June 6, 2024 • 49 mins
Malcolm Gladwell is an outlier in his own right, as a journalist, author and public speaker. His unique perspective and engaging writing style have made him a prominent sociology and popular culture voice. He has five New York Times bestsellers — The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. In addition to his best-selling books, Malcolm co-founded Pushkin Industries and hosted the hit podcast Revisionist History.
Malcolm shares his journey and offers many insights and lessons on what it takes to stand for and stand out in today's world.
I then bring back an interview with Alan Depencier, CMO from RBC, which is even more relevant today.
Malcolm Gladwell is part of a series titled Legends Journey: Lessons in Leadership, which I am co-producing with the Toronto Chapter of the American Marketing Association. We celebrate the journeys of those who have been inducted into Canada's Marketing Hall of Legends. In my CTM library or the AMA's YouTube Channel, you can find our interviews with Joe Mimran, Angus Reid, Jeanne Beker, Miles Nadal, Arlene Dickinson, and Frank Palmer.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:04):
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,
(00:26):
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
(00:48):
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
(01:10):
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,
(01:33):
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
(01:54):
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
(02:16):
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
(02:39):
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
(03:02):
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
(03:24):
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
(03:47):
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
(04:09):
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,
(04:33):
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
(04:55):
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
(05:16):
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.
(05:38):
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
(06:00):
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,
(06:22):
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
(06:45):
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
(07:06):
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
(07:29):
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
(07:51):
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
(08:12):
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
(08:33):
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
(08:55):
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.
(09:18):
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,
(09:41):
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
(10:04):
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
(10:25):
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
(10:47):
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
(11:09):
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
(11:30):
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
(11:51):
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
(12:13):
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
(12:35):
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
(12:58):
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
(13:20):
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
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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
(14:06):
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
(14:28):
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
(14:50):
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
(15:10):
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
(15:32):
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
(15:53):
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
(16:15):
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.
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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
(16:59):
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
(17:21):
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
(17:43):
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
(18:06):
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
(18:28):
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
(18:50):
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
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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
(19:33):
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
(19:56):
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
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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
(20:40):
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
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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
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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
(21:44):
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
(22:06):
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
(22:28):
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
(22:50):
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
(23:13):
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
(23:35):
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
(23:59):
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
(24:21):
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
(24:42):
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,
(25:05):
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
(25:28):
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,
(25:51):
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
(26:14):
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,
(26:36):
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
(26:58):
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
(27:19):
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
(27:41):
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
(28:03):
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.
(28:26):
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
(28:48):
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
(29:09):
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
(29:30):
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
(29:54):
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
(30:15):
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
(30:37):
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,
(30:59):
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
(31:19):
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.
(31:41):
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
(32:03):
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
(32:25):
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
(32:47):
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
(33:07):
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
(33:30):
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
(33:52):
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
(34:15):
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
(34:37):
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
(35:01):
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
(35:24):
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
(35:46):
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
(36:09):
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
(36:31):
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
(36:53):
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.
(37:15):
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.
(37:39):
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
(38:01):
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
(38:24):
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
(38:47):
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
(39:08):
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
(39:30):
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
(39:53):
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
(40:16):
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
(40:38):
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
(41:01):
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
(41:23):
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.
(41:46):
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
(42:09):
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
(42:31):
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,
(42:53):
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
(43:15):
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
(43:35):
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
(43:58):
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
(44:20):
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
(44:41):
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
(45:01):
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
(45:22):
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
(45:44):
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
(46:07):
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
(46:29):
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
(46:51):
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
(47:13):
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
(47:34):
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
(47:57):
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
(48:19):
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
(48:42):
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
(49:04):
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
(49:26):
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.
(49:49):
Thanks for listening. Let's chat soon.
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,
(00:26):
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
(00:48):
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
(01:10):
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,
(01:33):
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
(01:54):
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
(02:16):
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
(02:39):
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
(03:02):
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
(03:24):
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
(03:47):
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
(04:09):
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,
(04:33):
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
(04:55):
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
(05:16):
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.
(05:38):
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
(06:00):
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,
(06:22):
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
(06:45):
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
(07:06):
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
(07:29):
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
(07:51):
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
(08:12):
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
(08:33):
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
(08:55):
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.
(09:18):
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,
(09:41):
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
(10:04):
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
(10:25):
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
(10:47):
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
(11:09):
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
(11:30):
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
(11:51):
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
(12:13):
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
(12:35):
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
(12:58):
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
(13:20):
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
(13:43):
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
(14:06):
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
(14:28):
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
(14:50):
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
(15:10):
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
(15:32):
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
(15:53):
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
(16:15):
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.
(16:38):
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
(16:59):
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
(17:21):
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
(17:43):
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
(18:06):
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
(18:28):
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
(18:50):
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
(19:11):
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
(19:33):
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
(19:56):
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
(20:18):
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
(20:40):
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
(21:01):
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
(21:23):
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
(21:44):
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
(22:06):
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
(22:28):
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
(22:50):
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
(23:13):
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
(23:35):
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
(23:59):
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
(24:21):
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
(24:42):
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,
(25:05):
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
(25:28):
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,
(25:51):
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
(26:14):
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,
(26:36):
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
(26:58):
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
(27:19):
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
(27:41):
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
(28:03):
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.
(28:26):
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
(28:48):
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
(29:09):
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
(29:30):
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
(29:54):
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
(30:15):
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
(30:37):
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,
(30:59):
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
(31:19):
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.
(31:41):
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
(32:03):
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
(32:25):
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
(32:47):
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
(33:07):
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
(33:30):
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
(33:52):
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
(34:15):
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
(34:37):
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
(35:01):
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
(35:24):
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
(35:46):
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
(36:09):
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
(36:31):
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
(36:53):
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.
(37:15):
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.
(37:39):
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
(38:01):
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
(38:24):
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
(38:47):
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
(39:08):
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
(39:30):
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
(39:53):
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
(40:16):
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
(40:38):
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
(41:01):
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
(41:23):
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.
(41:46):
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
(42:09):
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
(42:31):
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,
(42:53):
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
(43:15):
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
(43:35):
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
(43:58):
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
(44:20):
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
(44:41):
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
(45:01):
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
(45:22):
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
(45:44):
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
(46:07):
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
(46:29):
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
(46:51):
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
(47:13):
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
(47:34):
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
(47:57):
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
(48:19):
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
(48:42):
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
(49:04):
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
(49:26):
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.
(49:49):
Thanks for listening. Let's chat soon.
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