Malcolm Gladwell - The Tipping Point

Hi, it's Tony Chapman, and welcome to that special edition of Chatter That Matters in collaboration with the Toronto Chatter of the American Marketing Association. And our guest today, Malcolm Gladwell. And our timing couldn't be better because Malcolm Gladwell that been inducted into Canada's Marketing Hall of Legends. Testament to a career where his insights, his compelling narrative, and his research that defined so many conversations, not just in business corridors, but across

society, and to millions of people around the world. It's actually better as a species if we're trusting that if we are suspicious. It makes better sense as a species if we're trusting. Because think about it, virtually everything that we do of value in the world requires that we do have that kind of implicit faith in the honesty of others. You can't have a successful relationship. You can't cooperate with others. You can't build

civil society. You can't start a company. You can't do anything unless you're willing to place your faith in others. His books from the groundbreaking The Tipping Point to his introspective Talking to Strangers, Malcolm invites us to see beyond the mundane, to explore how small changes can ignite significant shifts, and how misunderstood moments can shape

our lives. Malcolm's genius lies in uncovering hidden patterns of human behavior, and his ability to weave these insights into stories that Matters, stories that challenge us, that inspire us, and provoke. As we chat today, we'll discover the inspiration behind his most pivotal moments, and the personal insights that guide his exploration of complex social truths. This is Chatter That Matters with Tony Chapman, presented by RBC. Malcolm Gladwell,

welcome Chatter That Matters. Thank you. Happy to be here. 1st of all, I wanna just congratulate you for being inducted into Canada's Marketing Hall of Legends. There's a 100 luminaries in there. And, I mean, they use the word marketing, but it really is a hall of extraordinary builders and visionaries and thought leaders. So we're just delighted you're going to be taking your place that at our 20th anniversary.

I am delighted as well. I'm very honored. It's testament to a career where I believe you, your narrative has crossed so many genres from business borders to society, academia, and I think it's just testament to the fact that you can cross so many different areas, and every one of them has a great appetite for what you do. I'm fascinated by your work because it's this incredible fusion of left brain and right brain. One of my first questions is is that because this

DNA of your parents is roaring through you? And I wanna start maybe first with your mother, Jamaican, and she really had this sense of culture, that she really wanted to level the playing field, that she really wanted to let people know that we're all part of the human race. Yeah. I think that's a fair estimate, a fair description of my mother's perspective. She's by

profession, a marriage and family therapist. And I assist, you know, Chatter I think is if you're looking for some kind of contribution of my mother's that way I'm thinking, the way I think, I think that's probably where you should start. I mean, she's someone who is profoundly curious about the human condition, about the ways in which people relate to each other, about, the kinds of struggles people have

and how to fix them and how to help them. I mean, these are it's almost that perfect preparation for a journalist to have someone who's had who has that that range of interest Key be your be your own mother. And, you know, she wrote

her memoir, Brown Face Big Master, I believe it was titled. In an article I read about it, you said that was also instrumental in the sense that she was, in some ways, hoping that you would continue to carry on that I don't wanna even use the word battle, but carry that torch forward to say that empathy and concern from one another is something that she felt was a very important attribute to, give to her son. Her book was probably

the first adult book I read. By definition, it's gonna have an enormous

impact on me. And it's a book that's very, very, it's funny, you can you can trace up, I think a bright line from that book to the books that I write, because it's a very much a book about an individual in the context of their world and environment, you know, where she's describing the kind of, the collision between who she was and what she believed and the place she found herself, the places she found herself, first Jamaica and then England, in the fifties and

early sixties. And those are themes that I continue to explore on my own, that idea that there is is something very interesting happens when who we are meets where we are. And, you know, that

vein that you mine, you know, I often use the word insight. You just You remind me sometimes of Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David in the sense that they call it a show about nothing, but when you watch the show, you realize it was something quite extraordinary happened, that they found something about how somebody thought, felt, or did that you draw parallels to. And that on the other side of it, though, it's not just that

narrative. It's kinda your dad, the mathematician coming through because you back so much of those insights with with research and diving deeper into what you could have just written a book on intuition, but you seem to really combine that left brain and right brain. You can't have a father who is a mathematician and not also have a realize that your arguments have to have some rigor. You know, mathematics is all about, it's about proof. It's about showing how you reach your conclusion.

It's about logic, it's all of those things. So it's easy I think to get lost in stories and descriptions when you're writing about people and their motivations. And not realize that, oh, you have to anchor what you're saying in something solid. You know, I've always tried to kind of find find the science that supports the arguments that I'm making. So there's something solid in what I'm writing about, not such as Malcolm sounding

off. Have you ever abandoned something because you fell in love with this in sight? You really felt that this was something to to really explore, that that deserved a book. And yet, as you started doing research, it challenged some of that and and made you question whether this was in fact a branch on a tree that could turn into something. No, really because I Tony to start with the science. So I find my ideas come from reading the scientific

literature and finding things that already have support. So it's not that I have a notion and then I go looking. It's that, I go looking and then have a notion. And as you're starting to create this book or this body of work, and I'm you know, I look at you're right.

