8.4 Jennifer Sundberg: How Smart Teams End Up Doing Dumb Things

Are the wrong people making the biggest decisions at your company?

Tara and Michelle talk to Jennifer Sundberg—co-founder of Board Intelligence and co-author of Collective Intelligence—about why most leadership teams are flying blind. They dive into how poorly framed questions and bloated reports sabotage decision-making, why writing is thinking, and how to fix broken systems from the inside out. With examples ranging from NASA to FTSE boardrooms, this episode is a masterclass on designing cultures where the smartest ideas, not the loudest voices, win.

In this exciting partnership series with Jaico Publishing House, we are featuring fascinating new authors and writers who captivate the audience and bring forth a revolutionary perspective to Indian literature.

‘Books and Beyond with Bound’ is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D’costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India’s finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms.

Transcript

Tara Khandelwal: 0:02

Welcome to Books and Beyond. With bound I'm Tara Khandelwal and I'm Michelle nicotta, in this podcast, we talk to India's finest authors

Michelle D'costa: 0:11

and uncover the stories behind the best written book and

Tara Khandelwal: 0:15

dissect how these books shape our lives and world views today.

Unknown: 0:19

So let's dive in. This episode is part of our brand new series with Jaico publishing house. Hi everyone. Welcome back to Books and Beyond. I'm really excited about today's episode, because you're going to be unpacking the concept of collective intelligence, where every person in a team is given the chance to contribute to the success of the company. That sounds really cool, right? Because it's not just the CEO who's behind the success, but it's every single person. So the book collective intelligence is written by Jennifer Sundberg with her long time business partner and friend, PIPA beg So Jennifer, who's actually the co founder of, you know, board intelligence. It actually helps boardrooms perform better. She has observed countless boardroom interactions. You know, I really wish I was a fly on the wall. So she's a serial entrepreneur, and, you know, she's established her business when she was in her early 20s. So since then, I can only imagine the kind of experiences she's been through. And the book was such a very I would say the book was a really entertaining ride.

Tara Khandelwal: 1:29

Yeah, one of the reasons I really like this book was because it was just so entertaining. And as an entrepreneur myself, I'm really interested in these kind of books, and it gave me a great insight into how different types of businesses work, and some of the frameworks that, you know, I can also apply to my professional life. So that was really, really interesting for me. Yeah, and

Michelle D'costa: 1:50

actually, why I like the book Tara is because, you know, like, it really made me sort of think about how it's not just the top management that's sort of, you know, responsible for the success, and the fact that everyone matters, right? Everyone Counts. And I think for me, because I've worked in different industries, you know, being an employee sometimes you feel like you're not seen, you're not heard, but I like that, you know, Jennifer really vouches for everyone to be empowered, you know, and that it's not just one person, is not just a CEO, but it's a team, and that ultimately, yes, the goal is, you know, for the organization to succeed, but how will that happen? That will only happen through every person's contribution. So I'm really excited to know more. Welcome. Jennifer, we can't wait to get inside sort of, you know, these companies and see how they tick.

Tara Khandelwal: 2:33

So anyone who is part of an organization, or is it is even running an organization, this book is for you. It doesn't have to be that you know your CEO, or it's not one of those business books that's very daunting. It's one of those books that anyone can pick up. And I want to start with just asking you, you know about collective intelligence, can we hear about it from your words? And why this book? And why now? Thank

Jennifer Sundberg: 2:59

you. Well, you're right. Most of my career was spent advising boards at the very top of an organization, and I was drawn to that because I thought that's where the power lay, and that seemed to be the place we could have most impact. And it was a kind of rude awakening that, you know, there's truth in that, of course, but that's not the whole story. I was in a meeting once with a titan of British Industry, a man called Sir John Timpson, who ran a very successful chain of locksmiths around the country. You'll find one of his locksmiths on pretty much every street corner around the country. And he's known for being a pretty contrarian guy. He runs a locksmith, but he employs ex convicts, you know, he does things his way, and he has a board. And I managed, probably a few years into running the business, managed to get a meeting with him and an opportunity to pitch at him and pitch the services of my business, you know, help him drive more effective board. And he's a polite guy. And he sat there in our meeting room, big burly man in this quite small office that we had in the City of London, and he let us get to about slide five in our pitch. And this was a pitch that worked very well for us, that he got us into the boards of major international investment banks and government departments and all sorts. I was feeling pretty confident he does get to about slide five, and he held up his hand like he was trying to stop the oncoming traffic. And he said, stop. He couldn't take it anymore. And he said, I don't need a better board. The important decisions in my business are not made in my boardroom. To me, this was heresy. And you know, someone building a business to help boards work smarter, take better decisions. This was this was not music to my ears. And he went on to explain the philosophy that he subscribed to, what he called upside down governance, and he saw it as his job to put decision making as close. To the front line as possible, and his job in the boardroom was to make sure that at every level there were the skills and the confidence to use that decision making authority and use it well. We didn't sell to Sir John Timson, but what he did was planted a different perspective in my mind. And it took a few years for that, for the penny to really drop and to really buy into what he was saying there. And it was only when I think we stepped back and looked ourselves at the impact we were having with our clients, and we could see that, you know, we can improve the productivity of the board 100% we can double their productivity. But in a world where the fast eat the slow, it's not just the big, the eat the slow big, they eat the small anymore. If all of the really important decisions have to slowly work their way up to the top, up to the boardroom, you're just not going to be able to move fast enough. And we started to realize that there was so much truth in what Sir John Timson had explained to us that day, and that maybe what we needed to look at was how we could better apply the playbook that we built in the boardrooms of many of the world's most demanding organizations, how we could apply that playbook lower down through the organization, so that everyone at every level could take decisions and take them well, and that set us up on the chain of collective intelligence, which is where we are today, and the book that we've written to share what we've learned, to share what works, so that other organizations can also really tap into the collective brain power of everyone in the organization move much faster and take much better decisions.

