Voter Registration, Leading from the Inside Out, Squeezable Olive Oil

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It is Bloomberg Business Week, Carol. One of the most read stories on the Bloomberg terminal. Here's the headline. Taylor Swift brings two hundred and eighty three million fans to raise her thin twenty twenty four election. The world's biggest pop star through her support behind the Democratic ticket, energizing millions of her loyal fans. Yes, the campaign has started taking pre orders for the Harris Walls friendship bracelets.

That's true.

I'm serious. Wow, I don't I'm I saw a headline somewhere that they're selling pretty well. Oh my god, they might not even be available anymore. Speaking of friendship brace it's Taylor Swift. She's a cultural phenomenon. Totally think sold out concerts all over the world, her high profile relationship, what her presence has brought to the NFL. Perhaps that's why Democrats had for months speculated about Swift actually backing their ticket. Well, Natalie Trann is the co founder of

She did it?

I'd had that post was pretty phenomenal, and I love that she signed it off as a childless cat lady.

We're showing her right now on her screen for those people watching on YouTube and Bloomberg Originals.

And she said, I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walls in the twenty twenty four presidential election. I'm voting for at Kamala Harris.

Kamala Harris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.

I mean, it was pretty wild, and the timing, you know what was it less than a half an hour after the end of the debate, tell us about I want to take a step back your organization. You know, we said, in your words, create a cultural shift around voting in civic engagement. What does that mean, because some would say in terms of civics, we need to actually educate.

A fair amount of people about kind of how government works. But talk to us a.

Little bit about media literacy, Like, yeah.

Right, that's exactly what we talked about with David Weston. Tell us exactly what you guys are doing.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me and for the opportunity. You know, for us that I am a voter, We really wanted to make sure that we were building an organization that was going to be culturally relevant. We know that millennials and Gen Z will be the majority of potential voters in twenty twenty eight, and we know how much time we're all spending on our phones and on

I definitely want to hear about some of those. I want to start with impact, though, and just get an understanding of the baseline here and sort of where you're starting to what extent do we understand how millennials show up to vote in presidential elections? And I know we have less data on gen Z, but how have they shown up?

Yeah? I think it's that really is the key question. And I will say I think that sometimes millennials and gen Z get a bad rap, but they're really actually so active.

They're just showing up in.

Different ways than generations before them. We know that for this election cycle and many moving forward, youth vote will be the key vote, which is why so many campaigns are trying to figure out how they can really get in front of them and break.

Through the noise.

I'll just share a quick stat which I find is really phenomenal is millennials are spending one hundred and fifty seven minutes to day on social media and gen Z

We're doing, we're a little horrified buy these numbers here. I feel like the you know, Sunday morning, you wake up in a few hours after you wake up, you get that notification from that shows your screen.

Where's the day did I do with the math?

Right?

They're ticking and they're talking. I guess, Carol, is what the kids say, right, Elizabeth?

I know what was When I first read that, I thought it was is that one hundred and fifty seven minutes a week? And I had to read it a couple of times.

So no offense, but it makes me say, Okay, we've got a much more serious problem at hand.

That's for a different conversation.

So okay, but obviously you take that information and you've got to think about how do you reach those voters. I mean, is it as simple as just people under is it? Are they not registered? Do they not care?

Like?

What is it that moves the needle in terms of this group, because I think for a long time it was like they're candidates I just can't even.

Relate to, Right, There's definitely there's definitely a little bit of that. I think there's a lot of young people that don't necessarily see themselves reflect in the process and sort of what they've been hearing and seeing from the campaigns. You know, nearly nearly one in five young people have not yet been contacted by a campaign, So that just

But don't you feel like that's what go ahead?

Well, I was just going to say, I'm looking at the Pew Research Center, given that they have some good data on the US House and how the Senate is looking the meeting age of voting House lawmakers. This is in the current term fifty seven point nine years, so fifty eight and then the Senate is even older. Pulling that the meeting age is about sixty five point three, So there's room for those younger candidates to get in there, right.

You can understand.

So based on what you are doing and what you're seeing, I mean, did the candidates last night, do you think they reached a younger voter?

