00:30:55 · Ty Morse, Lulu Cheng Meservey
[00:30:55] S0: Yeah, it's almost like you have to have trust built in your, you know, small cadre. [00:30:59] S1: You either trust or you don't, if it's at the point where like, think the piece of paper is protecting you, something has already gone wrong. So so this is where it goes back to the founder as the cult leader. Personal loyalty is what will make people do the thing. It's what makes people understand commanders intent and internalize it and follow the spirit, not the letter. And that's what you want. It's not like this doesn't technically violate my NDA that I read closely, or I won't be I won't be caught. It's like, I don't want to, because I signed up to this, to work for him and do this thing. And I want to work for him, because I like him. And I want to do this thing, because I think it's important. So why would I do something that damages the company? Why would you have someone working at the company that wants to damage the company? Or who is trying to help the company, but doesn't have the judgment to know what helps the company? Both of those are really messed up, and something has gone really wrong. So personal loyalty, founder connection to their people. That is the best and only way to prevent having a leaky culture. [00:32:11] S0: I have a general philosophy that if I will, like default assume good in people when I meet someone, until I see something unless it's not like a high trusted person that I know, that has told me otherwise for a specific individual. But I think loyalty is like vastly undervalued. [00:32:28] S1: Super undervalued.
00:32:28 · Lulu Cheng Meservey, Ty Morse
[00:32:28] S1: Super undervalued. [00:32:29] S0: Yeah. How should you actually approach loyalty and like who you surround yourself with and who you don't? [00:32:34] S1: I think the right approach is to offer acts of loyalty, and then see what gets reciprocated. So I appreciate the way that you move through life basically is to just offer acts of goodwill, and then see what comes back. And then it's like the opposite of Nigerian prince fishing. Nigerian prince fishing is like you blast out these phishing emails that are poorly executed and badly written, and then you see who's dumb enough to click, and then you engage with them further. The loyalty building version of that is you are putting acts of goodwill out into the world, and they don't have to be expensive or elaborate every time, but they can be small things. They have [00:33:18] S0: to be meaningful. They have to be meaningful, even if they're not like expensive or elaborate, they have to like mean something to the person.
00:33:18 · Ty Morse, Lulu Cheng Meservey
[00:33:18] S0: to be meaningful. They have to be meaningful, even if they're not like expensive or elaborate, they have to like mean something to the person. [00:33:24] S1: Yeah, I agree with that. And then you see which ones reciprocate, and then you engage with those. And so it's like the Nigerian prince fishing scheme for goodwill, but good. The other thing on founders building loyalty, The you know, the book, leaders eat last. And I agree with the concept, which is one of like putting your people first. But in practice, the best leaders are the leaders that eat at the same time in the same place. Literally eating with people is such a symbolic act that forms connections. Like the best founders that I think of today just have lunch with their teams out in the lunchroom. You know, I saw Scott Wu doing that yesterday. You are just one of the people. Napoleon did that. Julius Caesar did it. There's no new innovation on how to relate to people. It's do the job at a level that they can respect. So like, the reason that Cognition is able to recruit these like incredibly elite coders is because they respect Scott as a leader. Two is be among them as a peer, and not somebody that so like at PepsiCo, I remember when Indra Nooyi was CEO, she actually put in efforts, know, one of my old colleagues, mentor of mine helped her do this and put in efforts to just go out onto the floors and just be among the people. So just live how they live, eat what they eat at the same time, so they see you. And then lastly, if you ask them to do something, you do it. Right?
00:35:05 · Ty Morse
[00:35:05] S0: Yeah, I remember there was a like prototypical example is basically Elon on the production line in 2018, and there was a hotel across across the street that he could have stayed at, and it would have a comfortable bed. But instead, he was like, no, just give me... You know, I'll just sleep on the floor right outside the... Not even in the conference room. The conference room had a couch, but the fact, like, if people were walking by the conference room, they wouldn't know that he was in there. Whereas if he's on the line, just sleeping there, and there's all these machines and stamping presses going in the background and very high decibels, all this stuff, they can tell that he's like in it. Yeah. And so they will work harder.
00:35:36 · Lulu Cheng Meservey
[00:35:36] S1: Yeah. Ernest Shackleton, when he was with his men, and they were taking turns rowing, and everybody was like frostbitten and miserable, and they tried to give him easier shifts, he actually demanded that he not be given different treatment. And that is what makes people go above the letter and follow the spirit is that they feel that from you. So it sounds very like touchy feely, Oprah, but the way you communicate is through what you say, what you do. And then also visuals, we can talk about that, like the visuals of something stay with with people for a long time. And that can be an act of leadership or inspiration. So like when the German Chancellor, Willy Brandt went to visit Warsaw, and he went to see the monument honoring the Jewish people who risen up. He stood there, and then he just silently dropped to his knees, and then he just kneeled there. And it is called the genuflection. And that statement said so much about him representing the German people and how they viewed the Nazis' actions then. And I think really helped to reshape relationships between Germany and Poland. It did so much. And it was just the visual of this man on his knees saying nothing. You can combine these things. So you can use words to paint visuals. So there's like visuals, visuals, I gave you the Willy Brandt example, which is like a very extreme and lofty example. There's also Steve Jobs, and the MacBook Air. And this was when he was on stage, I think it was 2008, and he just had the envelope. And it was like was like a secret Manila envelope. And he takes it out.
00:37:25 · Ty Morse, Lulu Cheng Meservey
[00:37:25] S0: Same thing that he did with the original iPod, where he's like, this is, know, this is your pocket for like a pen or a phone. And then he's like, what the fuck is this pocket for? And it's just he just pulls out this little device. And he's like, this is what goes in there. [00:37:37] S1: The visual stay with you. [00:37:38] S0: Sometimes,