Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss what looks like a growing consensus that the COVID 19 virus originated from a lab and from research related activities. And later on we'll take a look at the overwhelming evidence that firing employees deemed as low performing doesn't actually work to boost overall productivity in workplaces. Particularly in light of what we're seeing now in corporate America and in government and all the talk about efficiency and cutting work.
Hello, welcome to the Call Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys and joining me today is a man who on most episodes can be counted on to hit his spot with his takes. Tunde, Ogonlana Dunde. Are you ready to see if you can go 30 for 30 today?
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Always, man.
When you said hit a spot, I had really gonna say something, a joke about me and my wife, but I'm gonna leave it alone.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: But then I said takes.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: You out of it. I said what it made me think of, not what you said.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: So.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Before we get started, we'll keep it moving. I don't want to.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I was just moving forward. If you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe and hit like on YouTube or your podcast platform. Doing so really helps the show out. Now recording this on March 18, 2025 and last week we saw a report from, from two German newspapers that back in 2020, the German Foreign Intelligence Service put an 80 to 90% likelihood that the virus behind COVID 19 actually originated from a lab and was accidentally released from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology. Now this follows the revelation from earlier this year that the CIA in the U.S. central Intelligence Agency had a low confidence, quote, low confidence assessment that the origin of COVID was research related. So kind of a confirmation or they're both saying the same thing in that sense. So Tunde, what's your reaction to seeing these releases, you know, five years or almost five years after the fact? We're, we're about five years from the pandemic at this point. We're almost exactly five years from when the shutdown started happening and you know, when we've had a lot of argument in the meantime, in addition to dealing with the pandemic, there's been a lot of fighting over the origin of it and what, whether things should be done about that and cutting research and all that stuff. So that we're seeing these reports now and then some of these, that there was a belief of this back in 2020 even. What's your reaction to seeing this now?
[00:02:35] Speaker B: I'm going to believe the intelligence agencies over Vladimir Putin.
That'll be my assessment on this one.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: This would be believing the intelligence agencies or believing the Chinese Communist Party.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: Yeah, so I just said that of course as a joke. But yeah, it's interesting because like you said, I think that a lot of people already believe this and this was already part of our cultural conversation that this was most likely a man made or at least an engineered virus that escaped the lab.
And so to me it just kind of confirms what a lot had suspected. I think you and I, people can go back and look at shows we had five years ago were pretty neutral on this topic. We felt that however it originated was probably less important than actually dealing with it and making sure it stopped spreading and all that. Yeah, exactly. So I do think that it is appropriate that we look back and put some closure on it. So I do think that it's good to see that two major intelligence agencies that have been trusted with other kind of high level information are matching up on this one. And I think you're right. It's not a surprise that the Chinese government would deny that this was a leak. And so I think we're kind of still back where we were back then with the assumption that it was a leak from gain of function research, blah, blah, blah. And the Chinese government's going to deny it because they don't want to be seen being the cause of a global pandemic. I will say this though, it's refreshing to know that it wasn't from some dude in the mountains eating a bat, because that always. Honestly man, that did sound a little bit hokey to me. Only because my next inclination was, well, how come this doesn't happen more often? Because I'm sure out of 8 billion humans on the planet, I'm sure not just in China, but there's other parts of the world where people are just randomly eating stuff in the wild. So.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: Or fact that this doesn't happen where or something like that.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm saying it just that always seemed a little bit far fetched for me.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: No, I mean, I see, for me, I think this is the time that we should be like really looking at this closely. Like as you talked about in shows, we were doing shows weekly at that time and part of what we were discussing at that time was, okay, we need to figure out what we're dealing with and how to deal with it moving forward before we look back. And you and I, we've looked at the archives, we never were saying that it couldn't have been a lab leak. It was just Whether or not it's a lab leak isn't necessarily going to help us in terms of how society can adapt and deal with it. So now that we've adapted and dealt with it, like Covid's here, and people have kind of back to living their lives, but pretty much normally it is the time to deal with all this. And so, okay, if this is related to gain of function research, where they're basically forcing evolution of these viruses in order to see what happens and to play it out, which crazy research happens all over the world, but if this happens and then if there was a leak, then, yeah, there needs to be measures taken to prevent, make sure something like this doesn't happen again, at minimum. And then if you want to look into liability and all that stuff, fine. But the most important thing from a societal standpoint is to make sure it doesn't happen again. And the question of whether or not it was a lab leak is very important to resolve ultimately, but wasn't important in 2020. It is important in 2025. And so when we're looking at these intelligence agencies, what's interesting to me about this also is that these reports are saying that they concluded this back in 2020. So the. It wasn't. It didn't take years of forensics to figure out that they're getting 80 to 90% likelihood that that's what they believe, and that's. This is their job. They're not doing this from a political standpoint. Now, I think the political angle, though, I want to get to as well, because what I found, I found the conversation about this at the time and looking back on it very interesting, because a lot of times the effort to pin this on China, so to speak, and say, oh, this is China being the people that were saying they did it on purpose, that was kind of nutty all along, because China suffered just as much as everybody else, if not more so that part about it. But just like, oh, China did this and, you know, we need the Chinese to pay or we need to. To make people of Asian origin or, you know, like, we need to make them feel bad, call it a China virus or something, there was seemed to be more going on with that because that seemed to cloud the discussion of the origin is like, okay, we