You know, I think I think We'll have to wait and see. I think that I think all campaigns are trying really hard to make sure that they are being heard. The majority of young people probably didn't watch the debates last night, and that's just not last you know, that's not about this election cycle. For most presidential debates, the average viewer is not of Gen Z or millennial age.

Yeah. I mean that's that's what's so amazing is sometimes people send me like screenshots from Instagram with news.

Well, and you know, I was thinking that it was sound like.

Sound like I'm so out of it, But but I was also.

Thinking like, I don't know, I think you watched all of it, most of.

It, Yeah, the debate, Yeah, yeah, I watched.

All of it.

And I know this is our job, but it's interesting, how many? But like, yeah, I know, I just I wait until everybody snips it and like I just read the clip.

Well, you can also kind of follow real time on Twitter slash acts and see what kind of is resonating with people, like with Mitt Romney's you know, Binders full of Women comment from twenty twelve, right, right, but that was huge.

Sometimes you watch all of it to get a better feel of I don't know, it's just interesting, like when we're.

Just yeah, that's a good point. News snippets versus the whole thing.

Yeah, are the high points, Natalie, Interesting stuff.

Natalie Trent, co founder viam a voter joining us from LA This is Bloopberg BusinessWeek.

Well, our next guest has thirty years of experience at McKinsey and Company, focusing on projects related to organizational change in companies that range from high tech to banking, healthcare, industrial, and more. He's a senior partner in McKenzie and senior partner at mckenzen Company codean of the CEO leadership program the Bower Forum. He's also got a brand new book out. It's called The Journey of Leadership, How CEOs Learned to Lead from the inside out rameshing of Austin. Welcome to

I'm good, Thank you for having me.

It's good to have you with us. My first question is very basic. There's four co authors on this book. How do you write a book with three other people?

It's actually a fantastic experience.

I've learned a lot from my co authors, Dana, ham, Swanna and Kirk and you know, obviously some of us took the lead on different chapters, but bringing the different perspectives together was a fantastic learning experiences.

All right, So which chapters did you write?

So?

I wrote the chapter on humility, that's one of our first chapters. I wrote the chapter on vulnerability. I wrote the chapter on control. There's an illusion. Happy to talk about that. But I'm also as codean of the Power Forum. I've been in the journey of many many CEOs have gone through the program. More than five hundred CEOs have gone through it. So I have a good view of all the chapters.

How many leaders come to you, guys, and they're not great leaders to begin like.

By the time you become a leader in that sense, and you're like a leader enough to hire McKinsey. You've obviously done somethings right.

You have done somethings right, and I think you've got a good achievement orientation.

You've accomplished something, but yet you want to learn.

So people come to the Bower Forum, people come to our leadership programs because they at least have that initial sense of wanting to learn.

So there is some self selection in that process.

Okay, So talk a little bit about just the experience of sort of understanding how what makes a leader successful. Oftentimes we talk to CEOs of companies, especially honestly, especially this time of year because it's like book season. Yeah, so we're talking to like we spoke to Anchow yesterday, former CEO of AT and T business. Like these these CEOs they spent three decades at a company with Andrew Liveris earlier this week from he spent years at DOW.

Yeah, you know, we have stories of both CEOs have retired and we have stories of CEOs are still active. And I think what we found is, and this is the concept of inside out leadership that we've described in the book.

Successful leaders, especially in a world that is changing so fast.

With complex geopolitics and technology disruptions, they think a lot.

About who they are, what is their purpose.

And use that to inspire their teams, inspire organizations. So our big learning was the model of the imperial CEO no longer exists. And these leaders, and Androw is a great example, think a lot more about their purpose and use that to consciously inspire their teams and their institutions they're leading.

What about inspiring just by paying really good wages and giving benefits and making you know, I just think about for workers. You know, it's interesting coming off the debate, right, It's like the economy, the economy, the economy, and even though wages have gone up, there are workers out there who don't feel like they are participating, especially when it comes to publicly held companies in the fortunes of those companies.

You're absolutely right. I think these leaders think about.

Stakeholders and have to think about all stakeholders, their employees, their team, society, more broadly, their customers. I'll give you an example of Frank Desuza, who was, you know, one of the co founders of Cognizant, you know, Indian It and BPO company, taught a lot about even if a frontline software programmer reached out to him, he would always,

So completely agree with you.

