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Over the lifetime of Unstoppable Mindset I have met many of our guests on LinkedIn. My guest this time, and for his second appearance is Wallace Pond. I feel he is by far one of the most fascinating and engaging people I have had the honor to meet. Dr. Pond was born into a military family based at the time in Alabama. I do tease him about his not having an Alabama accent and he acknowledges that living on a military base is largely why he does not naturally possess a Southern way of speech. Dr. Pond has lived, worked, and studied in North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. He has served as a teacher, a professor and within the corporate world he has held a number of positions including several within the C Suite arena. We get to explore his life journey including learning of a mental health crisis that lead him to a career change a few years ago. Once again during my time with Dr. Pond we talk about many subjects including Leadership,our fractured society and what makes a good and real leader. Wallace observes that slowly leaders are shifting from requiring their own high technical prowess to relying more on the success of others. Wallace will tell us about his project, the Transformation Collaborative which is an effort to promote real change in how we can become better versions of ourselves. Once again, our time passes all too quickly. About the Guest: Dr. Pond, founder, IdeaPathway, LLC, the Transformation Collaborative™, and Life Worth Living, LLC, has been a missiondriven educator and leader for over 30 years. For the last 20 years, Wallace has been a senior leader in higher education, holding both campus and system level positions overseeing single and large, multi-campus and online institutions of higher education in the US and internationally. He has served as chancellor, president, COO, CEO, CAO (Chief Academic Officer), and board member, bringing exceptional value as a strategic-servant leader through extensive experience and acumen in strategic planning, transformational change, change management, crisis management/turn around, organizational design and development, P&L, human capital development, innovation, new programs, and deep operational expertise among other areas of impact. He has recently added psychotherapy to his practice and provides counseling services as an LPCC under supervision. You can see his counselor profile here. His many thought leadership articles are available at www.WallacekPond.com. Wallace began his career as a high school teacher and adjunct professor, and spent six years in the elementary and secondary classroom working primarily with at-risk youth. He was also a public school administrator and spent another six years as a full time professor and administrator in the not-for-profit higher education sector, working in both on campus and online education, bringing education to underserved students. Additionally, Wallace has over 15-years of executive, private sector experience, creating a unique and powerful combination of mission-driven and business focused leadership and insights. Ways to connect with Dr.Pond: www.wallacekpond.com www.transformationcollaborative.net https://www.linkedin.com/in/wallace-pond-47b05512/ https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Real-World-Executive-Turbulent/dp/B08C49FQ6Q/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1UIJFVM71G3RZ&keywords=leadership+in+the+real+world&qid=1704824712&s=books&sprefix=leadership+in+the+real+worl%2Cstripbooks%2C159&sr=1-1 About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! 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Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, Hi again, everyone, and welcome to unstoppable mindset today. We get a second chance to chat with or if I really wanted to be spiteful, I'd say we get a second shot at Dr Wallace Pond. He was on unstoppable mindset some time ago, and we had a fascinating discussion. And we talked about him coming back, and he said he would, and he did, brave man that he is. So here we are, and you can read his biography in the show notes and so on. But he has been in a variety of kinds of situations. Came from, as I recall, a military family, and has been in a number of different kinds of job situations and and he can talk about that if he would like to. But Wallace, welcome back to unstoppable mindset. I think we're going to have some fun. Wallace Pond ** 02:10 Thank you so much, Michael. I'm glad that we could do this again. I really enjoyed it the last time, Michael Hingson ** 02:15 anything that you want to talk about before we delve into other things or, well, Wallace Pond ** 02:20 you and I had, had talked kind of offline about just the whole concept of leadership and kind of what that means and how it's changing and and what elements of of leadership seem to be effective or more effective than others, as society evolves as organizations evolve, et cetera. And I thought we might poke around in that for a while and see what comes up. Michael Hingson ** 02:47 You said something very interesting when I asked you about that, and you emailed me back. You said that leaders, or a lot of leaders, are moving away from dealing with technical expertise and moving toward relying on the success of others, which I thought was interesting, and I thought very refreshing. I think that a lot of leaders that that I've known and or people who say they're leaders, regard themselves as being highly technical, and I think there's a lot of value in leaders being very familiar with whatever they're dealing with, and being technical in that regard. But that shouldn't be the only thing that makes up a leader. And I think all too often, we find that people believe that, which is really the mistake. So when we talk about relying on the success of others, and so when I think that makes a lot of sense, yeah. Wallace Pond ** 03:38 And I think there was a time, and by the way, I think an unfortunately low number of leaders are moving that way. I think leaders that are experiencing success are moving that way. But, you know, that's how it used to be. It's not it's not surprising. If you go back, you know, 25, 3040, years, a lot of leadership was about technical expertise in some field, about being directive, about really sort of price of entry come out, what we things that may be commodified in leadership today, But it was a much, much less complex environment. The workforces were much more amenable to hierarchy. Yeah, you know, older generations had much greater tolerance for things that didn't make a lot of sense, or, you know, it weren't particularly rewarding, or weren't connected to purpose. And I think what we're seeing now is that not only