want to discuss the origin so that we can try to lash out at somebody else about this. And maybe that's kind of the animal instinct of it, is, oh, something bad's happened to me, so I want to lash out at somebody else. But I did find that oftentimes you had people diverging into camps with the discussion of the origin piece. Not necessarily nobody had more information than anybody else, but because if one person that you disagreed with on a lot of stuff were saying it was a lab leak, then a lot of times I would see people who, generally speaking may be very rational people just automatically say that that's not true. You know, not say, oh, I'm going to stay in the middle. And I don't know, but say, no, no, it's not a lab leak that we haven't seen that yet. And it's like, so it was this kind of divergence, this natural divergence. Or if somebody you agree with said it was a lab leak, again, they have no more information than anybody else. But you're like, okay, well, I'm going to go with the lab leak because it's about me either siding with this person or siding against this person or that person or whoever, depending on who you believe, who you trust, who you want to be in camp with. Which was really interesting because nobody, from a public information standpoint, nobody really knew anything.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I'll start on that last part. The fact that no one really knew anything has never prevented people from talking about stuff they know nothing about.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: So that's why as soon as you said that, I was like, yeah, I gotta. That's gonna be the explanation of humanity.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: That makes it easier to start weighing in wildly.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: No, but it's interesting cause you said good stuff and a lot there. So I want to actually start.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Let me, let me just real quick. My point being.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: You gotta let me get in there, man.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: Well, but no, no, because I said I want to harmonize that in light of what you just said. Like, it wasn't like it was Angela Merkel, whose intelligence services, you know, the German intelligence services was the one weighing in on one side and then it was the Chinese Communist Party weighing on the other side. It wasn't like people who had more information arguing, it was people who didn't have information arguing. Yeah, so that was my point.
[00:09:04] Speaker B: That, that makes my point even more funny because we've learned that generally it's the people with the least information that have the greatest opinions and argue the most strongest opinions. Yeah, yeah. And online and everything else. So, I mean, not to go sideways on this conversation because this isn't the topic at hand, but think about the arguments from people who weren't well versed in medicine or science about things like the vaccine.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Or should it be ivermectin or hydroxychlochloroquine or whatever. Right. So, not. Not that. That's. That's. I know that's not the topic at hand, but it's just an example of how these type of disruptions in our society cause a lot of arguing. But you said something, and I wrote a note here.
China was a scapegoat for some.
And I thought about the term scapegoat in its actual definition, which comes from the idea that, you know, if it didn't rain or something back then, you know, the gods, you know, were thought to be punishing us. You know, we had to go kill a goat, Right. As humans, we had to go sacrifice something.
In more modern times, this might sound a little bit gruesome to some, but one could say the culture in America, in the American south In the early 20th century, you know, blacks were the scapegoat. Something happened in the society. You go do a ceremonial kill and you put a black guy on a tree and hang him. And that was a way to culture.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: That was like a release. You know, I was like, they're out there.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: And stuff.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: A pressure valve release. And I think for some, you know, that needed it in 2020 when this big, scary thing happened, which was a global pandemic with a pathogen, a virus that travels airborne. I mean, this isn't even Ebola, where it's by the touch, but it's just something you can't even see. We had all this changes, like social distancing and having to wear a mask and shutdowns and all that, which is all new. And so people.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: I remember it was very haphazard because we were trying to figure out what was going on while recommendations were being made.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: Yeah. We were literally building the plane as we were flying as a society. And so, yeah, for some people. And this, again, this isn't. I want to say I was about to say something that makes it sound like I would be tooting our horns, let's say, because. And it's not about that, it's just that how we're wired, you and I are wired a little bit more to be intellectually skeptical about just random claims that we hear that aren't backed up.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: About everyone, you know, about things that I want to agree with. I'm still going to be like, all right, well, let's see if this is really real.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Yeah. I'll say this. Yeah. Because I'll speak for me.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: I won't.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: I won't throw you. Speak for you. But I would say, you know, my response when I see Someone that appears to be coming from a place not of good faith in their argument. I will be skeptical of their argument later if I find out. If the facts show that it's true, I'll have to question my own judgment then and say, well, okay, well, I guess I got to bend to that fact if it is true. And I'll give you an example with this lack of it. We already discussed that at the beginning. You and I were saying that, you know, this isn't the time to try and figure out necessarily, cause like you're saying, we got to build this plane while we're flying. Let's focus on the cause later. We know this is here.
So when certain political actors and leaders in our culture came out and just called it the China virus, right? Or said this is the Wuhan flu, or acting like it was something China did on purpose. And like you said, I would think intellectually, well, China's got a billion people. Why would they let a virus out in their own country which causes unrest?
[00:12:31] Speaker A: To get back at everybody else.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. To get back at everyone else. For what reason? When the rest of the world's their customer, really?
[00:12:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: They're the manufacturing base of the world, so why would they want to make their customers sick? And then if you think about, if you understand an authoritarian regime, the last thing China wants is a bunch of people upset. And all the unrest, which we ended up seeing because of the way they did lockdowns, so this was a disaster for China in general. And, and, and, and, and so I was looking at it intellectually like that. But that's where my suspicion became or began, where I see people just saying, well, it's because it's, this is Chinese people. And because it was like, okay, hold on.
