Podcasts about Balaji

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 20, 2026 46:10

"Every time this child was proven wrong, he learned something new." In this episode, Andrew Stotz continues his conversation with Balaji Reddie as they explore two essential elements of Dr. Deming's System of Profound Knowledge: the Theory of Knowledge and Psychology. Through the memorable story of a young boy trying to understand how his father's scooter starts, Balaji illustrates how we build theories, test them through experience, and improve them through learning. The discussion also explores why PDSA begins with theory, why experience alone is not enough, and why understanding how people learn is fundamental to leading improvement. Whether you're new to Deming or deep into his work, this episode offers practical insights into how better questions lead to better knowledge and, ultimately, better management. Are you ready to learn more about the System of Profound Knowledge? Check out DemingNEXT online learning! https://deming.org/learn/demingnext/ TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with Balaji Reddie, an educator and trainer in the teachings of Dr. Deming, and quality management generally. The topic for today is: The theory of knowledge and psychology. Take it away. 0:00:29.8 Balaji Reddie: Well, thank you. Good morning, Andrew. And it's great to continue our series. So the last time we met, we had begun with the Profound Knowledge, where we said that Dr. Deming brought together four, seemingly disconnected, sciences. He never invented any single one of them, but he saw the connections, and he created, what you could say is, a bootstrap theory of management, if I may say so, a very all-encompassing view of things happening around you. That's why he had no other word to describe it except profound. Because you see things that you normally would not see. That's what we said the last time. And when he proposed that, all of a sudden, I told you the funny thing was that experts in each of those sciences jumped in. I think they realized that they were caught napping, that they did not see the connections, and they did not see a bare minimum set of competencies that you need to have in order to understand things in their entirety. It was very, very... It was amazing that he actually could put that all together. 0:01:44.3 Balaji Reddie: So we started off with the four sciences, in no order of preference. We said here... His words were appreciation for a system. That means, taking into consideration the fact that everything... Having a holistic view, that what we see is not an event but an eventuality, that there's a huge big system behind it. Whatever we get to see in front of our eyes, we're just getting to see the effect. So appreciating that, that's what he said, for a system, a systemic view. I just used a different word, I said connectedness. And I said that from now on, we say that there are no events, there are only eventualities. Which means when something happens in front of our eyes, we always question... We bring in the concept of time and space; that the origins of this, what I'm seeing in front of my eyes, lie somewhere else and maybe actually in a different time frame. So I need to study deeper in order to understand why I'm seeing this in front of my eyes. And you gave that fantastic example of coffee beans, where you said everything has to happen at the right time. So that was the first one. 0:02:54.1 Balaji Reddie: Second one, was about understanding variation. And I would say, that's statistical thinking. I think around 1998, I saw someone come out with the definition of statistical thinking. And they said that it's a holistic view of looking at a process, that everything in the world, happens in the form of a process, and all processes are subject to variation. And understanding and reducing that variation, is synonymous to increasing quality. Now, I'd just like to make a slight change there. Yes, all processes are subject to variation, but talking about reducing... I think, understanding and managing that variation, would lead to better quality. And his entire insistence was understanding variation. Although, let me tell you this, in Henry Neave's book, he wrote about this, where he said that in one of the weekend chats that they had with Deming, he made a statement that if I had to reduce my message to managers in two words, I would say: reduce variation. And this, I've heard from both Henry Neave and David Kerridge. For those who are unaware of who David Kerridge was, because he passed away, I think, around 2018 or 2019, I can't remember... Or maybe before. I'm forgetting the year. 0:04:32.1 Balaji Reddie: But this was... He was from Aberdeen, Scotland. And people used to say, he's like an unofficial person who could be the successor to Deming. So he wrote a lot of wonderful papers. So David Kerridge, Henry, and I, were sitting together having dinner, and they were talking about Deming, and they said that, yeah, he did not... There were some things where he could get really, really upset about when he... About performance appraisals. But there are some things when he spoke of Shewhart, Walter Shewhart, he spoke in a very different tone. And then came this topic, that when we told him that you said reduce variation, he said, "I never said that." They said, "But you said it. We have it... We wrote it down, both Henry and I." And he said, "I could have said that in a context, but I don't think I meant it in that way." So for the record, yes, he uttered it; but he meant it differently. I'm quite sure he said to understand and manage that variation. 0:05:35.4 Balaji Reddie: So what is that managing variation? Okay. We saw this last time, in the very narrow sense of the term, that is when Walter Shewhart invented the control chart. He said there are two kinds of variation that exist: natural variation and unnatural variation. And to distinguish between these two, he created the control chart, which was based on... It was an empirical formula, and people confused it to be a statistical thing. He demarcated, brought in two lines, what he called as the upper control limit and lower control limit. And he said as long as the outcomes of any process or system, if you could measure them and you're plotting them on a graph, as long as they lie within these limits, well, that's the natural behavior of the process or system under study. And the moment their performance crosses the limits, one of these limits on the higher side or the lower side, then you can say there's something unique, special, that has happened. So he used the term, random variation, and assignable cause variation. Because he said you could assign a particular cause to the points that lie outside limits. But when you are studying the variation that lie within limits, the variation that lies within limits, then you can't ascribe a particular cause. There is a system of causes acting. This particular difference in approach... 0:06:58.1 Andrew Stotz: That's a great point. The assignable thing is a great, great point. It really helped me just understand it better. 0:07:04.7 Balaji Reddie: Oh, yeah. Because you could assign a particular, that's why he said assignable. And this is random. Assignable, has its advantage that you can isolate it. And initially, he said you could isolate, and you could eliminate, that cause because it is something which is alien to the system under study. And one by one by one, when he said you eliminate all those causes, you land up with a system or a process that fluctuates only within limits, and he called that as a statistically controlled process. Now, he said your real work begins when you start looking into the reasons for each of those points lying within limits, and I made that statement. You don't have one cause, you have a system of causes. Here's where we studied systems the last time, and I'm just refreshing all of this. I said that in a system, you have interconnectedness, you have interdependencies. And then cause and effect are not closely related in time or space. You have synergistic relationships. So when you start studying, it becomes very, very complicated. Because the performance of each of those causes is also subject to variation. So you can never, ever tell with absolute certainty, what is causing the system variation. Because each of the causes is part of a bigger system. So he made that statement that the complete knowledge of any process or system, is unknown and unknowable. He was not being pessimistic; he was being realistic. We discussed this the last time. And so I said, what do we do then? Yeah, we'll come to that. But now comes the other part, which gets really, really interesting. 0:08:46.7 Andrew Stotz: By the way, I want to... Before you move on from the variation, I want to add something. But continue on. 0:08:55.2 Balaji Reddie: Okay. So he said the reason for the point lying outside... And I said it's assignable, what Dr. Deming called as, special cause variation. You can assign a cause, and I said it's alien to the system under study. And I started by saying you can eliminate it. And even Walter Shewhart began by saying, eliminate it. But now, I'm going back on my words slightly. If you eliminate that special cause, it could be a special cause for the system under study, but it could be the common cause of another system which is related to this. And so what can you do? Well, here's the best part that comes in. You reduce the effect of that cause, to the extent that it does not cause any harmful variation here, to the system under study. And that, Andrew, is optimization. "I want this, and I want that", not, "I want this, or I want that." So I need that. 0:10:01.0 Balaji Reddie: Because I can begin with eliminating, but then I have to keep my eyes and ears open. Because this is what I did in my own company when I started implementing all of this. I'll be honest, I drew a control chart, and when I found points lying outside limits and we discovered causes, I used to eliminate them. But since I was exposed to Profound Knowledge, and what Dr. Deming said about optimization, I kept my eyes and ears open to any change that we observed in the company, anywhere. If I... Even if I got a feedback within a day, two week, month later, saying, "See Mr. Reddie, this is what's happening," and I said, "Wait, wait, wait. Let's see the connection." And invariably, the systems would be connected. And so we could not eliminate, we had to reduce. So we had to go back and check. And that's optimization. Because what happens is if you just keep eliminating... Which is a good place to start... The system under study could get attacked by that interrelated, the other system which you have just actually disturbed. And the problem would resurface with a new face. And you would then say, "Wait a minute. We had solved this problem. Why is it back?" So here's where Profound Knowledge comes in. And that's why the word is continual, it's not continuous. You gotta keep at it, you gotta keep learning. So when he said, yeah, that for common causes, or what he called as random causes, they're so complicated... And for these special causes too, they become complicated... Then how do we understand, and what action do we take? Do we just wait on our haunches and do nothing? That's where he brought in the Theory of Knowledge. And I'll begin with his... 0:11:44.1 Andrew Stotz: And maybe I can add something. 0:11:46.3 Balaji Reddie: Yeah, sure. Now you could. Yeah. 0:11:48.7 Andrew Stotz: The first thing I was thinking about, a special cause, or an assignable cause in a factory, particularly in Asia... But maybe also in the US and maybe more in Europe these days... Is a fluctuation in the electricity. Not necessarily a blackout, but that can be a special cause. 0:12:12.1 Balaji Reddie: Right. 0:12:13.6 Andrew Stotz: But just fluctuations in electricity, can cause an impact on a system, so it can be a special cause. And then once you understand it, you may decide, "Hmm, is there a way we can smooth this? Is there a way we can think about the electricity input into this system, which is really critical for this system, by putting something in between the electrical source and this particular system?" So that's an example of the idea of a special cause, potentially, that is just a common cause, possibly, of another system. 0:12:55.3 Balaji Reddie: That's right. In fact, in India, we did have this problem in the 1990s, when the whole world descended into India because of the cost advantage. The rupee got devalued, the dollar really sprung up. And so people found India as a gold mine, when it came to establishing organizations. And what they would do is bring in much of their semi-automatic technologies that they had in the US, or wherever, Europe at that time, into India, which were largely electronic, had components which were electronic. And in India, the temperature conditions are... I mean, you're in Thailand, you know how it is. It's extreme. 0:13:35.1 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. 0:13:36.9 Balaji Reddie: And so it was not ready for that. And we would have these problems with the components conking off. We had to come out with some remedial stuff, some short-term stuff. And then we started discovering things, we started inventing things. And they almost started losing the cost advantage. Then they said, "Okay. Let's get a little smart." When the next set of machines etc., started coming to India... This was in '91-'92, if I remember right. By '93-'94, that realization came in and so they said, "Why don't we send it in with a cooler," the cooling system, "so that no matter what happens outside, the components would be unaffected." But that led to another problem in cities like Mumbai, where you had extensive humidity. 0:14:24.2 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. 0:14:25.3 Balaji Reddie: And that would cause droplets, which would short-circuit the electronic components again. And so they came up with climatizers. It was crazy. 0:14:34.4 Andrew Stotz: Round and round you go. 0:14:36.7 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. 0:14:38.5 Andrew Stotz: That's interesting. 0:14:39.8 Balaji Reddie: You see, when I was exposed to Profound Knowledge for the first time, and when I wanted to teach it, I remember, I used to want to look out for examples; but I found none. And then when I started digging deeper and deeper, I said, "Wait, I do have examples. It's just that I didn't know that I was looking at it differently." And so it was amazing. Like I said, what Dr. Deming said, you see things that you normally would not see. And I began seeing things in retrospect. 0:15:09.4 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And that's sometimes... I think the teachings of Dr. Deming have made me a very calm and relaxed guy. I no longer freak out over, what I now know, is just normal variation. And I feel like it's a world of people, that you have to react. If you don't react, you're not doing something. And it's almost impossible for most people to see that the next outcome of this, is not a special cause. And I spend a lot of time in my ethics class trying to help young people understand, that there's just normal variation. Which brings me to my last point I wanted to make with what you said. It reminded me of my studies... Which are limited... Of insight meditation, concentration meditation, or Buddhist... What the Buddha taught. And I remember sitting in a temple in Los Angeles many, many years ago, and I thought, "I'm gonna try to learn from this monk." 0:16:24.6 Andrew Stotz: And I left there thinking... So we did meditation, and he said, "Just try to clear your mind. And just..." And so I left that meditation going home thinking, "My brain was on fire," and there's so many things going on. So I went to him, and I studied more, and I learned more. And I realized that I had misunderstood. You're not trying to control your thoughts, or reduce your thoughts. You're trying to observe your thoughts. And once I started to realize, just observe, then I started to make progress in really understanding that reduce will come over time; maybe, maybe not. But observing was really the step. Because once you observe something, particularly with your mind, if you observe thoughts coming out, then that actually means you're somewhat disconnected because it's hard to observe something that's happening. So therefore, you're starting to look at it from a different perspective. And that's what I thought about when you were saying, it's not just reduce, reduce, reduce. It's first, observe. 0:17:40.1 Balaji Reddie: That's right. Yes, understand, see what's happening, ask the right questions, "Does this happen every day? Or has it happened only today?" things like that. And then you could say, "Okay. If it's happened only today, why did it happen only today? Is today a special day?" So that's the understanding of variation in the broadest sense. And that's why statistical thinking is about asking the correct questions, even in the absence of data. It's thinking, statistical thinking. Don't confuse it with statistical methods, where all kinds of mathematical mumbo jumbo come in. This is thinking statistically. And that's where theory of knowledge, where Dr. Deming said, comes in to help us, first, enlist what's unknown. And then from that, you start pinpointing, or segregating what is knowable, faster. And then you... Once you do that, then you start recycling your thoughts and trying to understand those systems much better. And that's the theory of knowledge. 0:18:45.5 Balaji Reddie: Now, just a statement which he said, what is a theory of knowledge? He said, "A statement conveys knowledge, if it relates some cause to some effect; It fits without fail, all the observations of the past; It helps us predict the future with the risk of being wrong." So I'll repeat the whole thing. He said, "A statement conveys knowledge, if it relates some cause to some effect," it provides us information, it relates some cause to some effect. "It fits without fail, all the observations of the past; It helps us predict the future, with the risk of being wrong." Now, if you go through this step by step, when you say here, take this example of a small five-year-old child. At least this is a very, very Asian and an Indian kind of an example, but I'm quite sure people all over the world will relate to this. A five-year-old child, here in India or in Asia, watching his father go to work every day. Father goes to work on, what we call as, a two-wheeler, a scooter as they call it. And if you know, in the old days, you could kickstart the scooter. We didn't have push-button starts, we used to kick the lever. And so this kid is very intrigued as to how does this scooter start. And he knows that he's at that age, if he keeps asking questions, he'll be told, "You'll learn when you grow up," or "Don't waste my time." 0:20:18.2 Balaji Reddie: And so he decides to observe and learn. And so he starts observing his father every morning from the small little balcony that they have. The daddy brought the scooter out into the compound and then put it on stand. And he did a big ritual around the scooter, and then he kicked the lever and the scooter started. And so he would write down. This is happening every day. And then he noticed that the scooter wouldn't start till he kicked the lever. And so he wrote down his first theory: kick is equal to start. Now, he decided to test this theory. A couple of days where he wasn't even in the balcony, he would sit inside the house and he would hear the kicking sound, and he would tell his mother, "Now the scooter's gonna start." And guess what? The scooter started. So this theory can't be wrong. Now, he decided to test the theory differently. He decided to start the scooter one day. So there was nobody at home, he goes to the garage where the scooter is there, and he gives the lever a mighty kick. But it doesn't start. 0:21:23.3 Balaji Reddie: Now, he says, "This is crazy." So he goes and reads the notes that he made. And then he saw a lot of funny things that were happening. His father was taking a bag off his shoulder, putting it on the handlebar, and touching the scooter two, three places and then kicking the lever. So he went and brought his father's bag, put it on his shoulder, took it off, put it on the handlebar, did that whole ritual, and then kicked the lever. But the scooter didn't start. He said, "Now, what's wrong? Maybe I've not observed properly." So the next day, the whole system came under scrutiny. But he didn't observe anything special at all. But then again the next day, and then he said, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. There is something he's doing there. He takes the bag off his shoulder, but then he touches the neck of the scooter on the inside, and then he kicks the lever." So what could that be? And then when he observed the next day, he saw there was a key he was inserting and twisting it. And he said, "Oh, damn." So he wrote down his provisional theory: key plus kick is equal to start. 