The Wisdom Gap: How Modern Leadership Fails Without 4 Essential Capabilities

Dave, I was the victim of a hate crime. You were the victim of a hate crime? What the hell? What happened?

Okay, fine. Not a hate crime, okay? But hate crime adjacent, in my opinion. Hate crime adjacent.

Seriously, this was scarring, okay? So I'm like, I'm riding my bike after my, you know, work, just enjoying the beautiful scenery. This is in Miami, right? You're at home.

This is Miami. My lovely island, okay? Yeah. Riding home, just like, great afternoon.

And this lady all of a sudden looks at me and yells, headlights, brake lights, speak English. Whoa, really? In Miami? Does anybody speak English in Miami?

You're not wrong. Wait, wait, were you talking to someone while you were doing this? I'm just minding my own business, riding along. And look, she had the total rights to call me out for headlights.

it's it's you know getting dark i don't have to look at your face and she's telling you you need to speak english and i just need to speak english and honestly they i'm tired like this this this this bullshit where you're just like i'm on an island where 85 of people speak english as a second language i'm like lady you're on the wrong island yeah you know but honestly it's just like what is happening, Why are you so angry? The fact that like her crowd is actually running the show now and she's still so freaking angry.

I was like, what are you going to have a complaint about? But yeah, clearly there's a lot of suffering there. How do we feel bad for her there? Compassion, Michelle.

Let's have compassion. I'm Dave Kutnayek. And I'm Michelle Aratamola. And you're listening to The Jump Podcast, the conversation for future focused leaders.

Today, we're getting into why wise leaders are in short supply just when we need them most and how we might be able to change that. As always, we're going to end up with some headlines from the future. Are you ready, Dave? Let's go.

Dave, I think you had a busy week last week, huh? A lot of travel. You know, everybody's getting together. A lot of board meetings are happening.

But it was interesting. I got to get away for a couple of days. It was kind of like a closed-door CEO session. I invite only 50 CEOs of various companies, including some of the largest hedge funds in the world, but also smaller companies, retailers, technology companies.

Fascinating to hear what is on their mind and what folks are worried about. Yeah, I love that because, I mean, you wish it would be kind of more open door so everyone would know. But you kind of know, as we know, when it's closed doors, you get to hear a lot that people don't say when the cameras are on, when it's public or even to more audience, right? For sure.

I mean, and, you know, if you're a public company CEO, so much of what you say is already managed by a PR team or an investment relationship, right, that you don't actually get to dig in and explore. So, you know, like, while I'm not all about kind of doing like private cabals, I think actually having conversations where you can actually express yourself is a good thing, is healthy. I'm there human beings, too. Yeah.

OK. So without, you know, telling us everyone's deepest, darkest secrets, you know, what did what I guess what did what can you tell us? What did you come away? Because it must be fascinating, right, to hear like what's is there a theme or something that you're just kind of like, man, this is what's going on.

Look, there is a general concern that we are headed down the wrong path. You talk about all those surveys, is America on the right track? Is it on the wrong track? And if you're ever concerned that some of the wealthy and powerful are concerned too, the answer is yes, they are concerned.

And for much of the same reasons that this system is unsustainable. And we have to figure out a way around that. And along with that concerns around new technology, AI, and what are we even building? But then even beyond that, this concern that the leaders that we have now have such a profound lack of empathy and compassion, that if we don't find that, how are we going to carry our way forward?

Now, I have to tell you, to hear people of very large investment management companies telling you that the thing top of mind for them is empathy and compassion. Right. That is that is heartening in its own way. Right.

And it's just part of the problem. But but it's a light, you know, in that maybe there's some opportunities here. I mean, it is, I think, heartening in that at least empathy and compassion is like, I guess, in leaders vocabulary. And we're talking about it.

That's probably different than in other times. But I got to say, there's a little bit of when I wrote, you know, Wired to Care. When was that? That was like 2009 it came out.

That was like a hippie idea at the time that everybody has a role in business, right? And so the idea that multiple leaders of large companies are saying, yeah, we need to increase our capacity for empathy, our capacity for compassion as leaders, that is encouraging. I do have to say, though, there's a part, I mean, not, you know, we're not always on camera. And so I want to say this out loud.

There's a little bit of me that, like, rolled my eyes, right, quite honestly, because there's a part really, come on, you're saying, this is the difference, right? You have the wealthy and powerful in a room. Yeah. It's different.

You can feel that, but you're actually the wealthy and powerful making the choices. Yeah, right. Right? And making the decisions.

And so, although it is encouraging to hear many of the decisions that we've been hearing out of business in general have been quite confounding, I think. Right. Right? And so then you want to say, okay, so yes, empathy and compassion, but what does that actually look like?

And these folks have the choice. Right. And both those words, and look, I wrote a book on empathy. Compassion is something I've spent so much of my waking hours thinking about, right?

Because I think it matters. Both of those ideas are part of a greater idea around wisdom, right? And the challenge that we're getting into is that most people do not understand what wisdom is. We confuse it with intelligence or we think it's on a roll to that.