I mean, when I think of Tom Matters' In Search of Excellence and Jim Collins' From Good to Great, I mean, you know, when you started off with the tipping point, did you go out ever imagining that you would have something that would become part of people's vernacular, that Chatter almost overnight, people would start framing their situations, their circumstances, the momentum that might be behind a brand

or a career as as the tipping point? I mean, I I, no one was more taken by surprise than I was, particularly with my first book, you know, I just came, seemed to come out of nowhere. I was just trying to describe something that interests me personally. You know, I was living in New York City and one day New York City was one of the most dangerous big cities in North America, and the next day it wasn't. And I just found that so bizarre and so inexplicable that I wanted to write about it.

But I it never occurred to me that there would be some would have the kind of cultural reverberation that it did. I wanna back it up now because it led to the tipping point. I that no idea how much work you did as a journalist prior to it. But you go to the University of Toronto, and you take a history Three. Mhmm. And then you move very quickly south of the border and within very short order. I mean, you're not covering, you know, a cat and a

tree. The work and that assignments they're giving you continue to grow as the papers that you start working for. So if you could just give us frame that sense of Chatter trajectory, and what was behind it that you could have so much momentum at such a young age? I got a job out of university, with a little tiny magazine in Bloomington, Indiana. I lasted there about 7 months, and then I got fired. And then I went to Washington DC and worked for a think tank for about a year or

so. And then I went to work for a little obscure, another obscure little magazine. And all the time I was freelancing though, for more serious magazines for things. And I caught the attention of an editor at that Washington Post. It was a time when the Washington Post was that heyday of newspapers when they were enormously profitable places, and they were hiring. You know, I can't I got very lucky. That the story

by story doesn't happen today because newspapers aren't hiring. No way they were hiring back then. But, you know, when I went to work at the Washington Post in 1987, they were one of the most profitable big companies in the country. So they had resources that they were, and they're willing to take chances on young, unproven Matters. And they were interested in telling different kinds of stories because they could. And I got there right at

the at the right time. And you're right. I was I avoided the normally, when reporters come in, they get assigned to the metro section, and they do. They write about casting trees and and, school board meetings. But I became a business reporter, which is was a non glamorous role at That Washington Post. But it was an incredible opportunity for a young reporter because I got to write about things on the national stage. That just greatly

accelerated my, my growth as a journalist. Did you ever feel that the time an imposter, especially when you're going to The Washington Post, as you said, and you could clearly argue one of the top newspapers in the world, and then you're walking in to cover business Three, and you're not necessarily going in with a a Wharton RBC, or you're going in with a, you know, a Rolodex of of contacts. You're kinda just having to find your own way. And was there ever

a time when you went, what am I doing here? Or did you always have that sort of inner confidence that there was a Tony, I could find it, and I could write about it? I'm not someone who's generally plagued by self doubt. And also, I felt like I was playing with house money. I mean, I was I was in the US. I had never imagined that I would RBC. I never imagined I'd have a job in journalism. I never imagined

I'd be hired by the Ouachita Bose. It seemed like such a inexplicable series of events that brought me to where I was that I, you know, if it all fell apart, I wouldn't feel like I had failed. I would have just thought, oh, things have just gone back to normal. I was, even several years into my time at the Washington Post, I was still very seriously considering going to business school, which had been my goal for quite some time. So I didn't, it took me a while to kind of

commit to what I was doing. I just so was just, it was more a lark than anything else. It was, I never kind of took it seriously enough to get to the stage where I might have imposter syndrome. One of the reasons we do these videos with the people in the

legends generation coming up. And is that do you think that is a lesson in life for them to take maybe take some of the pressure off of those first 5 years or 10 years of your career and just go into Three, maybe not having the same confidence you did to say it was a lark, but just to go in there with to learn and experience and enjoy versus wondering what the next move on the chessboard will be? The most important thing I did and have done my entire career is I've always chosen the path that

was the most enjoyable. I think you have to have fun. And when you're having fun, I think you do your best work and you're most appealing to Matters, and you learn the easiest. And so I just avoided things that I thought that I wouldn't enjoy. Now, by which I didn't mean that I, you know, I was avoiding all the kind of necessary apprenticeship, but I thought the apprenticeship was fun. I mean, I think I, you know, I enjoyed the fact that I didn't know anything about newspaper writing, and I got

