and English, and volunteer
to help their countries,

331
00:18:46,680 --> 00:18:49,220
but when they graduated
from these programs, had no jobs.

332
00:18:49,220 --> 00:18:52,050
So something struck me there.

333
00:18:52,050 --> 00:18:55,180
And I had this sense that somehow
between the room of us sitting here

334
00:18:55,180 --> 00:18:57,520
and people over there
if we put our minds together,

335
00:18:57,560 --> 00:19:01,050
that really, a lot could
be unleashed and created.

336
00:19:01,050 --> 00:19:05,010
And so I came back and told some friends,
two McKinsey colleagues of mine,

337
00:19:05,060 --> 00:19:06,340
and two childhood friends.

338
00:19:06,370 --> 00:19:07,720
We went back a few months later.

339
00:19:07,750 --> 00:19:11,180
We rented an apartment in Phnom Penh,
got on motos,

340
00:19:11,180 --> 00:19:13,200
and just knocked on some doors.

341
00:19:13,680 --> 00:19:16,930
And, I was saying this before.

342
00:19:16,970 --> 00:19:19,360
We were talking that, I think,
I've learned from this,

343
00:19:19,390 --> 00:19:21,640
it's much easier,and harder,
than I expected.

344
00:19:21,670 --> 00:19:26,020
The easier part is that
it's a relatively small place.

345
00:19:26,020 --> 00:19:28,100
You knock on a door and say,
¡°We'd like to do something with technology,¡±

346
00:19:28,100 --> 00:19:31,040
and they say,¡°Oh, you should talk to Bill,
he brought the internet to Cambodia.

347
00:19:31,040 --> 00:19:32,840
You know, because he got the grant
from the Canadian government

348
00:19:32,880 --> 00:19:34,090
and brought it working
with this local NGO.¡±

349
00:19:34,090 --> 00:19:36,090
Okay. You know, and here, these people¡­

350
00:19:36,090 --> 00:19:42,040
So, that kind of connections, and kind of,
ties to people,is really possible there.

351
00:19:42,040 --> 00:19:45,110
And so we, we basically went
through a bunch of different ideas.

352
00:19:45,110 --> 00:19:47,400
We wanted to do something that would
bring in revenue from the outside.

353
00:19:47,430 --> 00:19:49,290
We were first going to help people
start their own businesses,

354
00:19:49,320 --> 00:19:52,080
but there weren't the kind of skills,
people didn't have the management skills

355
00:19:52,080 --> 00:19:54,270
or the local economy
that really would help them.

356
00:19:54,270 --> 00:19:57,770
So we started doing business
planning competitions like we have here

357
00:19:57,810 --> 00:19:59,080
to help people there
do their business plans.

358
00:19:59,110 --> 00:20:00,920
But we saw that wasn't really going to work.

359
00:20:00,960 --> 00:20:03,640
So we tried a few different things
in a speeded up period of a few weeks.

360
00:20:03,670 --> 00:20:04,560
And then we realized,

361
00:20:04,600 --> 00:20:06,580
we wanted to do something that
would bring in revenue from the outside.

362
00:20:06,610 --> 00:20:10,580
It's when we started to see these call centers
in India were just kind of becoming popular.

363
00:20:10,710 --> 00:20:13,770
We'd never heard of outsourcing,
let alone think it was a bad thing,

364
00:20:13,810 --> 00:20:15,380
as it's sometimes called.

365
00:20:15,410 --> 00:20:17,230
And so we thought,
¡°Call centers. That's more difficult.

366
00:20:17,230 --> 00:20:19,060
But typing, people can do that.¡±

367
00:20:19,060 --> 00:20:21,610
People's English wasn't good enough
to talk and answer the phone.

368
00:20:21,620 --> 00:20:23,770
So we thought,
¡°Data entry, that seems pretty simple.¡±

369
00:20:23,800 --> 00:20:26,260
So a friend of mine got on
a plane and went to Delhi,

370
00:20:26,260 --> 00:20:29,100
opened the yellow pages
for data entry firms, and¡­

371
00:20:29,100 --> 00:20:30,070
He was with me in Cambodia.

372
00:20:30,070 --> 00:20:33,530
He got on a plane, went to Delhi that week,
opened the yellow pages for data entry firms.

373
00:20:33,560 --> 00:20:36,110
Nine out of ten, literally said,
¡°We won't talk to you,¡±and sent him out.

374
00:20:36,110 --> 00:20:40,080
One fine fellow who said, ¡±Oh,¡±
opened his doors to us, and said,

375
00:20:40,080 --> 00:20:43,590
sure, he would trade a few Cambodians
in the data entry business.

376
00:20:43,620 --> 00:20:46,000
He was a smart fellow because he's now
gotten a lot of work from us actually,

377
00:20:46,000 --> 00:20:48,480
because they do the high-level
skills we can't do in Cambodia.

378
00:20:48,520 --> 00:20:51,000
So it's a good lesson about being helpful.

379
00:20:51,000 --> 00:20:56,630
So, we then hired a few people
in Cambodia, again, by networking,

380
00:20:56,670 --> 00:21:00,230
finding some Cambodian-Americans
who were on some boards of local NGOs

381
00:21:00,310 --> 00:21:02,090
and finding some talented local managers.

382
00:21:02,090 --> 00:21:03,720
And one of the things we can talk about is

383
00:21:03,750 --> 00:21:06,520
this project really has been
locally driven from the beginning

384
00:21:06,550 --> 00:21:08,880
and those were some of the
founding partners of the project.

385
00:21:08,920 --> 00:21:12,710
So we found some people,
sent them to India to learn data entry.

386
00:21:12,740 --> 00:21:14,410
And then,

387
00:21:14,450 --> 00:21:20,060
I came back here and got in the next month
got a grant of $25,000 which¡­

388
00:21:20,090 --> 00:21:22,660
I was new at this
so I thought it was this easy.

389
00:21:22,700 --> 00:21:25,170
But I'd just read an article about
some venture Capitalists in California

390
00:21:25,170 --> 00:21:28,280
who had a foundation that
was doing technology and development.

391
00:21:28,310 --> 00:21:31,120
So I called them up and you know,
it's four weeks later,

392
00:21:31,150 --> 00:21:33,740
without having met them,
and in fact they said,

393
00:21:33,770 --> 00:21:34,830
¡°Well, we have to apologize

394
00:21:34,870 --> 00:21:37,450
but these are venture capitalists
and they're not used to grant proposals.

395
00:21:37,480 --> 00:21:41,130
They just listen to
PowerPoint presentations.¡±

396
00:21:41,130 --> 00:21:43,010
And I said,
¡°Well, the only concrete skill

397
00:21:43,010 --> 00:21:45,150
I have in life is writing
a PowerPoint presentation.¡±

398
00:21:45,180 --> 00:21:47,230
So, that's what I learned at McKinsey.

399
00:21:48,530 --> 00:21:51,770
So Jason and I wrote those
eight pages on our living room table

400
00:21:51,810 --> 00:21:53,120
and we still don't know
how to write grant applications.

401
00:21:53,120 --> 00:21:56,040
But, we got the 25,000 dollars,
it was a matching grant,

402
00:21:56,040 --> 00:21:58,020
and we got some friends
to put the money in.

403
00:21:58,020 --> 00:22:00,040
And, I was an undergraduate
down the street at Harvard,

404
00:22:00,040 --> 00:22:01,250
and talked to some of
the people at the Crimson,

405
00:22:01,250 --> 00:22:04,170
the student newspaper there,
and that was our first project,

406
00:22:04,170 --> 00:22:07,210
because they wanted to take
the microfilms and put them online.

407
00:22:07,210 --> 00:22:09,020
And, so these came together.

408
00:22:09,020 --> 00:22:13,080
And then, four or five months after
that visit when all four of us,

409
00:22:13,080 --> 00:22:19,030
five of us, spent in Phnom Penh,
we opened with twenty people in Phnom Penh,

410
00:22:19,030 --> 00:22:21,040
and the model we developed was to work¡­

411
00:22:21,040 --> 00:22:23,220
The project is called Digital Divide Data.

412
00:22:23,220 --> 00:22:25,150
And, the idea of digital divide,

413
00:22:25,150 --> 00:22:27,230
a divide in technology and 
in poor and richer companies,

414
00:22:27,230 --> 00:22:31,020
and trying to bridge that through
technology and data services.

415
00:22:31,020 --> 00:22:36,980
So what we do is we have employees
who are graduates of local training programs,

416
00:22:37,010 --> 00:22:39,580
who come from particularly disadvantaged
backgrounds, disabled people,

417
00:22:39,620 --> 00:22:43,840
world migrants, orphans, and so on,
women rescued from sex trafficking,

418
00:22:43,870 --> 00:22:47,740
who come with basic typing skills,
and basic computer literacy,

419
00:22:47,780 --> 00:22:50,050
who work six hours a day,

420
00:22:50,050 --> 00:22:52,080
and then go to school
the other half of the day.

421
00:22:52,080 --> 00:22:55,050
So the idea is we take people in their
early twenties for the most part,

422
00:22:55,050 --> 00:22:58,330
who had to drop out of high school
because they had to support their families,

423
00:22:58,370 --> 00:23:03,110
and now can find a way to earn some revenue
to support themselves and their families,

424
00:23:03,110 --> 00:23:05,040
and also have the time,

425
00:23:05,040 --> 00:23:06,630
because they're not working
twelve to fourteen hours a day,

426
00:23:06,790 --> 00:23:09,080
to go to school, so they can advance.

427
00:23:09,080 --> 00:23:12,100
So we measure ourselves on how many of
our graduates go on to better jobs

428
00:23:12,100 --> 00:23:15,020
in the future, and that's
the kind of model that we do.

429
00:23:15,020 --> 00:23:17,470
We call it a non-profit company.
That's always a question.

430
00:23:17,510 --> 00:23:20,490
Is it nonprofit? Is it a company?
So we just call it a non-profit company.

431
00:23:20,520 --> 00:23:24,130
We are set up as a 51C3 in the US,
and an NGO in Cambodia.

432
00:23:24,130 --> 00:23:26,540
We're now in Laos,
which I'll talk about in a second,

433
00:23:26,570 --> 00:23:29,850
where we're set up as a business actually.
But we think of two elements to it.

434
00:23:29,890 --> 00:23:31,720
One is the core, is that
it's a business at heart,

435
00:23:31,760 --> 00:23:33,640
which is that it needs to be sustainable,

436
00:23:33,680 --> 00:23:35,080
so our client revenues¡­

437
00:23:35,080 --> 00:23:39,790
This past year we had $400,000 of revenues
from clients this past year.

438
00:23:39,830 --> 00:23:43,050
That's all from clients in the US mostly
although somewhat in Asia as well,

439
00:23:43,050 --> 00:23:45,060
who pay us for services that we provide.

440
00:23:45,060 --> 00:23:48,530
And that covers all the core
operating costs of the enterprise,

441
00:23:48,570 --> 00:23:50,790
the salaries and infrastructure and so on.

442
00:23:50,830 --> 00:23:52,830
We then do raise philanthropic dollars

443
00:23:52,870 --> 00:23:56,000
that pays for some of the
extra social services that we provide,

444
00:23:56,000 --> 00:23:57,220
so the scholarships that we providefor people,

445
00:23:57,220 --> 00:24:00,100
some of the extra work in training
that's needed in a place like Cambodia.

446
00:24:00,100 --> 00:24:03,030
If we were just going to do this as a business,
we could have just done it in India.

447
00:24:03,030 --> 00:24:06,320
But our thesis had been that
countries like Cambodia and Laos

448
00:24:06,350 --> 00:24:09,120
would be forever passed by
in this kind of global revolution

449
00:24:09,120 --> 00:24:12,850
if there wasn't extra
investment of some subsidies.

450
00:24:12,880 --> 00:24:15,070
But what we wanted to prove was
that after those initial subsidies

451
00:24:15,070 --> 00:24:19,190
we could compete with these
other companies countries in the world.

452
00:24:19,190 --> 00:24:25,060
So that's where the non-profit
and the company come together.

453
00:24:25,060 --> 00:24:26,350
We now have¡­

454
00:24:26,380 --> 00:24:29,070
It's been a privilege to be a part of.

455
00:24:29,070 --> 00:24:32,820
We now have 200 people that
are in two offices in Cambodia,

456
00:24:32,860 --> 00:24:35,670
the largest in Phnom Penh
with about 130 people,

457
00:24:35,700 --> 00:24:38,060
twenty-five are in Battambang,
the second largest city,

458
00:24:38,060 --> 00:24:40,510
but you would think of
it as a village mostly.

459
00:24:40,540 --> 00:24:43,440
And then we opened an office in Laos,
in Vientiane, Laos,

460
00:24:43,480 --> 00:24:46,660
which now has thirty people,
that we're going to grow.