have the needs of leadership from a sort of operational and strategic perception perspective, evolved, but we've got a workforce now this that's predominantly millennial and Gen Z that just doesn't see work the same way. But. That you and I did earlier on, and that certainly our parents did, and just don't have a lot of patience for stuff that in previous generations, we just kind of sucked it up and did How so, for example, yeah, so I'll give you an example, like, you know, the idea, I think, for you know, older Gen Xers and certainly baby boomers, was, you know, you went to work, you know, you put in your time, you did what the boss said, and you were rewarded by that with job security and a decent salary, and there was tremendous respect for hierarchy. You kind of did what the boss said, even if you had a different idea and and you certainly in those generations, committed to doing a lot of work, whether it made sense to you personally or not, it was just what you were supposed to do. And I think in generations now, millennials and Gen Z ers, they're much more skeptical about dedicating their time, their effort, their energy, their intelligence, to things that just because someone said, Do this, I think they the whole kind of work life balance has been turned on its head. And I think younger generations really have moved away from that whole notion of living to work, and are now more focused on working to live work as it means to an end, it's less, you know, connected to their identity, their sense of success, their validity. They're also in an era where they just don't get rewarded in the workplace. So if you go back to boomers and older Gen Xers, they agreed to do a lot of stuff that didn't feel good or they didn't want to do, but they were rewarded for it. I mean, they had benefits, and they had a decent salary and they had much greater job security. You've got lots of younger folks today who are. You know, have far less job security, maybe no benefits at all. You know what they make versus what they need to live. The gap is substantial. Many of them are now in the gig economy. So, you know, there's no stability at all, no benefits, no sick leave, no you know. So for them, they've kind of said, Hmm, what's the calculus here? Does it make sense for me to you know, work to live or live to work, and the live to work part that calculus just doesn't make nearly as much sense. Michael Hingson ** 07:57 What do you think has brought that about? Wallace Pond ** 08:01 Well, yeah, I mean this, that's an interesting question. And I think we could sort of take a political approach or a philosophical approach. Some people would argue this is sort of a natural state of late stage, late stage capitalism, that this is just where it ends up when you have a system where the rewards and the regulatory infrastructure and the access to capital is designed, you know, to support ever increasing profitability and ever increasing wealth for a limited number of folks. You know, when corporations are expected to care more about profits and shareholders than about things like social good. I think that's a reasonable argument that this is sort of where our system leads to. I think also, at least in the United States, there's sort of an underlying cultural notion of, it's kind of, it's actually, it's mythology, but this idea of, you know, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, if you just work hard enough, you know, you will succeed. And in other societies, there's sort of a different value set, I think also as an underlying cultural reality, things change. You know, the the you know, the world in which the baby boomers grew up in is a very different world than millennials and Gen Xers have grown up in and values evolve over time. And I think it would be really unusual if the system were exactly the same today as it was in 1948 post World War Two. Yeah. Michael Hingson ** 09:59 I. Personally, though, have always had a problem with the company that says it's all about profit. Because typically, although I understand how things have changed, companies didn't start out necessarily being all about profit. I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg wanted to make money when he started Facebook, but he also had some social ideas and and he has evolved um over time, and there's a lot more to do with profit. And Steve Jobs did the same thing. Bill Gates did the same thing, but Bill Gates, especially now, has adopted more of a social attitude, and I think that, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, but I think that it's a mistake for companies to just take the position. It's all about profit, because if they don't, if they don't choose to be loyal to people at all, then, of course, people aren't going to be loyal to them. And where does that take us? That's a spiral. I'm not sure is a good place for us to go either. Wallace Pond ** 11:10 It's also a potential segue back to the, you know, to the leadership question. But what I would, you know, and I'm not, and I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I think, you know, the profit motive has driven a lot of innovation, yeah, has, you know, resulted in financial opportunity for a lot of people? I think, you know, if you if we sort of buy into this notion of late stage capitalism. You know, when you have generation after generation, when you have ownership structures of companies that are profit driven, they're shareholder driven, whether it's private equity, whether it's publicly traded, you know, whether it's, you know, some other sort of investment structure, like venture capital, all of those structures are foundationally built on people spending money and getting way more money back. That's That's what that structure is. It's based upon supporting profitability. If you go back to that time I was mentioning 40s, 50s, 60s, even into the 70s, the there was much less pressure on companies to enrich, to, you know, to significantly enrich a small number of people at the expense of others. If you look at the difference, you know, the gap in pay between employees and managers and executives. It was a tiny fraction of what that gap is today, right? You know, if you if you look at the return on investment that venture capitalists or private equity people are looking for, it's astronomical. They don't always get it, yeah, but what they're after is astronomical, and so that has to come from somewhere, you know, those resources, that liquidity, has to come from somewhere, and it's leverage, it's debt, or it's, you know, limiting the cost of of labor. And from a recent from a leadership perspective, I think I, you know, probably starting in the 80s, 90s, early, 2000s there was a leadership focus that sort of saw