I don't know if I can believe that. And then I'll end with this and pass it back. That's where my skepticism on why this may have been kept under wraps since 2020, because there may have been an effort by the political class in general, maybe globally, because this involves Germany and Europe as well, to just say, because, remember, China is the biggest manufacturing base in the world. So they could have been saying, hey, we just don't want to put fuel on the fire to get the population thinking that China did this on purpose, even if we discovered this was.
[00:13:38] Speaker A: But isn't that complete, like, fabrication, speculation as to why. Like, you're saying now you're leaping to say that now there's all this coordination between all these people. Like, I don't think you need to do that. Like the question of, okay, well, why is this coming out now? Why didn't this come out then? Intelligence agencies know a lot of stuff, and I think this is a point we've made. You know, historically, they know a lot of stuff that they're not out there releasing or that they're not leaking. You know, like there's, there's a lot of stuff that intelligence agencies are looking at, doing assessments here, doing assessments there. But generally speaking, they are strategic with what they're doing. So is there something to be gained by this, or is there something to be lost by that? So they can make individual assessments to decide, okay, is it worthwhile leaking this to the press, or does that serve any purpose or not? So it doesn't have to be some grand conspiracy. Why different intelligence agencies might come to a similar conclusion based on similar sets of facts? Because those are analytical people. And the idea of the analytical person versus the emotional person, the people who run intelligence agencies aren't the emotion driven people. Those people wouldn't be suited for that kind of role. And the reason I bring that up is because you talked about the scapegoat, and I wanted to bring it back to that real quick. I think that this is a blind spot for someone like you or somebody like me. That part of the calling it the China virus, in hindsight, now looking back, even though this thing looks like it was a lab leak from China, part of that was for the emotional release for the people that needed that. Some people, when something bad happened, needed someone to blame, and they needed someone to be angry at. And so leadership gave them somebody to be bad. And now maybe that wasn't conducive to, that wasn't helpful for addressing the problem. You know, if people looking at this analytically, that's not addressing the helping the problem. That's. That's causing the undue pain to people, you know, walking around America who might look Chinese. And it's like, well, why are people, people are gonna start being mean to them. So it's harmful in that way. It has all these negative effects. But some people needed somebody to be mad at. And so it's like, okay, yeah, let's serve them up some red meat for those people that want to be mad. And maybe the people who, you know, serving them up red meat, they needed somebody to be mad at too. You know, so it's kind of like, like, I don't want to tie someone who's emotion driven with weakness, but it does kind of illustrate kind of, you know, if you Are emotion driven. You may have needs that need to be fulfilled. And to some degree, humans are emotion driven, you know, to some degree. So all of us, you know, it's all a spectrum, so to speak. But if you're on the higher end of that, like, you aren't able to just sit back and wait and deal with the pain and then say, okay, yeah, we'll figure out at some point where this happened, but let's figure out how to deal with the pain. You need somebody to be mad at. And I think that's kind of what. Whether or not it was true at the time or whether it could be proved at the time what it was about was about.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: We're.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: We got to give people somebody to be mad. The people who need somebody to be mad at, we got to give them somebody to be mad at. And, you know, if it's going to mess some other stuff up, then that's what it is. And that's kind of what we saw, you know, and so now, when. Now this information is being released because it's not an ongoing tragedy, then people aren't necessarily looking for somebody to be mad at about this anymore. So we can actually have that. People who want to have a rational conversation about it can have a rational conversation about it and they can get into, okay, well, how do we make sure this doesn't happen again in the future?
[00:16:57] Speaker B: Well, the interesting thing is, I guess our society five years later has given everybody a lot more things to be mad about, no matter what the topic is or who they want to be mad at.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: Right?
[00:17:07] Speaker B: So it's just funny because you're right. It's just like, yeah, that seems like so long ago, five years.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: But I do want to get, get out of this topic, you know, but so the, the last thing I did want to bring up is when you're looking at this, like, the way that our society dealt with this, looking back, I think we'll have to take some. We need to try, I mean, now questions, can we do this? You know, human beings tend to have to learn the lessons over and over and over again in the same lessons as a generation pass or a half a generation passes or whatever. But the lessons that we may be able to learn from this, like, you know, do you think the way society is going now, you know, like, are we going to be able to. To take from this, what we've just experienced now, anything durable? Or are we kind of like, this is like, this is old news now? You know, this is like, all right, not really that interesting. Anymore, you know, we kind of just like, yeah, it was, it wasn't, you know, like, we don't. Again, the people who need the emotional, the emotional satisfaction from some of this stuff, they don't need that right now, you know, so they're not going to jump on this and be all over it. And then the, the, the. Maybe the planning apparatus from our society, I mean, you would hope that the intelligence services are communicating with them and saying, okay, well, if this kind of thing happens again, this is the kind of. This is the kind of things that needs to happen. And then obviously there would be some uncertainty with that. So is there anything positive, bottom line that we can take from seeing these releases in the public and any public pressure that might come, or do you see anything positive or is this kind of like just, you know, spitting in the wind at this point?