461
00:24:46,690 --> 00:24:50,000
So, that's what we've been up to.

462
00:24:50,000 --> 00:24:51,250
Great.  Thank you.

463
00:24:52,150 --> 00:24:53,840
Just a couple of general questions.

464
00:24:53,880 --> 00:24:56,480
By the way, our intent today
was to open it open it up for,

465
00:24:56,510 --> 00:24:58,990
kind of, conversation amongst all
of us in just a few minutes.

466
00:24:58,990 --> 00:25:02,740
But if you don't mind, I was just going
to ask a couple of general questions,

467
00:25:03,170 --> 00:25:06,080
to Ron and Frannie and Jeremy,

468
00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:09,020
it doesn't matter whoever
wants to respond, whenever.

469
00:25:09,260 --> 00:25:16,070
Obviously, this theme of working
across boundaries is more and more topical.

470
00:25:16,070 --> 00:25:17,370
In different ways,

471
00:25:17,400 --> 00:25:19,220
you guys live it all the time.

472
00:25:19,220 --> 00:25:24,050
Ron, you said one thing
in your introductory comments,

473
00:25:24,050 --> 00:25:26,830
about a really
important learning for you,

474
00:25:28,170 --> 00:25:29,830
which had to do with,

475
00:25:29,860 --> 00:25:33,090
what does it really mean to respect.

476
00:25:33,090 --> 00:25:38,680
I hear in your comments, Jeremy,
that kind of recognizing that,

477
00:25:38,720 --> 00:25:40,080
you know¡­

478
00:25:40,080 --> 00:25:43,860
In fact, I think maybe it was Frannie
who said it earlier, not today,

479
00:25:43,900 --> 00:25:45,270
but when we were talking,
I just remembered this phrase,

480
00:25:45,270 --> 00:25:48,390
¡°because people are illiterate
does not mean they're not wise.¡±

481
00:25:49,260 --> 00:25:55,040
Something about seeing the potential
of people across the divide,

482
00:25:55,040 --> 00:25:56,690
I'll use it in a different way now,

483
00:25:56,730 --> 00:26:00,370
of our own, basically,
our own conceptions.

484
00:26:00,410 --> 00:26:03,570
People who speak a different language,
who have a different kind of education,

485
00:26:03,600 --> 00:26:08,290
who might not read, or who might not read in
the way we would recognize it, or whatever.

486
00:26:08,320 --> 00:26:11,490
But it seems to me in order for
any of you to do what you do,

487
00:26:11,530 --> 00:26:16,170
you have to kind of get out of the mindset of,
¡°I'm just here to help these poor people.¡±

488
00:26:17,120 --> 00:26:20,620
And it has to be a very different mindset
that starts to emerge.

489
00:26:20,650 --> 00:26:22,110
Now, it might be a little
different for each of you.

490
00:26:22,110 --> 00:26:23,950
I'm just kind of curious
if you would just say

491
00:26:23,990 --> 00:26:26,490
a word or two about kind of,
what that means to you.

492
00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:32,160
Well, I could just cite
a couple of examples

493
00:26:32,210 --> 00:26:36,170
which are easily the most meaningful
in my whole professional life,

494
00:26:36,170 --> 00:26:38,910
which are really kind of
grassroots kinds of examples.

495
00:26:38,940 --> 00:26:41,130
One being, for example, Bangladesh,

496
00:26:41,130 --> 00:26:44,600
where we were working to try to
promote access to family planning,

497
00:26:44,640 --> 00:26:46,800
basic reproductive health which, by the way,

498
00:26:46,840 --> 00:26:49,130
some of you know,
has been a great success in Bangladesh.

499
00:26:49,160 --> 00:26:52,210
They've halved their fertility rate
over the last twenty years

500
00:26:52,210 --> 00:26:57,070
and it happened largely because rural
women have organized themselves,

501
00:26:57,070 --> 00:27:00,160
to deal with the bureaucracy
and to make their way.

502
00:27:00,190 --> 00:27:01,140
And to see,

503
00:27:01,140 --> 00:27:06,140
the thrill of seeing village women,
illiterate village women get organized,

504
00:27:06,140 --> 00:27:08,760
and seize an opportunity once
it's given to them,

505
00:27:08,760 --> 00:27:11,570
and make something out of
it is absolutely remarkable.

506
00:27:11,610 --> 00:27:14,010
I mean, it's the most gratifying thing.

507
00:27:14,010 --> 00:27:14,670
I mean it's¡­

508
00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:16,140
I just can't¡­

509
00:27:16,140 --> 00:27:18,780
I'll burst out in tears
if I go too much further than this,

510
00:27:18,810 --> 00:27:21,060
but it is absolutely thrilling to see that.

511
00:27:21,060 --> 00:27:23,050
And you know there's tremendous power there.

512
00:27:23,050 --> 00:27:27,050
If you could leverage that,
if you could help multiply those experiences

513
00:27:27,050 --> 00:27:29,590
to allow them to succeed
in their own society,

514
00:27:29,620 --> 00:27:31,060
then you've done something.

515
00:27:31,060 --> 00:27:32,070
Because it's clear that¡­

516
00:27:32,070 --> 00:27:38,880
anybody from the outside
is by definition, from the outside.

517
00:27:38,910 --> 00:27:39,040
And anything that will
last will be theirs.

518
00:27:40,700 --> 00:27:42,290
Two stories.

519
00:27:42,320 --> 00:27:45,230
One is my very first-
we call them ¡®missions',

520
00:27:45,230 --> 00:27:49,020
so it's part of the
military heritage of the World Bank.

521
00:27:49,020 --> 00:27:53,270
When we go on a trip to a country,
we call it a mission.

522
00:27:54,080 --> 00:27:57,900
And the very first one, I'd just come form
MIT and joined the World Bank,

523
00:27:57,940 --> 00:28:00,510
and was asked to go and see

524
00:28:00,540 --> 00:28:04,030
whether we could develop
a strategy for infrastructure for Peru.

525
00:28:04,220 --> 00:28:08,920
At that time Peru was just coming out
of conflict with the Sendero Luminoso,

526
00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:13,100
so it was quite dangerous actually
to even travel around the country.

527
00:28:13,100 --> 00:28:23,330
And we went to
a village up in the mountains,

528
00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:23,090
And the idea was to look
at the road network and say,

529
00:28:23,090 --> 00:28:24,670
¡°Are you going to construct roads

530
00:28:24,710 --> 00:28:29,000
that brings products from
the from rural areas to the city

531
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:33,040
because of the food shortages
but also for income for the farmers?¡±

532
00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:35,150
And on the way we were talking to people.

533
00:28:35,150 --> 00:28:40,160
And I remember talking to a farmer
who was coming down from Corka

534
00:28:40,160 --> 00:28:44,170
going to sell his potatoes,
he had grown potatoes.

535
00:28:44,170 --> 00:28:49,100
And it took him three days to walk,
from his village in Corka

536
00:28:49,100 --> 00:28:51,110
to get to the market.

537
00:28:51,110 --> 00:28:52,380
And so we asked him, we said,

538
00:28:52,410 --> 00:28:57,030
¡°If we were to build a road
that would shorten your trip to, say,

539
00:28:57,030 --> 00:28:59,620
half a day, would that be helpful?¡±

540
00:28:59,660 --> 00:29:03,090
because that was the thinking at the time,
that roads are needed.

541
00:29:03,460 --> 00:29:08,220
And he said, Actually, I'm not so sure
that the road would be helpful,

542
00:29:08,220 --> 00:29:12,040
because my daughter
who has to come along with me

543
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:16,080
has to carry the potatoes
from the farm to the

544
00:29:16,080 --> 00:29:18,070
he was walking with the donkey

545
00:29:18,110 --> 00:29:22,260
to the donkey and the road is not going to
help very much in that regard,

546
00:29:22,290 --> 00:29:27,000
because it will shorten my trip to the market,
but it won't do anything for my daughter

547
00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:29,070
who can't go to school.

548
00:29:29,070 --> 00:29:34,070
So then the question is, okay,
should we look at the school system?

549
00:29:34,070 --> 00:29:38,170
And at that time the Ministry of Education
and the Ministry of Transport,

550
00:29:38,170 --> 00:29:43,080
very silo, separate organizations,
so they don't talk to each other,

551
00:29:43,080 --> 00:29:49,050
so the plan for investing in schools is not
linked to the plan for investing in roads,

552
00:29:49,050 --> 00:29:51,540
and we are basically outsiders

553
00:29:51,570 --> 00:29:59,030
who have to then find a way
to help this connection take place.

554
00:29:59,030 --> 00:30:02,630
And the only way we'd be able
to do it is by talking¡­

555
00:30:02,660 --> 00:30:07,030
There was a journalist who was coming along
to figure out what's going on,

556
00:30:07,030 --> 00:30:10,450
¡°Are you coming back
to invest in Peru?¡± and so on.

557
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:15,040
And he published the story of
that gentleman from Corka,

558
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:18,710
and everything that he does,
the number of days it takes,

559
00:30:18,750 --> 00:30:22,070
and that created the change in the country

560
00:30:22,070 --> 00:30:27,070
that allowed the Education ministry
to work with the Transport ministry,

561
00:30:27,070 --> 00:30:29,750
and get the right type of investment in place.

562
00:30:29,780 --> 00:30:34,180
So the best decision was made by
the farmer from Corka .

563
00:30:34,180 --> 00:30:37,470
The other story is from Sri Lanka.

564
00:30:37,510 --> 00:30:38,260
We had¡­

565
00:30:38,260 --> 00:30:41,180
The World Bank realized
after a number of years

566
00:30:41,180 --> 00:30:44,000
that it was hiring very smart people,

567
00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:47,590
but people who really were not
very knowledgeable about poverty.

568
00:30:47,630 --> 00:30:51,550
Because even though they came from
developing countries, many of them,

569
00:30:51,590 --> 00:30:54,620
they were not from poor families
in the developing countries.

570
00:30:54,660 --> 00:30:59,840
So we had this management training system to
send all the managers in the bank

571
00:30:59,880 --> 00:31:06,030
to live in the villages for two weeks
and experience poverty firsthand.

572
00:31:06,030 --> 00:31:09,250
So we went with about ten people,
and were in Sri Lanka

573
00:31:09,250 --> 00:31:14,870
and stayed in a village called Muan Palessa,
which is now very famous

574
00:31:14,900 --> 00:31:18,540
because there's a docudrama
that talks about that village,

575
00:31:18,570 --> 00:31:23,360
and it's a very exciting TV show in Sri Lanka
that people follow on a weekly basis.

576
00:31:23,400 --> 00:31:32,050
But the home in which we spent the night
was a single-family headed household.

577
00:31:32,050 --> 00:31:35,110
The husband was out in
the north part of Sri Lanka

578
00:31:35,110 --> 00:31:37,430
because of the civil conflict,

579
00:31:37,470 --> 00:31:42,540
three children, and the mother
was raising these children on her own.

580
00:31:42,580 --> 00:31:48,780
And we, in the evening, need to take a bath,
so everyone was asking where can we go.

581
00:31:48,820 --> 00:31:51,400
Oh, obviously, no tap inside.

582
00:31:51,430 --> 00:31:57,080
And we walked and found
a very large pond of water,

583
00:31:57,080 --> 00:32:00,100
and that was the only source
of water for the village.

584
00:32:00,100 --> 00:32:01,060
So we go in,

585
00:32:01,060 --> 00:32:05,440
because you have to find some way
to get cleaned up from the dust and so on.

586
00:32:05,470 --> 00:32:08,940
And just as we put our feet in,
everyone starts shouting,

587
00:32:08,940 --> 00:32:11,400
¡°We have to leave! We have to leave!
The elephants are coming!¡±

588
00:32:11,440 --> 00:32:15,030
And that source was not
only for drinking water,

589
00:32:15,030 --> 00:32:17,100
for bathing and all hygiene needs,

590
00:32:17,100 --> 00:32:20,330
but also a watering source
for the elephants.

591
00:32:20,360 --> 00:32:25,210
And so finding a way to
balance the ecological demands,

592
00:32:25,210 --> 00:32:30,350
on the one hand, the agricultural demands,
but the very simple household demands.

593
00:32:30,350 --> 00:32:36,060
And when we asked our hostess
what would she need,

594
00:32:36,060 --> 00:32:40,260
she didn't ask for a tap in her house,
which was the solution we all had in mind,

595
00:32:40,260 --> 00:32:46,040
because we'd all written our little reports
saying the house needs running water.

596
00:32:46,040 --> 00:32:48,180
And she suggested a system

597
00:32:48,180 --> 00:32:51,950
whereby you could have ponds
that communicate with each other

598
00:32:51,990 --> 00:32:55,660
one of which could be fresh water
for drinking and other purposes,

599
00:32:55,700 --> 00:32:58,650
and at the tail end, for the elephant use.