And we're living in, that's the core issue right now for us as a species, as a society, as a marketplace, which is we're living in a time of incredible knowledge and such impoverished wisdom. Yeah, no, it reminds me that there's just this amount, crazy amount of stuff that's going on. You're just like, what are we doing? Right.

I was reading just like this week. Right. You're like, Palantir thinks college is a waste and is hiring high school grads. Palantir thinks.

Palantir. Yeah. You're like, again, we can talk about like college and its problems, but this is a bigger thing. Shareholders approve a $1 trillion pay package for Elon Musk.

Yeah, right. Which my whole thing is like, forget how I feel about Elon Musk. These sales are down significantly. Right.

And so I'm just what is what are you expecting this man to do? Right. And I mean, it's just and then there's robots and there's health care. Then there's like cultural wars, political assassinations.

I'm just like, yeah, it's not good. Look, I mean, this is the challenge that we're having now is like America are the beneficiaries of people, you know, of their era that were kind of children of the Enlightenment, folks like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who are incredibly thoughtful about their place in history. You know, that's what allowed George Washington to step away after, you know, two terms of office voluntarily, right? Like inspired by, you know, Cincinnatus of the Roman Empire.

But you look at the folks nowadays, and you talk about, you mentioned Palantir, whether it's Alex Karp or Peter Thiel at Palantir or Elon Musk or any of the tech bros who sat there and bent the knee at the White House a couple of months back. The biggest concern we have is that the people who are having the greatest impact shaping our society right now are some of the smartest people we have on offer with very low wisdom. Right. 180 IQ points and the maturity of a 14-year-old boy.

And this is terrifying. Huge problem. I mean, just like the idea that Alex Karp is saying, let's just, you know, take in high school students. Yeah, you're right.

They're computationally brilliant at 14 years old. If you think a 14-year-old is as wise as you should be, that's an indication that you're not doing the work yourself. No, I agree. And at a time when I think the challenges we're facing require more wisdom than maybe knowledge, right?

That's right. And as business leaders, like we should say this because, I mean, for as much as you and I could probably have this conversation for all sorts of reasons for days on end, part of the idea of this being a business realm, right, is that I think it is at the challenges we are facing in our businesses, our leaders, as leaders, are no longer these, let's call them the complex problems, or many of them are. I mean, it's still very hard, very complex to run multinational businesses.

But that the ambiguity involved in the decisions we're making, the multivariate decisions that we're making are just required judgment, not more knowledge, not more data. I think that's right. Right. I mean, if you think of it this way, which is that, you know, knowledge is all the stuff on your brain's hard drive.

It's like everything that you know. And it's all of the facts, all the figures, all the prior cases, all the technical understanding of how to solve problems. That's all knowledge. Right.

Wisdom is the operating system that you're running on. It's like, how are you taking all that information and organizing it and finding meaning-making in it and figuring out how to move forward in this world with it, right? And so, you know, when we talk about knowledge, we say you need to increase, you know, your technical understanding of a problem. When we talk about wisdom, we mean you need to upgrade your meaning-making system, right?

Which is, you know, that's, that's, that is out there for a lot of people. Right. And we, we've even, you know, we've talked to people on this podcast, really smart people, technology leaders, and, you know, like academics who they, they all seem to conflate the two that the, you know, that like the two are both just forms of intelligence or even what is that, you know, that crazy pyramid that, that Russell Aikoff came up with. Yeah.

Yeah. That the idea of like, that it's sort of linear. It's like, okay, well, first we start with data, then we have more knowledge, and then it begets wisdom. Yeah, data, information, knowledge, wisdom, right?

As if those four things are on a spectrum. They're not. Data, information, and knowledge are on a spectrum, right? But wisdom is orthogonal to that.

It has nothing to do with that, right? Yeah. It's like saying, like, first you get data, then you get information, then you get knowledge, And then if you work really hard, then you'll dress really nicely. You're like, what?

You're like, no, because like how you dress has nothing to do with how much knowledge you have. It's orthogonal to the case. It comes to my own personal journey, I think, just to take a second on that, right? Because the idea that.

Like, why did I joke about my own, right, my own insecurities there? Because part of it is because of how much we as a society are obsessed with smarts and geniuses. And that took me a really long time to kind of unwind, right, to undo for myself that the more you knew didn't mean that that person somehow knew more than I did in a grander way, right? And that started that curiosity that there was some other dimension of knowledge, right?

Some sort of, or not knowledge, right? Some other dimension of understanding. Yes. That, and that to me was kind of that opening, right?

Was it because of my own sort of insecurity where I would meet people who I think believe themselves to be very wise? Because, by the way, you can learn a lot about philosophy. Yeah. Right?

You can know a lot about every, and they would quote every philosopher and quote every theory. And I would feel very, well, then they must. Smaller or like, wow, they must know more. They must know more about the world.

Yeah. That's what I mean, that other thing that we're talking about, right? Not know more about a subject that's clear, but that because of that, they then knew more about this world and the way it works and what it means. Yeah.