labor or employees or workers as an expense item on a P and L, yeah, versus an asset. You know, certainly we're not seen as, you know, human beings, as humanity as something you know, bigger than, say, technology or capital or real estate. But I think what we're seeing now, and I think this kind of ties back in with younger generations of workers, is it's re I think it's getting harder and harder as a leader to effectively run companies, grow companies, sustain companies, if, if they don't have some focus on purpose, on social impact, on, you know, employees, as you know, not even employees, but you know human capital, where human is the important word. And I think for folks who figure that out, there's an incredible ROI, because, you know, technology is fleeting. It's a commodity. Even capital is a commodity. Real estate is a commodity, right? And I'm not the first to say this, but as a leader, if you want a truly, genuine, sustainable competitive advantage, it's going to be in people. It's not. To be in those other commodities, and if it's going to be in people, you know, that's going to come from being able to connect with people and connect them to purpose and to build trust. And you know, we might use the word loyalty, the idea that there's something bigger here than just punching a clock, and that applies to both the leader and the employee. So I think we're seeing some changes. I would absolutely agree, Michael, that if all a company cares about is profit, that can work for a while, but, but it's counter Michael Hingson ** 15:45 to sustainability, yeah, and it will be self destructive at some point in the long run, because people won't have loyalty. And if we don't learn to understand the value of loyalty in that kind of a company, then something's going to happen and that company will go away or be absorbed or whatever, Wallace Pond ** 16:06 yeah, or we'll just start underperforming, or we'll start underperforming, yeah, it's interesting. When I talk to clients and potential clients we do work. We talked about this in our last podcast at the transformation collaborative. We support organizations with helping them reinvent themselves. But we also have a really interesting leadership Discovery Program. We don't even call it leadership development Michael, because we've we think that's not the right focus or the right frame of reference. It's really about helping leaders and potential leaders really discover their own capacity as leaders and help connect them to what matters to them, so that they can connect other people to what matters to them. But you know, one of the things that becomes really evident when we talk to client organizations and potential client organizations, is it's really hard as a leader. It's really hard to stray too far from the status quo. It's really hard to talk about things like, you know, supporting the humanity in organizations, when, when investors, boards have no frame of reference for that language, let alone that language actually leading to sustainability and performance. Yeah, so I'll give you an example. Like, you know, boards and investors and exec teams, they understand all kinds of things. Like, you know, projected ROI on an investment in a computer technology, you know, you know, an efficiency move. They get that and you don't have it. Doesn't have to take much convincing anybody or anything, but the idea that you're going to be more profitable, that you're going to generate more revenue, that you're going to be around longer by investing in employee engagement. That's like, you see, you know, that's deer in the headlights, eyes over Michael Hingson ** 18:14 but, but aren't there? But aren't there ways, or aren't there companies that we can point to who do behave that way? To show some of these boards, know, take a different look. Look at x, y and z or whatever. Wallace Pond ** 18:29 Yeah, there are, you know, there are what we might call prototype organizations and even structures. You know, a while ago, there was this move by some companies to evolve or to be founded as what's called B Corp, or benefit corporations, that did not turn out quite, I think, like people envisioned, because there still tended to be, and All B Corp did was it gave corporations permission to focus on other areas of area, areas of benefit, other than profit, right? Right that they were legally protected from making decisions they couldn't be sued by, for example, shareholders for making financial decisions that may have decreased profit, but generated some other really intense benefit, important benefit. We thought that was going to maybe be a model that would really work. Hasn't turned out quite the way that, you know, people thought it would. I think, what if we kind of think about potential examples of of what I'm talking about, you know, you know, one example is Patagonia. You know, it's a in many ways. It's kind of an old fashioned. Textile company. But the culture of that company, which came from, you know, the founders of that company, is that they are about way more than profits, and they invest resources in the environment. They invest resources in sustainability. They invest resources in their employee they have incredible, incredible employee retention, very low turnover. They little things like you can, you know, you can own a Patagonia, a piece of clothing for years and years and years, and you can send it back to Patagonia after 20 years for get a credit and they'll recycle it. The owner of Patagonia has already announced that he is shifting the ownership of the company to employees, and he plans to die poor. You know that's that's an extreme but really profound example of what's possible, right? But in order for that to work, it had to be a privately held company, because typical investors won't stand for that, right? Typical investors invest, whether it's stock or whether it's venture capital or whether it's some sort of private equity investment, they typically spend a buck to make two or three or five, Michael Hingson ** 21:26 and that's it. Yeah. And Wallace Pond ** 21:29 so ownership structure. Ownership structure really matters. I think you see this oftentimes in nonprofit corporations, not because nonprofits are, you know. You know that the tax structure is. You know. You know, particularly the tax structure itself is, is not like a moral imperative or something that supports, you know, good decisions or moral decisions that but what it does do is it takes pressure off the organization to generate profits for investors and and that's huge. So you tend to see the kinds of decisions, not always and oftentimes nonprofits struggle strategically operationally. You know, it's not where you go if you want to make a lot of money as an employee