Michelle D'costa: 6:25

Yeah, I totally agree. And I think this is something I have been thinking about, you know, more recently, because something you said just now, Jennifer, that really sort of resonated with me, as you said, you know, sometimes all you need is confidence to sort of even, like, let's say, contribute an idea, right? So I have been volunteering, sort of teaching English to, you know, migrants recently and and I realized that they know English, right? It's, of course, like, probably, you know, probably basic English. But then even to sort of, let's say, string a sentence together, sometimes all you need is confidence, right? They have the knowledge. They have everything. But, yeah, it's a

Jennifer Sundberg: 7:01

very good point. I remember working we've worked with organizations before, who will say, you know, we aspire to a more federated, delegated decision making model, and then even say, you know, we've even decreed it thus, you know, decisions are to be taken further down. But you know, what keeps happening is people don't want to the accountability that comes with that is quite frightening. It's quite scary. And they found that, you know, that decisions keep coming up to the top for ratification, and you can't just delegate decision making authority for two reasons. One, it would be nuts. It would be throwing caution to the wind, you know, to throw out decision making responsibility lower down through the organization, without first building the skills and the capabilities to take those decisions Well, that would be reckless. But also exactly to your point, you've got to build the confidence to then use that authority and use it well, and that comes down to the habits and the conventions that you build into or the routines that you build into the organization, to actually build new habits, to build new skills and to build that confidence. And that's what the book sets out. It's really a playbook for a whole set of new habits and rituals that can become a daily a daily activity in the organization. So that what might sound very theoretical actually becomes very pragmatic, very practical, very quickly. I

Tara Khandelwal: 8:24

like how you showed that you know in the book with the help of examples. So the book is divided into three parts, thinking, communication and focus. Annually show the frameworks by which you know, organizations can foster this collective intelligence by these examples. So one example in the communication section that I really, really liked was the example of the plane crash of Florida 90 plane, and it was because of this miscommunication that actually the flight crashed. So can you take us, you know, inside what you were trying to show with this example, like inside what went wrong, and what can we learn from this? Sure,

Jennifer Sundberg: 9:05

so I'll dive into that. And just before I do, I want to put that into a little more context. So what we point out in this book is that if you want to successfully tap into the collective brain power of the people in your organization, you've got to build three habits, three independent muscles that need to work together. One is critical thinking. Got to help everyone to think really deeply analytically, to pull out signal from the noise, to identify really smart solutions to problems the critical thinking number one. Number two, communication. It's no good having brilliant insights, brilliant thoughts if you can't transmit them, business is a team sport, so you know, brilliant thinking, poorly communicated, will wither on the vine. So that's why communication matters. And thirdly, the third muscle is focus. If you're going to delegate more. Freedom and responsibility, you've got to make sure that all of that great thinking power is channeled in the same direction, in the right direction, otherwise you'll just be running off in 100 directions, and all of the Great thinking power will be pulling against each other. So critical thinking, communication and focus and right communication is is critical, and businesses are not known for doing it well, I think in poor communication in large companies is called the silent killer of big business. One of the things as a somebody who's specialized in working with boards over the years, we had about 5000 board clients as at the end of last year, very large, mostly large multinationals, but also some smaller charities, schools, hospitals, the full gamut, university across all boardrooms, the state of information and reporting is pretty poor, and you see at close quarters just how hard it is to communicate clearly in business, just how badly it's done. And a lot of the reason for that goes back to our formal education, right? An awful lot of what we're taught at school and university, the tenets of so called good communication, are wrong. They don't work in business. In fact, they do more harm than good. So a lot of what we send out in the book, and a lot of what I've spent the last 20 years doing as a professional is helping to helping executives to unlearn what they were taught and to consign to the dustbin the so called tenets of good communication and replace them with five new principles that work serious subjects demand formal writing generally. What we think, right? You know, if you're writing for an audience like the board, I'd better make sure my tone of voice is polite and has sort of a sort of grout as to it, and we tend to adopt this very formal, dry tone of voice. Well, put that in a bin. Write like a human no matter what you're writing about. So when we try to write in a formal tone of voice, we tend to use very long words, very long sentences. But study after study from Princeton University to Japanese universities, study after study globally finds that when we use a long word or a long sentence where a short one would have done makes us sound stupid, it's also really hard to digest. And the people trying to consume this stuff, they're only human, but perhaps more importantly, when you adopt a very formal tone of voice, you often find yourself using the passive tense you know, sales targets were missed, rather than we missed our sales targets. And when you do that and you adopt that tone of voice, it puts a distance between you and your message, a distance is the opposite of accountability. Is the opposite of ownership of the message, and what people are looking for is leadership.