600
00:32:58,680 --> 00:33:01,290
So a very different design,
and a very different solution.

601
00:33:01,290 --> 00:33:05,020
And again, none of us
could have come up with it.

602
00:33:08,110 --> 00:33:13,060
Yeah, this question of bridging
this divide of leadership

603
00:33:13,060 --> 00:33:17,170
and access to resources
is one of the motivating factors of

604
00:33:17,170 --> 00:33:19,160
what we've been doing.

605
00:33:19,160 --> 00:33:23,150
And, just for me, it was just
being inspired by the people

606
00:33:23,150 --> 00:33:27,710
that I saw who had worked much harder
than I ever had I felt,

607
00:33:27,750 --> 00:33:31,090
and had overcome much more
than I had ever overcome,

608
00:33:31,090 --> 00:33:36,380
and had only been exposed to what
was really right there in front of them.

609
00:33:36,410 --> 00:33:39,640
So there's something about
being able to broaden

610
00:33:39,670 --> 00:33:41,760
the exposure of us here in this room,

611
00:33:41,790 --> 00:33:45,500
and people there, coming together.

612
00:33:45,540 --> 00:33:52,080
My colleagues have given beautiful examples
of that local kind of wisdom.

613
00:33:52,080 --> 00:33:54,060
But there's then that challenge of,
I mean,

614
00:33:54,060 --> 00:33:57,750
the wonderful students were giving examples of
the help they want from the Leadership Center.

615
00:33:57,790 --> 00:33:59,910
These students here need this Center.

616
00:33:59,860 --> 00:34:03,310
Students here need these kinds of helps 
so they can influence projects here,

617
00:34:03,340 --> 00:34:06,150
let alone think of my friends in Cambodia

618
00:34:06,150 --> 00:34:09,990
who built thousand-people volunteer
organizations of poor people in rural areas,

619
00:34:10,020 --> 00:34:13,090
but have no with a little bit 
of extra help and resources.

620
00:34:13,120 --> 00:34:17,260
could have sped up by years
what it took to do.

621
00:34:20,100 --> 00:34:22,060
I'm hearing a couple things in common.

622
00:34:22,060 --> 00:34:23,170
And I just want to check them.

623
00:34:23,170 --> 00:34:27,150
I also want to ask one more question,
and then we'll just open it up.

624
00:34:28,010 --> 00:34:30,200
Obviously, for all of you,

625
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:35,080
being there and being directly in touch
with people is kind of foundational.

626
00:34:36,330 --> 00:34:38,000
You know, in some sense,

627
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:42,740
the World Bank is kind of a
bit of a paradoxical icon of sorts.

628
00:34:42,770 --> 00:34:47,200
Because first, the rich country is
trying to help the poor countries.

629
00:34:47,200 --> 00:34:54,030
And secondly, until not that long ago,
mostly operating in their offices,

630
00:34:54,120 --> 00:34:58,200
doing things, not this sort of journey
you were talking about.

631
00:34:59,150 --> 00:35:02,120
But what's also going on in my mind
as I'm listening to you is,

632
00:35:02,120 --> 00:35:05,640
I was thinking about this as,
in the flow of today,

633
00:35:06,170 --> 00:35:13,010
MIT has this kind of, obviously strong
bent bend towards problem-solving,

634
00:35:13,010 --> 00:35:17,020
but even a little more than that,
kind of technical solutions to problems,

635
00:35:17,020 --> 00:35:19,020
and technology specifically.

636
00:35:19,050 --> 00:35:23,550
Woody had his great chart up there,
which certainly raised some great questions

637
00:35:23,590 --> 00:35:28,310
about what we teach versus what people need,
even in a traditional business career.

638
00:35:28,340 --> 00:35:31,220
Right? Perhaps even more so here.

639
00:35:32,630 --> 00:35:34,220
So I'm really curious about¡­

640
00:35:34,220 --> 00:35:37,030
do you guys think you're just outliers?

641
00:35:37,030 --> 00:35:39,060
Here's what I mean by this.

642
00:35:39,060 --> 00:35:41,160
In some ways, you all
come out of MIT educations,

643
00:35:41,160 --> 00:35:44,410
yet follow very different paths,
which is so interesting,

644
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:46,560
you've followed very,
very different paths.

645
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:52,340
You've all found a way to kind of connect
pretty deeply with real needs of people,

646
00:35:52,380 --> 00:35:55,710
and really emotionally with
the people you're working with

647
00:35:55,750 --> 00:35:59,480
and tap the knowledge capacity,
the wisdom that's there,

648
00:35:59,510 --> 00:36:05,730
find ways that are really genuinely helpful,
in the minds of the people.

649
00:36:05,760 --> 00:36:07,620
In other words,
it's not just giving them your solution,

650
00:36:07,650 --> 00:36:09,100
but finding out what
they're kind of solutions are,

651
00:36:09,100 --> 00:36:11,200
and then actually working together.

652
00:36:12,100 --> 00:36:16,140
I don't see much of anything
that's obvious in your MIT education

653
00:36:16,140 --> 00:36:18,050
that prepared you for that.

654
00:36:18,050 --> 00:36:20,170
and yet¡­hence my question.

655
00:36:20,170 --> 00:36:22,060
Are you outliers?

656
00:36:22,060 --> 00:36:28,010
Or is there something that's more
subtle here that in many ways,

657
00:36:28,010 --> 00:36:30,150
if we understood at MIT,

658
00:36:30,220 --> 00:36:34,040
how it prepared people like you
to do the work you've done,

659
00:36:34,040 --> 00:36:36,190
it might help us as we're thinking about

660
00:36:36,190 --> 00:36:39,240
the next twenty or thirty
or forty years of students.

661
00:36:40,110 --> 00:36:41,290
Is my question clear?

662
00:36:41,290 --> 00:36:42,280
I got pieces of it.

663
00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:45,010
Well, okay.
I'll say it conceptually.

664
00:36:45,010 --> 00:36:46,160
There's technological problem solving.

665
00:36:46,160 --> 00:36:47,230
Yeah.

666
00:36:47,230 --> 00:36:51,230
But I hear you doing that,
in the context of something much bigger.

667
00:36:51,230 --> 00:36:54,070
Not just coming in and
fixing technological problems.

668
00:36:54,070 --> 00:36:55,140
Undoubtedly, in all your cases,

669
00:36:55,140 --> 00:36:58,110
there's technical solutions that
have got implemented, right?

670
00:36:58,110 --> 00:37:00,120
But there's a bigger context here,

671
00:37:00,120 --> 00:37:03,260
of really kind of immersing
yourself in the reality,

672
00:37:03,290 --> 00:37:05,540
appreciating the people who are there,

673
00:37:05,580 --> 00:37:10,250
tapping the wisdom and the ideas and the
potential of the people who are there.

674
00:37:10,280 --> 00:37:14,680
So, Ron Heifetz at Harvard would
call them adaptive problems.

675
00:37:14,680 --> 00:37:18,800
Other people, you know, would say it's way 
beyond the technical problem solving mindset.

676
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:21,430
You've put technical problem-solving
into something bigger,

677
00:37:21,460 --> 00:37:23,180
which leads to real change.

678
00:37:23,180 --> 00:37:26,520
What is it in your MIT background,
if anything,

679
00:37:26,560 --> 00:37:29,110
that had anything to do with
you being able to do that?

680
00:37:30,180 --> 00:37:32,020
I think there's two things,

681
00:37:32,020 --> 00:37:34,160
at least in contrast to
my other academic experiences.

682
00:37:34,160 --> 00:37:39,230
I really came away from MIT feeling that
people did respect each other

683
00:37:39,230 --> 00:37:43,060
and were willing to listen to
other people's points of view and ideas.

684
00:37:43,060 --> 00:37:47,270
And that they were problem-focused,
and that is, as opposed to, necessarily,

685
00:37:47,270 --> 00:37:50,090
discipline focused, you know?
That's interesting.

686
00:37:50,090 --> 00:37:53,120
The first big mistake
I made in this game was

687
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:58,130
I went out and tried to sell
fancy simulation modeling to,

688
00:37:58,130 --> 00:38:01,990
in a setting, where I was eager
to apply it but it didn't fit.

689
00:38:02,210 --> 00:38:05,270
And I rapidly understood that,
to be useful to these people,

690
00:38:05,270 --> 00:38:08,980
we had to deal with problems
that they saw as problems,

691
00:38:09,020 --> 00:38:13,050
and from the point of view that they saw as
helping to solve their problems,

692
00:38:13,080 --> 00:38:14,150
to build some credibility.

693
00:38:15,230 --> 00:38:17,080
Thank you.

694
00:38:17,080 --> 00:38:20,380
I received three things from MIT.

695
00:38:20,410 --> 00:38:25,030
One is, I came from a university where you,

696
00:38:25,030 --> 00:38:30,010
you basically had to choose very early on
what you wanted to specialize in.

697
00:38:30,010 --> 00:38:35,630
And MIT was this fascinating place where
you could basically register anywhere.

698
00:38:35,670 --> 00:38:42,200
And the ability to combine course 1 with
course 6 and figure out the interfaces.

699
00:38:42,200 --> 00:38:49,000
I thought, that to me was a really
fundamental transformation that allowed me,

700
00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:50,270
when I left MIT, to think

701
00:38:50,270 --> 00:38:54,730
that many problems can be solved by
putting things together in different ways.

702
00:38:54,830 --> 00:38:55,220
Interesting.

703
00:38:55,220 --> 00:38:58,050
And there are no real boundaries
in the discipline,

704
00:38:58,050 --> 00:39:02,440
because I didn't have those boundaries
when I was studying at MIT.

705
00:39:02,480 --> 00:39:06,190
The second one is,
I was very struck that you cannot,

706
00:39:06,190 --> 00:39:09,230
at MIT, just stick at the idea level.

707
00:39:09,230 --> 00:39:11,660
At least, the professors won't let you.

708
00:39:11,690 --> 00:39:15,130
You have to go from an
idea to something concrete.

709
00:39:15,130 --> 00:39:23,030
And being able to move away from abstraction
to something real was very helpful,

710
00:39:23,060 --> 00:39:26,260
because I find that in the kind
of problems we're talking about,

711
00:39:26,260 --> 00:39:29,040
you have to shift the frontier.

712
00:39:29,040 --> 00:39:33,030
And to shift the frontier,
you cannot stay at the abstract level.

713
00:39:33,070 --> 00:39:36,010
You have to change something on the ground.

714
00:39:36,010 --> 00:39:39,200
And that was something
I also took with me from MIT.

715
00:39:39,200 --> 00:39:42,860
But the third thing
I would say is just this

716
00:39:42,900 --> 00:39:45,120
every time I come here, I feel it again.

717
00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:48,120
It's this excitement about learning.

718
00:39:48,120 --> 00:39:53,070
I find it's a place
where people actually feel proud

719
00:39:53,070 --> 00:39:55,150
that they've learned
something difficult.

720
00:39:55,150 --> 00:39:59,210
And that makes you kind of arrogant
when you go out there and say,

721
00:39:59,210 --> 00:40:03,080
¡°There's no problem
that's too hard to tackle.¡±

722
00:40:03,080 --> 00:40:07,070
And I think that arrogance,
to say, ¡°Let's try,¡±

723
00:40:07,070 --> 00:40:11,080
is probably something
that's almost uniquely MIT.

724
00:40:12,040 --> 00:40:14,290
Thanks, Frannie.
Anything you want to add Jeremy?

725
00:40:14,290 --> 00:40:17,060
Yeah, well,
just listening to Ron and Frannie,

726
00:40:17,060 --> 00:40:20,090
I think what we need to be teaching,
I think, I'll reflect in a second,

727
00:40:20,090 --> 00:40:22,860
I think what did come out of the classes
that I was part of was

728
00:40:22,900 --> 00:40:25,180
you hear these two extraordinary people,
Ron who's built this organization,

729
00:40:25,180 --> 00:40:28,860
helped create this organization of 1200 people,
an eighth the size of the World Bank.

730
00:40:28,900 --> 00:40:33,080
And Frannie who, was asking before

731
00:40:33,080 --> 00:40:35,290
my ideas on whether entrepreneurial
international development is working,

732
00:40:35,290 --> 00:40:37,190
and how NGOs and governments
can work that together.

733
00:40:37,190 --> 00:40:40,180
And Ron's saying he tried doing
these simulations and they didn't work,

734
00:40:40,180 --> 00:40:43,210
and it's clear that it's such an
ongoing learning process for you,

735
00:40:43,210 --> 00:40:45,010
during this whole piece that,

736
00:40:45,010 --> 00:40:47,010
if you look back thirty-five years
when you started this,

737
00:40:47,010 --> 00:40:49,100
MSH I'm sure looks
very different than your ideas

738
00:40:49,100 --> 00:40:50,260
and you're still constantly learning.