This is so important, right? Just understanding that distinction between knowledge and wisdom, right? Because if you want to expand your knowledge, you need to learn. But if you want to expand your wisdom, you need to grow.

Yeah. And that distinction, right? I mean, like, Michelle, we've talked about this so many times. If I tell you, like, what's one thing you have learned in the last year?

What would you say? Prompting ChatGPT. Yeah. How to be a better prompt.

Yeah, that's learning. Your knowledge has expanded, right? Yeah. Michelle, what's one way you have grown over the last few years?

I think what we just talked about is something in the last few years is the... And both being secure in what I don't know and then what my place in the world is because of that. Yeah, right. I mean, that didn't happen because you read books.

That happened because, look, you got married. You became a mom. You went through all sorts of family struggles. Lots of struggles, yeah.

Right. And struggles, you know, it's not something you can just read about in a textbook. You know, you can read Stieski all you want, right? Like Russian literature is a great place to read about other people's struggles.

Great, yeah. But it doesn't, yeah, you can build empathy for other people's struggles, but it doesn't expand your growth, right? It doesn't expand your wisdom. And yet what we see over and over again, right, is that's where a lot of the wisdom comes from.

You know, it's funny. I was thinking about this the other day coming back from this CEO retreat I went to. You know, we tend to think of CEOs as like, you know, like fat cats, right? That's the story of like, you know, like, but the thing that we see over and over again, if I look at like some of the CEOs that I work with most closely, right?

They all have one thing in common, which is they all grew up poor, right? I mean, like best example is Howard Schultz, right? And here's, you know, one of the richest men in the world now, right? Founder of Starbucks.

Howard grew up in the projects in Queens, right? In Canarsie, right? He grew up in government housing, right? And like dirt poor.

And actually, if you look at it, he is not alone in that. Like so many of the leaders that we work with came from relatively modest backgrounds where they had to, to use your word, struggle. And in that struggle, they grew, right? And that growth has given them a level of wisdom that therefore allows them to lead.

I think we need to make sure we talk a little bit more about how do you define wisdom. It's probably good to have a few different handholds. I think there are, as best as I can ascertain, there's maybe like four big things people should pay attention to. One is just a modicum of self-awareness.

How aware are you of your own wiring? Power, where, view, and therefore, you know, awareness, self-awareness, which then leads to some amount of, like, decision-making. Let's call it self-authoring. Yeah.

And the reality of it is that most of us are not that aware of what's going on. We are trapped in cycles of stimulus and response. I mean, you go back to the old experiment of, like, Pavlov and the dogs, right? Yeah.

And, you know, too many of us in too many situations, not all the time, are trapped in a cycle where, you know, Pavlov rings the bell and like a dog, you start salivating. I mean, just hello, Dave and TikTok. Right, exactly. That's right.

Right. I mean, and you're just you're just, you know, in a stimulus and response cycle as opposed to going, hey, wait a minute, I am not a dog. What's going on in this situation? I just heard the bell ring.

What do I want to do? do I feel like salivating? I have a choice. I could do other things, but like we're trapped in that, which is why, you know, it, it sounds, you know.

Confrontational to say this, but most of us are sentient but not conscious. We are trapped in cycles of stimulus and response, and we don't step out of that in a way that kind of guides us to less suffering. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think being aware, I think, luckily, hopefully, I think I was joking about TikTok, but I do think the conversations around on technology are starting to wake us up a little bit too.

How much is not our choice, right? Like, or we're letting, how much of our choice we're seeding. Yes, we're seeding away our choices to the machine in a way that is just horrifying. Totally.

All right, so what other, I mean, we talked about self-awareness. I think, you know, you talked about the well-being of others, right? And I think there's something about like, how big is your tribe, right? Like, you know, like- Well, and so there's this idea of like social awareness, Right.

So there's like there's self-awareness, which is like, who am I? And then there's social awareness, like who is everybody else? Yeah. Many of us still move through the world in a way that would suggest that we think that everybody's a video game.

Right. And they're just like they're just NPCs here for my, you know, for my reaction, as opposed to like, no, like they are people, too. And they have people there are people with, you know, wiring, different ideas and different ways of thinking about the world. And motivations that are different from me.

And that if I want to be successful in life, I need to be curious about what those different ways are about thinking of the world. One of my favorite quotes that I think, I can't remember if it was our partner, Ryan, who taught me this when he trained me to go out into the field for the first time and study people. For ethnographic interviews. For ethnographic interviews.

Yeah. And he said, you know, there's a quote of like, everyone makes sense in their own head. That's right. And our job is to figure out.

And our job is to figure it out. Yeah. And to me, that always just sticks. Like everyone makes sense in their own head.

Right. Like, and I think, you know, media got that with the movie writers, got that with the villains. Right. You're the hero of your own story.

Right. And really understanding that. Yeah. Exactly.

I mean, I love that. Just like the great actors say, like, if you want to play a villain, you have to play the villain. Like, like, no, I am the hero of this movie. Because that's what it feels like.