Tara Khandelwal: 12:43

Yeah, I really like the chapter on writing because, you know, we are writers ourselves. And I was very interested in all the examples that you gave about how companies can adopt a narrative driven business and adopt a writing culture. And one of the examples that you gave, which I really liked about, you know, be a human was example of Joey and friends, and when he has to write a letter for Monica and Chandler, who own a doctor baby, and he's a character reference, and he wants to sound really smart, so he ends up using a thesaurus and the letter doesn't make any sense, versus, if he was just sort of heartfelt and use his own words, would convey so much more than What you said, right when, when we sit and write sometimes, and I we know this because we're writers and editors, and when we work with people, often times, you know, they think the first draft should be the last draft, and that hinders a lot of the writing process. Versus I always say, Okay, explain it to me like a five year old. Explain it to me like, What exactly are you trying to say? Just forget about whoever was reading this, what exactly you're trying to communicate. And then once we have those ideas, and then when we have all that, then we will, sort of, you know, put it into a structure and all of those things. But I think that gets confused. And I really like the way that you portray that, no

Jennifer Sundberg: 13:56

Exactly. And I think until you can communicate it to a five year old, or let's say, a 10 year old, maybe until you can communicate it so clearly that they could understand you don't really understand yourself what you're trying to say. And I think once it's understood that that's how it comes across, it gives people, again, the confidence to speak plainly and clearly and to write like a human

Tara Khandelwal: 14:16

Yeah, I think I'm a big proponent of saying complex things in simple language. And yeah, we work on a lot of books also that demystify, you know, these concepts for a general audience. But coming back to the examples, you know, I really, really loved all of the examples in the book. I think there were, you know, you have so much theory of so much research and these frameworks, but they came alive to me because of the very real life examples that you gave. So, yeah, so for example, I mentioned the flight crash one. And you know how you actually showed us what went on inside that cockpit and how miscommunication, and if they just communicated a different way, and they just spoken plainly, like you said that, hey, this is a problem, they might have a voted it. Sort of going out in circles. And then another example that I really like, which was in the thinking section, was how Gatorade came to be, and it's because the founder asked the right questions, you know? So, yes.

Jennifer Sundberg: 15:12

So the American football coach was looking out at his football players, and he asked himself the question, How come they don't urinate more? Isn't it kind of weird that in the course of an American football match, which is quite a few hours, nobody needs to take a toilet break. Even in the what do you call it intermission? I got the word right in the book, and I can't remember what you call it half time. Even at half time, the locker rooms would go strangely unused. And he just thought this was kind of weird. But instead of leaving it there, he really pursued that question doggedly, and his curiosity about this question took him into all sorts of biochemistry and led to the discovery of electrolytes and the relationship between electrolytes and performance on the pitch. And he created his drink in mixture of lemons and sugars and salts and all sorts, and experimented on the team and saw that this concoction of his, that his wife helped him flavor, that this mixture seemed to have a real direct impact on the performance of the players. And this indeed was the origins of the Gatorade story, which became a multi billion dollar drinks company, and the beginnings of a multi billion dollar energy drinks or sports energy drinks market. But it all began with the humble question, because at the heart of critical thinking is questioning. Questions are the catalyst of critical thinking. They're the spark and the fuel of creativity innovation, and most of us lose the habit right through our school and university careers and life beyond the emphasis is based on knowing the right answers to the questions that other people have presented, and not just not any old answer, but specifically the answer in the back of the examiner's booklet. Right go find a scope for creativity or originality in that so you know, we have our natural questioning instincts that we're born with. We have them pretty much beaten out of us as we work our way through our formal education. By the time we reach the workplace, we've all but forgotten how to do it. And so a lot of what the book sets out is how to rebuild this questioning, how to get our questioning mojo back and and how to help everyone in your organization to do that too? Yeah,

Michelle D'costa: 17:28

I just it, you know, sort of what you mentioned about, sort of how, you know, I think as kids, questioning comes very naturally to us. You don't, you know, there's no embarrassment, there's nothing. And even if you ask like, a 50 questions, you know, sort of like, you know, adults or parents would ever be tired and they would just, like, answer your questions. But I think as you grow up, and especially you know, when you're sort of, you know, when you're in school, you know, most of the time, rote learning is sort of encouraged, you know, like, don't ask any questions, just sort of learn things by heart. And it's just, I think you're right. I think it's often, it's we're sort of conditioned to not question anything. And I think that's the reason why I really loved that chapter. So in the thinking section, I think questions was, you know, this chapter, I sort of, I think I read it three times. I loved it, and I and sort of my favorite example was about the architect, Gary,

Jennifer Sundberg: 18:14

yeah, and he asked the question, why didn't he like? Why exactly,

Michelle D'costa: 18:18

exactly, and, and I was just thinking, how many of us would do that? So he was actually commissioned to sort of transform the sort of warehouse into a modern art gallery in Spain, right? And let's say someone's given this huge project that will sort of, I would say, completely overturn, you know, an economy. It will change the way people look at a country and all of that with such huge responsibility, right? I think they would just do that, but he, I would say, ask the right question, and and he was able to sort of, you know, do it in just in less than four years, and he was even well under the budget. And I think that was so cool. And you have sort of compared that with the Sydney Opera House, which obviously is more famous, and, you know, everyone talks about it, but that was actually created nine years later, and it went over the budget like 15 times. So that really surprised me. And, and I think this is sort of like a lesson in project management, you know, it's not just the architecture, it's not just the creativity or the design, but more like, I think, Gary's project management skills. So I was very curious to sort of ask you about why you chose to, you know, include this example, and why did it sort of appeal to you? Yeah,