0:22:23.7 Balaji Reddie: And so again, he tests this when there's nobody at home. He gets the key, inserts it and turns it, then he kicks the lever and the scooter starts. So here's where his theory becomes a little more elaborate: key plus kick is start. Now, this works very well till, months down the line, he hears kicking, kicking, kicking, but the scooter's not starting. And so he comes out and looks at his father. His father's desperately kicking away. And he says, "Looks like the old man's got it wrong." So he comes down and asks his father, "Have you turned the key?" And he says, "Oh yeah. You're trying to teach your father how to start the scooter." "Then why isn't the scooter starting?" "I don't know." So they take it to an elderly gentleman staying nearby. "Look, the scooter's not starting." So that elderly gentleman is quite unperturbed. "Oh, no problem." He does something totally out of the playbook. He runs with the scooter, jerks it into motion, and the scooter starts. 0:23:20.4 Balaji Reddie: So key plus kick completely collapses, and this kid is flummoxed. He asks his father what made the scooter start, and that's where he gets the answer, "You'll learn when you grow up." Now, this kid grows up with the question in his head, "How did the scooter start that day?" And he reaches seventh grade where they're having a subject called science, general science. And the teacher that day in class is discussing Newton's laws of motion. And she starts, "Body continues to be in a state of rest..." etc., etc. "And to every action there's equal and opposite reaction," and, "rate of change of momentum is equal to force." And the moment that kid hears that sentence, "Rate of change of momentum is equal to force"...now here's the point I'm making. To every child sitting in that classroom, this was just information. But one of those things answered a question; it became knowledge. He suddenly realized when his teacher said, rate of change of momentum is equal to force, that's when he said, "When you're running with the scooter or kicking that lever, I'm generating a force which is making the scooter start." 0:24:32.2 Balaji Reddie: And soon, of course, when he grows up, he inherits the scooter, and every time he has a problem, he runs with it, jerks it into motion. But one day he's doing that and then the scooter is just not starting. So he takes it down to the motor mechanic, and the mechanic does something very funny. He goes underneath the scooter and comes out with a contraption called the spark plug and shows him how dirty it has become. Then cleans it, puts it back and then kicks the lever and the scooter starts. So now he's got a big elaborate theory. When I kick that lever or run with the scooter, I'm generating a force, the force ignites a spark, the spark ignites the fuel, and the scooter starts. Now, I know this is not how it happens, but I think I made my point. 0:25:13.9 Balaji Reddie: But if you go through this entire narration that I've just made, if you realize something, that every time this child was proven wrong, he learned something new. And he was proven wrong because he had a theory. It may not have been correct, but it was a theory. So theory is not the opposite of practice; theory is a guide to better practice. And the more your theory is proven wrong, the more you learn. And the theory is based on what you have seen, what you see before your eyes. You liken it to something, an experience, something you've seen, something you watched. And that's how theories are generated. And that's when Dr. Deming said, if you want to understand the complexities in a system, you begin with theory. "I think. I feel. Let's try this." It worked? Great, "Let's do it again." If it did not work? Great, "Let's see under what conditions it would work?" And that's why he said we need to cooperate to understand the system, because when we sit together, each one comes out with a different theory based on what our backgrounds are. I think once we had this discussion, like if I were to start describing to you the road reaching to my place, you already start constructing a mental picture based on whatever you've seen in life. And that's your theory. 0:26:50.3 Balaji Reddie: Now, when you actually land here, you say, "Oh, I thought this and I'm seeing this." So that's what happens with Plan-Do-Study-Act. We're all born with this. It's a natural way of learning. It begins with a theory: I think; I believe; Let's try. And then you actually carry out that set of steps which you think would give you the result. And then you study. "Did I get the result? Did I not get the result?" And then you act. "Maybe I need to modify my theory. Maybe I need to add to it. Maybe just abandon the theory." 0:27:23.6 Balaji Reddie: I remember once somebody asked me this question, "That if we abandon the theory, what happens?" Well, you get to know the limitations of your existing theory. And the more you know where your theory fails, the more powerful it becomes for you. If you can predict failure, you have really understood the process. So when you know that this is gonna fail, then you've really understood this. So this theory, this is a system of learning, and all of us are born with this. We all have this natural inclination of asking questions. So that system of learning which leads to theory, we're born with it. But the problem is this: there are some people who learn by watching, some people who learn by doing, some people who learn by reading, some people who learn by writing. For some people, one word is enough. For some people, you have to keep repeating the theory till the person says, "Okay. I understand it." 0:28:22.9 Balaji Reddie: Now, is this wrong? We're just different from each other. And that, is what Dr. Deming said, is the understanding of psychology. You need to understand the learning process of a person, and then you need to interact with that person. So whether it is an employee in your company, whether it's your customer, whether it's your supplier, you need to understand. And I would reduce that word to being empathetic. Understand, be empathetic, and not just understand what makes that person tick. Broadly, we say learning process. Now, a lot of corollaries that come out of this, that you cannot copy an example without understanding the underlying theory behind it. It's not how that person has been successful, but why. And for that, you need to... Because we come from so many different backgrounds, that's why Dr. Deming said, you need to have operational definitions before you start communicating to each other. So all of these are an outcome of the Theory of Knowledge. One is the concept of experimentation. That means the more you fail, actually, the more you learn. But management rewards only successes. The appraisal system works only on successes. We need to also recognize failures, because that's where you know where it failed and what you need to do next. And as they say, failures are the stepping stones to success, etc. Fine. But if you're doing it in a very structured scientific way, your rate of success would go faster. 0:30:05.1 Andrew Stotz: And I think that's an important part, is the structured way. Because one of the things... I was just teaching a management team, about 35 people, yesterday. And I was teaching them about corporate strategy, and that there's many ways to win in corporate strategy. Could be the low-cost leader, or whatever. But one of the ways I describe, is what I call, know-how. That your firm has some special knowledge, or some special skills, or expertise, that you've accumulated over time. And this brings us to the point of... Because many times, I've thought about the Theory of Knowledge, and thought, "Yeah, we do that." We casually do exactly what you said. We ask a question, we have a little theory, we test it. But the problem is, many companies think that they have know-how as a competitive advantage, until the person with the know-how leaves. And then they realize, "Oh, we just had one superstar." The question is, do we have a formal or structured way of acquiring and disseminating knowledge, till it becomes common knowledge in our company? And that's where the Theory of Knowledge, and the PDSA, I see brings a lot of value. 0:31:36.2 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. So that's why the joke going around is know-how, know-what, but more important now is know-when and know-who. Even if you know who, it leads to the when, what, and how. Sometimes, you tend to thank the person profusely because that person says, "I know who knows to solve this," and then it takes you right there. 0:32:01.7 Andrew Stotz: Here's a fun thought exercise that I like to think of, is that... You and I both read physical books. And I've got thousands of them surrounding me in my office. But we're in a point in time where the future generations are not gonna read physical books. They're gonna read books that are online and... 0:32:27.0 Balaji Reddie: Right. 0:32:29.0 Andrew Stotz: And then we look at someone's house in the future. There's not gonna be books in their house. It's gonna be on their pad, on their phone, in the cloud. Now, one thing that's kind of interesting is, think about... Imagine that there's a solar flare hits the earth and wipes out all the books. They're all gone. In fact, all of our accumulated knowledge, of research studies, and everything. For the first time in human history, there's like this moment where everything's gonna... It wouldn't happen nowadays because people still have a distributed libraries, distribution of the knowledge. And all of a sudden, you could be without knowledge. And so this is part of the reason why, in a company context, it's important to have a method for acquiring, but also a method for consolidating, and collecting, and building knowledge, and upgrading it. Anyways, that was just some fun thing that I've been thinking about in my head. So anyways, keep going. 0:33:35.7 Balaji Reddie: Yeah, no. That's what's going on right now with the HR departments in companies, knowledge management, because they say, like you said, the person leaves and everything leaves along with them. So apparently, what happens is, when they are debriefing after a successful project... And this implementation thing which I read in Dr. Juran, he used to call it the Santayana review, George Santayana, who made that famous statement, "Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." And so he would say at the end of the entire project, y'all sit together... And like from the defense, you have this thing called, debriefing. You narrate everything, and it's verbatim. You take down what you went through so that that remains on record. And so we used to do this in our company. At the end of the project, we used to have the last meeting, and the last document that we used to put on the file, which used to close the file, the improvement file, was "Things Gone Right, Things Gone Wrong." 0:34:37.7 Balaji Reddie: And without that, no project file was completed. No project was completed. We used to have that last meeting, and the new team coming in would ask for the recently completed projects, and begin with reading that document first, because we don't want to repeat the same mistakes. And this is the only way. So nowadays, I've seen this, that the HR person also sits around in that meeting and asks the question, "Okay. You took this decision, but what made you take that decision?" Because they want that to be replicated. Turning tacit into explicit. So that that comes from here. If you understand why Juran explained... That's why I keep saying this, that I could understand Juran because I read Deming; and I could implement Deming because I read Juran. They're not mutually exclusive. And so when people get into this stupid argument of who was better, you're losing out on their learning by getting into that silly argument. They were very compatible. Maybe, they had different ways of expressing themselves. 0:35:51.7 Balaji Reddie: And so coming back to what Deming said, he said that this is Theory of Knowledge, and so you are in a continual state of learning when you're dealing with, what you call as, random causes. But in a state of assignable causes, that's the low-hanging fruit. It gives you the instantaneous results that management wants to see. But at the same time, if you're exposed to Profound Knowledge, you know that if you take such drastic steps of elimination, etc., etc., to show those results, the low-hanging fruit, a person with Profound Knowledge would keep his eyes and ears open to note any kind of changes, anywhere, in either a related or an unrelated system. And then make changes accordingly. You can't just leave it at that. 0:36:44.4 Balaji Reddie: So my experience in my company when I started implementing this... Because we had... What? 77 different interconnected processes which were running to make the company... Well, from start to end. Which included some manufacturing, some finance, some personnel. So these are all interconnected. And we found that if you're making changes, they would affect the other processes, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. So you have to keep revisiting those processes again and again, and seeing how you can optimize. And my estimate, is that it takes around three, to three-and-a-half years to actually attain some kind of predictability in the entire organization, if you're using good teams and using Profound Knowledge. If you are not using Profound Knowledge, you will gain some very good... You'd have some very quick gains, no doubt about it. But then the other problems may resurface. And if you've seen the path of frustration that Dr. Deming has drawn in, 'Out of the Crisis,' there's a diagram that you reach... You expect improvement and you don't, and it stagnates. And that's exactly what happens when you don't have Profound Knowledge. You tend to stagnate, and in fact, you start going the opposite direction. If you see it as a better way of learning and understanding your processes, then definitely, things can get much, much better. That's how I look at it. 0:38:28.8 Andrew Stotz: Excellent. Right. 0:38:29.9 Balaji Reddie: So in my own company, it took three-and-a-half years, to see things. And then we saw the effect of all this when we had to grow as a company, and from having something like 30-40 people, to close to 300. The growth was crazy. But because we had been exposed to all this, things became easier, let me put it that way. 0:38:57.4 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. It's funny because what I was just thinking about... Normally, when we say, "You have to grow," we're talking about like growing revenue, growing market share. But what you're also talking about, is you have to grow in your knowledge. 0:39:11.0 Balaji Reddie: Yes. You have to. 0:39:13.7 Andrew Stotz: Otherwise you can't manage it. 0:39:17.4 Balaji Reddie: Right. 0:39:20.7 Andrew Stotz: And anything else you want to add on this topic? 0:39:24.1 Balaji Reddie: Well, this is... So this is where you have all the four sciences acting together. So if I were to, in a nutshell, put together what we have just discussed of all the four sciences, I'll just pull up a list of points, and if we can sometime do perhaps a video call... Excuse me... Then... Just give me a minute. 0:39:55.5 Andrew Stotz: Yep. 0:39:56.5 Balaji Reddie: Okay. So here we are. So let's get to Profound Knowledge. Okay. So let's begin. 0:40:07.5 Balaji Reddie: So understanding... So appreciation for a system. The points you need to look at: that cause and effect are not closely related in time and space; that outputs are the results of a myriad of inputs; there exist synergistic relationships among the inputs themselves; And we need to understand the importance of a common aim and purpose for a system to function well. We come to understanding variation. That's learning how to think statistically, that is how to distinguish between matters that require immediate attention, what we call as, assignable cause variation; versus matters that require constant attention, which is what we call as, random cause or common cause variation., And understand that taking cognizance of and managing this variation, is synonymous to better quality. About Theory of Knowledge: the importance of theory; using theory to interpret observations; and experience is not doing the same thing again and again, but doing different things and learning from your failures. So you keep doing... Even if a person says, "I've got 30 years of experience," it could be... I don't say it's always... It could be the same thing being done for 30 years. But doing different things in 5 years, you could gain a lot more experience than doing the same thing for 30 years. And then you understand how to learn faster. The day you discover your learning process, is the greatest day of your life. And the funny thing is you can't discover it yourself. You need outside help. And that could be a mentor, maybe a teacher, maybe a friend, I don't know, it could be anybody. And understanding of psychology: okay, that people are inherently good; they want to do a good job; they learn differently, therefore they think differently. Working on people's learning systems and processes, rather than trying to exhort them, that would be better, learning their processes... And ranking... You cannot compare one person's learning system with another. Each one has their own learning system. You have to learn how to appreciate that and hone it, and make a person better at what they do. 0:42:40.2 Balaji Reddie: So these are the four sciences acting together. And that gives you Profound Knowledge. And we said here when we started, that when you have Profound Knowledge, you ask different questions. So when you start looking at things happening around you, and you start asking these questions... Because Dr. Deming said that people are the only living parts of any organization, and so you need to understand them. So I keep joking about this sometimes, that how do we learn this theory and psychology? The best thing is to... If you have a pet at home, if you can predict the behavior of your pet, then you really have Profound Knowledge. Because here is a living creature who can't communicate to you what they want, and if you can understand that, that's real empathy. When you understand your pet, or whatever. 0:43:43.5 Andrew Stotz: That's competitive advantage. 0:43:45.6 Balaji Reddie: Yes. 0:43:49.2 Andrew Stotz: Fantastic. 0:43:50.4 Balaji Reddie: Also, I keep saying this, when the womenfolk, they take a break when they are expecting. And then they come back to work after they've had their children, they had a child or something, people say that they've come back to work. I said, "Oh, they have not been away from work." They've done work which is so different right now. They've learned so much. So it's unfair to say that you've taken a break. I think women are never on a break. Whether they're in the family way, whatever, they are working. It's just that we define work as something that you do at a place of work, that is an office where they're doing work. Even when they're with a child trying to understand what that damn child is trying to say. I mean, just imagine, they learn how to... What that kid is going through, even though that kid can't communicate. And somehow, they have that instinct. So they have it more than us. I mean, of course, when you have parenting, which is done by both men and women now... During our time, of course, it was more women-oriented. We came from a different generation. But I see that change now. And so I keep saying this, that if you spend time trying to understand babies, or trying to understand your pets, I think you become more empathetic. And automatically, your Theory of Knowledge bit, and your psychology, starts getting stronger. 0:45:21.7 Andrew Stotz: Yes. I'm gonna test the theory. If I give my child this, they're gonna be quiet. Yeah. There you go, Theory of knowledge. 0:45:33.5 Balaji Reddie: There you go. 0:45:34.4 Andrew Stotz: Fantastic. Well Balaji, let's end it there. And on behalf of everyone listening, I want to thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org and jump into DemingNEXT to continue your journey. There's so much there now, it just keeps growing. So, this is your host, Andrew Stotz. And I want to leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, I just can't stop saying it: "People are entitled to joy in work."