to learn. I just thought that was kind of thrilling that I got to master some new and there are all these brilliant people around me who are more than happy to teach Key, and I learned something else, which is that people do wanna teach young people. At least I had imagined that the working world would be hostile to you if you're you were starting out that somehow people would feel like it was a waste of time or a chore to teach young people what

they were doing. I I I always found the exact opposite that senior people love nothing more than passing on. Once I realized that, that the system is set up to make you succeed if you just are enthusiastic and willing to work hard. You know, the connected tissue of of the American Marketing Association is this sense of

mentorship. That's what the Toronto's Matters known for. Does it take a certain type of individual to be open to be mentored so that the people that have that knowledge are saying, I'm willing to invest in you, or do you think it's just something that we should all, as a society, realize it's out there if we just raise our hand and say we're looking for it. What's what's fairly universal is the desire of older people

to teach, to pass on what they know. I almost feel like that's an evolutionary society could not have survived as long as it has, and grown as it has over the last 100 of 1000 of years. If we weren't hardwired to want to pass along our expertise to young people. That's not cultural or specific to certain individuals. That's baked into us. The challenge is on the receiving end. Are you willing to learn from people like that? Are

you is your mind open? Are you willing to work hard? Are you willing to make mistakes and not get discouraged? You know, I I think that all of the onus is on the is on the receiving party, not the sending party. Do you think in our society, in the western society, we are that open of an exchange between the

elderly? I'm not talking about our indigenous population, but just in general, the western, maybe it's framed as Hollywood's western society, compared to some of the, you know, Asian and South Asian societies where it seems like the elderly are revered and the lessons in life are part of the journey of learning? As we speak, the 2 candidates for president in the United States are respectively, that, late 70s early 80s, or whatever it is. So I don't know, it seems like the elderly are occupying

some fairly significant positions in the West. I know what you're saying, I know that there are cultures that consciously elevate elders to a position of respect. But I, I, I think that we do the same. We just are not as kind of formal about it. I still, you know, I'm 60 and I still find myself deferring to people older than myself who have had more experience. I mean, maybe the thing that's crucial is to disconnect age and experience. I think

that the issue is not how old the person is. The Tony is, do they know more than you? Have they seen more? Where where that is the case, I think that most of us are willing to, to learn. And where did the movie you're at the Washington Post, and your career is moving, and yet you make another big move in your journalistic career to that New Yorker. Yeah, I had moved to New York to be the New York correspondent for the Washington Post and I wanted to stay in New York and that was gonna be

difficult if I stayed with that Washington Post. But I also realized that I was better suited for magazine writing and book writing that I was for daily journalism. I was never a great daily reporter. It takes a certain degree of of energy and Compromise, I have to believe too. Yeah. And ultimately, I realized, you know, I wanna write things that are longer and take more time. What I do

or more kind of thoughtful pieces. And so I, you know, I I I had learned what I felt I needed to learn from these Matters, and I I I was ready. This is when I was in that thirties. And you were becoming quite famous. Articles you were writing in that magazine were well received, But that's another big jump moving to that first book, as you said, the tip the tipping point. And and was it really because you saw how quickly New York had tipped for the better? Yeah. That was the impetus.

I just was so mystified by it. You know, I got to New York in Three, and it was a frightening place. And then by 96, it wasn't frightening anymore. I just find it so weird. It really did feel like an epidemic had passed. And, I decided to take that metaphor seriously. What if it really actually was an epidemic? Well, how do epidemics behave? You know, that was

that kind of, thought process I was following. That got me going, and then I decided, you know, there was a a million different directions sort of presented themselves from there. It just began to occur to me that I didn't understand why when we talk about contagious things, we confine our conversation to viruses or to to diseases. So many different things are other things, ideas, trends, song lyrics, are contagious in precisely the same way. I mean, I talk in the book about the word yawn.

If I say the word yawn long enough, you will start yawning. Exactly. That's an incredibly contagious word. Our guest today, Malcolm Gladwell. Just think of Malcolm's body of work, that groundbreaking tipping point, that introspective talking to strangers. He invites us to see beyond the mundane. Key even explores how small changes can have a material impact on our lives and livelihood. What I love about your writing, is the way you

bring characters to life, almost like it's fiction. You know, like Paul Revere, and you're and you're you're riding with that. And and where did that come from? Because that just started honing it as you started writing longer form with the magazines, or is that something that you were always from your history lessons in the past and the University of Toronto stuff that you just said the character development is so important that people don't buy

yet another business book and read a chapter and weigh down their end tables. They're they're gonna get caught up in the story and ride with me. I think it comes from the New Yorker. That was something I learned. I began to study other writers that I loved and try and learn from them. Janet Malcolm, Michael Lewis, Adam Gopnik, all of whom that was their gift was,