Jennifer Sundberg: 19:26

I think it probably appealed to me because of two things, firstly, the simplicity of the question. And, you know, I think there's a mistake that I certainly made myself with of thinking that there's something clever about the clever question. You know, when actually, there's more power, usually, in the simple questions. You know, the how and why questions, or the So what questions, and helping, again, to build confidence in asking those simple questions and habits. You know, quite often, you might think, Well, I'm not going to ask such an old. Obvious question is that, but actually, that's often where the real the real discoveries get made. How, why? So what? Now, what questions like that. So have the confidence of your convictions to ask those basic questions, because they will often reveal huge truths that were otherwise going to go untapped, just as Frank Gehry discovered when he asked why they really wanted to build this new this new institution, and uncovering the real reason helped him to see that the brief he'd been given was wrong. The other thing that I think appealed to me about the Frank Gehry example is, I think you often hear that there's this idea of analysis paralysis, and you don't want to overthink. You've got to, in fact, you know, if you would start to get everybody thinking all the time, you know who you need to create a bias for action, right? And you want to get some stuff done. Don't sit in your ivory tower all day scratching your chin. Go and do something right? And, of course, that's not that's not daft. But what the Frank Gehry example illustrates is the cost of getting out there and starting to execute before you've thought your plan through. And actually a lot more time can be wasted from missteps, needless missteps, but if you'd spent a little bit more time thinking and planning you could have prevented so I guess, as with most things in life, any position taken to the extreme tends to be wrong. You know, of course, there's a point of paralysis, analysis paralysis. But of course, you know that bias for action can lead you to trip over yourself when you didn't need to. And generally in business, I would say the buyer for action brigade have probably been, have probably won out, and there's a lot of scope for more thinking to be done, particularly at all levels. As I say, the old model of, you know, just get the person at the top to do the thinking, and everybody else's job is just to execute. I think that's that may have bred that idea that there isn't a need for greater, you know, time invested in more more thinking at every level.

Tara Khandelwal: 22:05

Yeah, I think, I think that resonates a lot with me, because I think there's a fine balance, right? You want to act. You don't want to lose out, but at the same time you're absolutely right. Like I've experienced it personally in my own business, the cost of not thinking before acting is a lot. But then, if you don't act, then again, you're moving very slowly. You need to move at a certain speed.

Jennifer Sundberg: 22:29

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No. It's because I remember an old, an old client of ours who was an ex Army General, and he used to say, you know, if you're crossing a bog and you discover that you know you're just you find you're just you're fine, you're surprised, you're on a bog. Don't stop. Analyze the situation. You will sink, for certain if you're running across a bog. Keep moving, right? So there is a time and a place, of course, but action. But equally, the Sydney Opera House example, apparently it was little more than a doodle when they broke ground. You know, they were so keen to show progress and to, you know, to evidence that stuff was happening, that they got cracking before they had anything like the level of detailed plans in place to give themselves a fighting chance of actually delivering that project on time and on

Tara Khandelwal: 23:16

budget. Yeah, so it's all about that balance. It's also knowing when enough is enough. It's like, oh, when you've not done a little less. And having that framework and intuition, another thing I really liked about the book is, again, you know, as an entrepreneur, I'm constantly hiring people and training them, right? And oftentimes, you know, yeah, the decision making does always like, come after the top, where it feels like, okay, you know me and like Michelle and my other colleague, we are the one sort of like making all of the decisions and sort of driving the entire strategy, whereas we'd want everybody else to be involved as well. So I think this framework is really interesting to inculcate that and everything, because I think it's a universal problem, no matter how big or small the organization is. So that's another thing that really resonated with me in terms of the examples. As I mentioned, we really loved the example, so I wanted to actually know what was your process of gathering these examples, and which is what that one example that really stands out to you the most? Thank you.

Jennifer Sundberg: 24:18

So yes, it was. It was really hard trying to so I have a terrible memory at the best of times. You know, I can hardly remember what I did last weekend, so trying to delve back through 20 years of working with clients and boardrooms. Yeah, I wasn't naturally suited to it, and I had to. It took me quite a long time to to dig out memories and the far recesses of my mind and and to organize it, but it was also a lot of fun, and, and, and I think it for me, I actually very much enjoyed the process of just as we say in the book, it's only when you write something down that you very often discover whether it stands up to inspection or. Doesn't and, you know, I'd be pretty clear what I wanted to say. I draft it. I'd read it, and it was gobbledygook, and, you know, and I'd have to start again. And so I found the process of writing the book very cathartic. By the time I'd finished it, I felt clear what I was trying to say, but I thought I knew at the start that I really didn't know until I'd gone through the mental exercise and the rigor of trying and failing and eventually figuring it out. So so that was rewarding, but yeah, trying to actually recall and hunt down the stories. In fact, I remember one of the stories that they tell is about a client of ours who used to run a part of the immigration service and in the UK, and I remembered him telling me a story in a meeting room years ago about his experience going up against the selectivity hearing who wanted to take him to task in a very public, you know, kangaroo court type exercise to hammer him over the extraordinary waiting lists that and backlog for immigration applications. And he described that experience to me, and you know about what would have you know how all the questions were used as a they were used as a weapon, rather than as a means to understand and uncover and explore and and how, when you use weapons in that way, trying to catch you out. You can actually, if you're a pretty skilled opponent, you can buy them back again. You know, you can duck and dive and No, no greater revelations or truths is uncovered in that process, because it's a misuse and abuse of questions. I remembered him telling me that story, but I needed to get the details right, and so it was quite nice having an excuse. To call people up and take that for lunch and have a chat, to dive back into the stories that had intrigued me. And gives you license to be curious, and it gives you license to be, you know, to learn about other people's stories in the under the banner of writing a book, right? So, no, it was