or a manager, but that structure takes the pressure off return on investment for investors, and so sometimes organizations with a nonprofit structure can be much closer. Can really invest in purpose, can really invest in outcome, can really invest in mission, without sort of paying the price that organizations or leaders might pay if they're accountable to investors. Well, Michael Hingson ** 23:00 one of the problems with nonprofits, though, also, is that all too often they approach it with the mindset, we're not able to make a lot of money, we're poor, we're a nonprofit. We can't do that. And one of the debates I've had, and I worked for guide dogs, for the blind for a while, and other nonprofits, and one of the discussions I had was, fundraising or development isn't really any different than sales. And of course, they try to make all sorts of arguments why it's different. But the reality is, it's not you are you're seeking money, you're trying to make a case for it. And when you have a mindset that no matter what you do, you can't make you can't make enough, because we're a nonprofit, and the other part about it, I think it's changing a little bit with nonprofits, I know for a while, one of the things that I experienced was nonprofits couldn't have any kind of an administrative rate above 10% people frowned on it if you were above 10% and I saw one lecture from somebody, you think back In New York, who said he didn't buy into that, and he ran an organization for a while and spent more money than the 10% cap, but brought in a lot more money as well, Wallace Pond ** 24:33 right? Yeah, I think what you said is often very, very true. With nonprofits, they can be sclerotic, and you know what I what I've seen models of nonprofits that I've seen be the most successful are nonprofits that still see themselves as a business, and they are very amenable to generating revenue from multiple. Services, right? You know, fundraising is just one, right? If you know nonprofits that recognize, hey, there are multiple ways to generate revenue, multiple revenue streams, business lines that we can be in and see that as ultimately as a way to resource their mission. That is a very different way of of looking at how you operate as a nonprofit. And in fact, you know, some of the most profitable organizations today are actually nonprofit, which sounds like an oxymoron, but it's not because nonprofit status. It's just a tax status, yeah, and there are some other things that go with it, some other regulations about, you know, you know, community good and benefit, whatever. But you know, some of the most profitable businesses in this country are nonprofit healthcare systems, right? Or universities in, you know, the very extreme end of exclusivity. And so it's possible to be very profitable, you know, you know, in my State of Colorado, the UC Health System has become just a juggernaut, absolute juggernaut. It's a multi, multi billion dollar a year operation as a nonprofit. They have a ravenous appetite for acquisition. They generate billions and billions of dollars in revenue in the business, and another half a billion or so in profit from their investments. And, you know, they provide a great service. How do they treat their people? So, yeah, so that's a really good question, and I think you would get a different answer based upon whom you asked. I'll bet you know, and they've made some mistake, you know, they make many billions of dollars. They are about a billion dollars ahead in profit each year on investments and their business. And yet, you know, they're suing patients who can't pay their bill for small potatoes like, you know, they they sue patients for about 5 million a year, which is a rounding error in the P and L, yeah, but, but devastating for the people getting sued. So I wouldn't advocate that part of their business model, but they have been able to expand significant reach in their medical care to ever growing numbers of people and really high quality medical care by operating as a business, as a for profit, business that doesn't take pay taxes, right? Is the way I would describe it. So those models are out there too. Michael Hingson ** 28:01 Yeah, it's an interesting world. I going back to our discussion about leadership. I know my philosophy is probably a little bit at least on first appearance, Contra to what you were talking about. I love having technical expertise. I having a master's degree in physics when I started selling magnetic tape systems and so on, I learned all I could about how they worked, what to do with them. I became essentially an additional sales engineer, even though I was the Mid Atlantic region Sales Manager for the company. But I knew all about the technology, because I read all the bulletins that came out, I read all of the the information, and I valued having that that data. The reason, however, I valued having that data was because I knew that a number of the people who worked for me, like the salespeople, didn't pay attention to that. And the result is that many times things would come up that they wouldn't have answers to, and either they had to have a sales engineer come along, or they would get me to come along as their manager. And what I tried to instill in them was there is value in you having this information because it lends credibility. But there was another part about it for me, and I don't even remember when I started doing this, but when I began hiring people, somewhere on the line, I would say, and I started saying to them, I know I hired you. I hired you because you sold me on the fact that you could sell our products, even though some were very exceptional compared to others. But I said my job is not to be here to tell you what to do. My job is to sit down with you and figure out how. Can add value to you, to make you more successful. And so by that, I meant there are things you know, there are things I know. There are things that you do. There are things that I do. If you're smart, we figure out how I can augment you and deal with the things that you name, not necessarily do well that you can bring me in to help you with to make you a more successful person in what you do, rather than me bossing you around. And only a few people really got that, but they were very successful at what they did. Wallace Pond ** 30:34 So I appreciate that you shared that, Michael, and here's what I would say about my comment about you know, technical skill versus success through others. What I'm suggesting is that, you know, there it can be very helpful for a leader to be highly skilled in some technical area, right? Whatever that area is, that can be very helpful, but if that's how the leader believes he or she or they is going to bring value to them, yeah, but