was capturing someone's character. And, you know, I I clearly consciously read their read their articles or their books, their journalism, and tried to figure out what they were doing and how I could kind of, learn to do the same thing. It did not it was not something that was in my repertoire before I, started taking magazine writing serious. Was there more of your dad or more of your mom coming through at that time of your life, or you've always felt this sort of

balanced? Because when I read about your parents, I said, now I understand how you put these these pieces together. I think it was always a balance. I mean, at various times one one legacy may be in slight ascendancy over another, but I think in general, it's always been those 2 forces propelling me forward. The tipping point just I mean, it just takes off. It's it's a multimillion, bestseller. I have to believe

your life changes dramatically at that point. No. Not really. I mean, I just I continue to do to write for Three New Yorker for another, 10 years or more. It didn't change the kind of fundamental task of being a working journalist. It gave me confidence that what I was doing had a constituency, so that changed. You know, doors opened more easily if I wanted to talk to someone, if they knew, they know, someone knows who you are, they're more willing to

talk to you. So that was easier, but it didn't alter much more than that. It's funny. It's kind of like literary success is a different kind of success than other other professional success. It's not a it's not a clear hierarchy. You know, you join the group of people who have written books, but it's not like, you know, the legal profession where you could point to someone who is the great rainmaker or the great trial lawyer of the generation or the great judge.

There's not the same thing going on, I think in the literary world. And how hard was it Because I have to believe that you were suddenly in demand to come and speak at my conference. You know, we want Malcolm Gladwell. We wanna we wanna know the thinking behind the tipping point. Was that a was that a hard move for you to make, or did that come quite naturally as well? Well, that was a real learning curve. I mean, I had to kind of I did speaking for a couple of years, and

then I decided that I would take it seriously. So I began to very consciously prepare in a different way to learn a lot more about the people I was, you know, I think the that in the first wave of speaking, people just go and they give a spiel about their book. It's the same spiel every time up. And I began to realize that that was not a way to have a sustained speaking career. And so I committed way more time and attention to my speaking, because I realized how central it was

to getting my name out there and also how much I enjoyed it. It's way more enjoyable when you do take more time and you understand what your audience wants and you try and tailor something. That's so it could be useful, you know, so it's people, but talk should not be about you advertising your wares. It should be about you understanding what your audience needs. You know? Why did they bring you here? And what was the most wonderful

thing someone has said to you after a speech? Nothing, you know, just in general. If people enjoy a clear enjoying themselves, you know, like if they're laughing, if they're clapping at the end, if they come up to me and I just you when you're talking, you know this, you look out in the room and you could tell whether they wanna be there or not. And if they're not on their phones, nodding off, then and you have their attention, then you've you've succeeded. That's that's what I that's really

what I'm looking for. You know, this attention is a Key because I'm finding now that the audience is really often very disengaged from life because they've got the world with an arms race of desire. Have you changed your speaking style? Have you have you adjusted and adapted based on that next generation coming in, you know, wanting content at the speed of life? No. I'm not sure I agree with you, actually.

I think what's going on is there's a I think attention spans have grown at one extreme and shrunk at the other Three. That what we're doing now is toggling back and forth between I mean, the same generation that watches 10 second TikTok videos will also watch a 10 part miniseries on Netflix. And spend 36 hours hammering down a video game for sure. I think what's gone on that way is the middle.

I think people will commit to something that's compelling, or they wanna be entertained by something that's immediate. And they will happily go back and forth between those two states. So I watch a lot of biographies, of artists, and I'm always fascinated by the next move. And, you know, I have to follow-up that hit album with another album. How hard was it for you to get going on a second book knowing that in some ways you're gonna be judged by the success of your

first? I don't remember feeling any great anxiety about it. I just remember that I took my time in figuring out what it was gonna be about. I was just waiting for something to seize my imagination as much as my first book that. And luckily, I found something relatively quickly that, you know, snap judgments and first impressions that could because I've just been talking to psychologists about them, and I just found it really interesting. My rule was simply if I'm interested in

it, then chances are someone else will be too. How do you think Blink now factors into the world of AI where we have such intuitive software and big data? Does it have even more meaningful roles for people to say that their gut and their judgment is is paramount? It's a very interesting question. I don't know the answer to that. I don't really have a good answer to that. I that book was so conceived in this pre AI

world that I haven't gone back and thought about it. I mean, I would imagine that, you know, since since good good judgment is the marriage of rational analytic thinking, and the expertise, the unconscious expertise board of experience, that I imagine AI may make good decision making easier. I mean, it helps us with the first of those 2, doesn't it? So that's my only sense that maybe I can see how overall it