Because that's what it feels like. Yeah. So, yeah, so you definitely like certainly self-awareness, but then social awareness, awareness of others is important. All right.

There's, I think, at least two more that you and I have discussed in the past. Yeah, right. Well, the third is construct awareness. Okay.

All right. Tell me more about that one. And construct awareness is, you know, because we live in civilization, right, most of what we encounter every day is not the laws of physics. Most of it is stuff that somebody made up.

Yeah. Right? Truly. Absolutely.

Yeah. Like Steve Jobs said this once. He said the most empowering thing is when you suddenly discover that everything around you are just rules that people made up. Right.

And if those serve you, great. And if those rules don't serve you, right, then do something different, which can be jarring to people. So, no, let's make up new rules. We don't have to live this way if it doesn't serve us.

Yeah. I think that's the suffering that most of us are going through, I think, generationally right now, I would say, or my generation, I would say. Because it really comes to mind, I was reading this article recently about just our relationship with marriage. And this idea that you used to get married, and the idea was, like, you would build your life together.

That was, like, the rule, right? So you would get married and buy a house together and then get, you know, have kids together and your career would grow. And how much that's completely flipped. Now people feel like they can't get married until they've bought the house, they have their career figured out, they've done all of these things, right?

And I was thinking, again, like very classic or basic, but you grow up with these ideas, right, of like when you should get married or what those are like things that feel like they're permanent in our society, right? Or have lived for thousands of years. But you realize it's like over one generation, just this complete flip on what the construct of like marriage and its role in our relationships are. Yeah.

And these are not the laws of physics. These are things that have changed. No. But they feel like it, right?

They feel like it. Yeah. Because we've lived with this, everybody's been acting up the same script. All the time.

Exactly. The great examples is look at what has happened around LGBT rights in the last 20 years. And for people who grew up in a traditional construct, they're like, we are fundamentally changing the rules of what marriage looks like. And you're like, yeah, we're changing the most recent rules.

You go back to ancient Greece. You go back to ancient Mesopotamia. Gay marriage was a totally fine thing. Or gay partnership.

They didn't have necessarily Christian marriage like what we do in Western culture. But gay parkering was a totally reasonable thing. So this is just a moment in time where we've made up certain rules. Yes.

Now, warning, right? When you break those rules, prepare to be that you might not always be seen as an innovator. You know, you might just be seen as a jerk. Because you're breaking the rules.

Jerk or a pervert, you know. My kids are always freaked out with me about this. Because I will do things like I'll be sitting in a restaurant. On and we're i'm trying to you know like get the attention of a of a waiter and in a lot of places there's not enough waiters these days and so you can't get the attention of the person yeah good like and if i can't find a waiter i have been known to get up and walk into the kitchen.

To the to where they're cooking go hey guys i know i sent in that order change that and people are like what are you doing you can't get back in the rules yeah i was like the door's not locked, you're making my food i wanted to tell you why why do i gotta wait 10 minutes the food's already going to be done by that makes people crazy. I mean, again, this is what I'm saying is, good or bad we are waking up to this i think as a society i mean just to me the u.s government there were a lot of things where we felt like those were laws only to wake up and realize that they are not right just customs customs like and i think you know the government should you know like you should tell us the truth right or like you know i think that will always be there right or you know or just like again their habits but you didn't know they were habits or customs, And so I think that idea that is having that as part of the national narrative of the generational experience, I think, is causing us as a society to say, going back to that idea of like, why is this conversation of wisdom coming up so much for you and I?

And I think it's just in the water, right? Like, it's because the constructs are breaking. Because the constructs are breaking. I mean, you're seeing this.

This is, you know, whether you're talking about Zoran Mamdami or Donald Trump, right? So much of it, the fuel on all sides is happening because people are basically not buying into the basic premise anymore. They're not buying into the basic premise of constitutional democracy as we've known it, or the American dream as we've believed it, or the idea that institutions are here to further our own good. People are like, yeah, I'm not sure that's true anymore.

Yeah. Right? Yeah, exactly. Right.

Like, I get it. I don't agree with all of it. But I get it, right? Which is these constructs are now up for conversation, right?

And leaders need to get ahead of it and realize that many of these things are not the laws of physics. Exactly. Question them before someone else questions them for you. Yeah, exactly.

That's right. Okay. Last one that I think is super, super important. And again, especially today is this idea of sphere of concern.

Yeah. I've talked about in the past. Yeah. I mean, the idea.

So if you have some amount of awareness of yourself and you're not just a Pavlov dog, if you have some amount of social awareness and you have some understanding that the people around you are not just a video game, but they're people just like you who think differently than you. And if you have some understanding that like all this crap around you, like all of the ways that we are supposed to behave are not the laws of physics, we just made them out and we can make new rules.

Well, then the question is like, yeah, great. Given all that, what do you care about? And show me how big your circle is of what you care, of who you care about and what you care about. And I'll tell you what kind of leader you are.