father europe los angeles body crisis system turning psychology scotland indian asian theory thailand lens buddhist excuse newton buddha mumbai aberdeen deming balaji edwards deming george santayana juran pdsa santayana andrew stotz

A New Lens with Balaji Reddie (Part 4)

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 29, 2026 40:33

What if better management starts with seeing connections that were there all along? In this conversation, Balaji Reddie and Andrew Stotz unpack one of the most powerful and overlooked ideas in management: that everything is connected. Drawing on Dr. W. Edwards Deming's systems thinking, he explains why the problems we face today were set in motion long before we noticed them, and why the solutions are rarely where we think to look. Along the way, a cup of coffee becomes a window into five years of invisible effort, hydrogen and oxygen defy everything we'd expect, and a classroom game reveals that cooperation isn't a soft ideal — it might just be human nature. Whether you run a team of two or a global organization, this episode will quietly shift the way you read a situation, ask a question, or respond to a problem. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussions with Balaji Reddie, an educator and trainer in the teachings of Dr. Deming and quality management generally. The topic for today is connectedness, which will help you see things you normally would not see. Balaji, how are you? 0:00:30.7 Balaji Reddie: I'm good, I'm fine. 0:00:32.5 Andrew Stotz: Nice to connect with you. 0:00:34.1 Balaji Reddie: Yes, same here. 0:00:35.3 Andrew Stotz: Connectedness day. 0:00:36.5 Balaji Reddie: Yeah, connectedness, absolutely. Yeah, we chose this term very carefully, right? 0:00:42.6 Andrew Stotz: I suspect you have, given your precision. [laughter] 0:00:47.4 Balaji Reddie: Yeah, to see things that you normally would not see, let me attribute this to Henry Neave, who said that he heard Deming say this during his last three or four seminars in England, right? In Britain rather. Yeah, I think it was mostly in England. And he said, when he heard him say that, he said, "I am not here to teach you anything new. I'm here to make you see things that you normally would not see." And I would like to just expand on that and say when you see things differently, obviously, you observe, you record different things. And when you record different things, you ask different questions. When you ask different questions, you get different answers. And when you get different answers, you draw different conclusions. When you draw different conclusions, you take different decisions. And when you take different decisions, you get different results. It's insanity to expect different results by asking the same questions every single time. So management is not so much about giving the right answers as much as it is about asking the correct questions. And I think Dr. Deming helps you do that. He helps you ask the correct questions. 0:02:02.2 Balaji Reddie: Now coming to the word connectedness. We spoke about the System of Profound Knowledge, a unified theory of leadership and management, where Dr. Deming brings together four sciences. And the first one he says about systems thinking, or what he called as appreciation for a system, appreciation for a fact that everything is systemic. There's nothing that happens in isolation, right? And the second one, of course, he said was understanding variation, then understanding theory of knowledge and understanding psychology. But he said, all four are equally important, et cetera. And then comes the, I won't say contradictory, but a chapter before Profound Knowledge on systems especially. So that's where I decided to use the word connectedness, that all these are connected. What did he mean by that? So I believe he wanted people to learn about connectedness and systems first. 0:03:01.6 Balaji Reddie: So let's dive right there. What did he always say about systems, or connectedness as we say here? And let's get into his definition for system. And he says that "a system is a network," right, "of interdependent components that work together to achieve the aim of the system." And then he says "every system must have an aim. Without an aim, there is no system." And very well articulated throughout this book which he wrote, he always began with aim of the chapter. Even in Out of the Crisis, he always started with aim of a chapter. So network of interdependent components. So let's just break it down, because the three important words are network, interdependent, and aim. And he says aim comes first because without the aim, there is no system. 0:04:00.6 Balaji Reddie: Right. And he goes on to tell us what the aim of a system should be. Okay. He says here that the recommended aim should be for everybody to gain. Now, in one of the paragraphs there, management's job, where he says should be to make it clear, the first step is clarification. Everyone in the organization must understand the aim and how to direct their efforts towards the aim, right? And everyone must understand, okay, this is important. The danger and loss to the whole organization from a team that seeks to become a selfish, independent profit center. Right. So he says here we need to give both, why we need to do what we need to do. And he says the aim precedes the system. Now, I would like to leave this discussion right here. We will cover this in our 14 Points, our session on the 14 Points, because I believe the word aim and purpose are, they go hand in hand. Aim gives us a direction and purpose gives us the reason why we exist, right? And so the direction of all the efforts, you can see the development. He says here, he gives some examples that the system must create something of value. In other words, results. The intended results along with consideration of recipients and of cost mold the aim of the system. So he said it should be something that makes life better for everyone. 0:05:39.8 Balaji Reddie: Now, he was talking about a man-made system here. Remember, he wrote this for organizations, but I think I mentioned this before that this can equally be applied to natural systems, if you want to really study them in detail. I remember talking to Barbara Lawton about this, and I said, "Natural systems, they do have an aim. It's just that we've not understood it." The purpose and aim of, in fact, that was the basis for my paper, which I delivered at the Deming Research Seminar in 2002. And the title of my paper was Deming and Ecology. And I was trying to put together the thoughts of the physicist Fritjof Capra, who wrote some wonderful books like The Tao of Physics, The Turning Point, The Web of Life, and The Hidden Connections. And The Systems View of Life is also one of the sub-books or booklets that he came out with. But these were his wonderful books. At the time, he had not yet written The Hidden Connections, right? So based on his three books that I had read up until then, of course, one was called Uncommon Wisdom, where he reproduced some of the interviews he had with some systems thinkers in the world, including people not from conventional systems thinking. For example, he also reproduced his interaction with the then Prime Minister or the ex-Prime Minister of India, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, and how he spent time with her, because he was over here in India for quite some time studying the language Sanskrit and studying the texts over here, because he learned about systems thinking even deeper. 0:07:25.1 Balaji Reddie: So over there, he wanted to, he raised a question, what is the purpose? So I wanted to use Dr. Deming's theories to understand the purpose of a natural system and what is the purpose of man [laughter] in this natural system. So that was my theory. And that's when this aim thing became more and more clear. And Barbara said, "No, you're right. There is an aim. It's just that we're trying to understand it. Without that, you won't have the system working so beautifully. There is something that is at work." Right. And he says here, management of a system. And then he says that a system includes the future. And now here's where, when you talk about system includes the future, he mentions Peter Senge in his book, if you know about The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. And that's where this fantastic statement comes in because he says delayed effects. So although, Deming never used these words directly, but here I am putting among the first principles of systems thinking is that cause and effect are not closely related in time or space. Right. And that gives a lot of frightening conclusions, or inferences that you can draw from this. If I say that, by the way, that cause and effect are not closely related in time or space, and if I ask you what you understand by this statement, your first knee-jerk reaction would be what I do today, the consequences would be felt in another time at another place. Absolutely right. That's exactly what this means. But the converse is also true. What we get to see in front of our eyes, the origins are at another time and another place. 0:09:15.9 Balaji Reddie: So we only see the event, but systems thinking teaches us there are no events in this world. There are only eventualities. Now, this comes into play when you start doing a study, typically when people learn about quality, and then the first thing they learn is to, okay, identify a problem and try to solve it, right? And then they start asking the question, "Why did this happen?" And then you draw a fishbone diagram, which is, you know, one of the most popular tools. But the problem there is you need to arrange the causes logically and not categorically. And you also need to take into account that these causes are also related to each other. You can't isolate them. And the fact that, there could be an element of time over here, right, that this is a delayed effect that you're seeing. So the effect comes much later. And sometimes it could be weeks and months. So you have to take that into account, right? So the cause and effect are not true, which means then the next corollary from this statement is that seemingly disconnected events turn out to be connected. And so when you are studying something that's happening in front of your eyes, very quickly you ask the question, "What else happened a month ago, a week ago, that we seem to have missed? Are we missing something here?" So that's one of those things that we need to get into, right? We need to go backwards in time and not look at the localized stuff here. We need to look in space all around and try to figure out where and how we need to change things. 0:11:06.1 Andrew Stotz: It's also interesting to think about all the things that have to have happened for an outcome to occur today the way you want it, that is the right outcome. 0:11:19.8 Balaji Reddie: Yes. 0:11:21.4 Andrew Stotz: And a good example I use for that, and I was just talking two different times this week with my team, is coffee. Coffee is a really interesting one, because when you go to a coffee shop, they make you a cup of coffee, they give you a cup of coffee, but what you don't realize is that there was a farmer, took him five years to grow that tree. And then they had to pick it at the right time. You pick it at the wrong time, it goes wrong. 0:11:47.4 Balaji Reddie: Oh, yeah. 0:11:48.3 Andrew Stotz: They put it into some water. They leave it in too long, it's fermented. They leave it in too short, it doesn't, the shell doesn't come off. And then if they, once they've worked on it, if they have their grinders that are getting off the mucilage off of it, if they're too tight, well, then you're going to get a little slice off the top of the bean. And then when that goes to the roasting machine, that's going to burn right there because there's no protection in that area. But they got to get all of those things right all the way to that barista. And if that barista just basically doesn't check the water temperature, it's done. 0:12:29.5 Balaji Reddie: It's done. [laughter] 0:12:29.9 Andrew Stotz: You throw it away. And when you think about it, I have another lesson that I give to young people about capitalism, that how all of these decisions are happening all along the way. And when that happens, there's waste in the system. And that waste goes back all the way back to the effort of the farmer five years ago when they planted that tree. 0:12:51.8 Balaji Reddie: That's right. 0:12:52.3 Andrew Stotz: And so reducing waste is not only good for you and good for costs in general, but it has a respect for the process, a respect for the system. 0:13:04.0 Balaji Reddie: Yes. Connectedness. Reconnected. [laughter] 0:13:07.6 Andrew Stotz: Well, and the other thing I tell them is I say, and here you have a coffee bean coming from this country that's then being shipped to this country. They never met. 0:13:16.8 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. 0:13:17.1 Andrew Stotz: And that's capitalism. You trade. In fact, they may not speak the same language. 0:13:23.1 Balaji Reddie: Absolutely. 0:13:23.5 Andrew Stotz: Or they may even be enemies. They may hate each other. 0:13:26.9 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. 0:13:27.4 Andrew Stotz: And yet they trade. 0:13:29.5 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. 0:13:31.1 Andrew Stotz: And so it's a voluntary connectedness that happens through capitalism. Anyways. 0:13:37.2 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. The right quality and uniformity are foundations for commerce, prosperity, and peace. [laughter] That's Deming for you. 0:13:46.1 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. 0:13:46.3 Balaji Reddie: I think he chose that sentence so beautifully. It goes into the Deming Medal. He knew what he was talking about. So he was talking about systems, and I think profound knowledge came towards the end of his life, and rightly so. It came as a revelation, as a catharsis. I think he went through all of that, especially, I think it was between '88 and '89, if I'm not mistaken. Jaki Graham talks about this very, very funnily. She says that they were giving him pure oxygen and maybe that made his brain cells go alive. [laughter] And he could think so clearly. He was getting pure oxygen. And so his thought process... 0:14:31.0 Andrew Stotz: By the way, for the listeners out there, you may feel like I feel when I think about how Dr. Deming didn't really come out with the System of Profound Knowledge until he was, early '90s, let's say, '90s. You think to yourself, okay, I still have time to come up with my incredible insight on... 0:14:52.4 Balaji Reddie: Correct. 0:14:52.9 Andrew Stotz: Bringing together all my experience. 0:14:55.1 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. So because I think I shared this with you before that when you read Mary Walton's book and he says, "No, I don't think I'm ready to establish an institute," and he only did it one month before he passed. So I think by that time he was quite sure what he created was quite amazing, and it'll stand the test of time, right? And although, the title of the book is The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education, I believe it is industry, government, education, and healthcare. Because when he was in Japan, he said Japan must see itself as a system. And when he got the Deming Medal, that's what he said. Oh, sorry, when he got the Emperor's Medal, the Second Order of the Sacred Treasure. And he was talking to the Japanese Prime Minister. And he said, "You all must see yourselves as a system." And the four sectors of industry, government, education, and healthcare must work together. So he meant it as in the broadest sense of the term, right? And that's why this word system. So the first thing, of course, cause and effect are not closely related. Seemingly disconnected events turn out to be connected. The third important thing here in systems thinking is the reductionist thinking that we have. 0:16:12.0 Balaji Reddie: We believe the word analysis means dissection. And if you look deeply and read the book Mind and the World Order, what is the purpose of analysis? The purpose of analysis is not dissection. That's just the act of breaking a system down. But the purpose of analysis is interrelationships, establishing the interrelationships or understanding the connectedness. And I find it quite funny because people say analysis is dissection, and so they came up with a new term, really not necessary, synthesis, bringing it all together. There was no need for that term. You're not engaging in what, tautology? [laughter] You didn't need that. Analysis itself means dissecting and understanding relationships, right? 0:17:02.2 Andrew Stotz: Hmm. 0:17:03.3 Balaji Reddie: And so he said here, we have that reductionist thinking, but we forget that in a system, you have what are called synergistic relationships. You cannot understand a system by breaking it down into its components and studying the components separately and then believing that the components and their attributes and what they do gives the output of what we see. No, you could be completely wrong here. It's not what they do separately. Okay, it's a good thing to understand the components of a system and study them and maybe even establish connectedness, but sometimes what the results you see are quite contrary to what they could be giving separately. I'll give you an example here. Take the case of water. Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen. You cannot study and draw conclusions about water by studying the attributes of hydrogen and oxygen separately. You'd be making a mistake, a grave error. Okay, let's do that. Hydrogen, a highly inflammable gas, catches fire like this. Oxygen feeds fire. But you put them together and they give you something that quenches fire. Hydrogen is not wet. Oxygen is not wet. But water is wet. [laughter] How do you explain this? 0:18:25.9 Balaji Reddie: All right. If you take the case of sugar, it's a hydrocarbon. Try tasting hydrogen. All right, try tasting carbon. Now put them together and see what you get. Now, can it not be then that you are studying a system and when you break things down and you're studying the components separately, you could be making the same error? It's not what they do separately, it's what they do together. It's the same with sections in a company, departments in a company, companies themselves. Today, we use this sophisticated term, supply chain, call it what you will. I love to use the word provider network. I don't like using the word supplier any longer. I like to use the word provider, because today we're living in a different world. We're getting activities done by someone else, and you can't say he's supplying me this activity. He's providing me this service, right? So provider is a better term to use than supplier. And it's no longer a chain. It's a network, right? It's more lateral. It's all over the place. It's not linear. You're doing a huge disservice by using the term supply chain, because it's not bringing out what exactly is happening right there. 