will make us better decision makers. Outliers was, to me, I would argue 10000 hours of practice, the math of your when you were born. I mean, that became conversation in the schoolyards. It traveled like liquid everywhere. Did you ever imagine it was gonna have that much impact? Because or did did you first write it as a business book? Or did you realize that hockey moms and dads would be starting to look at Chatter their kids are gonna get to the NHL based on what they saw

out of that book? Yeah. I didn't it's funny. I I did not see that coming. I I thought it was interesting. I didn't think it would be the most talked about thing in the book. I've been amused to see how how far people have taken that 10000 hour rule. They take it far far further than I expected it would ever go. I'm not sure I even agree with many of the ways people have made made sense of that, argument. Parents still come up to me and say, I read your book and I

held my kids back. You might have some kids coming that here in their thirties pretty soon wondering why they got held back because of the book. There's times that you've had critics that have come out. Sometimes, when I've read this criticism, it's almost, I would say, jealous because you you've caught the narrative, and people are now understanding complex subjects in a very tight meme like 10000 hours. How do you deal with does criticism bother you, or do you just go, that

fuels me to to defend or to to push back on? I'm not very thin skinned, so I think maybe when you're younger, it hurts a little more. And then by the time you're my age, I mean, I've been doing this for so long, I don't, it doesn't. And you also, you become aware, what you realize is that all work has its share of supporters and criticisms and critics, and there's no way around it. You hope that the proportion is skewed in your favor. That's all you can hope

for. You know, you mentioned Seinfeld before. Seinfeld, when it first came out, was panned. Critics handed it. I mean, so I don't know. You can't look at that and take criticism all that seriously. What do you think of Seinfeld? Oh, I think it's genius. I don't think the first season is nearly as good as the subsequent seasons. And so one of the things that teaches us, I don't know whether the critics were wrong. They were just premature. They thought they could judge it on the

basis of the first couple of episodes. And maybe the lesson of that is why don't you just wait? Wait till the people running it have found their voice. So I got 2 things, themes that you've talked about, the sense of maybe there's a greater divide, the middle's disappeared. Mhmm. Does that exist even in terms of people that are supporters or against it? Three we've lost the middle

ground? Because that's one of the things I'm looking at society, like, why do we seem to be so pushed far out, where North against the South, red against blue Mhmm. Canada, French against English. It seems to be a greater divide. Maybe it's just the news that we're taking, but do you do you think that middle is still there, that you can put something out and have somebody that's against and for, but the mass is really standing

firm saying, this is something I love? Yeah. You know, it is it's true that this kind of disappearing middle, you can see it in all kinds of different domains. It's troublesome in some domains. In other domains, though, I don't know. It's funny. I think it's the kind of thing that it's probably a mistake to have one very generalized response. And at the same time, I would also say Chatter don't think that one way you could, one conclusion you could draw from this is that the generalist is dead.

And all we have are people who know nothing and people who know a lot, right? But then there's lots of other evidence that says the generalist is now much more important and much more kind of accurate. Yeah. It's interesting because I'd love one day for you to take that on and biases and, you know, confirmation biases. Do we get pushed in such a little castle with like money people liking like money content, validating each other that we start loving that and hating the other, or is it just

a wave going through? The other thing I wanted to just, you know, ask you about when you said earlier, you said, you know, the conditions were right for me at The Washington Post because they were hiring at the time. Do you think a New York City can happen again where in a very short period of time, this magic wand, this epidemic that you say can wash over a city and take it from a sort of chaos and and crime and confusion to

to being something that people are very proud of? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think it can and will happen all the time. I mean, I think that's the nature of, you know, we saw a repeat of it over COVID. Homicides in major North American cities spiked over COVID. They're now plummeting. I mean, they're down. This year alone, I think in New York City homicides are down 25%. That's what the line looks like, epidemic line. The mistake was in thinking that these kinds of trends

move gradually by nature. I think that the natural course is for them to veer up and down quite dramatically, And that when they do flat line for a while, that's the aberration. What the dog saw in that? Their New York stories, was that it was curious the motivation. Was that a publisher saying, Malcolm, we need another book, or was that your chance to say, I have a new audience out there, and there's some stories that deserve more

attention? I think that probably a mixture of both. That New Yorker has a court where the writers own their Three. So you can do anthologies. And I made sense was that many of the people who read my books did not read my New Yorker articles. So I that this would be a fun way to

expose them to that. And David and Goliath, was that a title that was very similar to your mom's memoir in the sense of the underdog that you called and the misfits that we were really framing these people on a very different lens than they should be thought of? I mean, the real impetus for David That is that it was a companion to Outliers. Outliers was concerned with how advantages lead to success, and David and Goliath was saying, well, sometimes