Right. Which is there's so many of us who start off like, you know, teenagers where you're just highly egocentric. You're like, it's all about me, me, me, me, me. If you're lucky, you know, for your and if your family is lucky and if your co-workers you're lucky you will go beyond the me me say it's not just about me but it's all about us, right and that may be my family my department my company right my tribe at some point you'll get beyond the the it's about us to say no it's all about all of us yeah all the world all the inhabitants all the people that i need to pay attention to, right?

And even at the highest levels of concern that we see, right? The, you know, folks at the level of like Mandela or the Dalai Lama, they're not saying it's all about all of us. It's about all of it, all of existence, past, present, and future. And that's a growth process that you can move through.

And we start off at life at different levels of that, and we get further, you know, than other people do. Yeah. I love that because, you know, each of these different I can see the benefits in engaging with those, not just as a person, right? Like, there are many things that I can see as, like, greater sphere of concern.

I mean, I can go on to, like, just as a sort of bicultural experience, right? I can go off on a whole other hour-long, you know, podcast on, like, man, you miss so much, right? When you're just thinking about, you know, your little tribe, right? You know, white Anglo-American culture.

I mean, you feel that all the time because you step into American culture effortlessly and you step out into Latino culture, right? Yes. You know, you can, you, I know this about you, you can go a whole day not speaking English. Yes.

And it's not just a language change. It's all the rules change. Everything. It's a cultural change.

Right? Yeah, exactly. So I think there's those benefits as a human being. Right.

As leaders, right, again, very excited that, you know, certain CEOs are saying it's time that we are not just needing more smart leaders. We've got those. We need wiser leaders. Yep.

Right? Lots of work to be done there by the people at Power. We're seeing a lot of stuff going on there. You're just like, what are we doing?

Right? What are the choices that we're making? And I think the big deal, the reason why is because most of us are mistaking knowledge versus wisdom. I mean, if maybe we could really unlock that, we could, you know, be happier, you know, be more compassionate, be more empathetic towards others.

But there's also, I think, to bring it back to a little bit of maybe not the point of it, but I think the point of a business, the decisions that a business leader needs to make is the... The ability to grow your company, the ability, the strategies you can come up with when you have that higher level of wisdom. Look, this is, I mean, let's make it very practical. When you talk about artificial intelligence, what you're talking about is that knowledge is getting automated.

And intelligence, as that is narrowly defined, is getting automated. And so no matter how smart you are, we don't need you anymore. Exactly. Right.

And we probably don't need your company anymore that a lot of that stuff can get automated. Yep. Right. The flip side of it, though, right, is that none of these LLMs are wiser.

Right. None of them have that idea, the capacity for metacognition, for thinking about your thinking. Yeah. For caring for a broader audience.

They can mimic it. Right. But they can't actually do it. And so if you're a leader, if you're running a company, you're running a department, and you're just worried about your own self-preservation, what I want you to think about is how do I get wiser?

Because we're doing so well on artificial intelligence, we haven't even scratched the surface on artificial wisdom. Maybe we'll get there, but I don't know. I mean, we're so limited on our growth on AI. I've started to think that artificial intelligence is almost - it's not the right word for it.

It's it's simulated intelligence like it can we can we built something that can fake that it's smart well although but though going by your definitions like if we take it purely on knowledge it's very knowledgeable although it makes up i guess maybe what you're saying is that it's making up half of the shit unless it's clear right like unless you're fact checking stuff but if you do it right right it's sort of like google and steroids where the promise of knowledge like Right.

Knowledge is democratized. Right. Everyone has access to infinite amount of information. But yeah, I don't think it's wiser.

It is certainly not wiser. It is not wiser. I mean, you need to treat the AI as if it is a, you know, like a hyper-intelligent, computationally brilliant, you know, hyper-aware 15-year-old kid, right? And that doesn't...

I think hyper-aware should be deleted as we... Yeah, well, not self-aware, certainly. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't think you're thinking of your 15-year-old son very much there. I mean, aware of what's out there in the world that other people have said.

Yes, exactly. But planning to say, let's take, you're in financial services, right? On some level, yeah, you're advising people about their wealth and you're getting paid to figure out. People in your company are either getting paid to figure out what equities to invest in or to get out of, Or they're getting paid to tell high net worth individuals how to plan where they should go in the future.

But they're often coming at it from a place of they're bringing smarts. They're not necessarily bringing wisdom. And that can be a competitive advantage where smarts becomes automated. Yeah, I think that's especially true.

I think with the word I've been hearing, another word I've been hearing a lot in our conversations, Dave, with senior leaders, is that it's not just, I mean, we've been hearing this idea of like there's something else, right? Like it's just not just about being smart. Some people are talking about wisdom. But I think there's also something a lot about like people saying like insight.

And I'm wondering if that's sort of become the word also for like, you know, I'm grasping on on this wisdom. But I do think that people, again, there's a lot of data. There's a lot of information in our companies, but we're hungry for, like, you know, the signal from the noise and seeing the insight, that piece of thing that tells us. And I think being able to see that, right, that's what we're talking about requires that wisdom, that idea to see the forest from the trees, see the thing that is bigger than everyone else is paying attention to.