Tara Khandelwal: 27:00

fun. And what about like, the second example? So there's a lot of, like, primary research that, you know, comes beyond clients, but then, for example, like the Gatorade example, sort of like process around finding about those,

Jennifer Sundberg: 27:14

yeah, I suppose it's a combination of mainly talking to people. Actually, I'm probably one of those people that I think through talking and through writing. So for me, it is a fairly collaborative process. And some of them were stories that I'd heard over the years that I hang somewhere in the back of my mind. And otherwise it was talking to during the period where we were thinking about writing the book, and then when we were writing it, you know, it becomes the thing on your mind, and you chat about it. And it's that funny thing, when you're, you know, when you're looking for something, you see it everywhere, don't you? It's just like when you hear a new word, you learn a new word, suddenly you find it pops up everywhere. And probably it was there before, but you weren't looking for it, so you didn't see it. And similar, similar thing, a sort of recency bias, isn't it? So, yeah, I think I was just on the lookout to the stories, and then you find they're everywhere. And I guess if what you're saying adds a truth to it, then you will find it played out all over the place. Yeah,

Michelle D'costa: 28:10

I think, I think your process sounds really, really cool. Um, and like you said, you know earlier, when I used to sort of learn a new word and I would notice it everywhere, honestly, I thought it was just me. It's good to know that it happens with everyone. But you know, what I'm also curious about is, I really loved how, you know, you sort of gathered this, you know, experience over all these years, and it's, you know, that you go back interview them and all of that. So I'm very curious about, how did you sort of, you know, reach the point of, let's say, publication, or even decide that you want to publish in India, and that too, with djco, and sort of, you know, what has the reaction been like, like Tara, and I really, really love the book. And we were actually discussing about, you know, how sort of this could really apply to, like, Indian companies and Indian boardrooms as well. But we wanted to know, sort of, why did you pick India?

Jennifer Sundberg: 28:55

Thank you. Well, honest truth, and you guys approached us, and we were thrilled. So we, we published the book originally in the UK and in the US, where we have most of our experience. And Jaco approached us, and when we when we learned more about your organization, your extraordinary history and heritage, and the fabulous authors that you've published, we felt ridiculously lucky and and utterly thrilled to be associated with you and to have the opportunity to reach a new audience, a huge audience. And there is nothing parochial about our message. If anything, you know, we draw an awful lot on ancient examples of you know, from the ancient philosophers, and what I think we're uncovering in this book are fundamental human truths around human behavior that transcends geography, it transcends cultures and nation states and no matter where in the world we are. Well, high quality thinking, well, communicated and focused on the things that matter most. Again, it make a difference. But I would be thrilled to hear from your readers what the cultural nuances are that you would add to this book. You know, where would you feel it would fit best, and where would you find it would not, you know, I think it'd be really interesting to learn more about that.

Tara Khandelwal: 30:21

Yeah, actually, that would be very interesting, because there's a lot of talk right now in India about, you know, work life balance, how companies operate. This is full controversy right now about a lot of senior leaders saying you have to work 70 hours a week, 90 hours a week. So yeah, I would love to know about more of your readers reactions, if you have them, yeah,

Jennifer Sundberg: 30:43

I think when it comes to bigger social themes, I think the other field I'm really interested in at the moment is around the way that we help the next generation to think critically, Given the very adverse conditions that I think they're walking into, by which I'm talking about social media, misinformation, disinformation, some pretty autocratic regimes in the world. I mean, we'll try and keep this out of politics, right, but I think we are all one of the things that you know my corporate life was based around, was that we are only as good as the information available to us, right? No matter how smart we are. You know, if we're presented with poor quality information, we'll take poor quality decisions. But there is one defense against that, which is, I suppose, a healthy cynicism and the ability to ask the right questions and questioning, building that questioning muscle back into kids, and making sure that, you know, unlike, I think my experience, it's not beaten out of them. I think that's probably the only defense I can think of against a pretty dystopian future in which next generation inhabit a world that is shaped for them by social media or by political the political elite and the message that they want to communicate. So I think it really matters. I think the way that we I think if you know, if I, if I could wave a magic wand and if I could engage in a bigger social discourse right now, beyond corporate boardrooms and corporate decision making, it would be that it would be looking at how we help children to hold on to and and really nurture that decision making, that that, sorry, that questioning instinct that they're given at birth. No, definitely.