the advantages look like disadvantages. We're compensating, usefully compensating for something that might otherwise be seen as a hindrance or a drawback or a constraint. What's interesting to me about the story of David and Goliath is David's adaptation to his own weakness. That adaptation to weakness is as common or more common, a kind of real world phenomenon than capitalizing

on strength. The more I see, you know, I just read that, biography of, Elon Musk and his whole success stories about that. Why is SpaceX the way it is? Because he didn't have any money. And he didn't have the contacts at NASA, and he was supposed to do something entirely new. And that's why he succeeded so dramatically. Had he come in with $1,000,000,000 SpaceX never

happens. Super interesting, you know, the very thing we think we do to enable an entrepreneur, give them lots of resources, in that case would have destroyed exactly what made him great. Do you think David and Goliath, I mean, to Key, it was so far ahead of its time when I look today at the disruptors that are attacking and taking down what we all thought were too big to fail because they didn't have the resources. They had to

use their imagination. I mean, do you not think that that what you were writing back then is really what is we're seeing with capitalism today? At least a capitalism to me that's got a a higher sense of purpose and momentum? Yeah. A little bit. I mean, I think whenever we're in the middle of whenever you're in the middle of this of a kind of technological transition as we are now, I think that normal rules don't apply. The value of an entrenched position is diminished, and I think we're

seeing examples of that. Maybe being forward, with all of your entrenched with your entrenched positioning out of your industry is a hindrance in adapting to an electric future. You know, I don't know. I mean, in some ways, if you're locked into the old way, it's harder to move to the new way. 2 biggest electric car companies in the world are startups, you know, BYD and Tesla. There's a lot of that going on, and the idea that biggest

media companies in the world didn't exist a generation before. That's crazy. You know, we had media companies that were hugely important for over a 100 years and suddenly, it's Washington Post being one of them. Washington Post is today a money losing also ran. Do you ever think of yourself as a modern senseu, that the art of war? Like, as you start looking at how he approached competition, the marketplace,

retreating and attacking. Because I look at some of the books you write, and you kind of somehow or other, you you bring some of those quotes to life in the most extraordinary fashions. Or is that just me with some wild imagination on it? Yeah. I don't know if I see it that In that That's Three good company to be in, but I'm not sure I'm deserving of that. I mean, but the enemy himself provides the opportunity to defeat the enemy. To me, in some ways, is what what David and Goliath was

about. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, it's a theme that has shown up in many, particularly, you know, people who think about the military think about this a lot because anyone well versed in the military knows that the army with the most resources does not always win. When we return more with Malcolm Gladwell, and then an interview with Alan de Poncier, the CMO of RBC, This interview took place last year, and given all we've learned from my chat with Malcolm Gladwell, it is even more relevant today.

Hi. It's Tony Chapman. Investing in Canada, well, that Matters RBC combat climate Chatter. 500,000,000,000 for Future Launch, a 10 year program to prepare youth for the jobs of tomorrow, helping to discover the next generation of Olympians, artists monetizing their talents, women entrepreneurs pursuing their dreams, supporting mental health, and so much more. Investing in Canada, well, that matters to RBC. 2,008, something very special happened to me. I was inducted

into the Canada's Marketing Hall of Legends. It's one of the proudest moments of my career because my family was Three, one of the proudest moments of my life. You Key, in this hall are people that have put a dent in the marketplace. We have visionaries who came up with ideas. We have business builders that not only established their brand in Canada, but around the world. With stewards of brands who found a way to engage the head and heart and

hands of the consumer and the media. We have leaders and creators who've built campaigns that dance all over media. This is more than the hall of legends. If you think about it, it's the hall of learning. Imagine the intellectual resource that exists within it. The lessons in life, the journey, the overcoming circumstances, the tight ropes, the way they reinvented and reimagined the world. The American Marketing Association's Toronto chapter

came up with this idea of curating this learning. And what they've done is they've created that lessons journey, lessons in leadership. We're gonna take some of the people that are in this call, spend some time interviewing them, draw out what they bring, not only to your livelihood, but ideally to your life. So thank you for being part of lessons in leadership and the

legend's journey. What I call the assumption of transparency, which is when I see you, I observe your demeanor, your face, your expressions, your emotions, your body language, and I draw conclusions about that. And my assumption is that the way you represent your emotions on your face and with your body language is reflective, is consistent with the way you feel in your heart. If you smile at me, it means you're happy. If you frown at me, it means you're not happy. Right? That is

true with some people, some of the time. But it is not true of many people a lot of the time. You're listening to Chatter That Matters with Tony Chapman presented by RBC. I wanna thank the Toronto chapter of the American Marketing Association for arranging my interview with Malcolm Gladwell. He's a new inductee in the marketing hall of legends. What we're doing is a series of interviews to institutionalize the learning that the people have found their way there.