100%. I mean, you look at, you know, take a guy like Lucien Grange, the CEO of Universal Music, who, you know, I like, yes, client, but also I just love to death. Same sort of thing like me like you know meager upbringing you know in in the bad part of london right but grew up did the struggle did the work right and and is now leading you know like the largest music company in the world and one of the things i i really respect about him is he sees things that other people don't see right yeah and and like he notices stuff he notices trends he He notices opportunities.

He says, you know, everybody else, you know, observes the same data. Right. But he can reach in and go, no, you know, pluck something as it's this. This is the big aha that we need to focus on.

Right. And that comes from wisdom. Right. Because it's not he's not smart.

Like, of course, Lucien, very smart. Right. But yeah, smart guy. But to your point, same data and lots of smart people that work with him.

Many of the people who work for him, I would argue, are computationally or cognitively You're strategically smarter than him. But they don't see what he sees. Exactly. And I think that goes back to, like, let's remind ourselves, right?

This idea of, like, construct awareness or spheres of concern, right? Is, like, going back to that, like, especially, for example, like, music, right? Culture is such a big part of that and a global culture, right? And so you're looking at things that are not...

Yeah, it's not obvious. The numbers are not going to say, especially when you're looking at something early, the numbers are not going to tell you that it's a good idea. Yeah, right. Right?

Like, that's just the basics of it. And all of us who have been in that situation know that. And the difference is that judgment. But judgment can be like, I just have a creative idea.

But the thing we're talking about is judgment that comes from, I think, when you are very aware of the constructs, very aware of that, of your own wiring, that means your own biases, right? Like all those things allow you to look at that data and say, wait, there's something here where I want to invest in it. And because you're seeing something earlier. Look, if you do the work, if you separate out, make a distinction between your intelligence and your wisdom, if you focus not just on learning things, but actually growing, you will notice things that other people don't see.

You will see a bigger slice of the chessboard, you know, because you'll see more than other folks. You will find that you have greater impact in the world. And most importantly, I say this because I care about the folks that I work with. You will just suffer less.

You will less grind in your own brain over things that shouldn't bother you as much if you were doing the work. Yeah. Okay, so last thing there, because we should leave people, you know, with what does it mean to do the work, right? A little bit, right?

Like a little tidbits, because again, doing the work is hard, but we know, we talked about it as it's different than learning, right? It's not the same as, you know, you go in a classroom and taking a test. Yeah. Well, that's true.

Look, the model for learning that we have, I mean, it goes back to stuff we learned back when we were in school, right? It's, you know, on some level, it boils down to listen and repeat, right? Or when you're in college, it's like read a book, take a test, but that's basically a written version of listen and repeat. And process it and put something out there in the world.

But you cannot grow by listening and repeating. You are not going to increase your wisdom by reading a bunch of books. I'm not anti-books, but that will increase your learning. If learning is about listening and repeating...

Wisdom is about doing and reflecting, which is you need to kind of put yourself in harm's way. You need to put yourself outside of your comfort zone. You need to give yourself experiences that challenge the existing operating system in your brain. And if you just do that, you won't go.

You have to do the second part, which is reflecting, which is you need to then step back and say, what the hell was that all about? And kind of reorganize your operating system to accommodate for those new experiences. This is why, whether it is people who meditate or who journal or who have a coach, these are powerful ways to rapidly, you know, develop your wisdom. But we find also, and this is the rough part of it, which is that if you don't take active steps to work on your own growth, then life does it for you and it does it maybe more brutally than you would otherwise experience.

And honestly, if we're lucky, because I don't know that many of us get that, Dave. Like, I've met many people who, you know, eventually die with, you know, wherever they got to. Yeah. I mean, you're talking about most of the people of my parents' generation in my own family.

Like, I came from a family of people who, like, you know, like someone told me, I was like, I am the first person in four generations to not have a graduate degree in my family. Yeah, yeah. You and I share that, the disappointment to our families. Yeah, yeah.

We are black sheep because we're not as educated as the last three generations, right? Sure. Are they particularly wise people? No.

And many of them, you know, suffered to the end of their days. Yes. Now, and disclaimer for everyone, this is not to say that Dave, you and I are super, super wise. There's a whole other thing here where we should talk about, you know, the spiral dynamics and how just even because we access a certain understanding doesn't mean you act that way all the time.

Yeah. And, you know, you mentioned spiral dynamics. I have huge reservations with, you know, many of those models because they're just the social science doesn't back them up. But there is something about saying that, you know, that the wiser you get, the more imperfect you see yourself.

Yeah. It's the growth equivalent of the Dunning-Kruger effect, right? Exactly. Which is like people who don't know anything think they know a lot.

They think, you know, well, they know about something, so they think they know about everything. Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly.