Tara Khandelwal: 32:37

I think nurturing that questioning instinct is so important, and I've seen it in my own organization. You know, the more that people question, the more that I don't want you know them to say that, Oh, you know you are right all the time, because I don't have all the answers. Most of them, I don't even know. You know what's happening, what I'm doing. It's all sort of like trial and error, or you're trying out different things, you know, new products, whatever. And it's really helpful when people are on that journey with you. And you know, can have those critical thinking skills, it actually helps the organization way better. And what I really liked, and you said, you know, it's universal. And so some of the psychological frameworks that you explain were very interesting. And I've, I'm a student of psychology as well. So you explain things like bias, group thing, all of these things that can hamper collective intelligence. And one thing that I know, which I learned from this book, is something called belief perseverance, which I hadn't heard of before. And you said that you give the example of Bernie Madoff, who we all know is running huge Ponzi scheme. And you said that you know somebody even showed proof of it to the SEC, but because he was so big in the field, and because everybody believed that he's in a more investment manager, all of that proof fell to death yours. And I think that was a very interesting sort of fact. You asked

Jennifer Sundberg: 33:56

me what was my favorite story in the book, and it probably would be that one, which is ironic, because so what the book sets out is a playbook that I hope is is persuasive. It's you know, this playbook that you know, if you can help everybody think more critically, communicate more clearly, and focus it where it matters most, that you will achieve a lot, that you will move mountains, that you will be wildly, wildly successful as a collective. But then the inconvenient truth is, you look through history, and history is peppered with examples where all those things were present and yet good things did not follow. And how can that be right? And it's, it's either just deeply inconvenient or there's a lesson in it. And I, I think it's the latter. So the story that we tell in the book is, as you say, it's all about Harry Markopolos, who was a fund manager. He was being challenged by his bosses to up his game. And they were pointing at this competitor of theirs, Bernie Madoff, and saying, you know, can't you, can't you deliver results a bit more like him? And you know, he's really nailing it. I. Think we need a bit of that. Go find out what he's up to, and let's, let's copy it. So he did. So Harry took his instructions and looked closer at what was going on with this fund run by this guy, Bernie Madoff. And he says, you know, it took me four minutes to figure out that this was a fraud. He said it took me another four hours to mathematically prove it was a fraud, and he wrote a letter to the SEC, as you said, he titled this letter, the world's largest hedge fund is a fraud. So we've got, you know, really clear communication. Tick got really good critical thinking. Tick, it's focused on something that really matters. Did it work? No, it didn't work, because it turns out that, as you say, you know the SEC, they couldn't hear it. They couldn't imagine that Bernie Madoff, who was one of them, who's part of the establishment, they couldn't imagine the possibility that he could be a person being described in this letter. And so I think what this reveals is that great thinking, well communicated. That lands on deaf ears. Won't achieve anything. The other side have to be listening. And the point of that, and I think the useful lesson in that, is that you can't apply these principles in pockets. You can't I'm not saying you shouldn't try, but you know, if one person decides to try adopting all of the principles set out in the book. I'm not going to suggest it won't be helpful, but hopefully would be, but it won't be anything like as helpful as if you can create the culture in an organization or a team where everybody is engaged in the same learning journey of critical thinking, communication and focus, and everybody is open to the principle of questioning, deep questioning and challenge, and only then do you have the culture and the environment around you where others are open to hearing the value that you can then bring to the table. So I suppose it's because back also to my point about education and the next generation. This stuff matters at scale. It matters individually. But it really is about getting everybody to do this together, to create both an organization that can move forward together, as much as as much as a community and a nation.

Tara Khandelwal: 37:18

Yeah, and that, that brings me to the point about focus, which is your last section in the book. And you know, you've already explained how that's so important. So how does it actually happen? Because we've spoken about empowering people to think communication. You know, everybody's thinking it's, it's a recipe for chaos, right?

Jennifer Sundberg: 37:35

So how does it, yeah, yeah. And it also sounds like a bit of a contradiction in terms, so we're going to try, you know, we're going to tell everyone to think more, and then we're going to tell them what to think about that. You know, it kind of feels like we're giving freedom with one hand and taking it away with the other, but it's really important. So if I Yeah, so there's a Roman military history example that we share. The quote from a man called vegetius. He was a Roman military historian, and He is quoted as saying, The Romans were poorer, weaker, shorter and less intellectually astute than their neighbors, and yet they conquered all of them. They conquered all of them because they were organized. They were focused. They were aligned. So focus alignment, the ability to organize around a common destination, it's a superpower, but how do you do it? Was your question. How do you get everyone to think in a in a focused manner, without clipping the wings that require that are required for the thinking to be done? The person who asks the questions controls the conversation. So one of the ways that you can do it in a large organization is for some of the questions that permeate an organization to be top down. The answers are not given, but the questions are I'm going to give you a very concrete example. One of our clients was a FTSE 100 airline, and the chief exec had just taken it on, and this was an airline that had been very successful, but was not currently successful. They were still in the FTSE 100, but only just, and they had been run on a low cost, budget model, and cost had been chipped away, but the competitors had started to do the same thing, and the edge that they'd had had been eroded, and it was now just table stakes. Everyone ran low cost. Airlines were very common now, and they chopped away so much cost already that there really was nothing left to chop. So the new chief exec actually usually had to do something different. So up until that point, the very clear focus of the organization had been, had been profit, first, then customers, and then the people, the team, and she wanted to flip that round, because what she realized is she needed to transform the customer experience. The customer experience had been so cost driven that it had become pretty unpleasant, and if your customers start to hate you, it's going to be hard to build a successful business. So she had to win back the love of her customers, and to do that, she realized that what she needed to. Put at the top was not the customer, but the team, the people. You can't have a miserable, demoralized team delight customers. It's not going to work. So she flipped a model around, and instead of profit, customer people, she went people, customer, profit people. And the well being, happiness and the engagement levels of her team would be preeminent. So number one, most important thing that would, in turn, drive great customer experience, and that, in turn she believed, and she was going to, she was willing to punt it. This would drive the profits. But she needed to change the conversation quite radically. She needed to shift the focus. I mean, it's hard enough to achieve focus. It's a wholly different challenge and even bigger one, to shift focus of a large multinational, right? But she did it by changing the conversation in her organization, by stipulating, by dictating a question that was to become the question that everyone would grapple with in every meeting. You can't be in every meeting, controlling every conversation all the time as a chief exec, no matter how hard you work, no matter how many hours, you can't be everywhere all at once, but you can require a few things, and this was one thing she she mandated the question of, how do our people feel, and what can we do to better support and enable our people? Those two questions became evergreen in every meeting, every board meeting, every leadership team meeting, you know, every every site meeting, those two questions. So she was encouraging thinking, because she wasn't setting out the answers. It was up to everybody in the team to engage with those questions, think deeply about them, but she had the right to insist that those questions be taken very seriously, and that created the focus, and that drove the results. And she had six years of continued growth, and she doubled the market share of the organization in that time.