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Spitting in the wind, baby.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: So we have pessimistic tunes.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, think about it, like I said as a joke, but it's actually kind of sobering to realize that, yeah, five years ago, this was it. And think about how many emotional pressure valve releases we've been fed over the last five years. I mean, I'm just saying. DEI crt. Transgender Gas Stoves.
Private equity is going to ruin the world, Dr. Sue. You know, whatever it is that, you know, the Bud Light go woke, go broke, you know, the whole thing, right? Moms for Liberty saying that, you know, the schools were, you know, teaching kids all this crazy stuff.
And I mean, I could probably go on for an hour, right? And we're talking just the last few years. So I think that. And I'll give an example, James. This is interesting to me because I think that our information networks are so distorted. And this is where, again, this isn't about people being stupid, people being weak minded. I had dinner with a guy on Friday. That very smart guy, works for one of the largest investment firms in the world. And he's a nice guy, he's a really good person. We had a great dinner. We got on this topic, and specifically about the virus stuff and all that, and about Fauci. And he ends up asking, you know, kind of telling me, well, wasn't Fauci kind of to blame for a lot of this because he was paying for the gain of function research in China. That's exactly how he said. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
I said, slow your road, brother.
And it's not that I was arguing with him. I just wanted to make sure we were dealing on the same plane of information.
And that's tough to do. I mean, we had a good conversation, but without offending somebody and them taking it personal. Because what I proceeded to tell him is, look, first of all, Anthony Fauci was retired when he was asked to come back and help the Trump administration deal with COVID So I don't know how he could have been paying for anything unless he got a huge pension with billions of dollars every month that he can pay.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: He wasn't paying for any of that personally.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: Correct. Then I reminded him, because again, it's about how the system works and most Americans just don't know it. This guy, again, very high up guy, very, very smart guy. I said, do you understand that Congress is the only one that appropriates funds in the United States for stuff that the government's doing and approving, like research on highly, maybe volatile pathogens, then I'm going to assume I'm not in the government, but I'll assume that if we are paying for stuff that are being done in biological labs in other countries, this passing certain smell tests, right, the nsa, CIA, the President, the administration, they all know about this stuff. And then if Congress is appropriating these funds, at the minimum, the people on the committees who approve that know about it. So that's where it goes back to me when I heard people in Congress in 2020, 2021, blaming people like Fauci personally and all that, that's again where I looked at it as a bad faith argument because I'm sitting there saying to myself, well, hold on, you're in Congress and you know that only you can be the one in control of paying for this type of research. So if you, if Congress is the one to pay for it, Congress clearly, clearly approved it. So again, this looks like you're trying to, again, pressure valve. You're trying to take the public's emotion, which is unhappy right now, instead of being a real leader and coming out and explaining what maybe the benefits of gain of function research are and why it makes sense for countries around the world, even adversaries, to collaborate on these things, which again, I may or may not disagree with or agree with.
Instead of doing that, you as a leader, meaning this person, so and so in Congress, and there's many so and so's, I'm not pointing at one person here. You take the other route and give the public something you feel they want, that pressure release which also then misdirects them into looking at things that aren't factual.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: Well, but part of that, that's why.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: I don't think it gets any better.
[00:22:29] Speaker A: Well, but yeah, part of that though, and this, I guess piggybacks on your point, is that for our leadership right now, the idea of integrity is not something we're selecting for, you know, just by and large, you know, like, of course there are some people with integrity in our leadership, but that's not one of the qualifications that by and large people are looking for. You know, it's about fundraising, it's about charisma, it's about a lot of other things. Integrity is very low on that. And so if you don't have a, if you're not selecting for integrity when you're talking about your leadership, then when the pitchforks come out, you're not going to have a bunch of people standing up like, hey, calm down, calm down. It's not that they're going to be, they're going to be sitting there, point the pitchfork over there, you know, like that. That's of course, and so opportunistic. Exactly. It's a way not only to divert attention from a role you might have had in it, even though again, they're not saying. That's not to say that you were, you know, doing this, you know, as some Bond villain, you know, like, ah, sinister. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But just like you were rubber stamping stuff as it came through because it's like, oh yeah, this is just what we're doing type of thing. But you don't want people looking at you, so it's like you misdirect and then that you then leverage that anger and so forth in order for your own personal game. So I mean, I think that you're probably right, they were spitting in the wind. I do think that ultimately though, it is better for this type of information to come out. Now I'm not getting involved in when spy agencies decide to make stuff public again, I walk around with the assumption that all of these spy agencies know a lot more stuff than we in the public walk around knowing. And of course there is no, there's no mechanism that causes that stuff to be released on regular intervals or anything.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: I'm just waiting for the Jeffrey Epstein release, what's up? Because they must know about that. You know, somebody was, was listening or watching that stuff. But okay, sorry, that's.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: That you can take that word if you want. But I'm just saying generally, I'm speaking just purely generally. So you know, like it is though, to the benefit, I think. And maybe this is naive again, because you talk about information networks and how things, you know, get manipulated. How things get kind of presented in ways to craft certain appearances and so forth. Is it better, you know, that information ultimately comes out, should it all come out right away because of the way our information systems like this, this is different. If information doesn't travel so fast that Germany sits on this for, for five years before they release it, you know, but so I don't know the right answer. The issue though of information eventually coming out, definitely good. Maybe though in the future information from these spy agencies and stuff like that does need to come out sooner. So that at minimum we don't just have the people who don't know anything weighing in with the strongest takes. But some people who do know stuff actually can weigh in as well. And then at least it's a fair fight on whether or not you're not just stuck saying, oh, we'll just wait and see. Oh, we'll just wait and see. Oh, we'll just wait and see if you're trying to be fair and honest about it. So you know, there may be some, some adjustments that need to be made in kind of the modern information ecosystem is kind of where. Where I land on that. But. But yeah, as said, incentives and yeah determine it all.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: You know, definitely current leadership globally starting to look like. Is incentivized by disinfecting, allowing disinformation to proliferate.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: So yeah, well they have been for a long time, you know, because is generally speaking a better way to. To consolidate the spoils of society amongst you and your friends with, you know, in the public and worry about all this other stuff, you know. So I mean, yeah, that incentive is not in our favor.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: You're making me depressed. Close this out. Just gonna get my.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: You're the one that agreed that it was spitting in the wind. But now from that we. We gotta wrap this topic up before this gets any darker. But we appreciate.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: I just gonna take my tax cut and move on after that one. Let's go.