Right. But I think the same thing is true, you know, with growth, which is that if you actually haven't worked on yourself, right, you think like, yeah, I have great judgment. I'm super wise. What do you mean?

I know everything. Right, yeah. You know, they've said I'm sentient but not conscious. Screw him, right?

But actually, when you start to do the work, then you open your eyes like, oh, my goodness. The universe is a, like, orders of magnitude beyond what my tiny brain can comprehend. Absolutely. All right.

So. It's clearly in the water, right? This idea, this feeling, I think because the constructs are falling, you know, on every different level of the pain we're feeling in a lot of these places, right? Whether it's work, home, you know, society-wise, we are as leaders calling out with different language this like, there's more than knowledge.

Let's just put it that way, right? There's more than smarts. Many reasons why we got here as a society, but we're here. And now it's super, super critical that we understand the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

We understand that as leaders and maybe not everyone, but especially if you are currently leading a business, it's imperative because the problems we're facing as an organization are not our classic complex problems, right? They're more ambiguous. They require judgment. And that's not something that we're going to get with more data.

Yeah. And look, sure, do this because it'll help your shareholders. Do it because your employees will have a more pleasant day at work. Do this because your kids will grow up with less of the hangups and scars that you did.

And do this because you will not lie awake in bed grinding out about some crap that actually doesn't matter, if you actually could understand and comprehend the larger pandemic. It's our favorite time of the day. Headlines from the future. All right.

This is when you tell us all sorts of cool stuff that's happening in 2030, but it's actually happening right now. This is a signal of change that's happening. What do we have? Give us a headline, Michelle.

Okay. Headline number one. China launches the world's first underwater data center. Oh, well, that's interesting.

Okay. So they're building a data center, but like rather than trying to put it next to a river to kind of keep things cool, they're like, no, just submerge the whole damn thing. Let's just submerge the whole thing or rather than putting it on the moon. We talked about that a few weeks ago.

Yeah. So yeah, so they've just completed, they say they just completed the first phase, what they call the first underwater data center. It's a $226 million dollar pilot project and this is just to give you a sense this is very small right so it's just a proof of concept 226 million dollar proof concept i love it okay that's money you know but it is basically it is powered entirely off of offshore wind right and the thing that you're calling out right like the river compared to a river it is much better as a natural coolant apparently seawater Sure.

So it is cutting cooling related energy demands to under 10 percent compared to 50 percent for the common conventional land-based centers. See, I love this. I love this for a couple of reasons, which is it is not a given that because AI is coming online, we have to take our climate change goals and just throw them out the window. Right.

Yeah. There's other solutions. Put it on the moon. No, I think that's right.

But the other thing I love about it, and it's kind of something that I wish for America, is that China is currently in an era where it is thinking about solving problems at scale, at a level that I feel like we have stepped away from. You know, we're not thinking big enough as a society, as an American society, I'm saying. And to see both, they're actually solving massive problems that allow us to move forward into the future. But secondly, they're thinking at scale in a way beyond anything that we're doing today.

Well, and they're definitely thinking of scale and also, I guess, politics, right? Just to be clear, this is something that is part of their grand plan that is called the East Data West Computing Strategy. So this is about turning Shanghai into a $28 billion cloud computing hub by 2027. So just a real push to be, I think, like, I mean, take TikTok, right?

It's like we are the data. West is doing the computing. But we've got the backbones. There you go.

Okay, so, I mean, like, an important challenge is probably something we can learn from. I love that they're doing it with wind. I love that they're submerging it with water. I'm sure it will cause all sorts of other unintended negative consequences that we haven't discovered yet.

That's the problem, right? But that's progress. We'll figure that out, right? Stay future-focused.

All right. All right, cool. Give us another one. Headline number two.

3D-printed gun movements. Excuse me, sorry. Headline number three. Wait, you're only on two.

What are you talking about? I know. Headline number two, 3D printed gun movement spreads worldwide. 3D printed.

Okay, we're taking all of our home stereolithography machines. And rather than just building, you know, like an art project for your kid, you're building a Glock. Exactly. So this is fascinating, right?

Because talk about like sort of ideals or whatever sort of, you know, being translated across the borders. So this has actually created the instructions to 3D print this. It's called the FGC-9, which it spells out the name of its ideology, which is F gun control, FGC-9. Oh, I see.

So the whole intent, right? This is not just about 3D printing. The interesting thing here is not just about 3D printing and 3D printing guns, really, but specifically creating a gun that, a manual that is really an ideology to spread it. Like specifically, how do we make this really easy for home manufacturing outside the U.

S.? So this is about not just, this is about the Second Amendment and sending that elsewhere. Wow. See, so we're basically, the United States is now using technology to export our romance with violence.

Exactly. It's called the 3D2A movement. Three, oh, three, oh, God, all these like tech pro initials. And what does 3D2A mean?

Second Amendment. I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, 3D Second Amendment.

All right. So, but what's been fascinating is that we should be paying attention to this because law enforcement has found, you know, they now encounter these FGC-9s across more than a dozen countries on five continents. Researchers who have been tracking this have found that out of 325 global incidents since 2013, they have found the FGC-9 in nearly a third of them and half of those outside of North America. Wow.