Tara Khandelwal: 41:39

Wow, that's a wonderful example. And I think, yeah, I'm learning a lot, and I learned a lot through the book, and a lot, you know, in this conversation as well, especially

Michelle D'costa: 41:50

because you mentioned the team, how sort of the team took precedence, right? Like, how the people matter. I think one example that really comes to mind, which I really, really like, because I think you've covered many different industries. Like you've covered sports, you've covered hospitality. So the one that I really like is, you know, you share this anecdote about working in the kitchen, and how, sort of, you know, you wanted to sort of reduce wastage, right? I think you've adopted the Kaizen basis, sort of, you know, which is a, you know, Toyota way. And I really liked how, sort of, you know, every person in the kitchen was, sort of like, you know, asked to contribute ideas. So, for example, the kitchen hand. So the kitchen hand is a person who, sort of, you know, washes the dishes, creates prep work, and does all of that. And I think when the kitchen hand suggested that, you know, if you actually ordered frozen salmon impacts of 10 instead of 100, you wouldn't be throwing out around 50 or 60 salmon, you know, on the days where you just needed to defrost a few. And that, that's actually a brilliant idea. And sort of, like another person in the kitchen, also sort of recommended, you know, moving the cheese shelf away from the wall. Because what used to happen is they would always reach out for the cheese, which is like, obviously easier to reach out to, and the ones behind would go rotten. And then he's like, Yeah, but it's just because the shelf is placed that way. Why don't you just move the shelf away from the wall, and then you can reach out to the cheese from both the sides. I thought that was, like, really cool. And And how often do you actually, you know, sort of listen to these ideas, or how often do you sort of think that they would add value? But it's really cool, and I really love that you sort of highlighted that.

Jennifer Sundberg: 43:24

And I think it's a I think those examples illustrate the point that, you know, no matter how smart the person at the top of the organization is or the board, they don't know everything. They don't have all the answers, they don't have all the information, and they never can. Back to what Sir John Timson said, you know, the people who are going to determine the fate of my organization, they're the people on the front line dealing with our customers every day, and my job is to empower them to make absolute best use of all of those extraordinary data points that they're getting that I'm never going to get, and giving them the skills and the authority to respond to the information in real time. If I can build a workforce that's capable of doing that, doing that, well, I'm going to be successful. And that's what he put his energies into, making that so and, yeah, those examples really make the point. At the top of an organization, particularly a multinational, you get, you know, the information is a summary of a summary of a summary of a summary. You're never going to understand those kinds of details, but collectively, those details can, can really move the needle.

Michelle D'costa: 44:25

Yeah, and I think that sort of, like, reminded me of one of the meetings we recently had at bound where we're sort of, like all of us, I think, like, you know, unmuted at the same time, and we sort of like shared our ideas. I really like, I sort of really enjoy, you know, sort of, let's say, workplaces, which sort of encourage you to speak right at the end of the day, sometimes your idea might not make it, because I believe the best idea always wins. So it doesn't matter who gives the idea. It can sort of like, you know, I mean, it doesn't matter, but the fact that you can speak out and then you can actually contribute an idea is really cool. So, yeah, I think, I think it's super fun when. Sort of, you know, like, like, I think, as you mentioned, it's sort of, you feel empowered, yeah. And