I agree that's probably a mistake. That's a problem, because that's a commodity that many people can share, and so whereas success through others is recognizing that as an individual, you can only create a fraction of the value that many other people working together can create. So there are, you know, transactions, there are decisions where your technical skill can be really helpful, you know, in that process. But if your value add is going to come from technical skill, it's probably not value add, right? The that Michael Hingson ** 31:51 the value add for me was knowing when to use the knowledge I have, and, better yet, the sales person knowing when to use the value add that I bring, but that's really the issue, is for them to do that, and for me to help teach them how to do that, and some of it was technical, and I value having a good technical skill. Sometimes I actually over the phone when we actually had some of our service people out on calls, they would call me and we talk about what's going on, and I might say something that suddenly gave them an idea that fixed the problem, and then they come dancing back in the office later, big heroes, but but the issue isn't just that I had a technical knowledge that's just one of the gifts that I had that I felt could be helpful, but the real value add that I bring is is interacting with with people and teaching them 32:53 what Michael Hingson ** 32:55 and how to use the different things that I might bring to what they do that they don't necessarily do. I had one guy who asked me, and he's my best sales guy, how come you know all this stuff and I don't? And I said, Did you read the technical bulletin that came out last week? He said, No, I didn't have time. And I said, there you go. I said, I don't have access to anything that you don't have access to, but that's okay, but it would be good, if you would learn more of that. And I think over time, you took it to heart. But you know, again, for me, also, very frankly, another skill that I brought was that I was blind. We went out on sales calls where we would go to a meet, and a sales guy my again, my best sales guy wanted me to go to a meeting with him, and he wanted to, they said that they wanted his manager to come. And he said, I didn't tell him, you were blind. We walk in the room and hit him right between the eyes with this blind guy carrying a laptop projector and using a guide dog. But they had no expectation was coming, and I did the PowerPoint presentation and other things like that that they didn't expect. But that's the kind of value add again, that I could bring. And actually, after the presentation was over, one of the people came up and he said, we're really ticked at you. And I said, why? And he said, Well, typically, these are very boring presentations, and yours wasn't first of all, but more important, you never looked away. You could point over your shoulder and point right to the things that were on the screen. I knew how to do that. I had learned that, and you never looked at the screen. So we didn't even dare fall asleep because we forgot you were blind. I said, well, even if you had forgotten and fallen asleep, the dogs down here taking notes, so we would have got you anyway, you know, but, but that's all part of the value add that I knew that I could bring that helped and and the result eventually was a sale that none of us knew about, but because we had developed that trust and shown that confidence on both of our parts, it worked out very well. Wallace Pond ** 34:55 Yeah, and I you made me think of something, and I'm not sure if. Exactly what you said. That made me think of this. But in terms of technical skill, I think there are some areas where technical skill is actually really helpful for a leader today, and one of those would be technical skill and leading change or change management, right? And I think a lot of us just don't understand that that is a skill, that there is a process, that there is a protocol. Yes, it's about attitude, yes, it's about vision, no doubt, right? It's about communication. But successful change really almost always requires a purposeful process or protocol for implementing and leading that change. And very, very few leaders, shockingly few leaders actually have any training or any in depth skill in leading change itself, in the change management process, in what that how you do it from a nuts and bolts perspective, which is really ironic, because if you think of the environment that most leaders operate in today, you know those environments are incredibly ambiguous. You know, they are hyper change. You know, both internal and external, and you know something you commit to and invest in and build out today might be barely relevant 18 months from now. Yeah. And yet, in the work that we do with leaders, it's incredibly rare that I come across a leader, maybe. And I'm not making this up, Michael, maybe two times in 50 do I come across a leader that can actually articulate a process for change, that they understand, that they could implement, that they can leverage, that they're good at, which is really weird. I mean, I'm not sure what the analogy would be, yeah, you know, it might be, you know, something like a pilot, you know, or a chief pilot in an organization that just doesn't understand the new glass cockpit technology. Yeah, they just, you know, they're comfortable with the round dials and the gages and the pneumatics and the vacuum pumps, but they just don't get, you know, the new stuff and how to train pilots on the new stuff. That was probably an inelegant Well, now Michael Hingson ** 37:52 maybe a maybe another one, maybe another one might be just the whole concept of AI. So many people fear AI, but the reality is, it can be an extremely powerful tool, and it can be a mechanism to help in all aspects of what we do. And I actually had a person on his name is Glen, and he talks a lot about CEOs and dealing with corporate change, and he's a very ardent supporter of AI. And one of the things that that he says is, look, AI will not take away anyone's job. Ai doesn't take them away. Ai doesn't take the jobs away. It's people who take the jobs away and give them to AI without figuring out what to do with the people who they have. And the reality is, AI isn't going to be able to do everything, and what we really need to do is to train people or provide other alternatives. And the example that he used was a truck driver. When we get to the point where we truly have autonomous driving and autonomous vehicles, what's the truck driver going to do? And a lot of people say, well, then they just don't need the truck driver anymore. And what he said was, and we both actually discussed it, and I contributed to it, why not let the