And Michelle, this is more than just we have a piece of code that we're shipping around. You framed it as a movement. Why did you call it a movement? Well, because there this is well, it was started at first.

The instructions was by a creator in 2020, actually, and actually a German national. So not even American, but he created a 110 page build guide for this gun. And so there's two things. One that it's mostly shared around this 3D2A group.

And the idea that the, calling it the FGC-9, right, so that it has, there's specifically tied to this ideology. I think the bigger thing here is that, man, as this proliferates, it's whether ideology-driven or not, I mean, they're finding them everywhere. And so the ease of sharing this and just a huge, what's interesting also is that it's created a legal fight against actual gun manufacturers don't like this either. They're not loving this.

So just really fascinating, like even though like Reddit has banned a majority of 3D printed guns and subreddit just last September, though. Right. So just this proliferation of stuff is is pretty fascinating. You know what I wonder about is, you know, what that's actually going to do to the gun lobby, to your point, where if you look at the NRA, the NRA has done an amazing job as kind of branding itself as a social movement of gun owners who are actually like fighting for their.

An ideology, right? For their rights. But not at all. The NRA is an industry group.

The industry is a cartel. It's a lobby group. Yeah, it's an industry gun lobby of manufacturers. And I wonder if the unintended consequences of this is that if everybody can print their own gun at home, does that actually constrain the market power of gun manufacturers in a way that we might actually get common sense gun legislation?

Yeah, exactly. The power is just gone. Yeah. And the other thing that this makes me think, quite honestly, I'm like, if it's this easy to get guns printed at home, what am I doing still shopping and getting things delivered?

I'm a little confused. Yeah, there you go. Ah, depressing. All right, cool.

Give us another one. What do you got? OK, this one, a little different, OK? Headline number three, Nike unveils e-bike for your feet.

I love Nike. I love that they're just unveiling anything that's interesting and cool. What do they unveil? Yeah, a whole conversation on Nike there.

But I think separately, this reminded me a lot of just as we're talking about robotics and AI and this kind of like bionic human. So Nike just announced this project, this project called Project Amplify, which is a robotic ankle brace system that uses a motor, drive belt and rechargeable battery to boost a wearer's stride. OK, so they're like, think of it like e-biking. I put a brace on my foot and then it just what it walks for me.

So that's what I thought. But no, have you actually ever been on an e-bike? I have yet, actually. Okay, I have never been on an e-bike.

So I didn't actually understand how they work. But the idea that it just makes your regular stride a little less easier for you to take. Right. So what they're aiming actually is what they're saying is this is not for the athlete, which is really or well, they're saying everybody's an athlete.

Right. But this is not for your runner. Let's say not for a professional athlete. Professional athlete, right?

Yeah, okay. This is for your commuter or your, like, walker runner who wants to do their three miles, but maybe with less effort, right, on your recovery day. You're like, I need to do recovery running, but I want to keep it. Or I love the use case of commuting.

It's like, how can I walk without sweating, right? Is that what it is? That's what, I mean, that would be great, right? So they've tested this with more than 400 athletes, though.

so you live on a small island outside of Miami where the hell are you commuting to what is, you know i gotta drop off my kid to school and stuff you know okay yeah and it's hot here um but but this this seems interesting but i think of thinking it made me think about that like bionic future right this idea of like and this has already been tested right and there it still will take a while to get into market but that idea of. We're figuring these ways to make ourselves more that, you know, Terminator without the commuter Terminator.

Yeah. Look, I mean, this is great for a few reasons. Number one, the whole trend around like technology augmentation of human capabilities is going to happen. Right.

And with all sorts of consequences, we'll see what it, you know, what it means for sports and what it means for, you know, other kind of general pastimes. It's also great that just like, you know, You know, Nike is getting back in the game of inventing cool stuff. Exactly. And it just seems that they spent, you know, the better part of a decade, yes, working on building a great, you know, e-commerce website and stuff like that.

But at their core, Nike needs to just come out with cool stuff. Exactly. So I love that they're doing that. I don't know that I'm going to be wearing a leg brace anytime soon for that reason.

Anyway, but who knows? Who knows? For both those reasons. Yeah.

Super cool. All right with or without ankle braces these are all fascinating headlines we gotta go we'll see you next time thanks so much for spending time with us and remember the conversation doesn't end here every saturday you can hear from dave in your inbox with his future focus letters for clients and friends you can always connect with us on linkedin jump associates.com you know the deal like share or subscribe for more thought-provoking content and encouragement to go see your coach.

Your hosts are Dave Bidnayek and Michelle Eretamola. This episode was produced by Debbie Maron. Research was developed by this Zach person who is off having a baby right now. Artwork was created by Sierra O'Kerry and music was composed by Avi.

The Jump Podcast is brought to you by Jump Associates, the strategy firm for future-focused leaders. Stay focused on the future because it'll be here.