0:19:38.3 Balaji Reddie: And today's supply chains or provider networks are globally dispersed. So you need to have something that connects them. You just said that, the farmer could be in a different country, speaking a different language, maybe he didn't even know where it is being used, and they could hate each other, but they have to work, [laughter] you need to work together. So there's some kind of connectedness that comes in once again. But here's where people make mistakes. So you're talking about synergistic relationships. So sometimes in a team, now here's where all that incentive pay and choosing employee of the month can destroy a system. 0:20:18.8 Balaji Reddie: It could have been the entire team that did well, and they did well because they worked as a team. And it was synergistic, where some components had to, I can't use the right word, but maybe had to underperform so that the system came out ahead. It's like the organs of the human body, right? That's an interconnected, interdependent system. You have a primary function of each of the organs, but there are many other functions we are still discovering, right? For example, if you take the case of ears, besides hearing, they're responsible for balance in our body, right? Eyes, besides sight, they are also responsible for balance in our body. If you try this yoga position, you know, there's a yoga, so to say, yeah, you stand on one leg. And then you lift one leg off the ground and put the ball of your heel on the knee, the other leg's knee. And then you hold your hands above your head to form like a namaste or a triangle. As long as your eyes are open, you stand upright. Shut your eyes, you fall. It's a system and we don't even realize it, right? So this is something we're still... 0:21:38.3 Andrew Stotz: You also fall in that posture when your teacher says, as mine did once, "Now you're in the position. Now raise your other leg." [laughter] 0:21:54.5 Andrew Stotz: My yoga teacher didn't come yesterday, but I did my sessions every day. But I haven't been able to do that one yet. 0:22:03.6 Balaji Reddie: We had that joke in school. Why does the crane stand on one leg? [laughter] 'Cause if it raised the other leg, it'd fall. [laughter] So it continues standing on one leg. So yes. So you have the synergistic relationships which exist, all right? And it's so difficult then to establish these interrelationships. And sometimes they're visible, sometimes they're not, all right? And sometimes you get to see the results right up front. Sometimes you get to see them in time delay. And that is why Deming said continual improvement. It never stops. Continual learning. You can never say you have complete knowledge of a process or a system. You can never say that, right? And now comes the best part. When you say here that all these are interconnected and there's synergy and then there's cause and effect not closely related in time and space, the output of a system, that is why, is subject to variation. And that's why the study of variation becomes important, right? 0:23:16.2 Balaji Reddie: And when you draw a diagram saying, suppose you say this is a system and all the components are there and you draw the interconnectedness and you draw an arrow and you say, "Okay, you're getting the system is subject to variation," right? Can you with absolute certainty say that because here, because the funny thing is each of the component's performance is also subject to variation, right? So can you say that, this combination gave me this output? You can never say that. You can only say it's probable, might be somewhere here. And so I think Walter Shewhart's greatness was in recognizing that what is natural to a system and what is not natural. When do you start asking the question, "What do I know about this?" When you cannot predict. When you can predict with a certain amount of certainty that this is going to happen. 0:24:14.6 Balaji Reddie: It is between these two limits. Well, then that's when you say, "Okay, I think I know quite a bit about this, but I don't know much. I want to reduce those limits, because I want to be as certain as possible when I make a prediction." And that was what was continual learning. It was not so much about cost. It was as much as it had to do about understanding and predicting. I know what's going to happen next. To a certain extent, this will happen. This will happen, right? And that's where the understanding of variation comes in. Okay, and then he brought in the third, that in variation, you saw that there were what he called as random variation and assignable variation, or what Deming had common and special cause variation. Common causes belong to the system and special causes are alien to the system under study, right? And so say it's easier to identify the special causes because they tell you something is not right. And so you can say, "I know it happened." You can isolate and say, "This is the cause," right? It makes it easier for you then to isolate that, study it, but... 0:25:30.1 Andrew Stotz: I just had that happen this morning. 0:25:32.4 Balaji Reddie: Okay. 0:25:33.7 Andrew Stotz: I'll give you an example. 0:25:35.2 Balaji Reddie: Yeah, sure. 0:25:36.0 Andrew Stotz: I've been working with my accounting team and what we're trying to do is make sure we have on-time and accurate monthly financial statements. And I've chosen those words very, very carefully. And what I've done with the team is ask them, there's no pressure in this. All I'm asking you to do is pick a day that you think we will be able to have on-time and accurate monthly financial statements. And then they pick their days for each month to the end of the year, which pretty much certainty accounting is a repeating of a similar function. And so then as I was talking with them throughout that day, I said, "Why are these boxes piled up around here?" And they said, "Well, the room that we store them in is getting full." The paper, 'cause you have a regulation in Thailand, you have to have your accounting documents for up to six or eight years on premises in case the revenue department comes. So I said, "Well, show me that room." And we went to the room and it was an absolute mess. It's like people have been dumping boxes and papers in there for five years. 0:26:51.6 Balaji Reddie: Wow. 0:26:52.6 Andrew Stotz: And I said, "Okay. You got to clean up this room this month." They're like, "Ah, it's going to take us two months." I said, "Look, this is critical." And they agreed. And so they have now completed that task, but it consumed so much of their time to do that. And it looks beautiful now. But they're two days late on the on-time and accurate monthly financials. And if we were to look at that on a control chart, we would see that it's a big deviation from what they've been able to do. But that special cause is almost meaningless, just as meaningless as the random variation in the sense that this was just a simple situation where there was a trade-off, they made the trade-off, and it's an acceptable trade-off. 0:27:43.1 Balaji Reddie: Yeah, I'd like to put it this way. When you know why it has happened, it's not that harmful, right? As long as you can predict when we do something. It's the unpredictability that makes a special cause harmful. And that's why when I used the term that Deming's thinking was about reducing or eliminating harmful variation, that is things which get out of your hand and you usually don't know why it's happening. So once you get to know, I believe that this could be connected, yeah, that's a good place to start, right? 0:28:15.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. Now, someone that doesn't understand the situation and look back over time may not understand what that cause was, which I'm thinking that I want to develop kind of a note-taking system where we actually write down what was that so that we have a record and an understanding of it. But... 0:28:37.1 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. And so when you say here that there's so many, that complete knowledge is not possible, and that's where you start thinking that was Deming being a pessimist to say complete knowledge is not possible, unknown and unknowable. But no, he was just being realistic. But he did not leave us right there. He said the way you can make the unknown as known as possible is through the theory of knowledge. And that's how the whole thing is. It's beautifully done, what the theory of knowledge is. But he says here, very simply, one of those exercises which you see in the new edition of The New Economics on page 58. But if you go to the old edition, right? That's, I believe, on... Where would that be? Page 84. The example he gives there, effect, the plans and their effect, area A, B, and C, the matrix diagram, if you see that? 0:29:50.0 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. 0:29:50.5 Balaji Reddie: That he says was devised by Henry. And then, of course, he picked on that and put it into his book. I got a chance to actually work on this in the form of a game. And the game, I would break up the audience into four or five groups of five people each and then say, "You're department A, department B, department C," and then have a host of projects lined up for them. And I say, "Now you're going to be ranked and rated based on how you do as a department." And so they would choose those projects where only they were benefiting, right? And obviously, that's what you see in the first table. A chooses three projects, and B chooses two projects, and C chooses three projects. And you see the plus signs there indicating that it's for them, for them alone. And then they are exposed to the fact that, wait a minute, now we're going to give you some extra information. You chose these projects because they were good for you, but now we're going to tell you that these were bad for the others, right? And only one of them was good. 0:30:59.9 Balaji Reddie: And I say, "Okay, now here's this extra information you've been given. Now what are you going to do?" All right. And I said, "I'm giving you five minutes to... Because the company is going to do badly, right? And even though you get a good rating, but the company does badly and eventually the company might have to shut down. So what would you want to do now? I'm giving you five minutes to rectify this." You know, Andrew, not even five minutes was necessary. They would come back within two or three minutes and say, "Let's just choose those projects where everyone gains." And I was surprised the first time that happened. And that's why Deming said cooperation is the key and it is natural. It's just that we have brought in this competition thing. So competition is not natural. He says cooperation is natural. [laughter] 0:31:53.9 Andrew Stotz: And that, in Asia, and I can speak to Thailand, what I like to tell people here in Thailand for managers and people running business is that the core strength of Thai people is that they want to work together. So when you break them up and you put them into groups and then you incentivize them either by group or by individual, you destroy one of their core strengths. 0:32:28.7 Balaji Reddie: Right. 0:32:29.1 Andrew Stotz: That's not a core strength of American. A lot of Americans don't want to work together. They just want to do their own thing. Right? They've been trained to be independent and they don't want that hassle. But in Asia, particularly in Thailand, where we're struggling to bring more and more value, what's happened is the KPI mentality of divide and conquer really is damaging. And it brings me to another point or question that I wanted to mention, and that is about the natural... My mom has a saying, and it's "inch by inch, it's a cinch, yard by yard, it's hard." And what she was telling me was to break things down into manageable parts and then work on the next right part, and then you will start to make progress. And we have studied under Adam Smith and the concept of how division of labor brings value, can increase output. And so there's a whole side of things. And then we're incentivized as individuals, particularly in the West, but let's say generally that, if it's to be, it's going to be up to you and you got to make yourself performance and your department's performance. I don't care about the others. I care about what you're doing with yours. 0:32:54.6 Andrew Stotz: So there's an accountability aspect and it all comes together to give people the perception that, hey, I need to break this down into smaller parts. And so there's just this natural inclination to do that. And if you were to say to people, you can't break it down into individual parts, that also doesn't work. You have to be able to understand the different parts and their interconnectedness, going back to what you're saying. 0:34:26.8 Balaji Reddie: Yes. 0:34:27.1 Andrew Stotz: But there's a lot of different things that I'm saying here. But I think the thing that I'm saying is that the pressure on most people is to divide and conquer, to say, "I'm going to go and look at this department and you and your performance." And what Deming was saying was, you've got to look wider than that if you're really going to be successful. Tell me where I'm right or wrong or give me some guidance. 0:34:53.5 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. I mean, that's exactly how it is. And I just told you that when I saw this happen, it was like an eye-opener. And then what happened after that was, okay, there were some other projects which where we were not going to do well, but the company's going to come out ahead. So why don't we choose those? And that's exactly what you see in the table, that they choose certain projects where they themselves are... Now that's real optimization, right? That's getting the best for everyone. 0:35:23.4 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. 0:35:24.8 Balaji Reddie: And today it's become an overused and abused term. For anything they use the word optimize. I think Deming was way very clear about this 30 years ago when he came up with this idea. And he said it's for everybody to gain. It's not compromise, it's optimization. Right? So I, of course, have a different take on optimize and we'll see that next week when we come into four parts of profound knowledge. So I'd like to end here with talking about cooperation is the key and I think we realized why. 0:35:59.1 Andrew Stotz: Okay. 0:35:59.8 Balaji Reddie: Deming says it's not about each other, it's win-win. The system should... And he gives that lovely example in the same chapter, the last example, where he talks about the truck company, the two truckers who used to keep their establishment open. Alternately overnight so that both could gain and they would use each other's resources. He said, "I was surprised when I called the pickup truck and I saw that the truck was from his competitor. He sent his competitor's truck to pick up my car." That was a classic case of cooperation. So since he ends with that, he ends that chapter, I'd like to also speak about that. Cooperation is the key because we are dealing with something very complex, right? And none of us is as strong as all of us. It's not just about, like you said, because cause and effect are not closely related, it is imperative now that we need to work together. So that was with systems thinking. Cause and effect are not closely related. There exist synergistic relationships. Seemingly disconnected events turn out to be connected. And outputs are the result of a myriad of inputs. You can never say you know everything. So that was systems thinking for you as they apply to the elements of profound knowledge as well. 0:37:33.3 Andrew Stotz: Great. 0:37:33.7 Balaji Reddie: Next week, we'll get into profound knowledge. 0:37:37.1 Andrew Stotz: You know, I think my ending thought on this goes back to the concept of meditation. 0:37:45.4 Balaji Reddie: Okay. 0:37:45.9 Andrew Stotz: Concept of insight meditation or Vipassana or... 0:37:52.6 Balaji Reddie: Vipassana. 0:37:53.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. So part of what I understand about meditation is the idea of clearing our mind in this moment. It may also be just observing our mind and just observing all that's happening and going on, which is fine. And let's say that a meditation master may be able to clear their mind. But let's just say that what we're trying to do is come down to this instant, this moment. And I remember during COVID when a lot of pressures were on in my business and stuff, I used to meditate and focus on one saying, which is, "I'm okay right now at this moment." 0:38:36.7 Balaji Reddie: Right. 0:38:37.1 Andrew Stotz: And why this is interesting is because let's say this moment is time zero. What you've just explained is that there's about 50 million things before time zero that have been connected in one way or another that got you to time zero. 0:38:55.1 Balaji Reddie: Yes. 0:38:55.3 Andrew Stotz: And you also said that a system, as Deming said, is a system includes the future. 0:39:00.2 Balaji Reddie: Future. 0:39:01.2 Andrew Stotz: And that's going to be a function of all the different things that happen after time zero, the interconnected things. And it just made me realize, ah, so the value of meditation, I can see it even more now when I think about all the connections on both the future side and the past side. And so it just helped me think about it from that perspective, a little bit different, but anyways. 0:39:23.4 Balaji Reddie: Yep. 0:39:24.9 Andrew Stotz: So I just want to thank you for taking the time. And in fact, what I was thinking is that I need to do more interviews with our advisors and other board members of the Institute, including yourself, because they've all got a lot to say. And I've got some discussions going on with that right now. So I'm looking forward to that. And so I appreciate the discussion and the journey that you're taking us on. And just for the listeners out there, remember to go to deming.org and jump into DemingNEXT to continue your journey. 0:40:03.8 Balaji Reddie: Yes, absolutely. 0:40:05.3 Andrew Stotz: There's so much, so much to learn and explore. So I'm going to wrap it up there. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and that is, "People are entitled," that includes you... 0:40:21.7 Balaji Reddie: Yes. 0:40:22.4 Andrew Stotz: Are entitled to joy in work.