I'm depressed. Yeah.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: But we appreciate everybody for joining us on this part. We'll have a second part as well and we'll talk to you soon.
All right. Tunday, you shared an interesting piece with me this, this past week that, that really detailed the amount of research that's gone into the idea of firing employees that have been deemed low performing. And that's relative to whatever workplace environment you're talking about and how that over decades has been established to not actually boost the performance and the productivity of the workplace, which is very counterintuitive. But it seems like A lesson that has been learned several times. And we're seeing now, whether it be Zuckerberg with Facebook, with Meta saying, oh, I'm going to cut 4,000 employees, I think are low performing, or we see with the doge and musk and government talking about, oh, we're going to cut the low rated employees. And now whether or not, like, there's a separate question of, you know, like people raised, like, actually the people that are cutting aren't really low rated, you know, but beyond that, just this idea that seems to be emergent right now that, oh, we got to cut the fat in these workplaces, we got to light a fire under workers and make them afraid so that they'll work harder and so forth. But, and this is in light of decades of research that are, you know, in spite of, I should say decades of research that suggests that this doesn't work. Like, people have had this idea before and it didn't play out the way that they, they thought. So, you know, like, we'll have the piece in the show notes that you shared with me. They really detailed a lot of this research. But, you know, what's your reaction to kind of us with this here we go again thing and just the forcefulness that we're seeing, hey, we're going to get in here, we're going to fire some people and shake some stuff up and you know, if something else is going on or if people really just, you know, again, have to learn the lessons from the past, again, I will.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: Go with the latter. People need to learn the lessons of the past. Again, I think just history is repeating itself.
So there's a lot here. It's interesting because language is important, words are important. So when we look at productivity and the idea that we want to get rid of people that are unproductive, that actually sounds like it would be a productive move for any organization to do that.
Because I think that again, language being important. When you say we want to get rid of unproductive workers, I think we all generally in our culture can imagine the kind of quote unquote freeloader, right? Someone who's shown up to work real thing.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: But and just to really add on to like, for example, if you have a car and one of the tires is operating at 40% and that's dragging the whole car down, and if you replace that with a tire that's not, that's operating at 70% or not 80%, then that mechanical machine or that mechanical device would presume to be operate more efficiently at that point. That's kind of, you know, that, that makes sense in our mind, you know, but the question is whether that applies with human, human beings.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and, and I think, and again, that's a good point because the way we look at the productivity of the car and the per and the way it operates is all left behind.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: Brain.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: Human beings though, when you're dealing with human beings operating in a structure, you have to include a little bit of right brain if you want to, you know, do it in a way that will lead to the most productivity. And I think that's what, that's why I want to differentiate because it makes sure that we start to show differentiating that no one here is supporting freeloaders, you know, not. And that's because that's why some people think, you know, fair point.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: I, I, that didn't cross my mind. Yeah, like, yeah, it's a good point.
[00:29:39] Speaker B: I was thinking, yeah, we got to make this distinction because no one here is saying freeloaders and the whole communism and no one's going to work and all this. But, but, but just to get into. So I want to start with that. But then because I wrote some notes here kind of going back to the why because we've discovered that we had a show recently that talked about this. The idea of stress.
And stress has been studied that stress limits cognitive function.
So things like creativity, all that over time begin to get suppressed in any organization. When you're leading on fear and stress in terms of how, if you think that's a way to motivate people and the studies, it seems like this has been a well studied and it's been well studied for decades and human psychology has been well studied for decades. So again, you could get a bit of a sugar rush boost by kind of cracking the whip a bit and all that getting people kind of focused in that way for a short period of time. But for a long period of time, it continually seems to not be the way if you really want to grow and be productive. And they even had a study recently in the last probably 20 years from Microsoft and how they really hurt themselves until about 2013 when they stopped this. And it seems that just looking at the stock price, Microsoft has been soaring ever since they changed their, their own.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: Management to how they manage their, their capital.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: So I think that just around that out, James, I don't want to mind your opinion on this.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: Well, I want to get into the why. So. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: Yeah, so the why I started thinking back to the history of the, of the industrial age. And it seems like every time that you have this wealth imbalance, because you look back at the Gilded age of the 1800s, and especially in the Victorian age too, in England, there became this idea in Protestantism of this kind of gospel of prosperity. And it became where once the lower class was starting to revolt a bit, the wealthy were like, well, it's godly to be prosperous. And I think now we're seeing a bit of a shift in this culture where today's kind of uber wealthy, as the lower class is starting to pipe up a bit.