Talking to strangers, I loved how I think it was an interview you did with Oprah where she started personalizing her talks with strangers. I mean, what was the motivation behind that book? The people reading it at the end of it, what would be your desired outcome in terms of how they would maybe change something about themselves? I was just struck by how many of the cases I was reading about were examples of communication breakdown between

strangers. You know, it was, I started that book with one of the signature cases from that wave of high profile police cases in the US. But the more I sort of thought about it, the more I realized that an extraordinary number of contemporary controversies were simply versions of the same problem that 2 people had attempted to communicate and failed. That is a premise

for a book that was an enormously powerful one. Again, it takes me back to to trying to invite people back to the middle ground where where people might have opposing views, but if you take your time to communicate it, you you often find you have more in common than you thought. Yeah. Somehow I feel like we had we had lost track of that of the the tools, communication tools that bring us together. They've somehow been mislaid,

and I wanted to find them again and bring them back to people's attention. Is there ever been a character in one of your books that you say is really me? Not really. Usually, I'm attracted to writing about people because they are very different from me. I would never interview someone who I thought there would be no point, you know, there would be nothing to learn. I'm interested in, I'm most interested in people, if they're not like Key, because I

can, that maximizes the amount that I can learn from them. We're now seeing a lot of people that have built a network, that have built currency with a lot of people, no longer wanting to sing for Three supper. They wanna own their diner, you know, the Ryan Reynolds of the world, the Rihanna's. Is was that one of the motivations of you starting a podcast company versus just doing the podcast that you said, I have an ability to to create great content, and in

doing so, that that be rewarded for it. Well, because as I quickly learned, I don't think there was no motivation. I think my motivation was I'd like to have the freedom to do cool things. And the easiest way to do that, to remove the friction, is just to have my own company. I wasn't doing it for economic reasons. And, you know, one of the things I've learned is that very, very, very few people in the podcast world

get rich. It's not what it's about. You're giving up, in some senses, you're you're giving up that opportunity in exchange for freedom. That's what it's about. It's about freedom. That you can put together your own little crew, and you could publish it for free on a platform, and you don't have anybody saying you can't do it. And to me, that's what the value is.

And, you know, it may be the case that incidentally, some people do well economically, but it's the, the far more important outcome is the liberty it gives you. So as we wrap up this interview, Key talked about mentorship earlier on and how important it is for the Toronto chapter. What advice can would you give to young people that would say to you, I just feel like the headwinds are pushing me in my back feet. Is the climate gonna melt? Am I AI gonna take

away my job? Am I getting a university degree that I don't need? What advice would you give to them so that they could instead of thinking about impossibility, think about possibility? Find something that you're interested in, and be good at it. For example, as I always tell people who wanna go into journalism, who wanna write books or what have you, the most important thing is not working. If you want to prepare for that, it's not working for a journalistic enterprise. It's,

finding something that you want to write about. If you want to be a foreign correspondent, the first thing you do is you learn another language, not look for a job as a foreign correspondent. If you know Chapman, and you have read deeply in German history and talk to German people and like hanging out in Germany, that's the way to become a foreign correspondent in Germany, right? Building a knowledge base that gives you authenticity and credibility in the

marketplace. I had a guy drive me to the airport the other day and he was telling me about his son, who I said, what does your son do? He says, oh, he works as a producer at ESPN. I said, wow. How did he get that job? And he said, well, from the time he was 5 years old, when other kids were watching Sesame Street, he was watching Sports Chatter on ESPN. And when he was in college, in high school, he started up, like a radio show, sports radio, and he would do play by

play announcing of their school sports teams. And, you know, that makes sense. Right? He made himself the kind of person that ESPN couldn't butt higher. Right? How how did you turn that kid

down? Like, he's like, you know, he's exactly what you want. Like, but he did that, and then he consciously sought to build his credibility as someone who's, you know, out of enthusiasm and love for and that's the kind of find the thing that you can build your own expertise around and for which you have enthusiasm and love, and you will be irresistible, I think, to others. I understand we have a book coming out in the fall. Is there anything we can tease in this show to let people