739
00:40:50,260 --> 00:40:53,020
So, it's this ongoing learning
that is just so powerful

740
00:40:53,020 --> 00:40:54,290
and together fitting
with these hard problems.

741
00:40:56,100 --> 00:41:01,010
And I feel both the teamwork piece,
that we were focused around so much,

742
00:41:01,010 --> 00:41:04,000
and also, your course, and Prof. Ancona,
and I saw Ed Schein here,

743
00:41:04,000 --> 00:41:08,210
around this listening, asking questions,

744
00:41:08,210 --> 00:41:11,180
that it's not just this command
and control idea of you know,

745
00:41:11,180 --> 00:41:15,090
you're the CEO, here's the problem,
you can go solve it, boss everybody around.

746
00:41:15,090 --> 00:41:17,280
But that it's this, well, we need to stop

747
00:41:17,280 --> 00:41:21,060
and listen and take
in different perspectives.

748
00:41:21,060 --> 00:41:24,210
And the maps in class that had, you know,
eight maps of the world actually.

749
00:41:24,210 --> 00:41:27,100
If you look at the map of the world,
the one we've got growing up with,

750
00:41:27,100 --> 00:41:29,050
from even in Canada where we grew up,

751
00:41:29,050 --> 00:41:31,040
it looks the same as here
with the US right in the middle

752
00:41:31,040 --> 00:41:32,210
and the largest, larger than Africa.

753
00:41:32,210 --> 00:41:35,220
And then you look at the other maps,
the one people in Europe see,

754
00:41:35,220 --> 00:41:38,130
and the one if you do based on
the actual size of Africa.

755
00:41:38,130 --> 00:41:40,190
And then, if you're in Australia,
it looks upside down.

756
00:41:40,190 --> 00:41:45,250
So just this idea of, what is the reality,
and this idea of kind of understanding

757
00:41:45,250 --> 00:41:48,180
that there's not just one reality out there,
which I think McKinsey, more, taught me.

758
00:41:48,180 --> 00:41:51,130
I learned a lot of good skills there,
but it was about, okay, you know,

759
00:41:51,130 --> 00:41:55,120
you put it onto a page, the work plan,
and you break it down and you solve it.

760
00:41:55,120 --> 00:41:59,210
I think what I learnt here more was that
there are different realities out there

761
00:41:59,210 --> 00:42:02,110
that are harder to see,
and by bringing people together,

762
00:42:02,110 --> 00:42:05,230
we can try to adapt
and develop approaches that work.

763
00:42:05,230 --> 00:42:07,060
That's great, thank you.

764
00:42:07,060 --> 00:42:09,290
Well, we want to open this up
somewhere around midway,

765
00:42:09,290 --> 00:42:11,290
which is just about now.

766
00:42:11,290 --> 00:42:14,290
So any kind of comments or questions.

767
00:42:14,290 --> 00:42:17,090
It it could be something specific
about what they've said,

768
00:42:17,090 --> 00:42:20,210
or it could just be this kind of,
in this broader territory,

769
00:42:20,210 --> 00:42:22,080
of working across boundaries.

770
00:42:22,080 --> 00:42:27,160
Obviously, the emphasis here has been working
across geographic and cultural boundaries.

771
00:42:27,200 --> 00:42:29,000
But there are all sorts of boundaries.

772
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:31,110
So, comments?  Questions?

773
00:42:36,180 --> 00:42:37,280
Please.

774
00:42:38,230 --> 00:42:39,270
Could you stand?

775
00:42:39,270 --> 00:42:42,280
I think she'll get you a mic
if she can see you there.

776
00:42:42,280 --> 00:42:44,110
That way everybody can hear.

777
00:42:51,220 --> 00:42:56,000
Yes, for me here at MIT,

778
00:42:56,160 --> 00:42:59,570
one of the very important skills
I think I developed,

779
00:42:59,640 --> 00:43:03,070
and a lot of it based on
your work on systems dynamics

780
00:43:03,070 --> 00:43:06,620
and complex models and so on,
was basically,

781
00:43:07,180 --> 00:43:10,010
when leading across boundaries,

782
00:43:10,010 --> 00:43:12,150
thinking of the problem systemically,

783
00:43:12,150 --> 00:43:17,290
I think it's, a lot of
MIT students learn how to do that.

784
00:43:17,290 --> 00:43:22,940
And regardless of what context you are,
either in a business or public sector,

785
00:43:22,980 --> 00:43:25,100
or very specific problem,

786
00:43:25,100 --> 00:43:30,850
that type of skill,
and that intellectual capacity

787
00:43:30,890 --> 00:43:33,100
to look at a problem broadly

788
00:43:33,100 --> 00:43:36,170
and systemically
has helped, I think.

789
00:43:36,170 --> 00:43:41,140
And I've seen that skill in
many MIT students to solve problems.

790
00:43:41,140 --> 00:43:43,020
And also, the

791
00:43:43,020 --> 00:43:48,030
I think that the ability
to articulate the problem,

792
00:43:48,030 --> 00:43:53,630
to find some of the essential
elements of that problem,

793
00:43:53,660 --> 00:43:56,010
and then put it on the table
and a team of people,

794
00:43:56,010 --> 00:44:00,070
for them to work and to solve,
is also a very important skill.

795
00:44:00,070 --> 00:44:04,810
Not necessarily, another thing
that I've seen that sometimes lacks,

796
00:44:04,840 --> 00:44:12,010
is the ability either to communicate ideas
very clearly with non-technical,

797
00:44:12,010 --> 00:44:16,010
non-engineering type of minds,

798
00:44:16,010 --> 00:44:20,130
and being able to translate those issues

799
00:44:20,130 --> 00:44:24,100
into common wording
so that everybody can understand.

800
00:44:24,100 --> 00:44:28,240
So it's a multi-dimensional
type of elements, I think.

801
00:44:28,240 --> 00:44:29,150
Right.

802
00:44:30,050 --> 00:44:31,230
Is there any particular question you want?

803
00:44:31,230 --> 00:44:33,230
We can certainly respond to

804
00:44:33,230 --> 00:44:40,040
Yes, well, basically for the,
for the speakers,

805
00:44:40,040 --> 00:44:43,000
How have you experienced,

806
00:44:43,000 --> 00:44:46,200
is this type of

807
00:44:46,200 --> 00:44:50,180
are these elements of looking at
things systemically and translating,

808
00:44:50,180 --> 00:44:55,870
communication, and the
articulation of your thoughts,

809
00:44:55,900 --> 00:44:58,910
of your mental models to people,
has that been a challenge?

810
00:44:58,940 --> 00:45:01,010
Was that something that you learned at MIT?

811
00:45:01,010 --> 00:45:04,100
Or is that something that
you have developed after MIT?

812
00:45:04,100 --> 00:45:06,250
What's your feeling on that?

813
00:45:08,090 --> 00:45:10,270
Just as you're pondering the question,

814
00:45:10,270 --> 00:45:14,070
I think I spotted, Woody, you flashed
through them pretty quickly,

815
00:45:14,070 --> 00:45:16,280
all those different, 
you know, charts up there.

816
00:45:16,280 --> 00:45:18,270
But I thought systems
thinking was one of the ones

817
00:45:18,270 --> 00:45:21,240
that people had some preparation
but hadn't used too much.

818
00:45:24,060 --> 00:45:27,020
I'm not sure, I wasn't sure exactly
what to make of that,

819
00:45:27,020 --> 00:45:30,270
so I just wanted to make a note
since there was some data there.

820
00:45:30,270 --> 00:45:32,230
We probably shouldn't ignore it entirely.

821
00:45:32,230 --> 00:45:35,080
What has it meant in the context to your work,

822
00:45:35,080 --> 00:45:37,100
systems thinking, and helping people

823
00:45:37,100 --> 00:45:39,020
I'll use my paraphrase now

824
00:45:39,020 --> 00:45:43,080
helping people understand the kind
of systems they're part of?

825
00:45:46,260 --> 00:45:52,190
Well, I've certainly made a mess of it,
in places where people's mindsets do not,

826
00:45:52,190 --> 00:45:56,200
you know, react that way,
they don't see things that way.

827
00:45:56,200 --> 00:46:00,600
And sometimes you butt your way for ahead
against a wall while before you

828
00:46:00,630 --> 00:46:03,870
appreciate that they really
do have a different perspective.

829
00:46:03,900 --> 00:46:06,020
And frankly, I think it's
a big challenge that we face.

830
00:46:06,020 --> 00:46:11,040
There are places where that
just is not common at this point.

831
00:46:11,040 --> 00:46:12,270
And how hard do you want to work?

832
00:46:12,270 --> 00:46:14,030
How hard can you work,

833
00:46:14,030 --> 00:46:16,000
as a relative leverage kind of investment.

834
00:46:16,000 --> 00:46:18,060
Do you want to butt your head
against there a long time?

835
00:46:18,060 --> 00:46:22,010
Or do you want to go somewhere else where maybe
you've got a better chance to be useful.

836
00:46:22,010 --> 00:46:24,050
And that's tough.

837
00:46:25,120 --> 00:46:27,130
My first culture shock,

838
00:46:27,130 --> 00:46:31,050
when I had to put a
report together and I was told,

839
00:46:31,050 --> 00:46:35,070
¡°You can't have equations in it,
no diagrams, no footnotes.¡±

840
00:46:35,150 --> 00:46:40,010
And so, that pretty much limited
how you could actually communicate.

841
00:46:40,010 --> 00:46:48,060
And what I learned, very hard I must say,
is that you may think in a system's fashion

842
00:46:48,060 --> 00:46:50,190
but don't say that you do.

843
00:46:50,190 --> 00:46:54,080
Unbundle it and talk about the different
pieces with different groups,

844
00:46:54,080 --> 00:46:59,020
and so understand the complexity
but just keep it to yourself.

845
00:46:59,020 --> 00:47:02,610
And I think it's a very hard lesson.

846
00:47:02,640 --> 00:47:05,060
And I must say, I mean,
Peter knows very well,

847
00:47:05,060 --> 00:47:08,070
because a number of people from
the World Bank went through these

848
00:47:08,070 --> 00:47:11,070
training sessions on neck-down learning.

849
00:47:11,070 --> 00:47:15,640
Because most people who come to
the World Bank are very cerebral.

850
00:47:15,680 --> 00:47:18,890
And you need to really change yourself,

851
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:21,200
because you can't
communicate in the same way,

852
00:47:21,200 --> 00:47:25,020
in every culture,
and you have to really tone down.

853
00:47:25,020 --> 00:47:27,290
So over the years,
one of the biggest fears I had,

854
00:47:27,290 --> 00:47:31,130
was I'd never be able
to write an equation again,

855
00:47:31,130 --> 00:47:36,060
and fortunately,
it hasn't been too much of a problem.

856
00:47:36,060 --> 00:47:39,070
And I was looking at
the charts that Woody put up.

857
00:47:39,310 --> 00:47:43,730
I had  our new president came to
visit the World Bank Institute

858
00:47:43,760 --> 00:47:44,780
and met with the management team,

859
00:47:44,780 --> 00:47:49,130
and were showing him the tracer studies of
the impact we've had around the world.

860
00:47:49,130 --> 00:47:52,090
And one of the ones
we had was a chart very similar,

861
00:47:52,090 --> 00:47:54,030
that saids,

862
00:47:54,030 --> 00:47:58,130
¡°Learning gains were very high
but use was very low.¡±

863
00:47:58,130 --> 00:48:00,710
And he said,
¡°I don't understand that chart.

864
00:48:00,750 --> 00:48:02,000
Why aren't they correlated?

865
00:48:02,000 --> 00:48:04,250
Shouldn't you use
a lot of what you learned?¡±

866
00:48:04,250 --> 00:48:08,050
And I said,¡°Well, I have a PhD from
MIT in civil engineering.

867
00:48:08,050 --> 00:48:12,880
I'm using zero of
what I learned at MIT in this job.¡±

868
00:48:12,910 --> 00:48:16,200
And that was an example of
how we could explain to him

869
00:48:16,200 --> 00:48:20,150
that a minister may learn something
about the knowledge economy

870
00:48:20,150 --> 00:48:24,120
but when they go back to their country
that has no connectivity,

871
00:48:24,120 --> 00:48:28,190
and has very little opportunity to
tap into the services trade,

872
00:48:28,190 --> 00:48:30,280
they can't use much of it.

873
00:48:33,230 --> 00:48:36,230
One thing that

874
00:48:36,230 --> 00:48:39,220
I was just going to say that if you want
to add anything, that's fine too.