They're making. They're trying to make this cultural thing about, you know, well, we're just getting rid of people that aren't productive.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: And to your point, the left and right brain part too, before you get too far away from that, because I think that that really the why on this, to me, is what's really fascinating. And that is like, it talks about again, this has been studied a long time. One of the things that stood out to me was that when you're talking about productivity in the workplace, I mean, that's kind of a nebulous concept. We can. When you're building widgets, for example, we can look at how many widgets are being built per hour. So that's a measure of productivity. But that's not necessarily all that is done in workplaces. Sometimes it's about solving problems and addressing issues that pop up and then being able to keep the ship sailing, so to speak, as different things pop up. And one of the things creating the fear environment, creating this environment of if you don't, you know, meet a certain level, you're out of here. What it does is it. While you talked about the sugar rush, but what it can do, though, is create this kind of. It can help with productivity in a certain respect. And that is like with kind of basic, move this lever, move that lever, do this, do that, like work that doesn't require thinking outside of the box, but just requires, if you got people put punch again, punching, you know, levers or pulling levers and stuff, or just moving numbers around or something like that, it can actually do well with that. But the problem with this type of an approach and to not have, you know, kind of a. To not work, to get everybody pulling in the same direction, but just trying to crack the whip, you know, to taking that approach, is that when it comes to solving problems, taking risks, figuring out different ways to do things, it disincentivizes people from doing that stuff. Because taking a risk, by definition, taking a risk, it might not play out the way that you, that you think. But a lot of times problems are solved by thinking outside of the box. But if you think outside of the box and it doesn't work, you're fine right away. So it's like, well, why would I ever think outside of the box? Why would I ever. If, you know, if the boss is saying, hey, we got to solve this problem, people don't go around and brainstorm, figure out the best way. They say to the boss, well, how would you solve the problem? And then because all they're trying to do is make sure that they're not holding the bag if something doesn't go right. So you change the culture of the workplace when you do this to one where people aren't invested in trying to figure out the best ways to do things, but rather self preservation mode. Like, okay, well let me just figure out how to not get fired. And then the other pieces they talked about is how then also like people who are the higher performers, oftentimes that type of environment may push them away. So you got all these ways outside of the whether or not people are pulling levers really fast that you lose productivity. So even any gain you might make with, oh yeah, they're, they're really, everybody's working hard to pull the levers and do the easy stuff that, but the stuff that really makes the difference, the innovation and stuff like that. And that was the piece, what Microsoft observed is that where they really fell behind is that all of this new stuff that was coming online, they didn't have the brains or the mindsets to get ahead of that stuff and to figure that stuff out. Because they just had people saying, asking the boss. So, so what do you think?
[00:34:46] Speaker B: Yeah, well, even more importantly, they may have had the brains, but those brains.
[00:34:49] Speaker A: Were scared when they were disincentivized from.
[00:34:52] Speaker B: They weren't gonna get outside the box for that reason. I think that's a big key because we're going back to the left brain, right brain. I mean, that's right brain. That's morale, right? That's, that's, that's the stuff that you can't see on the balance sheet. Like you're saying if there's a widget company there, that's the human element. And I think that those organizations that can thread the needle and kind of play both sides, right? They got a good left brain people in there making sure the cash flow statements and balance sheets look good. But then they also have an understanding that right brain side is needed as well. And that really comes down to leadership. At the end of the day, do you have the type of leadership that understands that or not? And also in that form of leadership is the confidence versus insecurity. Because I started thinking about sports because I played college basketball, which means I played high school basketball. So I, you know, oh man, you.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: Beat me to a sports analogy shelf. My sports analogy now.
[00:35:54] Speaker B: And so what I was thinking of. No, seriously though, like on a basketball, just for that sport and for people. Now I'm aging myself a bit. You know, there was a famous coach for four decades. I think his name was Bobby Knight. Most of that time was at Indiana, University of Indiana. He was seen as a real authoritarian, hardline guy, military type and all that. He produced some great teams, had some great players, notably Isaiah Thomas, I think probably the greatest player that ever played under him. But for a guy who was coached as long as he had and had been as kind of famous and had the type of players he had, he didn't win as much as some other coaches and he didn't pump out as many NBA players as some other coaches. And I think of the other coaches, people maybe like John Wooden from ucla, you know, Dean Smith from North Carolina, Mike Krzyevsky. And if you look at the style of coaching, because I played under different types of coaches with these different personalities, like that's what this got me thinking of, the Bobby Knight style, that very authoritarian, always yelling and screaming.
You know, players tend to not be as creative under that environment. They tend to be a little bit more nervous, they tend to make more mistakes because they are worried more about getting yelled at, most people. And there are, there's a much smaller population that I've seen with my own teammates at the time that can thrive under that, that environment. The, the, the ones that coach more like a father figure, that was more of a welcoming type of personality and more egalitarian and how they ran their, their coaching style.