Yeah. It's a sequel to The Sipping Point. So it's a return to my first book. And what are we gonna see out of that that sort of takes us into 2024 and beyond? Well, I'm really interested in how much on on establishing who's responsible for epidemics. Do they just happen, or are they the result of deliberate decisions that people make? And if they are, the la if the latter is true, then what are those decisions, and who are those people? So, Malcolm, I always end my

podcast with 3 takeaways. And the first is just the word empathy came through almost everything. And so I think there's a lot of your mum and you, but I just love the way you always well, I interview people that are smarter. I I talk to people that are smarter. I mean, you just really have this great curiosity and love. I think the second one for every person living out there, whether you're 20 years old or you're 70, is just find that

passion, pursue it, fall in love, and I love what you say. It'll make you irresistible. And that third thing is just how you continue to be curious. You're not doing a sequel to Tipping Point because it was the thing to do, is because you're now curious about how epidemics happen. And I think curiosity is one of the greatest attributes. And if you're living in a world with AI nowadays and you're curious, you've got yourself an army of Davids to work for you. So for all of that and

more, we really appreciate you taking the time. And, again, congratulations for, joining us in, Canada's, Marketing Hall of Legends. Thank you so much, Tony. This was really fun. Last year, I had an opportunity to interview Alain

Depoisier, the CMO of RBC. I've spent a lot of time with Alain over the years, and I truly value what he has to say about culture and marketing and the tipping point, where through social media, consumers and employees have a voice and their feedback can quickly turn from a whisper to a roar. Joining me now is Alan Key Ponce. He's the chief marketing officer of RBC. Alan, difficult times for marketers because there's a growing cynicism. There's a

lot of, people standing on shifting sand. They're looking to blame. How does a brand navigate this climate when when you're going out with good intentions, when you're trying to do good things, knowing that that there's always gonna be people sitting in their armchair ready

to fire social media slingshots? I think the most important thing that we try to do is really understand our purpose as an organization, make sure we have the culture that we need internally with all our staff and employees, and have conviction of, you know, our overall plan of delivering against that purpose. And what are the right programs and strategies we're gonna use to to bring it to life. But we're not perfect. You know, sometimes when we do things, we overlook specific situations

or, we get feedback. The the great thing about social media is, you get lots of feedback And sometimes that downside of social media is you get a lot of feedback that maybe you don't wanna hear. But I think you're you need to be open to listening and constantly thinking about, are you on the right track and learning to grow over

time? How do you keep your the younger generation inspired and motivated because they might read something or their parents might read something and and bring it to the dinner table where they feel they have to defend? How do you let them know that this is just the reality of the world today, and it's okay to have opposing points of

view? I think it starts with your culture. I think it starts with, communication of really helping other everybody understand what is our overall purpose as an organization, what is our overall strategy, what are those programs we're gonna lean into? I think we also have to be transparent. And I think the wonderful thing about RBC is we have a culture where people are not afraid to speak up and ask questions and and challenge things,

which I think is good. It helps us see different lenses. And as you get those different lenses, you actually make better outcomes and you make better decisions. So, I think you're if you think of your employees as that first kind of feedback mechanism, you'll probably learn a lot more before you go to market that you don't probably want to learn if you put something in market and

it's kind of kind of just off the market a bit. And I'm curious as a leader nowadays where we are sometimes walking on eggshells because we're dealing with a lot of current of change. You know? We're dealing with gender equality. We're dealing with diversity, we're dealing with how an organization must stand beyond profit. Is it hard to give the individual the kind of feedback that they deserve? Feedback that is has empathy, but it's also very, very candid. Well, I I actually

love the concept of radical candor and all the guiding principles. And I I actually it's one of the few things that I kinda think back to as as part of my leadership journey. And also as as part of our team, I think our organization at RBC has embraced it. You know, I think the guiding principle that I that I start with is you can't grow as an individual unless you get feedback. Like, if you're a professional athlete and you don't have a coach telling you, like, just take a tennis player and

and, you know, you're working on your forehand. The great part about having a coach is they tell you what you're doing well and what areas that you can improve on. And they do it because they care about you and they want you to succeed. So if you take that same guiding principle for radical candor, you as a leader should want to give candid feedback to your employee, as well as receive candid feedback from them to you

so that you can be so that you can grow. And it's just normal to get both positive feedback and maybe feedback that's not so good. But it starts with the concept of caring. And I think that's the piece that most resonates with me is if someone's giving me feedback and I know they care about me, then I'm more apt to listen to it. If they're just giving me feedback and I don't think they care about me, then I probably get a

discount. I think the most important thing as a leader is to create an environment and a muscle that, you know, feedback is a good thing. That's how we grow. That's how we better. I think the worst or least helpful feedback I've ever received is when I only get positive feedback. Nobody's perfect. I know I'm not perfect. I'm far from perfect. But when they don't share their true thoughts or they sugarcoat constructive points, it really doesn't

help you grow as an individual. And I'm not saying that you should go out and give people really hard critiques, but have the respect to be honest and constructive. If you really care about that individual, you want them to help them help them grow and succeed through constructive feedback. I thank you for letting me be part of that as well and, continued successes that, in your, marketing role. I appreciate it. Thank you. Chatter that matters has been a presentation of RBC. It's Tony Chapman.

Thanks for listening. Let's chat soon.