செந்தில் பாலாஜி செய்தியாளர் சந்திப்பு நிர்மல்குமாரின் குற்றச்சாட்டுகளுக்கு | Senthil Balaji Press Meet

Dravidian Stock

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2026 92:15

செந்தில் பாலாஜி செய்தியாளர் சந்திப்பு | Senthil Balaji Press Meet

press balaji senthil

A New Lens with Balaji Reddie (Part 3)

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 22, 2026 53:59

"I'm not here to teach you anything new. I'm here to make you see things that you normally would not see." — Dr. W. Edwards Deming In this episode, Deming educator Balaji Reddie reveals the practices that are hiding in plain sight within most organizations. Practices that feel normal. That get celebrated. And that quietly undermine everything you're building. One example: arbitrary targets. An employee collected 2 million rupees in a single day — four times his target. He told no one and did nothing for four days. Because he knew his manager would just raise the bar. That single moment of silence cost the company a genuine breakthrough. This is what Deming called a "faulty practice." And there are many more where that came from. Host Andrew Stotz and Balaji dig into Chapter 2 of The New Economics — Deming's most overlooked chapter. They cover why ranking employees is built on a mathematical illusion. Why chasing quarterly results destroys long-term value. And why the best leaders, from Steve Jobs to Walt Disney, ignored the pressures that trap most organizations. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.4 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm continuing my discussions with Balaji Reddie. He's an educator and a trainer in the teachings of Dr. Deming and quality management generally. And the topic for today is becoming aware of faulty practices. Take it away, Balaji. 0:00:26.0 Balaji Reddie: Good morning. Thank you, Andrew. So part three of our series, what we're looking at. So last time we met, we spoke about essentially Point number 14, because we outlaid his profound knowledge. And then I always said that he gave us a lot of clues as to what needed to be done. So I started out by reading some of the excerpts from the book, which we tend to ignore. And then he said, "Here's what I expect." So he expected leadership, a critical mass to be created, and then he gave attributes of a leader. So we listed 17 of those points, which we said principles of leadership. And now once you've created that critical mass and there's someone who's taken the lead and there are a bunch of leaders, maybe, so what do we do next? So when you start becoming aware that you are now in a prison, so to say, because that's what he said here, that they feel it's a fixture, and this is the way things are, this is how things always have been. So he says, "No, you need to understand that these things are wrong." Right? And you first need to become aware, and then we need to look at what needs to be done, perhaps. So he's given some suggestions, and you could always adapt and adopt this. So most of this would be taken from the book, The New Economics, chapter two, which he has titled as "The Heavy Losses." Now, remember, when he wrote this book, it was after the other book, Out of the Crisis, where he had listed his 14 Points. Yes, but he also listed diseases and obstacles. And people tend to ignore that. 0:02:18.9 Balaji Reddie: In fact, I remember having a chat with Bill Bellows on this, and I said, "Diseases and obstacles." And he said, "Obstacles?" I said, "Yes, he has listed 16 obstacles in Out of the Crisis." And he said, "Oh, wow." And he took his copy and he said, "Oh, yeah, you're right. There are 16 of them." And so sometimes you see things that you normally would not see. So when he wrote this, initially, I think many people thought that it was just an extension of those Diseases. But when you start looking deeper, you'll find that he became more elaborate in what he listed as the heavy losses. So he says here that these are things that you start observing and you say, "This is not normal." So the language that he's used is pretty, pretty clear. Present practice, so faulty practices. The present practice, and he says these are only reactive. You only need certain skills and not nearly any theory of management. Whereas when you opt to go to a better practice, you need a theory. So let's start with the very first faulty practice. And this stems from his 14 points too. He says, "Lack of constancy of purpose, short-term thinking, and emphasis on immediate results. Think in the present tense, no future tense." And then he becomes more elaborate and says, "Keep up the price of the company's stock and maintain dividends." 0:04:02.0 Balaji Reddie: Which, well, okay, it seems like you should not do that. No. He says here, you fail to optimize through time. Make this quarter look good, ship everything on hand at the end of the month or quarter, never mind its quality, mark it as shipped, show it as accounts receivable, and defer till the next quarter repairs, maintenance, and orders for material. Just a word here, in the new edition of The New Economics, there's been a spelling mistake there. So if anyone's listening, you can just correct it in the next edition that comes out. Instead of "defer till the next quarter," he's written "defer toll the next quarter." So we need to correct that in the next printing. Now he says here, a better practice... 0:04:52.1 Andrew Stotz: And before you go to there, can we just talk about this for a second? 0:04:56.1 Balaji Reddie: Sure. 0:04:57.8 Andrew Stotz: One of the things that, having been a financial analyst all my career, we get quarterly results from companies in the stock market. And in my own business, of course, I look at monthly results because we close the books every month. And it's definitely one... Donald Trump recently came up with the idea of telling companies not to report quarterly results. And I believe the Singapore Stock Exchange also came up with the idea of maybe we'll reduce the amount of reporting to maybe half-yearly, because we do have half-yearly reporting in some countries, right? 0:05:39.6 Balaji Reddie: Right. 0:05:40.9 Andrew Stotz: But having learned the teachings of Dr. Deming many years ago, long before I became a financial analyst, I always thought, I never really got this one because I thought, what an idiot you would be if you're running a company and all you could see was the market's demand for quarterly performance. And I've always admired those people, I think Jeff Bezos was one that really made it very explicit. "If you're here for quarterly performance, you're not gonna get it." And so I always have said to CEOs, having seen analysts and fund managers, I've visited, taken fund managers more than 1,000 times to meet with CEOs, and CEOs ask me, "What's your advice from seeing all that?" And I said, "Don't listen to this too much." Take it on board, what the discussions are about, but you're the CEO. Your job is to optimize the value of this business. And that means, that doesn't mean making quarterly numbers, manipulating things to make quarterly numbers. So part of what I've said to people is, "Get a backbone. Don't come and complain to me, 'Oh, yeah, but the pressure of the market's quarterly.' Come on." You know and I know that the job of a CEO is to maximize the value of the business, not the quarterly result. So anyways, that's my little pet peeve. 0:07:13.6 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And if you look at even Jobs, Steve Jobs, when he came back as Apple CEO, he had the nerve and the spine, like you said, to tell the board, "Don't judge me on this. It's gonna take time. And believe me," he said, "someday you will see results." Now, unfortunately, he was not there to see what he's created, but I think anyone in Apple can safely say that they're growing because of the foundation that he laid so long back, right? And I think that was one of the major reasons why he did not make Jonathan Ive as the CEO, because he wanted him to focus on the product and the customer rather than the quarterly results. And I don't think Apple ever played it by quarterly results. 0:08:04.9 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And here's a good book called Competition Demystified by Bruce Greenwald. And there's a passage in here that's interesting because he published the book back in 2005, so it was long before Steve Jobs really made the company profitable. And he had basically gone through and explained the situation at that time as a strategist looking at the company. And what he said, it says, he just said that "Jobs had managed to restore operating margins, but Apple survived, it had hardly prospered, its future does not look bright." And I use this as an example in my strategy class to help people understand that when you're building strategy, you're thinking long term. And the ecosystem that Steve Jobs created, the value of that ecosystem didn't really truly appear until many years after he was working on it. So anyways. 0:09:06.6 Balaji Reddie: Yeah, so that's a classic case here. 0:09:11.1 Andrew Stotz: Let's keep going. You're on a roll. 0:09:14.5 Andrew Stotz: Oh, that's okay. So now better practice, he says, theory of management. Now see what he writes here. He says, "Adopt and publish the constancy of purpose." Now, that's one of the things that he also changed in his 14 points in the 1990 edition, which he never really published in a book but he gave as handouts in his seminars. Earlier on, it was "Create a constancy of purpose," but he says now, "Publish it." And it should be a proper statement, right? And he also said not just for the company, but for other organization. Now, he perhaps was envisioning or he already saw what is happening in the world today, that it's not one company against another, it's a family of companies against another family of companies, if I may say so. And these companies are globally dispersed, so there has to be something that binds them together, and that's the constancy of purpose. And purpose is why we exist, right? 0:10:13.4 Andrew Stotz: And I want to ask about this. 0:10:15.3 Balaji Reddie: Right. 0:10:16.2 Andrew Stotz: Professor, can I ask you about this? 0:10:18.4 Balaji Reddie: Sure. Right. 0:10:21.0 Andrew Stotz: Because if we go to Out of the Crisis, he has his section, and this for me is on page 24, but I don't know what edition I... Maybe I have an old edition, but it's the chapter "Principles for Transformation." He's gonna talk about the 14 Points, and I want to talk about the first point. And the first point is "Create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service." 0:10:45.8 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. This is the old edition, 24. 0:10:48.6 Andrew Stotz: And the question that I have is that was he saying... Because now you've said in The New Economics he says constancy of purpose. He just states constancy of purpose. He doesn't say "for improvement of product and service." So my question to you is, is he saying that the constancy of purpose should be about improvement of product and service, or is he saying your constancy of purpose could be any purpose, but you just need a long-term purpose? 0:11:22.8 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. And he says that anything that help people to live better and have a market. That's on page 25. So whatever you do, your purpose should be to make life better, right? 0:11:40.2 Andrew Stotz: Right. 0:11:40.7 Balaji Reddie: And the product is just the manifestation of that. It's the outcome, correct? For example, if you talk about Walt Disney and his statement of purpose, he made a very telling statement, right? And how he came to write that down as a very fascinating tale. But he said, "I'll do anything to make a child smile. I'll do anything to make a child smile." So all that you see was aimed at the child, right? Whether it was the merchandise, whether it was the animated films, whether it was the actual non-animated films, if I may say so. And then, of course, coming out with Disneyland and then Disney World. So whatever he did was for the child. And then after he passed away, they lost that. I think they wanted to just sustain what they had attained, but there was nothing new coming out of Disney. And slowly people started encroaching on their turf, so to say. You had someone like a Steven Spielberg who made ET, and that really pulled the rug under their feet. And before they knew it, there was Goonies and Gremlins, and they were really crumbling. And they thought, "Let's join hands with the devil," and so they hired him to make a film. And that did very badly. 0:13:01.9 Balaji Reddie: We also know that Hook, which was supposed to be on Peter Pan, et cetera. And then they were in a crisis and said, "What do we do now?" And most of the top people were just washing their hands of everything. They were the employees who were left, many of them who had worked with Disney, and they said, Sony was very keen to buy them out. And they said, "We need to keep them out, and how do we do that? The only way we can do that is to make a comeback and let's make another film. And we've not been doing anything original, so let's go back to the drawing board." But they said, "We need something to guide us." And that's when they discovered what Walt Disney had written, "I'll do anything to make a child smile." And they said, "What a shame. We forgot the child. We hired the best, but we didn't do anything for the child." And they added one more sentence there. "Anything to make a child smile, and there's a child in every adult." That's how they created Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Unique idea. 0:14:03.0 Andrew Stotz: Right. 0:14:03.9 Balaji Reddie: You can see it's a statement of purpose that brought them back. 0:14:07.6 Andrew Stotz: Okay. That helps me to understand that what he's talking about, according to what you're saying, is come up with your purpose. 0:14:14.4 Balaji Reddie: That's right. 0:14:15.3 Andrew Stotz: Okay. 0:14:15.6 Balaji Reddie: And he of course also added the word "aim" later on, which is that direction, because he says there, "Where do we wish to be? And then by what method?" So you should know whatever you do should go in the right direction. So that's the first faulty practice, and also giving us a theory of what we need to do. So go back and try to rediscover your purpose if you don't have it, or maybe just come out with something and see what really ignites you, what really drives you forward. And he's given some bullet points here. No number of successes in the short-term problems will ensure long-term. Short-term solutions have long-term effects. So that's that statement where he said cause and effect are not closely related in time and space. Of course, management must work on short-term problems as they turn up, but it's fatal to work exclusively on short-term problems. So he tells us that there has to be some place where you need to stop and start focusing on the big picture. So that's the very first faulty practice. Now the next one is a real, real bucket of water on your face. "Present practice, ranking people, salesmen, divisions. Reward at the top, punishment at the bottom. The so-called merit system." At the top and bottom. It's an artificial creation because no matter what scale of measurement you use, there will be an average measure and there will be 50% above the average and 50% below the average. That's exactly what the word average means. So making these stupid claims that this is an above-average person or a below-average person does not really mean anything. 0:16:07.8 Andrew Stotz: Because what you're really doing is rewarding or punishing common cause variation? 0:16:14.9 Balaji Reddie: Well, that's one. But when you're artificially creating something which doesn't even exist, right? You're saying top half, bottom half. In fact, that funny statement where there's a headlines in England, this happened in England, which said studies have shown, and they spent half a million pounds on carrying out the study, that 50% of the children in England are below average nutrition level. You don't need to spend half a million pounds to figure that one out. That's the law of averages. And using that to judge people is crazy on some arbitrary scale that you've invented. And he goes on to... 0:17:06.7 Andrew Stotz: So the first question I asked was, is this just a frivolous or tampering with common cause variation? Or the other question that... Or is this part of psychology and the idea of demoralizing people through this type of behavior? Where does that fall in from the System of Profound Knowledge, let's say? Is it variation, psychology, or is it both? 0:17:34.5 Balaji Reddie: It's a bit of both. 0:17:36.4 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. 0:17:36.6 Balaji Reddie: Because if you talk about understanding psychology, what he meant, I think I used the word empathy, that we need to be empathetic. When you're talking about employees, what do you mean by empathy there? Well, we need to understand their learning processes. Each one of us has a learning process, but we have a different kind of a learning process. And then when you understand the learning process of a person and then put that person in the right job, you'll have to stop that person from working. That's joy in work. He says that when you... And that takes time. And the ranking system or the merit rating system is an excuse for not having understood or making an effort to understand your employee. You're becoming lazy. You put the onus on them when actually the onus is on you. You have to find out what makes that person tick, if I may use the word resonates. What resonates with that person, right? And then put that person in the right job. He's been saying this from the beginning. It's fascinating that he said this in Japan when he was teaching the control charting there. 0:18:42.3 Balaji Reddie: He said if you draw the control chart for performance of a worker and then it's all within limits for a long period of time, despite all the training and all the lessons that he or she has been given, then he said, "I think it's time to move that person out from that job and give them some other job." Because they've reached statistical control. Any amount of effort put in will not result in a better output. You're gonna get the same thing. And if you want something else, then you need to shift them or maybe give them some better job, whatever it is. So he always had this, that we need to use these in tandem. And in any case, it's a System of Profound Knowledge, so all the four sciences work together, right? And if you want to ask me, when a person understands their purpose, I'm extending the statement of purpose here to the person, when a person understands why they're doing something, they always do the job better. So that statement of purpose needs to come in here too. Instead of ranking them, sit down with them and have a heart-to-heart with each one of them. This is back again to the 17 principles we discussed last time, that you have to spend some time with them. 0:19:57.9 Andrew Stotz: Okay. 0:19:58.3 Balaji Reddie: And understand what makes them tick. So he says "the better practice is to abolish the merit system and manage the company as a system. The function of every component, every division under good management contributes towards optimization of the system. That is, it's not compromise, it's optimize." We don't say either-or, it's and. And he says "differences there will always be, but the question is, what do the differences mean?" So that's where you can use control charting to figure that one out. And I told you how I did this in my company and I got the HR lady to finally say, "I think we need to remove performance appraisal." Performance management, yes, of course you need to have a system in place because I need to know where I am. Even when we later on come to the 14 Points, one of his most, according to me, most misunderstood points is point number three, cease dependence on inspection. But that doesn't mean you stop inspecting. 0:21:02.8 Balaji Reddie: And we will read that when we come to that as to what he meant. So you need to know what is happening, definitely. For that reason, you do need to have some system in place, but you cannot judge a person based on that. And so he says here that "ranking is a farce. Apparent performance is actually attributable mostly to the system." And a simple equation, that's my favorite, that's what we discussed last night too, Tim Higgins, when he said x + (x * y) = 8. And you've gotta solve this equation when you don't even know both. Both are unknowns. Then how can you figure out what is x and what is y? So the other factor, the Pygmalion effect, right? I think for those who are not conversant with the Pygmalion effect, the play by George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, which was made into the movie My Fair Lady, where he picks up a lady from the streets who was a flower seller, a flower lady, a flower girl. And he accepts the challenge of teaching her how to speak good English rather than what they call as Cockney English. And then it's like an experiment and a challenge and he starts teaching her. And then to test himself, he takes her to a party. And there she has one drink too many and she gets a little bit tipsy and then goes back to her old way of speaking, which really shocks the guests in the party. 0:22:41.5 Balaji Reddie: And he's very upset when they come back home and he said, "You'll always be a flower girl." And then she makes a statement, "Treat me like a flower girl, I'll behave like a flower girl. Treat me like a lady, I'll behave like a lady." And that's the Pygmalion effect. You start treating people that they're failures and then they have to live up to that reputation, right? So they continue being failures. You treat them well, so the Pygmalion effect comes into play. And of course, he talks about his red beads. That's an excellent experiment in bringing out many of his principles. Though he did not design it originally for this, that came much later. In fact, in Japan when he carried out the red bead experiment, it was purely for sampling. He invented that experiment for sampling. And he said that he broke down barriers and made things so simple for people. I think the lessons of management came much later at Hewlett-Packard where while he was explaining sampling and then when he went to what he was trying to teach them about management, someone jumped up, I forget the name of the person, who said, "But this is... So this is what you're trying to teach us with that sampling experiment." And then he suddenly realized he could use this. And of course, the so-called, and then raises in pay, et cetera. Yeah, whom to raise? Everybody within the system, blah, blah, blah. 0:24:13.4 Balaji Reddie: So I think last time I explained this about the roles, responsibilities and objectives, right? I borrowed this idea from another company in India where I saw this happen. When we removed the performance appraisal system, we came out with something which was quite different. We used to sit down with the people and explain to them what we intend to do as a company for the next four or five years and what their role is and what we expect them to... How do we expect them to contribute? But then came the next question. We turned around to them, "What do you expect from us as a company to help you grow in this direction or anything else?" And so they would give us certain expectations. And so we negotiated, came down and wrote things down. And then came the best part. We said we're gonna meet not once a year, but every month and as often as possible to discuss. That's why I loved it when the Deming Institute came out and were doing it, I'm sure they're doing it even now, in the two and a half day, from "me" to "we". So when we met every month, we used to ask the question, "How are we doing?" Not "What have you done?" "How are we doing?" 