They, that's why I said those other coaches I mentioned, the track record is they produce way more NBA players and they won way more championships. And when I played under coaches like that, I could see the difference because they were the type that would allow players to be a little bit more creative on their own on the court, which threw off the defenses a little bit more. And also when a player might have made a mistake, it wasn't, they weren't really reprimanded in a way that disincentivized that kind of creativity or risk taking.
[00:37:58] Speaker A: Going forward, particularly when it's a mistake of creativity and Risk taking as opposed to. It's a different kind of mistake. If it's a mistake of lack of effort, you know, and the coach that can tell the difference and discipline that differently as opposed to the coach that, you know, like you said that it's gonna. Any mistake gets treated the exact same versus the mistake. Hey, I tried something new, it didn't work okay. Versus yeah, I just didn't try like those steps handled differently.
[00:38:24] Speaker B: And I think the leadership is the.
[00:38:25] Speaker A: Most important piece because when you, when you look at this, in this point, you know, this point is straight from. And well I guess it happened in the show not straight from the article that we're citing or that we're pulling this from. Just that when you have a significant number of low performing workers that's really on the leadership, you know, like they, why are all these people not bought in? Like there's a certain amount of society, yeah, that is less motivated maybe naturally. But there are ways to, to, to bias yourself towards either finding and retaining the more motivated people but more importantly getting buy in. You know, like when you have these, even these tech startups or whatever, like what these things are driven by primarily are the buy in that the workers have. You know, like so. And that is whether they, the leadership is able to convey kind of this what we're trying to do and they're excited about that or somehow generating excitement amongst the workforce to do this stuff. And so yeah like the, the answer oftentimes to, to increasing productivity isn't about subtraction, it's about figuring out ways to, to, to add, to add to what we have. Let's. How can we get the people who we have to do better? How can we put them in a position to do better? And so that part and the, what was really fascinating to me is like you can chart going back to like Jack Welsh and GE and then Microsoft kind of another generation of that. Like this has been tried over the years because there is a tendency to feel like amongst certain personalities that when if things are sliding, the way to address it is to crack the whip. The way to address it is to. And you might get a short term bump from that because of kind of the factors of what that does. Like especially if the kind of work that's being done is not risk taking or creative and doesn't involve that problem solving stuff like that. But.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: Well.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: Oh, go ahead.
[00:40:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I was just going to say usually people that respond that way are doing it out of fear and insecurity. They're scared that they're either they personally are going to miss out on something, they're going to miss out on the bonus or the earnings call is not going to be that good. So they're driving everybody like a slave driver or they're scared of, you know, their own how they look, you know, in the society or something failing. And, you know, it's just interesting.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: But sometimes it is kind of a worldview though, because there is just that thought that exists that permeates. And again, whether or not it's been like with a lot of these things. And again, we tend to look at things polar. We as human beings like, we tend to try to look at these things in a polar way where it starts to be like you're either going to be 100% like, well, I'm just going to fire a bunch of people and make everybody afraid. I'm going to rule by fear or I'm going to not, as you said, I'm just going to let the freeloaders run wild and not deal with that at all and kind of just hope that everything works out. We tend to look at these things as those are the two options. But what has been shown over a period of time, over and over again, is that the best way to do it is somewhere in between. But that requires skill and dexterity from the leadership. That's a higher bar for the leadership, the leadership to be able to know, to know when to use a carrot and when to use a stick. That is something that requires a better version of leadership. And that's not when, when something's not going right. The person in charge, generally speaking, doesn't look at themsel and say, how can I do better in order to get more out of the team that I'm leading? You know, and that's. Some of that is just human nature and then some of that is, you know, it. It's as we, we talked about in many shows even earlier today. You know, it's like the idea of trying to pass the buck. That's the first thing. Well, how can I make sure that I don't get blamed for this or put this on somebody else and, you know, cracking that whip. It definitely if Facebook or Meta is not doing what is what, what, what Zuckerberg thinks it should be doing it when he fires 4,000 people, that makes it look it's not his fault, you know, to own the service. Not, not to me necessarily, but. But if he, on the other hand was look at himself, okay, what can I do to get more out of these people? Do I Need to move stuff around and stuff like that. That requires more introspection, which is just oftentimes not the first place people go with stuff like this.
[00:42:30] Speaker B: Well, I think just on that firing thing, I think that's where the beginning of the conversation I mentioned about culture, I just think they're making up whatever excuse they can to just say, we're going to fire these people. And now it's productivity, the lack of productivity culture. You know, this is the one on the excuse. And that's why DEI and WOKE and all that BS is being used. I mean, think about DEI is being used to do everything to fire people under federal government.
[00:42:54] Speaker A: And clearly all this lack of productivity is crazy, though, because CEOs are making so much more money now than they ever have.
I'm like, how are these dudes making so much money if everything is so crazy and so unproductive?
[00:43:06] Speaker B: Well, that's where just it's a decision by leadership just to not say we're going to fire these people because we want to trim some fat off the bottom line. We got to make up some ideological excuse why we got to get rid of them. But what I wanted to really focus on as we rounded out here is the article made a good point to some of the stuff we're saying, and it's real simple. It said leadership can be demanding or they can be demeaning. And I think that's really a good way to kind of break it apart because. And that may be a better way to define what we're saying on the show right now.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: Demanding is not a doormat at all.