875
00:48:39,220 --> 00:48:44,290
I think that one of the
shifts that often has to happen,

876
00:48:44,330 --> 00:48:49,100
and I'm kind of guessing you guys have been
over this territory a little bit,

877
00:48:49,100 --> 00:48:53,130
is that we come into it
in our academic education trained

878
00:48:53,130 --> 00:48:57,110
basically as individuals
to think systemically.

879
00:48:57,110 --> 00:48:59,620
Yeah, now we do
team projects and stuff.

880
00:48:59,660 --> 00:49:03,120
But for most students,
most of the time that's pretty minimal.

881
00:49:03,120 --> 00:49:04,120
There are exceptions.

882
00:49:04,120 --> 00:49:07,660
Like the kind of projects Woody's
is showing are real exceptions.

883
00:49:08,110 --> 00:49:11,090
But in many ways,
when you're in a complex system

884
00:49:11,090 --> 00:49:16,040
what you're trying to do is kind of tap
the latent wisdom that is there.

885
00:49:16,040 --> 00:49:18,060
And it is in different pockets.

886
00:49:20,150 --> 00:49:23,500
But if you just try to do it all
with one person or one group,

887
00:49:23,530 --> 00:49:25,140
you don't get to it.

888
00:49:25,140 --> 00:49:27,210
You have to somehow weave groups together.

889
00:49:27,210 --> 00:49:33,060
I remember years ago, someone once told me that
the real response to complexity is diversity.

890
00:49:33,060 --> 00:49:35,190
And I didn't have a clue
what they were talking about.

891
00:49:36,030 --> 00:49:37,190
But I've found over the years,

892
00:49:37,190 --> 00:49:41,280
that getting a sufficiently diverse group
of people who kind of live in,

893
00:49:41,280 --> 00:49:44,140
and by the nature of their circumstances,

894
00:49:44,140 --> 00:49:46,120
emphasisemphasize certain
aspects of a system.

895
00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:47,270
That's what's most real to them.

896
00:49:47,270 --> 00:49:50,290
But when they really start
listening to each other,

897
00:49:50,780 --> 00:49:52,190
and if they really
start to work together,

898
00:49:52,190 --> 00:49:56,270
then a kind of
latent system begins to emerge.

899
00:49:56,270 --> 00:50:01,120
But it's a slow process,
and it's not like you'll find, you know,

900
00:50:01,120 --> 00:50:06,010
the minister of thinking holistically about
¡°the development of my country.¡±

901
00:50:06,010 --> 00:50:08,080
That person doesn't usually exist.

902
00:50:08,250 --> 00:50:10,240
But on the other hand,
to just do nothing

903
00:50:10,240 --> 00:50:16,050
but piecemeal stuff also probably
won't accomplish very much.

904
00:50:16,050 --> 00:50:17,230
So it's always a real dilemma,

905
00:50:17,230 --> 00:50:21,110
but I think part of
the strategies are usually,

906
00:50:21,110 --> 00:50:23,250
fostering a quality of dialogue,
and real listening.

907
00:50:23,250 --> 00:50:28,100
And bringing different groups of people to work
with one another who otherwise wouldn't,

908
00:50:28,100 --> 00:50:31,030
or maybe wouldn't even listen to one another.

909
00:50:31,030 --> 00:50:34,750
If you think it's hard among MIT teams,
when you're talking across these boundaries,

910
00:50:34,780 --> 00:50:38,770
we've had a Global E-Lab team
from LFM that came.

911
00:50:38,800 --> 00:50:40,190
They did very good work
and some of it's lasting.

912
00:50:40,190 --> 00:50:44,050
But their report they put together
on our operation and so on

913
00:50:44,050 --> 00:50:46,000
just was over everybody's head.

914
00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:48,110
And they worked hard
and they really tried,

915
00:50:48,110 --> 00:50:49,230
these were good people
who really were listening

916
00:50:49,230 --> 00:50:50,280
and trying to make an impact,

917
00:50:50,280 --> 00:50:54,140
But I'd say in terms
of my colleagues there,

918
00:50:54,140 --> 00:50:57,220
in Cambodia who, there's on one hand
a lot of underlying knowledge

919
00:50:57,220 --> 00:51:00,000
and real ideas of what's going
to make a difference.

920
00:51:00,000 --> 00:51:02,120
The school systems though
just don't teach problem-solving,

921
00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:04,240
and don't teach this kind of approach.

922
00:51:04,240 --> 00:51:06,080
So that's what's really, I found,

923
00:51:06,080 --> 00:51:09,160
missing in the managers that
we try to develop and hire.

924
00:51:09,160 --> 00:51:14,020
So, it's hard when you're coming from such
different educational backgrounds to,

925
00:51:14,020 --> 00:51:15,190
and with fairly limited time,

926
00:51:15,190 --> 00:51:18,250
where even, we've had expats who've been
there for six months or a year,

927
00:51:18,250 --> 00:51:24,030
to really do productive work together is hard,
and I'm not sure how to make that work.

928
00:51:25,050 --> 00:51:26,010
Question over here.

929
00:51:26,010 --> 00:51:27,120
Oh, I'm sorry.

930
00:51:27,120 --> 00:51:29,210
Start over here,
we'll work our way across. Okay.

931
00:51:29,210 --> 00:51:31,100
Hi, I'm from the Philippines.

932
00:51:31,100 --> 00:51:35,250
I'm on the Philippine team of a
MIT public service center funded project.

933
00:51:35,250 --> 00:51:37,000
And I was wondering,

934
00:51:37,000 --> 00:51:41,220
one of the boundaries you see in developing
countries is not just calcified systems,

935
00:51:41,220 --> 00:51:46,200
but also there's corruption,
and you also want to avoid,

936
00:51:46,200 --> 00:51:48,200
I think, what Ron was saying,

937
00:51:48,200 --> 00:51:51,050
that you have this
impression of leaning from

938
00:51:51,050 --> 00:51:54,110
¡°You should listen to me because
you're learning from your betters.¡±

939
00:51:54,110 --> 00:51:59,130
And how do you get across these things that
have kept developing countries back,

940
00:51:59,130 --> 00:52:01,180
these systems, not just systems,
but you know,

941
00:52:01,180 --> 00:52:03,230
corruption and old thinking.

942
00:52:04,130 --> 00:52:06,060
So two things.
The corruption part was clear.

943
00:52:06,060 --> 00:52:07,240
The second part, would you just clarify?

944
00:52:07,240 --> 00:52:10,190
When you said, ¡®old thinking'
you meant specifically,

945
00:52:10,190 --> 00:52:12,270
just, ¡°this is the way we've always
thought about it,¡±sort of thing?

946
00:52:12,270 --> 00:52:14,100
This is the way we've
always thought about it,

947
00:52:14,100 --> 00:52:17,110
this is the way we're doing it,
and I don't see why we have to change.

948
00:52:17,110 --> 00:52:19,060
Got you. Thank you.

949
00:52:19,060 --> 00:52:22,080
I saw there for a
moment quite a few hands ups,

950
00:52:22,080 --> 00:52:23,150
so I'm going to suggest that

951
00:52:23,150 --> 00:52:25,070
whoever wants to respond
to one of the questions,

952
00:52:25,070 --> 00:52:26,240
we don't have to all respond,

953
00:52:26,240 --> 00:52:28,280
we'll get through
more questions that way.

954
00:52:28,280 --> 00:52:30,120
So, whoever

955
00:52:30,120 --> 00:52:32,130
That is a very important question.

956
00:52:32,130 --> 00:52:34,070
Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

957
00:52:34,070 --> 00:52:38,190
Quickly on the corruption thing,
Cambodia is a very corrupt country,

958
00:52:38,190 --> 00:52:40,200
but we haven't faced one request besides

959
00:52:40,200 --> 00:52:42,160
to buy a fire extinguisher
from the police department,

960
00:52:42,160 --> 00:52:43,180
that involved that.

961
00:52:43,180 --> 00:52:46,090
And the reason why, I think,
is we're using technology

962
00:52:46,130 --> 00:52:50,240
and that could happen in Cambridge 
having to buy a fire extinguisher

963
00:52:50,240 --> 00:52:53,070
but we're using the internet,

964
00:52:53,070 --> 00:52:56,850
and we're shipping goods back
and forth over FTP and over the internet.

965
00:52:56,890 --> 00:52:59,080
It's a different model that
the government's not aren't used to,

966
00:52:59,080 --> 00:53:02,150
goods that come in the port,
that they can tax,

967
00:53:02,150 --> 00:53:03,240
and the customs, and so¡­

968
00:53:03,240 --> 00:53:06,170
And to the Cambodian government's credit
that I don't get give a lot of credit

969
00:53:06,170 --> 00:53:09,180
usually, they haven't censored the internet,
and they've been pretty free about it.

970
00:53:11,130 --> 00:53:14,010
and it's just one example,
and maybe it points to some other ones,

971
00:53:14,010 --> 00:53:15,290
of kind of using new technology in new ways,

972
00:53:15,290 --> 00:53:18,080
where we're shipping goods in
and out over the internet

973
00:53:18,080 --> 00:53:20,610
and doing some of these other ways
of organizing ourselves,

974
00:53:20,640 --> 00:53:24,590
or may be activities
which can get around some of this.

975
00:53:24,620 --> 00:53:26,070
I'm assuming also most of the people

976
00:53:26,070 --> 00:53:27,230
you're working with are pretty young.

977
00:53:27,230 --> 00:53:28,200
Yes.

978
00:53:28,200 --> 00:53:30,140
Which might have a little to do
with the old mindsets.

979
00:53:30,140 --> 00:53:33,180
But any other thoughts about both
the mindsets and the corruption?

980
00:53:33,180 --> 00:53:35,030
Because they are very important.

981
00:53:35,120 --> 00:53:37,130
Well, clearly transparency helps every time.

982
00:53:37,130 --> 00:53:38,160
Yeah.

983
00:53:38,160 --> 00:53:39,170
The more the better,

984
00:53:39,170 --> 00:53:43,590
and there's no way to predict how
that frontier is going to move.

985
00:53:43,630 --> 00:53:47,040
But I think that's probably the most single,
most single, important thing

986
00:53:47,040 --> 00:53:49,040
Do you see it
as a frontier that is moving?

987
00:53:49,040 --> 00:53:50,210
Oh, absolutely. No question about it.

988
00:53:50,210 --> 00:53:51,260
I mean, we used to¡­

989
00:53:51,260 --> 00:53:54,290
no, no, you don't have time for anecdotes,
but I literally have been in meetings,

990
00:53:54,290 --> 00:53:59,070
I've been in meetings
which had a minister of health,

991
00:53:59,070 --> 00:54:00,270
had the ambassador of the United States,

992
00:54:00,270 --> 00:54:04,060
and the head of a major pharmaceutical
company say, in public say,

993
00:54:04,060 --> 00:54:07,000
¡°I will do anything, legal or illegal,

994
00:54:07,000 --> 00:54:09,250
to see that my company
succeeds in this country.¡±

995
00:54:09,250 --> 00:54:12,280
I mean, that doesn't
happen so much anymore.

996
00:54:17,000 --> 00:54:18,240
Okay, there were quite
quite a few hands. Right here.

997
00:54:19,290 --> 00:54:22,250
I'd like to ask the panel
how they would advise

998
00:54:22,250 --> 00:54:25,200
the Leadership Center
to deal with a problem

999
00:54:25,200 --> 00:54:29,240
that America deals with regulary overseas.

1000
00:54:29,240 --> 00:54:33,700
In WWII I was an engineer company 
commander in Africa and Italy,

1001
00:54:33,730 --> 00:54:36,230
all the way through both
of them in the campaigns.

1002
00:54:36,230 --> 00:54:41,280
We dealt with, in leadership positions,
American soldiers, British soldiers,

1003
00:54:41,280 --> 00:54:48,040
German prisoners, Italian prisoners,
working people and Arabs.

1004
00:54:48,040 --> 00:54:52,170
The normal training that
any ethical American is given is,

1005
00:54:52,170 --> 00:54:56,410
I treat everybody the way
I would like to be treated.

1006
00:54:56,450 --> 00:55:00,030
You can't think of a bigger mistake
that America makes

1007
00:55:00,030 --> 00:55:03,020
than going out and applying
that in the different cultures.

1008
00:55:03,020 --> 00:55:08,020
How would you advise the Leadership Center to
tell people to deal with that problem?

1009
00:55:09,210 --> 00:55:11,060
Could you explain that?

1010
00:55:11,060 --> 00:55:13,270
Do you understand the question?
You have a thought.

1011
00:55:13,270 --> 00:55:16,100
I will say something about corruption,

1012
00:55:16,100 --> 00:55:20,070
and come to this,
because they're interconnected.