Even in the manufacturing I'm with you. I think the successful companies are thinking about creating value, you know, not just for shareholders, but for employees as well. I see this even in private equity companies are thinking much more about broader participation in creating value.

How do they justify that from a cost perspective.

I think all our research at McKinsey shows that deeper engagement investing in employees taking care of them, benefits well being. That absolutely leads that deeper engagement leads to better productivity, better performance, better financial returns.

There's a lot of research that confirms.

That you do talk to CEOs, and you mentioned the head of Cognizance, but I'm just curious talk to us about some of the CEOs that you did talk to for the book and what you wanted to get from them, and include.

Yeah, Frank is actually in the book, but beyond Frank, you know a couple of other CEOs.

Tefan Bansal of Moderna.

You know, when he wanted to you know, he had the aspiration of developing the vaccine. They'd never manufactured a vaccine before, so he told his head of manufacturing, tell.

Me what support you need to make a billion.

Those are the vaccines and and you know, the head of manufacturing almost fell off the chair. But they also realized that, you know, Stefan normally sped an aggressive ambition, but was there to support them, roll off his sleeves, talk problem with them. Another is Wendy Copp of Teach for America and Teach for All. You know, when she

Of education equity is the same.

But she's had to tailor the model and inspire these leaders to have the kind of impact in these sixty countries that she never thought was possible fifteen twenty years ago.

A lot of your own work has focused on organizational change. As I mentioned in the introduction, this is just another way to describe how companies organize themselves from a human capital perspective. And I'm wondering over your three decade career at McKinsey, what the biggest shift in how organizations have realized how they can be more efficient. What is that shift?

Then?

I think the biggest shift is the notion of purpose. So we often talk about people purpose performance. I think these institutions have realized that they need to figure out what is their purpose and how do they help the people in the organization reflect on what gives them meaning, whether it be their own development, their teams, their bosses.

The communities around them, and how do they tie that purpose back to the individual.

That's when they can unleash the most from the people and deliver sustainable performance. Again, moderna is a great example, and in healthcare. It's probably easier when you're doing work in life sciences or healthcare, but helping people see the value of what they're doing can then unleash their fullest potential.

I thought it was interesting there was a chapter, chapter ten, everyone keeps things from the Boss, and it talks about as somebody becomes the CEO, they really no longer have peers who might.

You know, inform them, keep.

Them, say to them, say no to them, or I know a lot of instances of that that I've seen play out over the last few years. It's so free. Why is this nobody's saying no around this guy?

You can tell right, or say that's a great idea.

That's a great idea of boss.

So you know, you get in this vacuum, and you know, I think there's a lot of either founder led companies or founder created companies that ultimately get into a problem where nobody wants to tell them don't do anything.

Yeah, don't tweet that exactly.

No, I just think about you know, here we're go looking at companies like Starbucks and Chapotle went through period, you know, like these companies so identified with their founders for a long time and went through some tough times. I don't know, what do you what do you tell the leaders to make sure they don't get in that predicament?

How do they not get in that predicament?

You're absolutely And by the way, this is issue is not just in founder led companies. It's actually many companies and not just the CEO. Even as you're getting more senior people will start holding back and don't share the truth with folks. So I think we had the story in that chapter about the media company CEO who surrounded himself with truth tellers, and these truth tellers were people

And he used that knowledge to.

Set the strategy, inspire people, and direct his own team.

Hey, how has the organizational structure at Mackenzy changed in your career.

I think McKinsey, our mission and values have stayed the same in these thirty years. Obviously, the scope of work we do, the geographies we are in that has expanded quite a bit in response to our clients are asking and you know, we're we are in a waiting we're experimenting. We've invested a lot in technology, and then we remembered that purpose into what we do. That's become much more important for us now. So those are some of the shifts that I've seen in these studies.

Listen, we want to get back to our guest thirty years at mackenzie and Company. Senior partner at mackenzie Codine of the CEO Leadership program the Bauer Forum.

He's the co author of a new book.

