Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S1: I come back to this ability and willingness to take ultimate responsibility, which is really not what most people want to do at all. And for some reason, especially filmmakers, I have a true vision of what it is they want to be doing, which means they're birthing this project and they take ultimate responsibility from beginning to end and then do it again, and then do it again, each time risking total failure, staking their entire being on this one next thing. They're running these pretty big temporary startups that get funding from the outside world. They get distribution from someone else, not themselves. So I think it's courage, and it's also courage to espouse their particular worldview. And all the great filmmakers have a very particular worldview. I think it's extraordinary it exists at all in the world, someone like that exists who will do that even if it fails, and then is willing to do it again. And some of the CEOs I've gotten to know are artists. In some ways this is difficult stuff, especially when you have 100,000 employees and you're owning it too. But to answer the question more precisely, I think it's the willingness and the courage to espouse a specific kind of worldview that perhaps is a little bit counter, but stands in some tension to the dominant worldview and own that anyways.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: Having been and worked with lots of CEOs that have chosen this ultimate responsibility, how would you articulate the job of a CEO in your experience? When you've seen people do that job well or do it poorly, what are the good ones in some basic sense doing really well?
· Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S1: All society is communication, and because of its complexity, communication breaks down into buckets of specialty. But it's in essence being a master communicator of an almost infinite amount of buckets, and knowing to context switch between them and understanding the language games that each one of these buckets plays, but never forgetting the core principles underneath all this. Some of it is unspoken. So I think the people I've observed, especially one person that I admire enormously, is doing a massive turnaround. And he has been communicating the same marching orders for two years to this huge company. Everyone around him was in doubt, and the results are finally coming in. And he's right. So he imposed his will against all these obstacles, but he was able to do it because he could communicate exactly what he was doing almost in these three layers to anyone, but always adjusting—never the philosophy, but always sort of adjusting the emotional component to whomever he was speaking to so that each person could hear the point that needed to be conveyed so they could be at peace knowing that they'd done their bit for this thing to work out and to be able to communicate that in such a way that the people you're speaking to can hear it because you're adjusting this subjective, emotional component to them. I think that, to me, is the secret of great communication.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: What is an iconic character to you? And I ask that because I feel like most people, maybe selfishly, want themselves to be like an iconic character in their own story, their company to be an iconic thing in the world that it operates. When you think about iconic characters, what things come to mind? [00:00:00] S1: My view today, and it might change, but has probably to do with an ability to be a Greek hero, which means to live and espouse a worldview that is universally disliked. That's iconic. I'm really interested on this pure narrative level in what Elon Musk is doing, because it's so unconcerned with the traditional hero trajectory. It's almost Greek. And this idea of breaking societal rules, if you will, that you get to some Platonic ideal that is worth more than acceptance. And I think all stories have in common the idea of resilience, that the character will overcome these obstacles and things are not working and there isn't enough knowledge and enough power to go where one must go, or one has been impelled to go, and keep going anyways. So this idea of resilience and to keep going anyways, even though the obstacles are getting enormous, I think inspires that begrudging admiration. None of this is a moral evaluation. No one cares what I think was good or bad on a personal moral level. But on a narrative level, I think it's absolutely fascinating that you have someone willing to step out on such limbs all the time. [00:00:00] S0: Is that just fighting death?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: Is that just fighting death? [00:00:00] S1: Yes, everything is in some ways a death project. Absolutely. Creativity, the art of creating, negates death and therefore is the purest expression of a battle against the inevitable. And Tolkien has this famous clip on YouTube. All stories are about death. And I think he's absolutely right because it's the ultimate stakes, and it's the stakes everyone lives with every day. And we get up and do things anyways. [00:00:00] S0: To go deeper on that: so we all have to die, and therefore a certain kind of story is appealing? [00:00:00] S1: I think it has to do with a perceived power differential, that we're completely powerless in the face of death, at least for now. And that is a fantasy to acquire more power. And then because we have this capacity to imagine the future and we can imagine really much anything, we have an ability to create our own cherished outcome, overcoming this weakness with the power fantasy. Robert Towne, who was a great screenwriter and wrote Chinatown, and he recently died, wonderful life and a wonderful career, he said this to me at lunch years ago when I was a young executive. He said, stories are either desires fulfilled or anxieties purged. And I think he's right. These are great minds who've made great films, and it's never left me. I think it has to do with overcoming basic human condition. [00:00:00] S0: I want you to expand on each of those two: anxiety purged or fantasy fulfilled, that these are the two fundamental kinds of stories. Is it important that people know which one they're in?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: I want you to expand on each of those two: anxiety purged or fantasy fulfilled, that these are the two fundamental kinds of stories. Is it important that people know which one they're in? [00:00:00] S1: I think you do have to know which part of it you're in. We experience both desire and fear. It's not just one or the other. The hero's journey is very often a desire to rise in the world. That's a desire to fulfill one's potential in the world. An anxiety or a fear purged is an idea of an inherent fear of something that might happen to you that you really don't wish to happen. And it feels good to see a version of the world play out where that which you're afraid of actually doesn't happen because you have had agency in defeating it. This is always really important. So story is character and action. Things don't happen to you. You act against obstacles and as you do, you acquire knowledge. With knowledge comes power to then affect the outcome. It's also interesting to see that this is never done alone. There are always surrogates, people who give you knowledge and people who aid you in the quest, whatever the quest may be. [00:00:00] S0: As you began to process what makes a great story, making them, enjoying them, what elements started to fall out?