1013
00:55:20,070 --> 00:55:24,000
We have not observed improvement, or,

1014
00:55:24,000 --> 00:55:27,040
we have not observed a reduction
in corruption when you look globally.

1015
00:55:27,040 --> 00:55:33,110
We have these indicators that
benchmark every country over time.

1016
00:55:33,110 --> 00:55:37,230
And the reason is really because that
there's a corrupter and a corruptee.

1017
00:55:37,230 --> 00:55:42,080
And in that process, it's very difficult,
it's one of these systemic changes that,

1018
00:55:42,080 --> 00:55:46,100
it either changes globally,
or it doesn't change at all.

1019
00:55:46,100 --> 00:55:52,250
And so, part of the problem of eradicating
corruption is, it's really very hard,

1020
00:55:52,250 --> 00:55:58,070
because it's on the one hand a criminal act,
and people will always do

1021
00:55:58,070 --> 00:55:59,150
They're not always good.

1022
00:55:59,150 --> 00:56:03,070
Maybe that's the way to assume it.

1023
00:56:03,070 --> 00:56:05,240
And therefore one has to work on it,

1024
00:56:05,240 --> 00:56:09,070
society by society,
and company by company,

1025
00:56:09,070 --> 00:56:10,070
country by country.

1026
00:56:10,070 --> 00:56:14,190
So we haven't, unfortunately,
observed an improvement.

1027
00:56:14,190 --> 00:56:18,080
And it's one of the reasons
why understanding different cultures,

1028
00:56:18,080 --> 00:56:21,130
and I think, coming to your question,
becomes very critical.

1029
00:56:21,130 --> 00:56:25,710
Because people have very
different understandings of issues.

1030
00:56:25,740 --> 00:56:31,410
In some countries, taking a gift is
the most polite thing you can do.

1031
00:56:31,440 --> 00:56:36,130
You cannot go to a country and
not gift the person you are visiting.

1032
00:56:36,130 --> 00:56:39,110
Whereas in a society
like the United States,

1033
00:56:39,110 --> 00:56:41,060
that's called bribery.

1034
00:56:41,060 --> 00:56:44,700
So, how to understand
the different customs,

1035
00:56:44,740 --> 00:56:48,050
and be able to function,
and at the same time,

1036
00:56:48,050 --> 00:56:52,190
remove the negative consequences
of those types of behaviors

1037
00:56:52,190 --> 00:56:57,410
because they don't allow competition,
and they don't allow free flow of ideas.

1038
00:56:57,440 --> 00:57:01,180
I can only say that
we have tried some things

1039
00:57:01,180 --> 00:57:06,090
in terms of having people
understand different cultures

1040
00:57:06,090 --> 00:57:10,140
and the possibilities of shifting
or not shifting some of the behaviors.

1041
00:57:10,140 --> 00:57:13,670
Because there are cultures
that discriminate women.

1042
00:57:13,700 --> 00:57:16,560
We believe that's not
a good thing for development,

1043
00:57:16,590 --> 00:57:21,000
because half of the population
is not productively employed.

1044
00:57:21,000 --> 00:57:22,090
So when we go to countries,

1045
00:57:22,090 --> 00:57:26,210
we do try to push for
equality of men and women.

1046
00:57:26,210 --> 00:57:30,070
But you have to do it very differently
if you're in Saudi Arabia,

1047
00:57:30,100 --> 00:57:33,090
compared to Mauritania, or Bangladesh.

1048
00:57:33,090 --> 00:57:37,040
Because the way in which
you are effective is very different.

1049
00:57:37,040 --> 00:57:41,140
In Bangladesh for instance,
the fertility rate that Ron talked about.

1050
00:57:41,140 --> 00:57:45,270
How that came down was through
very difficult work done by NGOs,

1051
00:57:45,270 --> 00:57:50,660
convincing men that it was manly
not to have too many children.

1052
00:57:50,690 --> 00:57:53,220
Which was a very difficult thing to do
but it did work

1053
00:57:53,220 --> 00:57:57,110
because of the way in which
the social communication was done.

1054
00:57:57,110 --> 00:58:01,150
And it's a very different way from
the way it was eradicated,

1055
00:58:01,150 --> 00:58:02,170
for instance,

1056
00:58:02,170 --> 00:58:06,040
or the fertility rate brought down
in a country like Tunisia,

1057
00:58:06,040 --> 00:58:08,070
which is also an Islamic country,

1058
00:58:08,070 --> 00:58:12,220
but with a  very different mindset in terms
of how people talk about issues.

1059
00:58:12,220 --> 00:58:19,320
So I think if the Leadership Center
could find a way to educate people

1060
00:58:19,910 --> 00:58:23,840
who graduate from MIT on
what it means to be a global citizen.

1061
00:58:23,870 --> 00:58:26,220
What do you need to know to be effective?

1062
00:58:26,220 --> 00:58:30,290
What are the differences across countries
that would have an impact

1063
00:58:30,290 --> 00:58:35,040
on decision making, on design,
on the way you implement things?

1064
00:58:35,040 --> 00:58:37,660
I think that's a very critical skill that

1065
00:58:37,690 --> 00:58:41,020
unfortunately you don't
learn in a normal setting.

1066
00:58:41,020 --> 00:58:43,280
It has to be something that
you create an environment

1067
00:58:43,280 --> 00:58:46,190
by which these skills get developed.

1068
00:58:46,190 --> 00:58:50,110
And the environment starts with
having sufficient direct experience

1069
00:58:50,110 --> 00:58:52,120
with very different types of people.

1070
00:58:52,120 --> 00:58:57,170
I mean, I was thinking about the way
you framed your question.

1071
00:58:57,170 --> 00:59:00,140
And I think it's one thing to have

1072
00:59:00,140 --> 00:59:04,070
as a principal to treat people
as you would like to be treated,

1073
00:59:04,070 --> 00:59:08,080
as I think you expressed it,
which I think is pretty universal.

1074
00:59:09,100 --> 00:59:12,030
But oftentimes,
subtly it gets translated as,

1075
00:59:12,030 --> 00:59:14,170
¡°treat them as if they were Americans.¡±

1076
00:59:15,140 --> 00:59:17,000
Which is very different.

1077
00:59:17,290 --> 00:59:19,130
A couple others. Yeah, here.

1078
00:59:20,010 --> 00:59:22,030
That's exactly the recipe we developed,

1079
00:59:22,030 --> 00:59:25,070
which was, when you're dealing
with Italian laborers,

1080
00:59:25,070 --> 00:59:29,100
treat them the way
they regarded a good Italian boss.

1081
00:59:29,260 --> 00:59:31,240
Which was very different

1082
00:59:31,240 --> 00:59:33,060
And thank goodness.

1083
00:59:33,200 --> 00:59:36,180
Otherwise the world would be
a very boring place, right?

1084
00:59:36,180 --> 00:59:37,120
Please.

1085
00:59:37,120 --> 00:59:41,180
I'm glad you invited us to
talk about different boundaries.

1086
00:59:41,180 --> 00:59:45,060
I had the great pleasure of being quite
close to Jerry Wiesner when he was,

1087
00:59:45,060 --> 00:59:48,020
shortly after he'd been Kennedy's advisor.

1088
00:59:48,020 --> 00:59:50,120
And the frustrations that he had

1089
00:59:50,120 --> 00:59:56,080
in trying to apply MIT-type
thinking to Washington.

1090
00:59:56,080 --> 00:59:59,060
And we just now jumped to,
a couple of weeks ago,

1091
00:59:59,060 --> 01:00:01,160
I had a chance to spend
some time with Sam Bodman,

1092
01:00:01,160 --> 01:00:05,120
also an MIT graduate
who's now Secretary of Energy,

1093
01:00:05,120 --> 01:00:07,070
and the frustration,

1094
01:00:07,070 --> 01:00:11,070
I hope I'm not talking too much out of turn
but he was just very private with me,

1095
01:00:11,070 --> 01:00:13,270
about the frustrations, and you know,

1096
01:00:13,270 --> 01:00:16,080
he and I and any
of us here could sit down

1097
01:00:16,080 --> 01:00:19,150
and talk about the things that
should have been in that Energy bill,

1098
01:00:19,150 --> 01:00:20,280
but they're not.

1099
01:00:20,280 --> 01:00:29,110
And his frustration in trying to get any
of those things in was so palpable

1100
01:00:29,110 --> 01:00:34,080
that I hope maybe this Leadership Center
will broaden its range

1101
01:00:34,080 --> 01:00:38,170
to try to deal with the interface
between politics and engineering.

1102
01:00:38,170 --> 01:00:40,060
Thank you, thank you.

1103
01:00:41,010 --> 01:00:42,220
Let's hear from a few more folks.
There's a lot of hands.

1104
01:00:42,220 --> 01:00:44,060
How about over here?
We haven't gotten anybody over here.

1105
01:00:44,060 --> 01:00:46,040
We have these two then
we'll come back over there.

1106
01:00:48,050 --> 01:00:48,250
Hi.

1107
01:00:48,250 --> 01:00:52,280
I wanted to thank everyone on the panel
for sharing your inspiring work with us.

1108
01:00:52,280 --> 01:00:57,000
And it sounds like you've
overcome a lot of challenges.

1109
01:00:57,000 --> 01:01:02,250
My question is specifically for Jeremy,
and anyone else who would like to respond.

1110
01:01:02,250 --> 01:01:05,040
Currently, where you are in your program,

1111
01:01:05,040 --> 01:01:08,170
what would you say are
two largest challenges currently,

1112
01:01:08,170 --> 01:01:13,030
and what are your plans or how are you
trying to address those challenges?

1113
01:01:16,050 --> 01:01:19,220
Well, I guess, appropriate for today,
the first one is leadership,

1114
01:01:19,220 --> 01:01:23,080
and particularly,
local leadership in Cambodia and Laos,

1115
01:01:23,080 --> 01:01:25,230
which has been a big focus
of the project from the beginning.

1116
01:01:25,230 --> 01:01:28,170
And the project is run by people locally.

1117
01:01:28,170 --> 01:01:33,110
We've had different expats spending time there,
over different times, and different roles.

1118
01:01:33,110 --> 01:01:34,270
And particularly in Cambodia,

1119
01:01:34,270 --> 01:01:38,160
we're were just dealing with a dearth
of middle managers and senior managers.

1120
01:01:38,160 --> 01:01:39,190
Particularly because the people of

1121
01:01:39,190 --> 01:01:42,260
that generation were all killed
by Pol Pot in the late 80s,

1122
01:01:42,260 --> 01:01:44,100
the people would be in their mid-40s now.

1123
01:01:44,100 --> 01:01:47,050
So we have a few managers
who are survivors of that,

1124
01:01:47,050 --> 01:01:48,100
who are in their mid-30s,

1125
01:01:48,100 --> 01:01:50,180
and then our employees
were born just afterwards.

1126
01:01:50,180 --> 01:01:52,190
But we're really facing this challenge of

1127
01:01:52,190 --> 01:01:55,570
the kind of leadership that you
need to be running an institution.

1128
01:01:55,610 --> 01:01:57,100
I still think of it as the thing
I do late at night you know,

1129
01:01:57,100 --> 01:01:58,110
because it's twelve hours ahead,

1130
01:01:58,110 --> 01:02:00,150
I can work on it from 10:00 at night
to 2:00 in the morning,

1131
01:02:00,150 --> 01:02:01,740
and a little thing we do.

1132
01:02:01,780 --> 01:02:06,040
But now it's almost a million dollars a year,
and we've got a 150 people in Cambodia

1133
01:02:06,040 --> 01:02:07,210
another 50 people in Laos,
and so on.

1134
01:02:07,210 --> 01:02:10,010
And so, it's serious,
and it's beyond the skills that I have,

1135
01:02:10,010 --> 01:02:13,250
even on finance, and that kind of mechanism
that you really do need in place.

1136
01:02:13,250 --> 01:02:16,220
So that's the real core challenge, is,

1137
01:02:16,220 --> 01:02:20,450
how can we develop that type of management?

1138
01:02:20,480 --> 01:02:22,220
I could learn a lot from
a few weeks with Frannie,

1139
01:02:22,220 --> 01:02:25,110
but just, even some of the things
that the World Bank

1140
01:02:25,110 --> 01:02:26,160
that before I would have thought, you know,

1141
01:02:26,160 --> 01:02:28,010
¡°Geez, they're ruining everything,¡±

1142
01:02:28,010 --> 01:02:30,290
in the sense of, that being a
big organization with HR processes,

1143
01:02:30,290 --> 01:02:33,000
and compensation plans processes,
and personnel manuals.

1144
01:02:33,000 --> 01:02:35,270
I mean, you could lock me in a room
for a month in Cambodia,

1145
01:02:35,270 --> 01:02:39,000
I would not write the personnel manual,
if that was the idea to come out,

1146
01:02:39,000 --> 01:02:40,060
just writing that kind of thing.