We've been talking about the Journey of leadership, how CEOs learned to lead from the inside out. We are still talking with Ramesh Shinavasan. Hey, Ramesh, one thing I want to ask you, and I think it's safe to say we've done a lot of reporting a lot of other folks about the consulting industry. Overall, McKenzie and others kind of going through a bit of a rethink, a redesign McKenzie. We talked about earlier this year Bloomberg reported out, you know,

And secondly, is it tough.

Sometimes when McKinsey has been under the microscope to kind of give advice to other companies, And how does that make it kind of interesting the conversations.

You know, I've been in the industry for thirty years, and I think the industry goes through its own cycles.

But I see robust demand. You know, I talked about changing.

Geopolitics, technology disruptions, climate change. All of these are changes happening in the world, and our clients are looking for new creative ways.

Of driving growth.

Our vision is to help clients deliver sus thingable inclusive growth in the world. I think in that journey, we're seeing robust demand. We're also having to shift our own practices. Frankly, if anything, we're you know, when clients look at us and see some of the changes we're doing, see the way in which we're adjusting ourselves. You know, part of it is we're taking some of our own medicine. And I see demand continuing to be robust.

I'm enjoying what I'm doing.

You know, the book is getting great response from people, and that's what keeps me going.

All Right, One thing we wanted to do, We've done this with some other folks that have written leadership books, is talk about some of the leaders that are out there. And I want to start with the two leaders that were up on stage in Pennsylvania last night, the debate stage, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump. How would you rank them as leaders? What advice would you give to them in terms of their leadership skills or lack thereof.

You know, I'm not a political commentator, I'm not an expert. I'll leave it to other experts. I think our belief, like I said, is this concept of inside out leader leadership where we see successful leaders in business, in in social leadership, in all spheres thinking about their own purpose, who they are, and using.

That to inspire teams, inspire the world.

That's the model we see, we understand well, and that's what we're sharing with the world.

Do you think that though these are two candidates, either of them, one of them, both of them that inspire like the electorate and citizens.

They obviously have, like citizens, different parts of the world that they inspire, right, so you know they resonate with different parts of the world and different parts of America as well.

All right, so maybe easier, let's pick a leader that we talk about. Where do you want to go, Tim, I want to talk.

About Elon Musk. I mean, he's someone we talk about each and every day. He's got several companies including SpaceX, Tesla of course the boring company. He's got x formerly known as Twitter, Say Neuralink. Didn't say neuralink yet there you go, that's one of his companies x AI as well. When you look at Elon Musk, what do you see in terms of leadership?

I mean, I see a leader who comes up with ideas, innovating bold, so many attributes that are interesting and useful to learn from.

What about ways that you think he could be a better leader?

Again, I have not studied Elon Musk, so again I'm not I don't think I'm an expert at at Elon Musk specifically.

I'll go back to what we see leaders do.

I think for us, our leadership model starts with leading styff who am I, you know, being more self aware, being aware of like what are my strengths, what are my areas?

How can I improve?

Like I said right at the beginning, that's why people come to the Barer Forum and other leadership programs we do, and then using that to lead teams, inspire teams. You know I already mentioned at least our belief is the model of the imperial CEO is no longer sustainable, and then using that to inspire institutions, inspire.

Change in the world.

That's the model of sustainable leadership we've seen, we've studied, and we share with leaders who.

Come to us.

Ramesh, what are some takeaways that folks who don't necessarily lead organizations at the top, but maybe managers who have small teams or who are early on in their careers, what are some takeaways that they can get from the leaders at the top of their game, who you've written about, you've studied, you've worked with.

Yeah, our book is actually meant for a wide spectrum of leaders. Leaders frankly who are in schools today, Leaders who are early in their career, leaders who are more senior. My advice would be, you know, focused not just on academic success and achievement, but think about your own purpose.

You know, what do you want to accomplis in.

The world, What what service you want to provide to the community around you, and and bring that sense.

Of purpose to the to the institutions you're part of. Ask a lot of questions.

Uh.

You know, when when.

I meet a lot of younger colleagues who are coming into McKenzie, I tell them exercise the obligation to dissent. That's one of our key principles within mckensey. Ask a lot of questions, understand how things work, get invite a lot of feedback and coaching, and use that to improve and grow.

That's what I advise younger leaders.

Interesting stuff.

I mean, listen, a lot of leaders right like looking for advice and trying to figure out in an environment where things can change a lot a lot thrown at you.