truck driver stay in the vehicle on principle, but give the truck driver other things to do for the company so that the truck driver keeps busy and does meaningful work while the vehicle itself is being driven, so that he is also there to help, just in case something happens with the vehicle, but he's doing other things as well. Wallace Pond ** 39:32 Yeah, I you know we are our take on AI and the role it's going to play, or the implications it has for leadership, has evolved a little bit as well at at the transmission collaborative, we initially were kind of of the opinion that AI, I mean, we knew it was going to be a significant, uh. Uh, area of focus, let's just say that, yeah, for leaders in organizations. But we initially thought, I think incorrectly, that it was going to be about, you know, harnessing the technology itself, you know, about making really good decisions about employing the technology, determining you know, where you know AI can bring value or efficiency, etc. And that's not untrue, but what we've come to believe is more likely to be true is going to be the role that leaders play in evaluating and understanding and taking advantage of The interface between human capital, yep, and technology and figuring out how that human capital becomes more valuable and becomes more powerful in in in tandem with the technology, Michael Hingson ** 41:18 one of the things that Glenn did was that he had someone that he worked with, CEO of a company and convinced him of the value of AI. And this guy called all of his direct reports in, and he said, I want you to take the rest of the day and look at AI, learn about it, and then by tomorrow, using AI, come up with ideas where AI can contribute to the company, and where we can enhance what we do by using our skills and combining them with AI. And he said the next day, he was totally blown away by the level of involvement that everybody brought during that previous day and the number of incredible ideas that people hadn't thought of before. Wallace Pond ** 42:12 Yeah, and, you know, I Michael Hingson ** 42:13 It's all about the interface, Wallace Pond ** 42:15 you know, I'm not sure kind of where you want to go with the No, that's okay with the conversation at this point. But one other thing that we have observed, in fact, I just read a paper earlier this week, and I can't remember. I think it was written by AI researchers at Microsoft. I'd have to go find it. But it was really interesting article. And I know it was also involved some folks at Stanford. I think it was three authors, and it was really interesting take, which is, they have, they have come up with a new way of, sort of measuring the effectiveness and capacity of AI. And that new way of measuring comes up with really different outcomes, so really different assessments on what AI is capable of and sort of how it's progressing. And the short version is that that AI is probably way, way less capable than we think it is. Michael Hingson ** 43:26 That's a tool. Wallace Pond ** 43:29 Yeah, but in what they're saying is that the, you know, the quote, improvements or progress we're seeing now is not that it's actually getting smarter. It's not getting any more capable, that what we're doing is we're just through brute force, computing power and data sets. We are allowing a we are helping AI figure things out faster, make connections it didn't make before. But really, that's what that what that's actually happening is, you know, we're giving AI, you know, 60 billion data points versus 10 billion. Well, the Michael Hingson ** 44:11 other part about that is that AI, in turn, is feeding back to us things that help make us more creative. Wallace Pond ** 44:18 Yeah, I would agree, yeah, and I don't think they would disagree with that either, but I thought it was really interesting, because it was the first time I saw that perspective, which is, hey, you know what, we may very well be attributing more capacity to AI than is really there. Yeah, some point, you know, we're going to run out of data points, and we're not, you know, and we're going to hit a viable ceiling of computing power, and then what you know, it'll still do great things, it'll still do amazing things, it'll still be very helpful. But the human, I guess, the point was that the human element is probably going to continue to be more important than Michael Hingson ** 44:59 exactly right. Yeah, and I think there's a lot of merit to that. And, you know, it goes back to little, the whole discussion with even the Gen Z ers, I would suspect that even though they are as you describe, if they found a company that truly demonstrated loyalty to them, and truly wanted to bring, well, make employees who come into the company a part of it, and make them feel like they're a part of everything that goes on that they like in days of old, would want to stay there, Wallace Pond ** 45:44 yeah, yeah. And I think that one of the things that leaders and organizations are going to have to figure out is, you know, and it's not rocket science, no, but they're going to have to break that code and figure out, you know, because, you know, human beings can only be seen as a line item on a P and L, or can only be seen as efficiency plays for so long, you know, and if your downside is, you know, 50% of your employees are totally disengaged or quiet, quitting or the turnover is, you know, 25% a year, you know, and you're spending double what you got in your efficiency by rehiring. And by the way, that's not, you know, particularly new or crazy, or, you know, creative thinking. That's just, you know, pretty fundamental stuff. Michael Hingson ** 46:41 We have a situation in California right now, in a sense, it's laughable, but, I mean, it's not, but So on Monday, I think it is, the wage for fast food workers goes up to $20 an hour, which is $4 an hour more than the minimum wage in California. Okay, great. Fact, so that's going on, so prices are going to have to rise in various places, and they will, and yet, people complain, well, the prices are going up, and it's all the President's fault and all that. And you know what I when I get so frustrated with, are people who don't step back and analyze what's going on. Now, should we have raised the price to $20 an hour? I'm not the expert to say no to that, but I understand it, and I understand it's going to cause a change in price for fast food in places like McDonald's and other places like that. Is that a good thing? Well, it depends on who you are. For the fast food worker, it certainly is. And for the customer, they'll probably complain a lot. Wallace Pond ** 47:59 I think it also depends Michael, on the organization, on the on their existing profit margins. You know, for healthy organizations, for