1147
01:02:40,060 --> 01:02:42,090
But that kind of stuff is really necessary

1148
01:02:42,090 --> 01:02:44,030
when you're at the point that we're at.

1149
01:02:44,030 --> 01:02:51,070
So, I honestly wish I'd taken more of
the entrepreneur center courses here,

1150
01:02:51,070 --> 01:02:54,060
which I never really did, actually,
thinking, this is my own mistake,

1151
01:02:54,060 --> 01:02:57,520
but geez, I never really cared about,
you know, I was going to start up a business.

1152
01:02:57,550 --> 01:02:59,030
That wasn't exactly what I cared about.

1153
01:02:59,070 --> 01:03:01,000
But I see that, you know,
this is social enterprise,

1154
01:03:01,000 --> 01:03:02,090
the kind of things that we're doing,

1155
01:03:02,090 --> 01:03:07,060
and that it has those core kind of challenges
that any kind of start-up would have.

1156
01:03:07,060 --> 01:03:11,040
So that's what we're trying to do,
and if you want to come try some curriculums

1157
01:03:11,040 --> 01:03:15,070
just around transparency and leadership,
we really see ourselves,

1158
01:03:15,070 --> 01:03:17,040
as I said before, I think I said,

1159
01:03:17,040 --> 01:03:19,130
helping people come work
for two or three years

1160
01:03:19,130 --> 01:03:20,210
then go on to something better.

1161
01:03:20,210 --> 01:03:23,090
So, in a kind of a broader vision
of what we're doing

1162
01:03:23,090 --> 01:03:26,090
we're trying to create a
next-generation of leaders,

1163
01:03:26,090 --> 01:03:28,110
like HP did for Silicon Valley,

1164
01:03:28,110 --> 01:03:31,070
of people who really are
the next generation of IT leaders,

1165
01:03:31,070 --> 01:03:33,150
not only technical wise
as we've been talking about,

1166
01:03:33,150 --> 01:03:34,120
but more broadly,

1167
01:03:34,120 --> 01:03:36,110
who can use
technology as assistants,

1168
01:03:36,110 --> 01:03:38,280
or NGO leaders or government officials.

1169
01:03:38,280 --> 01:03:40,050
And so with that,

1170
01:03:40,050 --> 01:03:45,000
we really need the skills of integrity
and transparency and leadership that,

1171
01:03:45,000 --> 01:03:46,220
we want to inculcate.

1172
01:03:46,220 --> 01:03:48,290
And we've already had forty people go out.

1173
01:03:49,300 --> 01:03:52,280
The minimum wage in Cambodia is $25 a month.

1174
01:03:52,280 --> 01:03:55,050
Garment factories pay $45 for, kind of,

1175
01:03:55,050 --> 01:03:56,090
twelve, fourteen hours a day.

1176
01:03:56,090 --> 01:03:59,200
We pay about $75, a hundred dollars
when you include all the benefits.

1177
01:03:59,200 --> 01:04:01,110
And, we've had forty graduates

1178
01:04:01,110 --> 01:04:05,010
who are going on to average salaries
almost of $200 which is,

1179
01:04:05,010 --> 01:04:08,040
you know, unheard of, compared to what the
opportunities would have been before.

1180
01:04:08,080 --> 01:04:12,190
But it's this real question of,
this leadership and how we develop it.

1181
01:04:12,190 --> 01:04:14,200
That's the real core challenge.

1182
01:04:14,200 --> 01:04:17,240
You must deal with
that very problem a great deal.

1183
01:04:17,240 --> 01:04:18,230
A great deal.

1184
01:04:18,230 --> 01:04:21,250
But what I must say
about what Jeremy does,

1185
01:04:21,250 --> 01:04:24,170
because this is one of things
we are very struck by,

1186
01:04:24,170 --> 01:04:27,220
is that, when you,
we have this program called

1187
01:04:27,220 --> 01:04:29,050
¡°Developing Marketplace¡±

1188
01:04:29,050 --> 01:04:32,100
where we create competitions
at the country level

1189
01:04:32,100 --> 01:04:35,120
for innovative ideas,
either from the private sector,

1190
01:04:35,120 --> 01:04:37,140
the government and civil society.

1191
01:04:37,140 --> 01:04:42,730
And then we finance them as venture
capitalists to a start-up level after

1192
01:04:42,770 --> 01:04:44,270
which they need to find financing.

1193
01:04:44,270 --> 01:04:49,020
And the one skill that is seriously lacking
in almost every country we work in,

1194
01:04:49,020 --> 01:04:54,100
no matter how advanced, is going from
the entrepreneurial idea to the market.

1195
01:04:54,100 --> 01:04:56,020
And so this whole chain of

1196
01:04:56,020 --> 01:04:59,870
how you get people to
lead beyond the innovation itself,

1197
01:05:00,070 --> 01:05:05,110
to be able to market it, and for most
of the countries in which we work,

1198
01:05:05,110 --> 01:05:09,120
exporting those products, which means
understanding the global economy

1199
01:05:09,120 --> 01:05:15,100
and being able to open niche markets in areas
where otherwise you wouldn't be able to export.

1200
01:05:15,100 --> 01:05:18,010
And if I may say just a word about Africa,

1201
01:05:18,010 --> 01:05:21,100
because Africa is the only continent

1202
01:05:21,100 --> 01:05:24,210
that will not reach any one of
the millennium development goals,

1203
01:05:24,210 --> 01:05:31,050
whether it's on income, infant mortality,
girls' education, etc.

1204
01:05:31,050 --> 01:05:35,110
And ideas are badly needed, to really find,

1205
01:05:35,110 --> 01:05:40,120
what would be the new sources of
growth in the economy in Africa,

1206
01:05:40,120 --> 01:05:46,040
that would not continue to
further deteriorate the ecology,

1207
01:05:46,040 --> 01:05:51,020
but that would be good opportunities
for the continent to export,

1208
01:05:51,020 --> 01:05:53,220
and go beyond this dependency
on agriculture,

1209
01:05:53,220 --> 01:06:00,190
which is really not helping to advance beyond
where the economies have reached today.

1210
01:06:00,190 --> 01:06:02,200
So there's a need for very deep innovation.

1211
01:06:02,200 --> 01:06:08,770
I was very struck by the Ghana Project
that Woody's students presented,

1212
01:06:08,810 --> 01:06:11,180
which I thought was a terrific example of

1213
01:06:11,180 --> 01:06:14,200
how you can take the
creativity and innovation

1214
01:06:14,200 --> 01:06:17,270
that a place like MIT naturally has.

1215
01:06:17,270 --> 01:06:20,670
People are asking now,
¡°How do you grow entrepreneurs?¡±

1216
01:06:20,700 --> 01:06:23,140
MIT knows that answer,

1217
01:06:23,140 --> 01:06:25,110
and has been doing
it for many, many years.

1218
01:06:25,110 --> 01:06:28,280
In fact, every country I go to,
they ask me,

1219
01:06:28,280 --> 01:06:30,170
¡°Where did you go to school?¡± and so on.

1220
01:06:30,170 --> 01:06:36,120
And they say, well, when you add up
the GDP generated by MIT graduates,

1221
01:06:36,120 --> 01:06:39,110
it's amongst the richest
of countries in the world.

1222
01:06:39,110 --> 01:06:43,030
And so there's a lot of value
that graduates from MIT have created.

1223
01:06:43,030 --> 01:06:47,190
How can that be leveraged for countries
that particularly need it,

1224
01:06:47,190 --> 01:06:50,200
and to support people
like Jeremy and like Ron

1225
01:06:50,200 --> 01:06:54,070
who are pushing at
using private enterprise,

1226
01:06:54,070 --> 01:06:58,150
NGOs and ideas to really
leverage these opportunities,

1227
01:06:58,150 --> 01:07:03,170
one level up, and scaling them up
beyond two or three countries.

1228
01:07:05,010 --> 01:07:06,050
I wanted to ask you a question.

1229
01:07:06,050 --> 01:07:08,050
I'm going to start asking the questions.
It's not fair.

1230
01:07:08,050 --> 01:07:10,180
Sir, You've been waiting over
here for a long time.

1231
01:07:16,150 --> 01:07:18,000
First of all, I want to thank you

1232
01:07:18,000 --> 01:07:21,250
for bringing such an excellent panel
over here for this discussion.

1233
01:07:21,250 --> 01:07:25,140
I'm going to take this discussion slightly
in a different direction.

1234
01:07:25,140 --> 01:07:27,110
A lot of the discussion so far has been

1235
01:07:27,110 --> 01:07:31,120
around the government
and the communities and social work.

1236
01:07:31,120 --> 01:07:35,510
I would like to talk a little bit about the
private sector and large organizations.

1237
01:07:35,550 --> 01:07:39,130
And a lot of the managers
as they turn into actual

1238
01:07:39,130 --> 01:07:42,180
practicing managers
in the large organizations,

1239
01:07:42,180 --> 01:07:45,250
they have to deal with
organizational boundaries.

1240
01:07:45,250 --> 01:07:48,000
A lot of them act as fiefdoms.

1241
01:07:48,000 --> 01:07:51,030
You've got a young and talented manager

1242
01:07:51,030 --> 01:07:54,140
that has excellent ideas,
wants to implement it,

1243
01:07:54,140 --> 01:07:58,150
but has to deal with the practical
reality of power struggles and politics

1244
01:07:58,150 --> 01:08:01,030
and everything else
that comes with the job.

1245
01:08:01,030 --> 01:08:02,270
A lot of those things are not taught.

1246
01:08:02,270 --> 01:08:07,270
And Woody's presentation really
made a point there.

1247
01:08:07,270 --> 01:08:11,160
So I would like to see if the panel
has any thoughts about that.

1248
01:08:11,160 --> 01:08:14,140
What kinds of things can be added
to the curriculum here

1249
01:08:14,140 --> 01:08:19,060
that would make it more effective
for people to use those ideas?

1250
01:08:19,060 --> 01:08:20,110
Thank you.

1251
01:08:20,110 --> 01:08:22,000
Any suggestions?

1252
01:08:28,030 --> 01:08:30,210
I don't know how long somebody
wants to battle, you know.

1253
01:08:30,210 --> 01:08:34,150
If it's an uphill battle in
an organizational structure,

1254
01:08:34,150 --> 01:08:38,010
where somebody,jhh their major
motivation is to hang onto power,

1255
01:08:38,010 --> 01:08:42,270
and not use it appropriately,
then maybe the strategy is to move on.

1256
01:08:47,250 --> 01:08:49,140
I'll say this.

1257
01:08:49,140 --> 01:08:53,180
We had this funny conversation
recently with our new president

1258
01:08:53,180 --> 01:08:57,160
who has worked in academia,
he's worked in the private sector

1259
01:08:57,160 --> 01:08:59,580
and he's also worked in bureaucracies.

1260
01:08:59,610 --> 01:09:04,240
And he was characterizing the typical large
organization in those three spheres.

1261
01:09:04,240 --> 01:09:07,600
and he said,
¡°When I was in the private sector

1262
01:09:07,630 --> 01:09:11,470
I was very careful what I asked people to do,
because they would do it right away.

1263
01:09:11,500 --> 01:09:15,250
So I had to think a lot before saying,
¡®This is what I think we should do.'

1264
01:09:16,060 --> 01:09:17,730
When I worked in a bureaucracy,

1265
01:09:17,770 --> 01:09:21,290
it didn't matter what I said
because nothing would happen anyway.

1266
01:09:22,740 --> 01:09:25,180
But in academia, when I said something,
they said,

1267
01:09:25,180 --> 01:09:29,160
¡°Who the hell do you think we are
that you can tell us what to do?'

1268
01:09:32,010 --> 01:09:35,100
And I think it really,
perhaps we've reached a world now

1269
01:09:35,100 --> 01:09:40,050
where the traditional large-scale company
is probably something between all three.

1270
01:09:40,050 --> 01:09:44,100
They become so large that they function
in many ways like bureaucracies.

1271
01:09:44,100 --> 01:09:48,140
But they have to competitively innovate,
so they function in many ways

1272
01:09:48,140 --> 01:09:51,650
like academic institutions
on the information innovation edge.

1273
01:09:51,680 --> 01:09:58,240
And there's the big element of being
the production line of creating products,

1274
01:09:58,240 --> 01:10:01,080
and therefore implementing
things very quickly.

1275
01:10:01,080 --> 01:10:06,830
So I would say the challenges in being
in a hierarchy of that sort,

1276
01:10:07,220 --> 01:10:09,130
if you are innovative,

1277
01:10:09,130 --> 01:10:15,140
you push ideas and push the frontier
no matter at what level,

1278
01:10:15,140 --> 01:10:18,130
and you are able to communicate
with people effectively,

1279
01:10:18,130 --> 01:10:21,160
you make it through that system
no matter what kind of

1280
01:10:21,160 --> 01:10:23,060
whether it's a bureaucracy,

1281
01:10:23,060 --> 01:10:27,020
or a large company,
or an academic institution.