0:25:33.0 Balaji Reddie: And so when I heard that, I wanted to tell Bill Bellows I've been doing this since 2004. And when I heard the "me" to "we" thing, which was around 2017, '18, I think I saw that happen and I was, "Wow. All right." So thinking on the same lines. So the faulty practice, all right, when he talks about this, the second one and what needs to be done. Yeah, he gives some other advice also that if you're faced with problems, cut the dividend, cut it out. And that's, of course, when you're having hardships in the company. So he's given us a set of steps there too. And he says finally, if necessary, cut pay, but nobody loses a job. So, of course, those are extreme cases that we need to do, but he gives us advice what needs to be done. Now, the third faulty practice is incentive pay, pay based on performance. And I think that this has a lot to do with the arbitrary numerical targets that are set, right? And then, "If you do this, I'll give you that." So he says that the performance of an individual cannot be measured except maybe on a long term. 0:27:04.7 Balaji Reddie: He said reward for a good performance may be the same as reward to the weatherman for a pleasant day. He's got no control over it. And he says, "Abolish this incentive pay and pay based on performance. Give everyone a chance to take pride." I think you were talking about this last week too when we said about these arbitrary targets that lead to all of this, where somebody made a statement to me that, "The targets were a distraction to me from what my actual job was. My job is this. The target is just distracting me from my job." So very often people feel that way, right? And pay for performance, "I'm supposed to do this," right? And he gives an example. The top salesman may be a heavy loss to the company by overselling, selling to a customer a bigger copying machine than he, the customer, needs, right? And selling a bigger or fancy insurance policy than the customer can handle, promising immediate delivery, promising unauthorized discounts, et cetera, et cetera, right? It's the same thing, when one of my students was doing this, his internship project, he found that there was excessive inventories that were stocked up at an automotive company, at the authorized service stations and the sellers, and they had excessive stocks of components and that's why the sales had dipped over a period of time. 0:28:42.3 Balaji Reddie: Why were they holding so much of stock? Because the previous purchasing guy, or rather sorry, the marketing guy, forced these guys to buy extra, saying that, "I'll give you a discount," and things like that. And so they overstocked themselves to a point where they did not need anything because he had to meet a target. So he pushed it down their throat without really understanding what repercussions this would have. All right? And the problem with that pay for performance, it sounds good. Get what you pay for, pay what you get for. But the funny thing is you'll get only that much. Another case which I can tell you is how this student of mine was... His job during the internship was to collect receivables from the shops that were buying stuff. This was in the appliances, home appliances industry. And after they trained him to do that, how to call up the retail outlets and outstanding statements and then go collect the money, and his target was 500,000 rupees a day. 500,000 rupees a day collection. Now, one day he collected 2 million. My question is, do you think he reported it? Well, he did. And for the next four days he did nothing. 0:30:22.6 Balaji Reddie: Now, there's also a reason why he didn't report it. Because when you don't have Profound Knowledge, if he reported that he collected 2 million, immediately the manager would have said, "From tomorrow, your target is 2.1 million." Now, this is what happens when you don't understand variation. If you drew a control chart and you said that, "Okay, the average is so much, so I'm telling him to collect 500,000," and he's collected 2 million, he's done something special. As a manager, I'd call him and ask him, "Could you please tell me what exactly you did? Because you've not done what I taught you, otherwise you wouldn't have gone to this extent." Sometimes you don't know why you've been successful. The theory comes from the outside, right? So a manager with Profound Knowledge would sit down and have a talk and say, "Okay, you did this right. Now try doing this again." And he goes the next day and collects 2 million again, and then the next day and 2 million again. And then he comes and says, "Okay, boss, I'm ready for a new target. Raise the bar." Now what have you done? You've improved the system. 0:31:24.9 Andrew Stotz: We have new knowledge. 0:31:26.3 Balaji Reddie: We have new knowledge. And that's why, answering the same question what you asked me, it is a bit of both. So you need to understand that it's beyond... And we need to help the people understand why they've been successful. So better practice, here you go, is "abolish incentive pay, give everyone a chance to take pride." So when they start realizing, like this child, this student of mine, why he hit 2 million rupees that day, it would have been great. Instead, he just kept quiet. So see, you've lost an opportunity to really learn, to find a leverage point in a process which can take the process to another level. The next one he talks about is failure to manage the organization as a system. Instead, components are individual profit centers, everybody loses, right? And I think we have these separate business units, and he says here that they don't optimize for the aim of the whole organization. I think this is again, if you look at his Points number 9, 10, and 11, he very clearly mentions these because one thing leads to another, right? Break down the company into silos, each one focuses on what they're doing, and there's no communication, and they don't know their understanding the relationship of their work with the work of others. 0:32:54.9 Balaji Reddie: They don't even talk to each other. And he says here that "enlarge the boundaries of the system," but that comes when you understand your companies much better. And the system must include the future. Definitely, you start with theory. If this is what's happening in the world right now, this is how the world is going to change. Now he says, encourage communication. Now this part, a lot to do with Point number eight, drive out fear, where he says make physical arrangements for informal dialogue between the various components of the company regardless of level of position. That's a very telling statement. Encourage continual learning and advancement. Some companies have formed groups for comradeship in athletics, et cetera, all right, which provided facilitation for study groups. The company can well afford to underwrite the cost of social gatherings in outside locations. I can give you my personal example here. One of my college friends, and this was the time in the '90s when she came to America to do her Master's and then eventually started working in Ford, right? She did her Masters in applied electronics and she joined there as a design engineer. And that time, the world was a different place, and we Indians from India, we tend to be very, very conservative about a lot of things. We don't want to step on people's toes. So when someone says something, we, instead of opposing it, we keep our mouth shut. 0:34:32.6 Balaji Reddie: And so in meetings when they used to discuss and somebody brought up something and she said, "No, I think there's a problem," and they said, "What's the problem?" and she decided not to say anything, but eventually it turned out that she was right. And so the team members had a grouse against her that she doesn't share and she doesn't talk, she doesn't open up. Now what had happened was the HR lady in Ford, when she'd given her resume, when she asked about her hobbies and activities, one of the things she wrote there was dancing. Now she was learning a form of classical dancing here in India and obviously she could not continue pursue that in the United States at that time. So when that lady read dancing, she said, "You know, Ford sponsors ballroom dancing classes. So would you like to go for that?" So she said, "Oh wait, I learned a classical dance form in India. This has nothing to do with this." So she said, "Well, dancing is dancing. Why don't you just go? And we're paying for it, so why don't you go for it?" So she said, "I just enrolled in that class." Now, the first day when she went for the class, I don't know if you've seen the movie Shall We Dance, Andrew, but Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez, and if you remember the first day, they tell you to hold your partner's hands and you're blindfolded and you follow your partner. It's about trusting the person in front, right? So she said when she went through that and she had to hold a stranger's hands, the whole barrier was broken. 0:36:08.2 Balaji Reddie: And she said, "I don't know, I had a different kind of a feeling when I came back to work." And she started trusting a lot more and it had an impact. Now, who would have dreamt that a ballroom dancing class could have changed my friend like this? That's Point number 13. You just have a theory that this will make that person a better person. You don't really do things to get a return on investment, but it works. So I think this is a beautiful paragraph by Deming where he says that there are ways and means of doing it and give it a shot. You have nothing to lose, right? Now he comes to the next one. Now this one, I think a lot has been spoken about this, MBO. But very clearly, he says "MBO as practiced." He does not blame Peter Drucker at all. In fact, he says Peter Drucker was clear that the objectives are interdependent and they're not mutually exclusive. He says, "Unfortunately, efforts of the various components do not add up. There is interdependence. Thus, the purchasing people may accomplish saving of 10% over the last year and in doing so raise the costs of manufacture and impair quality. 0:37:31.3 Balaji Reddie: They may take advantage of high-volume discount and thus build up inventory, which will hamper flexibility and responsiveness to meet unforeseen changes in the business." Peter Drucker was clear on this point. It's unfortunate that many people do not bother to read his work. In fact, let me just make a note that it was even Juran who said this, that having these kind of disjointed objectives can lead to a lot of problems. He said, of course, you can't be devoid. And that's why I think Deming has been very clear in chapter one of The New Economics where he says there are some things called as facts, right? Facts of life. So giving an arbitrary target is not a fact of life. He says here how he needs to improve that. So setting numerical goals, arbitrary numerical goals, I would say, right? Work on a method for improvement of a process. By what method? I think even Brian Joiner says that when you set this arbitrary goal. And now he goes on to explain that even further where setting a goal beyond the means of the process, they either distort the systems, distort the data, or distort both. Then management by results. 0:38:56.7 Balaji Reddie: Okay. Take immediate action on any fault, defect, complaint, action on the last data point. I think this again brings to the fore the understanding of variation where you need to look and ask questions and where you say, "Okay, I know this normally happens." So understand and improve the processes that produce that. Understand the distinction between common causes and special causes and understand the kind of action to take. So common causes, most of the time you need management to take action. There's a change in system. Yeah, there are some times when it is when a person close to the process can take that decision. Likewise, a special cause can be taken care of by the person closest to the process, but sometimes you need management action too. So that will always be the case, but it's rare, right? And so he talks about Sears, Roebuck, et cetera, and working on improvement of the process. The other one was buying materials and services at the lowest bid, right? Which he goes back to his Point number four, where he says here that it does not take brains to work with the cheapest. It takes brains to choose the best. Right? 0:40:23.4 Balaji Reddie: And estimating the total cost of materials and services, purchase price. Don't go by purchase price alone. And if I know right, Andrew, this was a point he was working on till the end of his life. You see the lady who was actually looking into the publication, the second edition of The New Economics, Elizabeth DiLorenzo. I was in touch with her because in my early days of my introduction to the Deming world, because I was quoting a lot from Out of the Crisis and The New Economics, and she was working for MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study that used to originally publish his books. And she told me a very funny tale of how she was expecting her twins and at the same time she had to release this book. So the joke at MIT was, "What's gonna come out first, the twins or the book?" And since Deming was no more, she had to release that very quickly. So March '94 is when she released the book, and she said her twins were born some weeks later. So they are as old as this book. Now, she was telling me that till the end, the one aspect of what he was working on was, if you see the notes in the appendix and purchase of supplies and service. So continuing purchase of supplies and services, World 1, World 2, World 3 and World 4. He made this so clear. I think nobody has made it clearer. Okay, World 3, sorry, there's no World 4. So he talks about this and he talks about how practical you need to be about this, right? 0:42:18.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, and I underlined something in there from a long time ago that said, "Sudden jump to a single supplier is inadvisable." 0:42:28.8 Balaji Reddie: Right. He says there's a method of doing that. 0:42:32.5 Andrew Stotz: Yep. 0:42:33.2 Balaji Reddie: And I teach that method, by the way, where you start with the product, then go on to the process, and then go on to the system. And that takes time. You just can't get up one fine morning and say, "You're my sole supplier." It doesn't happen that way. It takes a lot of effort and a lot of doing, right? The next faulty practice is delegate quality to someone else or some group. And this is, I remember my interaction with Dr. Juran on this, right? I had just received my certificate for ISO 9000, I became a lead assessor, and I quite liked the new standard that had come out at that time in the year 2000 because it had a lot of Deming flavor to it. Plan-Do-Study-Act had come in and things like that. I was quite happy, the definitions and this. I said, "It's better than what it was." It's not, they had a long way to go, no doubt about it, but I said at least they've broken away from the defense mode where they copied the whole document from, right? And when he asked me the question that, "What's the status of quality in India?" and I said, "Well, earlier on it was a lot of standards-oriented and ISO 9000 played a huge role in that," and he just raised his hand as to tell me to stop and he said, "I am very disappointed with the ISO." And then he made this statement, "The ISO 9000 is a standard for mediocrity splendidly marketed by the ISO." And I just stared at him. I said, "What?" because I had just received my certificate, so obviously I was very touchy about it. And I said, "Dr. Juran, a little harsh." He said, "I've just begun." 0:44:26.4 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And the problem is, is there's a lot of money to be made from it and it's an ingrained system. 0:44:30.5 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. So I just asked him, why would you say that? They made a lot of changes. He said, "Yes, but two things are missing." And one of them, he said, is something about leadership. Go back and read it. And then I went and read the standard again, and I realized what he was trying to say here. There was a lot of work that they were delegating to a person called the management representative, and he says, "Sorry, you can't delegate this to someone else. It begins at the top." Ed Deming also said that. He said, "It begins at the top. Only they can do this." 0:45:10.5 Andrew Stotz: I have a little story on that. 0:45:13.5 Balaji Reddie: Sure, sure, sure. 0:45:14.8 Andrew Stotz: In my coffee business, maybe 15 or 20 years ago, we got a big, big customer, and overall, they were a very good customer. But they picked us over all of our competitors. And then they told us, "Okay, in a month we're gonna come and inspect your factory, and if you get below 80%, then you're not gonna be our supplier." And so we said, "Well, I study with Deming, and I know quality, and we've never had a problem with quality ever." And my business partner, Dale, is very focused on the principles of quality. So they came, we were quite proud, and then by the end of the day, they had 600 questions they went through. And by the end of the day, we were like, "Yeah, what's our score?" And they said, "65. You're fired." They said, "You have 10 weeks or five weeks to fix these top 10 things." And then at that moment, we had a revelation, which is, oh, to them, paper is quality. And what I've always said, what I learned from that, was that it wasn't a big deal. We did the paperwork that they asked for, and then we got the job. And they were a customer for 16 years and a very good customer. But what we learned, one of the things I say, is that we had the heart of quality. They asked us for the paperwork that they thought represented quality. That's not such a big deal. But could you imagine having been trained that paperwork is quality, and then you have to try to develop the heart of quality? Very difficult. 0:47:01.9 Balaji Reddie: Very difficult. And now I come to this picture that he's drawn on page 37 of The New Economics, the old edition. I think the new one, let me just see what that is. Okay, that's on page 27. So he says here that unique processes that produce figures, all these principles have been applied to just 3%. Now, I have my own version of this particular picture that he's put here. Imagine an X and a Y axis, all right? And on the X axis, you can put down measures that are known. Close to the origin, you can write "known", and then as it goes away from that, "unknown", right? And then you have on the Y axis "measurable", and as you go up, "unmeasurable". So because he said that most of the things are unknown and unknowable, and among the known, you have only some fraction of those which are measurable. So the 3% deal with those factors or those parameters which are known and measurable. There are many parameters, he says 97%, which are unknown and unmeasurable, but you still need to manage them. 0:48:26.5 Balaji Reddie: And that's where he gives us a lot of advice that comes after this. Okay, when after this diagram, beautiful paragraphs in his book. "Beware of common sense," he says. And of course, he gives the example of Gallery Furniture, salary instead of commissions. Also goals, aims, hopes, facts of life, futility of a numerical goal. And a picture may help, where he talks about the goal being beyond the capability of a system. And will the goal be achieved? And he says redefinition of terms and distortion, et cetera. Gives a lot of examples there. And then he goes on to give even more examples. Okay, if you say merit pay, et cetera. Need to manage by results, wrong. And the last bit, the note where he says America 2000 was originally put together in December 1989 at the educational summit between the President and the governors of the 50 states. These goals were published in February 1990 by the White House, later incorporated into America 2000. This job may be an example of an enlargement of a committee. We shall learn in chapter four, he says, that the enlargement of a committee is not a way to acquire profound knowledge. How could they know? 0:49:57.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, and so what's happened to education since then in America? 0:50:00.6 Balaji Reddie: Oh, no comments. And we in India are almost going the same way. Of course, in some cases they've gone back to the roots saying that, no, we need to get back to our original way of educating people, right? We had this thing of exposing a child to all the different kinds of subjects, right? Like you have history, geography, languages, mathematics, science, just about everything. But the idea was to very quickly identify which child is resonating with what, because we need these different kind of people to work together. Some people are good at memorizing, some people are good at analyzing, some people are good at imagination. And so you throw all this out and then you cast the net and then you say the job of the teacher is to identify, okay, you're good at this, you're good at this. The problem is when you start saying if you're good at this, you are intelligent, and if you're not good at this, you're not. There are different kinds of intelligence. I would say the problem is more with the teachers and not with the system. 0:51:16.5 Andrew Stotz: We should wrap up at this point. 0:51:18.9 Balaji Reddie: Absolutely. 0:51:19.6 Andrew Stotz: How would you summarize what you want people to take away from this discussion? 0:51:24.0 Balaji Reddie: Sure. Go back and read chapter two in The New Economics. Dr. Deming has very clearly shown us why we need to do what we need to do. You're gonna be seeing things differently. As he used to say towards the end of his life, "I'm not here to teach you anything new. I'm here to make you see things that you normally would not see." And now he's just shown us what we thought was normal in the working of a company is actually detrimental to the running of a company over the long term. So my advice is go back, read this. You could watch some of the videos of the Deming Institute, especially on the 14 Points. We will be covering the 14 points later, but I would say that this is a real elaboration of his Diseases and he's given us what needs to be done. Not just pointing out what was wrong, but he tells us what needs to be done. That's why the heavy losses form an integral part of the preamble to actually what is the next step that you're taking your foot off the brake, so to say, trying to identify things that are pulling your company back. 0:52:37.8 Andrew Stotz: Well, Balaji, I want to thank you for this discussion. And recently I have been reading chapter two and I saw a lot of new stuff. It's funny how you just keep rereading. And then today you've just made me realize I gotta go back and read that chapter two because he does really the way he did the tables. I kind of forgot all about that. When I went back to it about three or four weeks ago, I was like, oh, this is really great. I kind of forgot about it. And now as you go through it, it's the tables was what I was focused on, but now I'm also seeing the text in between that you're highlighting that's valuable. So for everyone out there, grab your book, go to New Economics, go to chapter two. It's just gold. It's gold. 0:53:30.7 Balaji Reddie: It's gold. 0:53:31.0 Andrew Stotz: So, and for listeners out there, remember to go to deming.org and jump into DemingNEXT to continue your journey. 0:53:37.7 Balaji Reddie: Absolutely. Absolutely. 0:53:39.9 Andrew Stotz: Yep. And this is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and that is, "People are entitled to joy in work." 0:53:52.2 Balaji Reddie: Absolutely.