Uh, and if you're publicly held.

You can be out if the stock price isn't doing well, or.

Maybe they keep paying you even if the stock is coming down. We've seen situations like that before too. We have seen that.

Ramesh, Thank you so much.

Ramesh Shrinavasen, who said senior partner at Mackenzie and Company. The book is called The Journey of Leadership, How CEOs Learned to Lead from the Inside app This is Bloomberg.

You're listening to Bloomberg BusinessWeek with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio and Television.

It is Bloomberg Business Week. Like I said, it's time to talk olive oil. I'm not talking posa olive oil. Olive oil, yeah, oil, olive oil, yeah, Popeye not Popeye. It's what Amanda Mole describes as the global olive oil lobby. We're gonna get to that in a minute. Today olive oil is in every kitchen. It's nearly a seven billion dollar market that's still growing significantly. But there's a little drama.

That's what we really.

Want to know.

You get invited very luckily to a house here. In my experience, that's how you get here.

Is that a real background or is that one of those fake zoom backgrounds?

That is real?

Oh wow, for those people who are not watching on youtubeer Bloomberg originals, it's the most iconic idyllic you know. It's the epitome of a background is showing out and enjoying the sun.

Okay, come over.

I thought it was gonna be an olive oil convention.

It's not an olive oil convention. I think she's just having fun and she's taking some time to join us, which I really appreciate. Okay, can you talk a little bit because I tease this, this global olive oil lobby. We you know, everywhere every kitchen you go to, not commercial, not commercial kitchen, but every like home kitchen you go to has a bottle of olive oil in it. It wasn't always this way. Can you talk a little bit about what's happened over the last three decades or so, right?

It recently has the nineteen nineties when when I was a kid informing my my own tastes in food, all the oil was sort of a gourmet ingredient. It was for people who had like a real interest in international cooking, or people who had lived overseas or had family from overseas, especially Southern Europe. But it was not like it was not something that just sat in every kitchen in America or in this case, over over half of kitchens in

Then I gotta stay in my own home, like there was a transition from Crisco my parents, my mom would use for like making French fries or fried chicken and so on and so forth, or fried fish. And then it got to those big cans of I can't remember the.

Olive oil, but it was olive oil. It wasn't like eventually, wasn't a vegetable oil.

You went through some vegetable We went through all these different phases. But now I know my own home for the most part, it's all olive oil.

Yeah.

Crisco, fascinatingly also sort of an invention of convenience. It was an industrial by product, which is why it existed. We used a lot of that when I was a kid because I'm from Georgia, so there's a lot of Crisco available in my household. But now my mom cooks with olive oil. It was it was a very very effective set of junkets marketing effort.

Basically, how big is the olive oil market.

In the US it's seven billion dollars, but the US is still a minority player globally in the olive oil market. It is many many times that around the world per capita, Spain, Greece, Italy all eat, all consume like many many times what Americans consume. But we still are a big player because we import almost all of our olive oil. So for those countries, the American market is very very important.

Okay, Well, we got to talk about the next evolution of olive oil, which is what your story for Bloomberg BusinessWeek focus is on. It's the olive oil in a squeeze bottle. Talk to us about what's going on with Andrew Bennin and Graza.

Sign me up man.

Well, Gaza debut just a couple of years ago, and they make olive oil that is mostly from the Spanish picule olive, which is a very common varietal that is used in olive oil. And their real insight when they were developing this product was that olive oil packaging leaves a lot to be desired in the market. Up until this point, there had been plastic bottles that were like not squeezable, that were mostly just bulk hard plastic containers, the kind of thing that you would see at Costco

All it took was putting it in a bottle throw So.

Wait, is it just about the squeeze bottle or is it actually good ten seconds? I mean, is it a good stop or is it just because I can squeeze it?

Now?

The all oil is pretty widely brid carded is good. The New York Times Wirecutter has it as their top pick. But the squeeze bottle is really important.

What we go home and put I have a big, huge can from Costco of olive oil, and you go put it in a squeeze bottle like the chefs do, as Amanda writes about Amanda Mole love it when you join us, especially when you're like on vacation. This is so cool. Thanks. She's Bloomberg Business Week senior reporter writing about this

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