1282
01:10:27,020 --> 01:10:30,230
So I think the panel before
us came with this idea,

1283
01:10:30,230 --> 01:10:36,140
that it's communication
within a large organization,

1284
01:10:36,140 --> 01:10:41,760
So it's lateral communication mostly,
a little bit of vertical communication,

1285
01:10:41,790 --> 01:10:43,070
but mostly it is lateral.

1286
01:10:43,070 --> 01:10:45,950
I find very few management schools

1287
01:10:45,980 --> 01:10:50,100
actually teach effective ways
to communicate laterally.

1288
01:10:50,100 --> 01:10:52,930
And that's the edge of being able to grow

1289
01:10:52,970 --> 01:10:56,210
and be effective in
large-scale organizations.

1290
01:10:56,210 --> 01:10:59,030
You might have something to
say on this one too, Jeremy.

1291
01:10:59,030 --> 01:11:03,230
I have kind of a radical view
that I'm not sure

1292
01:11:03,230 --> 01:11:05,180
how helpful it's going to be.

1293
01:11:05,180 --> 01:11:11,020
I frankly think teaching management
is kind of an oxymoron.

1294
01:11:11,120 --> 01:11:13,260
My favorite management school
in the world is in Finland,

1295
01:11:13,260 --> 01:11:18,000
which is a very interesting country
for fostering entrepreneurs.

1296
01:11:18,000 --> 01:11:22,130
And it's a school
where there are no teachers.

1297
01:11:22,130 --> 01:11:24,160
Actually, there are no classes.

1298
01:11:25,050 --> 01:11:29,080
The students enroll, and in the
first week they create companies.

1299
01:11:29,080 --> 01:11:32,120
And there's a database of
about a thousand mentors,

1300
01:11:32,120 --> 01:11:33,210
all across Finland.

1301
01:11:33,210 --> 01:11:35,110
So when it's time to do
your business plan,

1302
01:11:35,110 --> 01:11:36,120
you go to the database

1303
01:11:36,120 --> 01:11:39,040
and you look for someone with experience
in the kind of company

1304
01:11:39,040 --> 01:11:40,080
you and your cohort

1305
01:11:40,080 --> 01:11:43,000
usually it's groups
of five or six students-created.

1306
01:11:43,000 --> 01:11:45,150
And by golly, the person
shows up and helps you out

1307
01:11:45,150 --> 01:11:48,060
or you have a
personnel problem, and so on.

1308
01:11:48,060 --> 01:11:51,270
And having brought those students,
it's called Team Academy.

1309
01:11:51,270 --> 01:11:55,000
They're image is ¡°team entrepreneurs¡±
which is a really nice image.

1310
01:11:55,000 --> 01:11:58,050
I think it's very consistent with
what we're talking about here.

1311
01:11:58,050 --> 01:12:00,020
That it's not
just individual entrepreneurs,

1312
01:12:00,020 --> 01:12:03,130
it's groups of people together
who can create new sources of value.

1313
01:12:03,130 --> 01:12:04,060
They've actually, by the way,

1314
01:12:04,060 --> 01:12:06,160
started quite a few
successful companies in Finland,

1315
01:12:06,160 --> 01:12:08,200
and it's only been operating
for about eight years.

1316
01:12:08,200 --> 01:12:11,030
But when you talk to those students,
and you ask them,

1317
01:12:11,030 --> 01:12:15,040
¡°Gee, what would it have been like
for you to go to an MBA program?¡±

1318
01:12:15,040 --> 01:12:17,010
They sit there and they go,

1319
01:12:17,010 --> 01:12:23,210
¡°I just can't imagine, sitting, listening to
people talking about managing or finance.

1320
01:12:23,210 --> 01:12:25,110
What good would it be?¡±

1321
01:12:27,120 --> 01:12:32,090
So I think that at
some level to prepare people

1322
01:12:32,090 --> 01:12:34,110
for the reality
of complex institutions,

1323
01:12:34,110 --> 01:12:36,840
which is what your question is all about,

1324
01:12:37,100 --> 01:12:39,220
they have to have
experience in some sense.

1325
01:12:39,220 --> 01:12:40,230
And there's all kinds of ways.

1326
01:12:40,230 --> 01:12:43,050
This is really an extreme case.

1327
01:12:43,050 --> 01:12:47,030
But I think that we're not going to do
that sitting around talking about it.

1328
01:12:47,030 --> 01:12:48,020
You have to live in it.

1329
01:12:48,020 --> 01:12:49,020
You have to¡­

1330
01:12:49,020 --> 01:12:53,170
Another small thing you can do is, of course,
use your student experience itself,

1331
01:12:53,170 --> 01:12:54,220
create your own projects.

1332
01:12:54,220 --> 01:12:57,270
You know, Ed Scheinhine used to
teach a course at MIT on change.

1333
01:12:57,270 --> 01:12:59,260
Ed Scheinhine is one of the
most knowledgeable people

1334
01:12:59,260 --> 01:13:01,220
in the world on theories of change.

1335
01:13:01,220 --> 01:13:03,220
His course was, the first day,

1336
01:13:03,220 --> 01:13:06,060
you pick something in
your life you want to change.

1337
01:13:06,060 --> 01:13:08,160
The course was, try to change it.

1338
01:13:08,160 --> 01:13:11,060
And then you come and talk
and pull your hair out.

1339
01:13:11,060 --> 01:13:14,300
Somehow we've got to make it
grounded it in experience.

1340
01:13:14,330 --> 01:13:18,190
Otherwise, we live in these two worlds,
of this kind of academic fairy tale,

1341
01:13:18,190 --> 01:13:22,050
world of theory, and then people
are going to go off and say,

1342
01:13:22,050 --> 01:13:25,040
¡°Wait a second. This is actually not
what happens in real organizations.¡±

1343
01:13:25,040 --> 01:13:27,130
And there's probably, when you think
about it from that standpoint,

1344
01:13:27,130 --> 01:13:30,020
there's probably just an
infinite array of opportunities,

1345
01:13:30,020 --> 01:13:31,160
up to the radical ones,

1346
01:13:31,160 --> 01:13:34,200
which I don't think
we should entirely discount.

1347
01:13:34,200 --> 01:13:35,240
There were a couple of other hands.

1348
01:13:35,240 --> 01:13:37,130
I'm watching the time.
I guess a few more minutes.

1349
01:13:37,130 --> 01:13:38,200
Please, Over here.

1350
01:13:40,110 --> 01:13:41,160
If you want to say anything¡­

1351
01:13:41,160 --> 01:13:43,190
Working and leading across boundaries,

1352
01:13:43,190 --> 01:13:46,160
how can you ensure, indeed,

1353
01:13:46,160 --> 01:13:50,040
avoid that you do
not transfer your value,

1354
01:13:50,040 --> 01:13:52,140
your cultural value system, across.

1355
01:13:52,140 --> 01:13:54,250
Especially when you're
talking about leadership,

1356
01:13:54,250 --> 01:13:55,290
you are talking about,

1357
01:13:55,290 --> 01:13:59,140
you know, intrinsically
a very cultural thing.

1358
01:13:59,140 --> 01:14:03,090
And you're transferring sets of skills
and so on and so forth.

1359
01:14:03,090 --> 01:14:05,290
And what would make us right
and make the others wrong?

1360
01:14:06,180 --> 01:14:07,230
Thank you.

1361
01:14:09,140 --> 01:14:10,270
I think complementary to
that is the question,

1362
01:14:10,270 --> 01:14:13,170
When do you and when is
it important to do that,

1363
01:14:13,170 --> 01:14:15,270
both being aware that you don't want
to be imposing your values,

1364
01:14:15,270 --> 01:14:19,360
but some of our knowledge
around organizations

1365
01:14:19,390 --> 01:14:22,770
can be valuable to people,
particularly in our case.

1366
01:14:22,800 --> 01:14:26,230
It's such hierarchal cultures that
we're dealing with and we're¡­

1367
01:14:26,230 --> 01:14:27,230
you know, I showed up and said,

1368
01:14:27,230 --> 01:14:29,150
¡°Okay, we're all equal
and let's you know,

1369
01:14:29,150 --> 01:14:31,030
create this whole
great co-op together,

1370
01:14:31,030 --> 01:14:32,180
and any ideas, speak up¡±

1371
01:14:32,180 --> 01:14:34,000
and so on you know.

1372
01:14:34,000 --> 01:14:37,000
And people don't speak up and
it really takes lots

1373
01:14:37,000 --> 01:14:38,020
and lots of efforts to do that.

1374
01:14:38,020 --> 01:14:39,050
And am I imposing that because

1375
01:14:39,050 --> 01:14:41,130
I think everybody
should be sharing their ideas

1376
01:14:41,130 --> 01:14:43,200
and we're going to be stronger together?

1377
01:14:43,200 --> 01:14:47,110
You know, I don't know.
I kind of laid off that for a while.

1378
01:14:47,110 --> 01:14:50,190
And you know, now we're having
some troubles where there's kind of

1379
01:14:50,190 --> 01:14:54,010
management and employees aren't
working together as closely as you'd want.

1380
01:14:54,010 --> 01:14:56,230
And so, you know, if I'd been at
it on the ground a few years,

1381
01:14:56,230 --> 01:14:57,280
I would have tried a different approach.

1382
01:14:57,280 --> 01:15:01,140
I don't know if that would have come
into some other dangers.

1383
01:15:01,140 --> 01:15:03,050
So I don't know the answer
to how you do that.

1384
01:15:03,050 --> 01:15:05,130
I mean, you take the approach
we've been trying to take of

1385
01:15:05,130 --> 01:15:08,290
listening and being open,
and trying to solve problems together,

1386
01:15:08,290 --> 01:15:11,130
and focus on the issue.

1387
01:15:11,230 --> 01:15:13,260
But it's something I struggle with,

1388
01:15:13,260 --> 01:15:17,120
of the assumptions we bring and
whether it's helpful to the enterprise.

1389
01:15:17,120 --> 01:15:20,200
And many of my attitudes,
of¡°No, don't take no,

1390
01:15:20,200 --> 01:15:22,150
let's go talk to the other person
and get it done,¡±

1391
01:15:22,150 --> 01:15:26,190
has actually been a lot of what's led to
some of the progress that we've had.

1392
01:15:26,190 --> 01:15:27,160
You know, and I could have said

1393
01:15:27,160 --> 01:15:31,180
¡°No, we're going to do it
the local value way,¡± and so on.

1394
01:15:31,180 --> 01:15:34,050
So I don't know. It's tough.

1395
01:15:36,020 --> 01:15:38,290
Maybe an issue of time
perspective in a sense.

1396
01:15:38,290 --> 01:15:42,160
If you're there for the long haul,
five, ten, fifteen years,

1397
01:15:42,160 --> 01:15:45,180
and you can build relationships,
and you can build on them,

1398
01:15:45,180 --> 01:15:47,120
I think you have a chance to be useful

1399
01:15:47,120 --> 01:15:51,270
and potentially helping
with constructive cultural change.

1400
01:15:51,270 --> 01:15:53,010
And some of it's got to be changed.

1401
01:15:53,010 --> 01:15:55,110
If we accept everybody's
culture the way it is and,

1402
01:15:55,110 --> 01:15:58,220
ours included, I think we're all in deep soup.

1403
01:16:00,150 --> 01:16:01,850
So in a sense, what you're saying,

1404
01:16:01,890 --> 01:16:05,000
if you enter into the
kind of relationships

1405
01:16:05,000 --> 01:16:07,280
that take time to build,
but are really mutual,

1406
01:16:07,280 --> 01:16:09,980
then everybody's culture evolves a bit.

1407
01:16:10,020 --> 01:16:10,290
Yeah.

1408
01:16:13,240 --> 01:16:14,250
I apologize for being quick,

1409
01:16:14,250 --> 01:16:17,080
but I do want to hear from a couple more
and we only have a few more minutes.

1410
01:16:17,080 --> 01:16:19,860
Yeah, please.
We'll get you and then this gentleman.

1411
01:16:19,890 --> 01:16:21,090
Oh, he's got the mic.

1412
01:16:21,090 --> 01:16:24,110
Then why don't we go with the mic,
then you can pass it down, okay?

1413
01:16:24,110 --> 01:16:29,090
I was in the for-profit sector,
in the global sector.

1414
01:16:30,150 --> 01:16:32,110
We're concentrating
a lot more on the human,

1415
01:16:32,110 --> 01:16:35,160
or social engi