healthy large, you know, massive at scale corporations, most of them, can easily absorb those kinds of increase in labor cost, if, if they are willing to take that increased cost out of things Like shareholder dividends, you know, executive bonuses, equity distributions, that, but that's really hard to do like so if most of those very successful, profitable organizations have the resources, absolutely what they may not have is the resources to more fairly compensate employees and maintain the same levels of profitability and and so that, where you know you see that thinking, where you see a massive, massive, oftentimes multinational corporations that have multi billion dollar profits, and they will lay off 1000s of employees, not because they have a cash flow problem, not because they have a profitability problem, but because they want to preemptively preserve profit margins or shareholder dividends At a given level through maybe a slower sales cycle, or something like that. And and when you are in a capital system and the primary focus of investor supported companies, there is a tremendous amount of pressure. Pressure, way more pressure, yeah, to preserve the shareholder dividend than to support a higher wage for employees, particularly lowering employees. Yeah, and, and I, you know, we'll see what happens in California. I know so far, in many, many places, there's almost never evidence to support the doom and gloom. You know, yeah, tons of people will be laid off, that customers won't buy, that organizations will go bankrupt. Some of that happens, you know, for organizations on the margins. But this happens over and over at Washington, DC, Seattle, you know, California, New York City, and these are not all you know, necessarily ideal or perfect situations, but the doom and gloom almost never, ever happens. Michael Hingson ** 50:52 Yeah, the world isn't going to come to an end. You know, of course, looking at it from the standpoint of when we grow up. So these people are now going to make $40,000 a year, which is a fair amount of money. But the other side of it is, I don't even know what the number is today. What's the poverty level in the United States? It isn't that much lower than that. Wallace Pond ** 51:17 Yeah. And I think it depends on how you measure it. So that's true measures. There are federal numbers, there are state numbers, there are thresholds for things like Medicaid or SNAP benefits, you know what we used to call food stamps. There are all different ways to look at it, but, and I don't have the data in front of me, but the combination of stagnant wages and then the double hit recently of inflation, yeah, the the buying power for a really substantial slice of people in this country, workers in this Country, had incredible downward pressure. There was, there was a brief moment of reprieve, which was, which is mostly federal money during COVID, right? But, yeah. I mean, if you look at over the last 30 years, where buying power has increased, it's been almost exclusively, exclusively in the upper echelons, top 20% Yeah, of wage earners, and the bottom 80 have been mostly flat for about the last 30 years. So, you know the idea that, I mean 20 bucks an hour sounds like a lot, you know, for a fast food worker, and it probably would have been a lot, you know, 10 years Michael Hingson ** 52:41 ago, 10 years ago, yeah, that's my point, Wallace Pond ** 52:45 you know. But relative to cost of living, it's only marginally greater than the increases in cost of living over Michael Hingson ** 52:53 the same time, right? That's the point. Yeah, and people can complain about it and all and grouse all they want. But the reality is, I'd love to hear what you think when it suddenly becomes your son or your daughter who's going to work at McDonald's to start to earn a living. You know, the reality is, it isn't that much. One of the things that I really, really changing the subject on you a little bit that I've always found fascinating. I've had the opportunity to travel to other countries and speak and so on, speaking of restaurants and so on, is the whole concept of tipping, because there you really only tip if it's an incredibly, exceptionally good job. And a lot of times, I thought people did an exceptionally good job, and they wouldn't let me tip them. They wouldn't take my money. Well, we didn't do that great of a job. I thought they did for my own personal reasons as to why. But here and again, it's unfortunate. All it's doing is, is, is kind of giving things to the workers and making it an excuse for the employers not to pay them. Wallace Pond ** 54:01 Yeah, well, and I've also had the great fortune of traveling and living abroad quite a bit. I think 39 countries I've visited and I've lived in six. And I think that that dynamic you're describing, particularly as it applies to the United States, is both economic and cultural and on the economic side, and one could also argue this is another kind of manifestation of late stage capitalism. You know, the push for profits, the push for profits, the push for enrichment, has to come from somewhere that the pie doesn't grow as fast as the enrichment and the profits do. So it has to come from somewhere, right? Yeah, and you know, this started some years ago. You know, when companies started to unload benefits, the cost of benefits, and you. Um, you know, there are many, many companies out there. You know, Walmart is probably one of the largest employers. A substantial percentage of its employees qualify for Medicaid, and that's where they they're full time employees, and yet, they get their health care from the federal government. And tax that is a tool that allows that business to shift expense from the company to the public. So that's one example. Another example is with the tipping issue. You know, you've got more and more and more companies that were where employees were falling further and further behind in terms of buying power based upon what they were being paid. And so to fill that gap, it was shifted to consumers, to customers. I'll tell you a funny story I was and it's like there seems to be no end in sight. And I've read a couple articles, one New York Times, one of the Washington Post, I'm sorry, I mean Wall Street Journal, about the tipping backlash and how customers are just getting fed up. I was in a bookstore, Michael about, I don't know, three or four weeks ago, and I bought a book, a book I wanted, and I, you know, purposely went to a local bookstore, you know, to give them my business, and I went to pay for the book, and that damn screen popped up, you know, you know, do you want to tip? Yeah, 20% 22% I'm thinking way I'm buying a book, you know, in a bookstore, yeah, and, you know, it was, it was irritating, it