#105 Inside the Underground Meme Marketing World: Jason Levin of Memelord

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 16, 2026 74:03

Topics: (00:00:00) - Intro (00:03:34) - The most effective meme and the midwit curve (00:08:11) - Memes as memetic warfare and communication (00:10:04) - Jason's internet kid origin story (00:13:09) - Building MemeLord and AI agents for memes (00:16:47) - Working with B2B and boring companies (00:17:50) - The arbitrage in funny B2B marketing (00:21:38) - Running multiple meme accounts for distribution (00:25:01) - Owning the distribution with owned pages (00:27:30) - The coming robot meme wave (00:28:59) - The truth about astroturfed virality (00:36:06) - Stop hosting dinners (00:39:04) - The most entertaining outcome is most likely (00:42:15) - The $10k protest in France (00:44:23) - Word of mouth and marketing books (00:46:14) - Build worlds around your company (00:48:34) - Raising capital and leveling up as a founder (00:52:12) - Delegation and leverage as you scale (00:59:56) - Dealing with hit pieces and cancel culture (01:03:15) - Heroes and influences (01:06:00) - Where to follow and closing Links: Eric Jorgenson LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/erjorgenson Twitter / X — https://x.com/EricJorgenson Website — https://www.ejorgenson.com/ Jason on X - https://x.com/iamjasonlevin Jason on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamjasonlevin/ MemeLord - https://www.memelord.com/ Memes Make Millions by Jason Levin - https://iamjasonlevin.gumroad.com/l/memes To support the costs of producing this podcast: >> Buy a copy of the Navalmanack: www.navalmanack.com/ >> Buy a copy of The Anthology of Balaji: https://balajianthology.com/ >> Buy a copy of The Book of Elon: https://www.elonmuskbook.org/ >> Sign up for my online course and community about building your Personal Leverage: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage >> Invest in early-stage companies alongside Eric and his partners at Rolling Fun: https://angel.co/v/back/rolling-fun >> Join the free weekly email list at ejorgenson.com/newsletter >> Text the podcast to a friend >> Or at least give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners! Important Quotes from the podcast on Business and Entrepreneurship There is no skill called “business.” Avoid business magazines and business classes. - Naval Ravikant You have to work up to the point where you can own equity in a business. You could own equity as a small shareholder where you bought stock. You could also own it as an owner where you started the company. Ownership is really important. Everybody who really makes money at some point owns a piece of a product, a business, or some IP. That can be through stock options if you work at a tech company. That's a fine way to start.

ai business marketing france running elon musk raising heroes invest owning b2b memes ip ownership underground delegation anthology balaji jason levin world jason

TGM Classic | Eric Jorgenson | What We Can Learn From Naval Ravikant

The Greatness Machine

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 15, 2026 64:46

After dedicating his career to understanding and sharing the power of transformative ideas, entrepreneur and author Eric Jorgenson has seen how the right book can inspire action and drive personal growth. Best known for “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant,” Eric shares how reading sharpens decision-making and unlocks new opportunities. In this episode, he discusses his latest work, “The Anthology of Balaji: A Guide to Technology, Truth, and Building the Future,” featuring insights from visionary entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan, and offers a sneak peek into an exciting project on Elon Musk's groundbreaking innovations. In this episode, Darius and Eric will discuss: (00:00) Introduction and Guest Introduction (03:08) The Impact of Books on Personal Growth (05:49) Eric's Journey to Writing “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant” (08:54) The Process of Writing and Publishing (12:00) The Influence of Naval Ravikant (14:53) Exploring Wealth and Its Definitions (17:53) The Role of Leverage in Success (21:01) The Importance of Knowledge and Skills (24:11) Elon Musk: A New Book Project (27:01) The Future of Network States (29:59) Final Thoughts and Greatness Question Eric Jorgenson is an author, investor, and creator known for distilling complex ideas into accessible wisdom. His bestselling book, “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant,” guides readers to wealth and happiness through Naval's most impactful insights. Following its success, Eric published “The Anthology of Balaji,” showcasing the visionary ideas of engineer and futurist Balaji Srinivasan. As the founder of Rolling Fun, Eric invests in early-stage tech startups, writes at ejorgenson.com, and hosts the Smart Friends podcast. His blog has engaged over a million readers since 2014. When not working, he's on a mission to craft the perfect sandwich. Connect with Eric: Website: https://www.ejorgenson.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erjorgenson Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erjorgenson/ Books: https://www.ejorgenson.com/books-1 Twitter: https://twitter.com/EricJorgenson Connect with Darius: Website: https://therealdarius.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dariusmirshahzadeh/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imthedarius/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Thegreatnessmachine Book: The Core Value Equation https://www.amazon.com/Core-Value-Equation-Framework-Limitless/dp/1544506708 Write a review for The Greatness Machine using this link: https://ratethispodcast.com/spreadinggreatness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

success technology future books building truth writing elon musk influence impact skills personal growth leverage publishing final thoughts naval anthology naval ravikant balaji jorgenson almanack balaji srinivasan eric website greatness machine

A New Lens with Balaji Reddie (Part 2)