[00:43:43] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's where I'm getting at. Right. Is demanding doesn't allow for freeloaders. Right. You're still demanding quality work. People show up on time, they try their hardest and all that. The difference is about the demeaning part. Right? And I think part of it demanding.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: Also, just real quick, is also you putting things in place in order to get the best out of people as well. It's not just, all right, you know, you just send them off, hey, do your best.
[00:44:05] Speaker B: It's like comes back to leadership and how a leader, it not only is wired, but how they understand their role. Like you're saying about. And that's what my point was about bringing up those basketball coaches is I could see where the more egalitarian, fatherly figure type is going to help someone grow as a young man, let's say, and mature and all that, versus the authoritarian type, which is just looking at how do I squeeze as Much as I can out of this kid while they're with me.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: Well, it's a different mindset, what you just said. Demanding versus demeaning.
[00:44:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's two different mindsets.
[00:44:35] Speaker A: And so brought us here.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And. And so, and I think that really goes back to. And this is where it's just tough. You can't read into everyone's psychology. But think about it, like, how people are raised. Right. Like, it seems like some of our leadership now, both the presidential level, the leader of Doge, you know, those kind of things. It's been well documented that they had really, really terrible relationships with their own fathers, and they had the type of fathers that were demeaning to them. So if you were raised in that kind of way, it's probably difficult for you as an adult to. To go and have empathy and compassion and really try and lead people from behind and try and build them up as people, because you don't know what that's like. Because your upbringing was someone being demanding to you. And if you happen to be one of the smaller percentage of people like those two men clearly are, that make some sort of financial success while they're in their journey of growing up and being adults, then they probably assume that the only reason why I'm like this is because I treated everyone else the way I was treated.
[00:45:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:32] Speaker B: And they're also very.
[00:45:33] Speaker A: Lot of reinforcement of that.
[00:45:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And they're also very insecure and they operate off fear. So when things start not going well, what are they going to do? They're going to blame even more people for being unproductive and all that and try and tinker with everything until they break stuff, which appears to be where we're going. So.
But yeah, so that's why to me, it's an interesting.
[00:45:52] Speaker A: You know, when that's where that leadership example is a really good example, and how they were heading a certain direction based on this demeaning type of an approach. And we're able to course correct, you know, like in real time. Course correct and then put themselves on a different trajectory, you know, so it's one of those lessons that seems like that just people are going to have to learn over and over again. I was just shocked at how well studied this was because it is intuitive to some degree. I'm not saying it's not intuitive to say if we. Because we tend to view organisms and organizations with kind of the. The mechanical analogy, you know, like. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like I said, it, it. It is the case that if you have a car that everything's working right except the engine or everything's working right except the transmission, that if you put a new engine in or a working engine or a working transmission in it, the productivity of that, that machine will go up. Like that is true. But where we lose it a lot of times is that again, the, the, the operating of a machine, mechanical device is just not the same as these human organisms, these human kind of. Or human organizations, you know, because the human factors it. There is a difference between whether or not from your high performers, from your low performers, from the middle, you know, the, the vast middle. There is a difference. And the leadership has a lot of control in this on whether or not you're getting the best or close to the best out of each of those people. And firing a bunch of people brings you lower on that scale. And so if you, if you aren't getting the best or a good amount or close to the best out of your people, then you're just going to underperform no matter what. And so how that the real question isn't getting rid of the lower performers is how to get the best out of the people you have. You know, and if that involves, again, that doesn't involve being a doormat, but it involves how do you be demanding without being demeaning, which, you know, again is just a lesson that appears to be one that has to be learned over.
[00:47:47] Speaker B: I just want to finish with this, James, because your allusion to the fact of how well studied this phenomenon is because this is really organizational management, all the stuff that's been studied since the early 20th century. Yeah. And that's what tells me this is not just an ideological play. And these guys are scared and insecure because someone. Obviously these guys are around very smart people as well. Right. So basically people, I'm sure have told these guys that behaving like this is going to have very negative consequences for the economy, for the nation, so on and so forth. And I'm sure those people got fired until the yes Men showed up. That says I'll do it. Right. And so that's what tells me that because this isn't like the first part of our show today that we discussed, which was a new pathogen which no one ever saw.
[00:48:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:32] Speaker B: You know, this management stuff and dealing with human beings and organizations, like we said, is extremely well studied. So for the fact that they are just throwing out all those playbooks tells us that, no, they just got a different idea on how they're going to run it.
[00:48:45] Speaker A: And we're all suggest, though like you said, the. The. That there's just some. Some nature, some. Some people's human nature that brings them to this, you know, like that. That it continually comes up and then. And then some people are able to adjust midstream, you know, and others just aren't. And the companies tumble down or the organizations tumbled tumble down. That. But there's something going on that. With our humanity and how we view things and more so our blind spots and how we. How we look at these things that, you know, it just. It's going to keep coming up. And so, you know, ideally we can be reminded of it and catch ourselves when it's something that we don't want to have to learn this lesson the hard way.
[00:49:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:25] Speaker A: So. So, yeah, but I think we can wrap this, Wrap this episode up from there. We appreciate Eric for joining us on this episode. A call. Like I said. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Till next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:49:35] Speaker B: I'm tuned in with Mana.
[00:49:37] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk soon.