was a dilemma. And I thought, well, if I'm the person selling the book, you know, and I don't know what those people make per hour, but a tip probably is helpful to them. It probably, if it goes to them. But I just remember thinking, Yeah, this is, this is nutty, right? I mean, at some point there's a wage that you can live on for doing your job and and there. And we've just shifted. It used to be that tipping was in very few places. Yeah, you know, a restaurant, a bar, an intense service transaction, right? Bringing up a book that I pulled off the shelf is not an intense service. No, I have, Michael Hingson ** 57:36 I've not been above asking, do you get the tip, and I've done that too, yeah, and I respond accordingly as far as tipping when that happens, yeah, yeah. And sometimes it doesn't even go to the employee, which is shot, no, yeah, which is and that's disgusting, that's, that's just not an unacceptable thing. But it does happen. It's, so strange that we have some of these things. Well, you know, we are in a and all the things we've been talking about contribute to it. But you know, there's so much polarization in this country right now, and you got the people who will say, Well, fast food and food prices are on the rise. They're going way up. And there's a lot of evidence that they're not really going up in grocery stores and stuff, as much as people want to make it believe. But there's a segment of society that says how much it's going up. Nobody discusses how the pandemic contributed to all that. But then there are other people who say, wait a minute, inflation really is going down, and it's not really what people say. How do we really deal with this whole polarization issue? Or can we, yeah, Wallace Pond ** 58:52 well, and maybe that's kind of a topic to wrap up on. I have a stop here in a few minutes, but so this is a really interesting and I think really, really important question, Michael, because that polarization, that tribalism, whatever the issue is, right? And it seems, it seems to be an equal opportunity employer, you know, it can apply to anything. I think it's a really, really corrosive, corrosive element in society right now. Yeah, I know we all sort of intuitively feel it is a big deal, and it makes a lot of us uncomfortable and but I don't think that broadly we recognize just how corrosive it is just how potentially dangerous it is. So I have a and you talked about, you know, have this long and winding career, you know, one of the things I'm doing now, and I've been doing for a while, is working as a mental health counselor, as a psychotherapist, and so I, I have a lot of interest in psychology, and. Social Psychology and and I see a lot of clients who whose distress is not just about their own issues. It's about climate change, it's about polarization, it's about tribalism. It's about, you know, racism, it's about, you know, all of these things that are going on externally that they, you know, technically, have no control over, and it can really exacerbate their depression, their anxiety, whatever they would bring to the to the table, you know, regardless, right? And, and I think what's going on here, and this is not just me. I mean, I've, I've read some interesting theories on this, but I you know that polarization is almost certainly tied more to a need for belonging, a need for acceptance in a group than it has Anything to do with ideology or politics or policy, or whatever that and But politicians have have taken advantage of it. They've leveraged, they've, you know, they've flamed, they've added fuel to the fire. But this idea that, and I think it's, I think the theory really is, is, you know, is pretty solid. I mean, to the extent that people even vote against their own interests, pretty substantially, you know, like, like people on Medicaid or Medicare voting for a candidate who wants to eliminate Medicaid or medica, you know, or in a state, you know, that doesn't want to expand Medicaid, and they're poor and that's their insurance, or would be their insurance, you know, really crazy, weird stuff, where? But, but the theory is that it's more important. It feels better. It feels safer to belong, to belong, to have a tribe, then it is to and to the extent that people will very quickly and easily, you know, ignore arguments, facts, reality, that could challenge their affiliation with whatever tribe they're affiliating with, and I think that makes Michael Hingson ** 1:02:25 a lot of sense and well. And the problem is that what we we don't learn we want this sense of belonging, but we don't really think a lot about how to maybe pick the tribe that really, or the group that really would be best for our interests, and there's so much fear in the world that we just don't tend to want to deal with that. Wallace Pond ** 1:02:52 Yeah, and it's not, it's not, you know, it's not rational. It's not, no, Michael Hingson ** 1:02:58 no, it's not. Well, Wallace Pond ** 1:02:59 let me, let me rephrase that. It's very rational in the sense of finding belonging or finding acceptance, sure, but social connection. It's not rational in terms of one's own interests. Michael Hingson ** 1:03:11 One of the things, one of the things that I did early in the era of the pandemic was to start to realize that for years, I had talked about not being afraid leaving the World Trade Center, but never really discussed teaching people how to learn to control fear. And I've now written a book that will be published in August called Live like a guide dog, stories, true stories from a blind man and his dogs, about being brave, overcoming adversity and moving forward in faith. And it's all about teaching people to learn to control fear. And you pointed it out. The fact is, there are a lot of things that we can't control necessarily, that happen to us, but we always can control how we deal with what happens to us. Yeah, yeah, Wallace Pond ** 1:03:58 if we want to learn that. And part of a, you know, a real prominent therapeutic intervention called cognitive behavior therapy. That's a real big part of that. It's been a pleasure talking to you again, it Michael Hingson ** 1:04:12 has, and I want to thank you for you have to go. And I want to thank you for being here and being part of unstoppable mindset. Again. Love to hear from you all what you think of Wallace being here and his thoughts and either we'll have to do it again. But Wallace, if you know other people who ought to be on the podcast, we sure would appreciate introductions. Absolutely. It's Wallace Pond ** 1:04:33 been it's been great. Michael, thanks so much for the time and for the platform. Just to have a nice, enjoyable conversation. You **Michael Hingson ** 1:04:44 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.