Jennifer Sundberg: 45:04

perhaps it's an elephant in the room. That we should mention is that, you know, you might be thinking, hang on, I know about successful businesses, and they're not what you're talking about here. When you look at the large Silicon Valley behemoths, they are mostly led by superstar chief executives, right? Superstar chief execs who are famous for taking big bets, big calls, making the big decisions and and I think I had this idea that you know that if you want to build a really successful business, you know, kind of Silicon Valley style, you need a superstar chief exec, and you need to get out of their way and let them move fast and break things. And everybody else's job is to row behind them and help execute on their brilliant ideas and strategies. That's what I assumed was the case. That's what I thought was going on, and I had an experience recently. The Chairman that we recently hired of our business used to be the chief of staff to Jeff Bezos, and after that, Eric Schmidt for about 20 years, and she shared first hand how very different in reality, these organizations are to what's presented on the tin. When you peel the onion and you look below the surface, what you see that's going on is something quite different, as she pointed out, the iPhone was not the invention or the idea of Steve Jobs. He didn't want to go into the mobile market. He got dragged there by colleagues who thought better. Warren Buffett didn't decide to back apple. He didn't want to back or invest in Apple, but one of his left tenants did, and he gave them the authority to make that call, to make that bet. And it turned out to be the best bet that Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway have ever made. Jeff Bezos didn't come up with the idea for Amazon Prime. Again, it was a it was a junior engineer at Amazon who came up with that. And what, what our chairman and Hyatt has said is that, you know, the vision and the confidence of these larger than life chief executives is incomparable. But what has made them as successful as they are is their commitment to helping everybody to think well and unquestionably, that is why they have been so successful. Because they can't be everywhere all at once, solving every problem, and because they also know that the end of the day, too much power concentrated in one person or one group doesn't just corrupt, it makes you stupid. I

Tara Khandelwal: 47:30

think that really resonated with me as well, because when you're leading company, oftentimes, like, I always want to hire people who are much smarter than me. Like, I want to be the, like, dumbest person in the field always, because that is when, like, you have that, that is when you can learn, otherwise you're just so stagnant. And since I don't have a boss about me, right? Yeah, the market is my boss. My employees are my boss, my clients are my boss. And I think that's really important for, you know, as a leader, also, to keep growing. So I really like this whole framework that you've come up with, because even as a leader, you're constantly then getting input and taking it forward and learning. Thank

Jennifer Sundberg: 48:10

you. And I think the the message of the book is that, you know, we all try our best to hire the best and smartest people that we can. What we don't all try, but we should all try, and many of us do, but just hiring brilliant people isn't enough. And in fact, one of the things you learn very quickly working with boards is that you can take a group of very intelligent, individually, very intelligent, capable people, and when you put them into the boardroom, something weird happens, and the sum of the parts is less than the individual pieces. Environment Matters. Context matters, and creating the environment that's conducive to everyone that you've bought into your team, everyone you've bought into your business, making sure that environment is conducive to them, using their brains and using them well, that doesn't happen by itself. And what the book sets out is, I say, hopefully, very practical, very simple, pragmatic things that you can do to create the right conditions for people to use their brains

Michelle D'costa: 49:03

Absolutely. Okay, cool. So this brings us to the last round of the interview. Jennifer, so it's a rapid fire round. You'll have to you'll have to be rapid you can answer in only one word, a few words or a sentence, okay, and no thinking allowed. I know your book sort of propagates thinking, but no thinking aloud. Here, you have to be rapid. Okay. So the first question, what are your top two leadership books to go

Jennifer Sundberg: 49:34

to? Oh, I would pick top two books, sapiens and any one of Plato's dialogs?

Tara Khandelwal: 49:42

Wow, it's very different. Yeah, I've read Sapiens, but not yet read any Plato. Okay, would you ever consider writing a memoir on your life? I

Jennifer Sundberg: 49:53

wouldn't. I find talking about myself really uncomfortable. I don't know why. What movie do? You

Michelle D'costa: 50:00

think depicts boardrooms and entrepreneurs the best?

Jennifer Sundberg: 50:04

Oh, oh, great, sorry. I mean, I recently watched succession, that's a good one, isn't it?

Tara Khandelwal: 50:10

Yeah, that's one, one. I think that does like, I mean, it's full of drama, yeah? So that's a good one. Egos, yeah, yeah. Okay, one thing you and your co writer agree on, even on a bad writing day, on

Jennifer Sundberg: 50:24

a bad writing day, two heads are better than

Michelle D'costa: 50:27

one. Oh, lovely. Okay, what's next? What's

Jennifer Sundberg: 50:31

next? Well, for me, that's actually a massive question, because I have handed on the reins of running broad intelligence to my co founder, Pippa beg who is extraordinary individual, and she is taking the business global, and she's taking it to the next level. And I'm right behind her, cheering her all the way, but I have chosen to step back and to spend more time with my kids and to chew on what I might do next. But the thing I'm thinking about at the moment is this question of, how do we help the next generation to be critical thinkers so that it's not just applied to executives, but more to society at large? I think you can't take it for granted, and without it, it's a fairly scary future that's

Tara Khandelwal: 51:17

a really great problem to be solving and super relevant, and can't wait to see what you write next, or definitely read, you know, anything that comes up next. So thank you so much for this interview. It was really interesting. I think I have learnt a lot, as I mentioned in the book, and all of these concepts have really got crystallized for me even more speaking to you. Thank you so much. Thank you

Jennifer Sundberg: 51:42

very much. Thanks for having me.

Tara Khandelwal: 51:44

Hope you enjoy this episode of Books and Beyond with bound.

Michelle D'costa: 51:48

This podcast is created by bound, a company that helps you grow through stories. Find us at bound India on all social media platforms.

Tara Khandelwal: 51:57

Tune in every Wednesday as we peek into the lives and minds of some brilliant authors from India and South Asia. So.