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 15, 2026 55:51

What does great leadership actually look like? Can you make a difference even if you're in the middle of the hierarchy? "If you think you're too small, you've not spent the night under a bedsheet with a mosquito." In this episode, educator and Deming practitioner Balaji Reddie explains why W. Edwards Deming was far more practical about leadership than many people realize. Drawing on both The New Economics and Out of the Crisis, Balaji shares stories and examples that bring Deming's 17 principles of leadership to life. From creating trust and joy in work to understanding variation, coaching people, and improving systems, this conversation challenges conventional management thinking and offers a clear path toward transformation. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm continuing my discussion with Balaji Reddie, who is an educator and trainer in the teachings of Dr. Deming and quality management generally. And the topic for today is Principles of Leadership. Balaji, take it away. 0:00:27.9 Balaji Reddie: Good morning. Thank you so much, Andrew. We had left our last session with that, we'd be dealing with this. And of course, Dr. Deming gave us the outline of Profound Knowledge and he gave us 14 points. He also gave us the deadly diseases and the 16 Obstacles. So people often talk about the diseases, but very often they forget the obstacles. And there are 16 of them which he highlighted for us. And if you think that they're outdated, they're as relevant as they ever were. So you need to keep revisiting those. I think if you start working on removing the obstacles, it's like you're taking your foot off the brake rather than pressing on the accelerator. 0:01:11.3 Balaji Reddie: So you're removing the things that actually stop you before you actually take things forward. But nevertheless, we start with point number 14 where he says, take action to complete, to make the transformation. And he says that there should be a critical mass of people that you need to educate and train and get them on the same page as you are. I'm gonna quote Hazel Cannon here, who is current president of the British Deming Forum. And she talks about the time when she was very young and she attended the Deming four-day seminar, I think in Birmingham. And at the end of those four days, she was overwhelmed as you normally are when you hear how the man speak. And he spoke... He wanted you to make drastic changes. It's not just tinkering here and there. 0:02:08.2 Balaji Reddie: And so she went up to him and she said, "I'm really taken up by what you just said." And then she made a statement, "I'm too small to make these changes in my organization." I believe she worked as a lab assistant in a chemical manufacturing company. They used to make chemicals for cosmetics. So she said, "I'm too small." And Deming just interrupted her and said, "Never think you're too small. If you think you're too small, you've not spent the night under a bedsheet with a mosquito." So make a change where you are and take it from there. So I would like to now quote Dr. Deming from Out of the Crisis. This is Plan for Action: Take action to accomplish the transformation. So he writes there, there are three points and then I'll come to what he writes below that. 0:03:01.8 Balaji Reddie: So he says, "Management in authority will struggle over every one of the above 13 points, the deadly diseases, and the obstacles. They will agree on their meaning and on the direction to take. They will agree to carry out the new philosophy. Management in authority will take pride in their adoption of the new philosophy and in their new responsibilities. They will have courage to break with tradition, even to the point of exile among their peers." So he talks about courage. He talks about courage of conviction. And then he says, "Management in authority will explain by seminars and other means." So I think he leaves it to people of the ways and means. And now today there are a lot of means of doing that. DemingNEXT is one of them. And he says, "To the critical mass of people in the company why change is necessary and that the change will involve everybody." 0:04:00.9 Balaji Reddie: Now he writes something very interesting. He says, "This whole movement may be instituted and carried out by middle management speaking with one voice." So he gave instructions. Why are people saying that he did not tell us what to do? It is just that he expected maybe a lot. And now let's get to that middle management and what he expected. He says here... Let's see here. I'm coming to chapter four now in The New Economics where he says, "A System of Profound Knowledge. The aim of this chapter: the prevailing style of management must undergo transformation." So we just heard that, that what we need to do. And he says, "A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from the outside. The aim of this chapter is to provide an outside view, a lens that I call a System of Profound Knowledge. 0:04:59.7 Balaji Reddie: It provides a map of theory by which to understand the organizations that we work in." Then he says, "The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding the System of Profound Knowledge." Then he says that "the individual, once transformed, will set an example." So setting an example, I believe, is doing the right thing under adverse circumstances, when you stick to your principles despite the fact that there is an easier way out. As they say, choosing a path between good and bad is easy, you choose good. But good and better, you need to make the right choice. And that needs profound knowledge. "So be a good listener," he says, "but will not compromise. Continually teach other people and help people pull away from their current practice and beliefs and move to the new philosophy without a feeling of guilt about the past." 0:06:02.7 Balaji Reddie: So he explains to us what was needed here, right? And he says this is what we actually need to do. Now I'd like to, I mean, I'll be referring to a document. I don't know how we're gonna get this to people, but for the Principles of Leadership. All right, I think I'll have to send this over to you later, but we will do that. So in the Principles of Leadership, just come to them. I am quoting again from both Out of the Crisis and The New Economics. So you will find this there when he speaks about what needs to be done. Modern Principles of Leadership. And he says, "The modern principles of leadership will replace the annual performance review. The first step in a company will be to provide education in leadership." So that would be introducing people to profound knowledge from what we just heard. Then he said, "The annual performance review may then be abolished." Of course, that will take time. "Leadership will take its place, and this is what Western management should have been doing all along." 0:07:12.6 Balaji Reddie: So he says, "The annual performance review sneaked in and became popular because it does not require anyone to face the problems of people. It is easier to rate them, focus on the outcome. What Western industry needs is methods that will improve the outcome." And he says, "Suggestions follow." So first, institute... The first principle. "Institute education in leadership: the obligations, the principles, and methods." And so I think introduction to the System of Profound Knowledge will help. And then after profound knowledge has been sort of brought to the notice of... Of bringing to the notice of the people then you get into perhaps teaching them about 14 Points, et cetera. 0:07:57.8 Balaji Reddie: Comes the second principle. He says, "Ensure more careful selection of people in the first place." So choosing the people, he says again, now here's where it requires you to understand the purpose of what you're doing, purpose of your organization, purpose of the people you're looking out for and making this change. Because when you know your purpose, you know the aim, then you can choose people in the right way. And I believe he said this somewhere, it's a combination of education, training, skills, and experience. So we need to combine these four factors in choosing the right people. Then he says, after selection of the people, ensure better training and education. So we fine-tune all of their... He says a complete background. He said their aspirations, their goals. 0:08:54.2 Balaji Reddie: I kind of borrowed this idea from a company here in India where they had this thing called roles, responsibilities, and objectives. And they used to meet once in a month, but once in a year they used to decide. So the top management, the HR, would sit down with each and every employee and say that, "In this calendar year, this is what we intend to do and this is what we expect from you." And in turn, they used to ask the employee, "What do you expect from us? Because this is what we want from you." And then the employee had a chance of putting forth what he or she wanted, the management, what help they needed. And I think this is where we have to be... It's a give and take. And they didn't just meet once a year; every month they would meet and the question was, "How are we doing?" not "What have you done?" 0:09:51.1 Balaji Reddie: So I think it wasn't a traditional appraisal. If there was any appraisal, it was appraising what top management were doing or intended to do and not so much the employee. I thought that was a good move. So that's what we need to do here: better training and education. Principle number four states: "A manager understands and conveys to his people the meaning of a system. He explains the aims of the system. He teaches his people to understand how the work of the group supports these aims." Now, here's where, you know, when you talk about, say, hiring people in the first place, when you bring in new employees, I believe that there should be a special session by people inside the company who have stayed the longest, who served the company the longest, especially during their bad days. Because the employees need to know what really happened and how the company survived and how we were resilient, we came back despite all the problems that we had. 0:11:00.7 Balaji Reddie: And the historical perspective, especially if there's someone who's in touch with the founding members, that would be a great boon. I know nowadays we talk about the older companies, obviously none of the founders are there, but if there is such a person, exchanging those ideas with the young employees would definitely make a difference. So they would then understand the purpose, the aims, and how your work supports these aims. I think it's the best way to do that. But what I see right now in companies and I'm being very specific about this, because today when new employees join the company, they have an orientation, they have onboarding, as they call it, but that's done by a rookie, someone who's just joined the company and is just making... 0:11:46.8 Andrew Stotz: [0:11:46.8] Following a checklist? 0:11:48.1 Balaji Reddie: Exactly. Like a PowerPoint presentation. They don't talk about the history of the company. And I think there has to be an emotional connect before there is a logical or an intellectual connect. That emotional connect, I think, then makes you feel that pride and you feel good about coming to work and you say, "Oh, I did not know." So I believe this fourth principle is important in that sense, in the way to do that. Now, he says that... Principle five says he helps... 0:12:19.7 Andrew Stotz: By the way, do you know what chapter are you in? 0:12:23.9 Balaji Reddie: Oh, I have combined. 0:12:27.9 Andrew Stotz: Okay. 0:12:29.4 Balaji Reddie: I took some of the text... Okay. If you want to see here, this is management of people, all right? In that chapter. So I've taken... There are 14 principles there, management of people. In the new edition of The New Economics. It appears... 0:12:48.2 Andrew Stotz: So chapter six. 0:12:50.2 Balaji Reddie: Chapter six, yeah. That's chapter six... 0:12:51.8 Andrew Stotz: Yep. 0:12:52.6 Balaji Reddie: All right. And he talks about pictorial effect of transformation, and then he talks about management of people, role of a manager of people. So there were 14 there, but in Out of the Crisis, the first three which were there, he did not include here. 0:13:10.0 Andrew Stotz: Okay. I just just asked... 0:13:11.0 Balaji Reddie: So I just included those. Yeah. No, so that when people read the book, they could read it clearly, right? So, yeah. So he says now principle number five, which in Economics is principle number two or three, right? He says "he helps his people to see themselves as components in a system, to work in cooperation with preceding stages and following stages toward optimization of the efforts of all stages towards achievement of the aim." So we want optimization, not compromise. So you need to sit together. Just if I were to ask a simple question to you, Andrew, and without thinking, if I were to try to answer this question... Okay. I presume you know how to make a cup of tea. 0:13:58.7 Andrew Stotz: Yes. 0:14:00.1 Balaji Reddie: So what is the first step? 0:14:02.7 Andrew Stotz: For me, boil water. 0:14:04.6 Balaji Reddie: Boil water. And what if I say that's not the first step? 0:14:12.0 Andrew Stotz: Well, first of all, I think you probably have more experience with tea than I do, but I have more experience with espresso, probably. But anyways, go ahead and tell me. 0:14:20.9 Balaji Reddie: Okay. The first question is, whom am I making a cup of tea for? So what I just tried to convey is it's not natural to think about the customer. And so the first step is, for whom is the cup of tea? If it's the person... 0:14:30.8 Andrew Stotz: Grandma. 0:14:40.7 Balaji Reddie: That's right. If she's diabetic, then you would not need sugar. So you gather the ingredients accordingly. If he wants black tea, you don't take milk, right? And that's the point he's trying to say here. When you look at different stages, every every person has a customer. So the first question is, who is my customer? 0:15:07.1 Andrew Stotz: Right. 0:15:07.4 Balaji Reddie: And that part of profound knowledge, understanding psychology, I mentioned this last time, is empathy. The word empathy captures this. So you go to the next process as, "Whom am I doing this work for?" and sit down with that person and say, "What do you expect from me? How may I help you?" And that's what decides what you're gonna do. So this this fifth principle here, that he helps his people see themselves as components, I think this is important. The next process is your immediate customer, and the rest of them are customers in a very oblique sense. But what you do is critical to the next person in line, right? So you always spend extra time with that person and of course the other people down the line who your work is gonna be impacting over a period of time, right? But these are the... This is the first step you find out. So who's my customer? So that's principle five. 0:16:09.0 Balaji Reddie: Principle number six: now this comes under psychology again, that a manager of people understands that people are different from each other. He tries to create for everybody interest and challenge and joy in work. Now, if you look at the theory of knowledge, what exactly did he give us when he brought that component of profound knowledge into play? He says that theory is a statement that conveys knowledge by relating cause to effect. So I repeat, theory is a statement which conveys knowledge by relating some cause to some effect. It fits without fail all the observations of the past and helps us predict the future with the risk of being wrong. 0:17:04.7 Balaji Reddie: So I'm gonna repeat this whole statement again. Theory is a statement which conveys knowledge. How? By relating some cause to some effect. It fits without fail all the observations of the past and helps us predict the future with the risk of being wrong. So no amount of examples can establish a theory, and even one example can lead to either abandonment of the theory or modification of the theory. That's what he kept saying. Now, how does this work? So he says it's a system of learning, and all of us have this built in, right? Now, he came from the school of Clarence Irving Lewis, Mind and the World-Order. And if you read that book, Lewis says all knowledge is a priori, it's based on what you already know. 0:18:00.9 Balaji Reddie: For example, let me take this example here. Now, suppose I were to start describing the road to my house. Now, you've not been here, but if I start saying that the road bends towards the left and then there is a command you get to see, now you start constructing a picture in your head based on what you have already seen. It's not the same. That's your theory, right? And then when you actually visit, you say, "Oh, it's the difference between theory and what I actually saw," and then you change your theory. So theory is... It's natural. All of us think naturally like this. And that's why he says here that people are different from one another and we need to celebrate those differences. All of us are born with the system of learning, but not all of us learn the same way. 0:18:49.8 Balaji Reddie: There are some who learn by watching, there are some who learn by doing, there's some who learn by reading, there's some who learn by writing. For some people, one word is enough. You utter a word and they say, "I got it." And for some people, you have to repeat the statement maybe 10 times, 11 times, and then the 12th time you repeat it, they say, "Okay, I got it." Now, is that wrong? We're just different, right? And that's why he says here that we need to understand the learning process of people. And when you understand the learning process of a person and then put that person in the right job, you'll have to stop that person from working. That was his definition of joy in work. People enjoy their work when they realize it resonates with them. 0:19:40.4 Balaji Reddie: And how does that resonance come in? When you under... And because this is so difficult to do, we just throw the responsibility on them by saying, "Here's the target." So the target actually distracts them when actually you should be working on understanding their learning process. So it's a lot of hard work. And sometimes people are motivated enough to discover it themselves, which is great, but we need to create that atmosphere for them to enjoy their work. So interest, challenge, et cetera, he tries to optimize. Now, here's the key. This is beautiful. He tries to optimize family background, education, skills, hopes, and abilities of everyone. 0:20:21.7 Balaji Reddie: So this is not ranking people, very clear. It is instead recognition of differences between people and an attempt to put everybody in a position for development. I think this is one of the most important principles in getting things done. When I teach this to the HR students in my college, I keep saying that I don't think you should call this science as human resource management, because the definition of a resource is obtain it, shape it, use it, and throw it away. We don't wanna do that. I think we should change the title of that department to Department of Learning, because that's what exactly this is all about, and it's learning in both ways where you are trying to understand their process of learning and in effect, you're trying to understand how the company is going to be learning. 0:21:17.0 Balaji Reddie: So you put this in... So this principle, he says, combine all of these things: family background, education, hopes, I love that word. Because if you see one of the things that people talk about, customer satisfaction, I think Deming was the only person who said customers should be happy. Not just satisfied, happier, right? Now comes the next principle. "He is an unceasing learner." So you can never say, "I know it all." Unceasing learner, he encourages his people to study. And I think this fits Dr. Deming himself. He made no excuses to learn. "May I not learn," he would keep repeating that. And I remember Bill Cooper getting irritated and said, "The last time I met you, you said this, and now you're saying this. I got that on tape." He said, "Well, you got this on tape now." He said that, "I do, I learn. And as I learn," he said, "that could have been under different circumstances that I said that, but I'm saying this." 0:22:22.4 Balaji Reddie: And so you keep learning. And he encourages his people to study. The word is study. And he provides, when possible and feasible, seminars and courses for advancement of learning, encourages continued education in college or university for people that are so inclined. So I think this bit is in many places getting to be a part of the systems in most companies. I've seen that happen now, which is a good sign. But it doesn't end there, there are a lot of other things to do. This was the Principle 7 in the list of 17. Now comes Principle 8, and this is so difficult to look at. He says "he's a coach and a counsel, not a judge." You judge people, they shut up. 0:23:15.4 Balaji Reddie: So he says coach and counsel. When they need help, guide them, show them the path. Sometimes maybe you need some help in doing that, well, go ahead. So that was principle number eight. Principle number nine says "he understands a stable system. He understands the interaction between people and the circumstances that they work in. He understands that the performance of anyone that can learn a skill will come to a stable state." Now, this is amazing. He said this way back in the 1950s when he was in Japan teaching them the control chart, where he took one example where he says that further training to the worker and the process was still in control. And he says, "I think he's reached the limit of his learning. He perhaps needs to be taken to another process or maybe given something more challenging so that we can develop the learning process." 0:24:17.6 Balaji Reddie: So he was speaking about this way back in the 1950s, which today you can say comes under understanding psychology through variation. And he says, upon which furthest the lessons will not bring improvement of performance, and a manager of people knows that in this stable state, it is distracting to tell the worker about a mistake, because he says you'll actually then demotivate someone. So these three principles... 0:24:44.1 Andrew Stotz: Because a mistake may be just normal variation, or are you saying... Okay. Yep. Okay. 0:24:51.0 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. I mean, it could be anything, right? But if you are highlighting that when he's already reached a stable state, it could just work in a detrimental way, the opposite direction. 0:25:05.4 Andrew Stotz: Ultimately you've reached your goal. A steady state is fantastic. 0:25:07.4 Balaji Reddie: A steady state. And then now you say if you want him to... Anything better here, I think you need to move him out from there, since maybe he needs to be given something either more challenging or whatever it is. But use of psychology and variation together. If people are saying that he spoke about this in the 1990s, he actually spoke about this in the 1950s in Japan. And I have proof. If you go and check Elementary Principles of the Statistical Control of Quality, the series of lectures that he gave in Japan, you will see this in one of the chapters, very clearly stating what needs to be done. 0:25:47.9 Balaji Reddie: Now we come to the next principle, which is... I don't know how to explain this, but it's amazing. He says that "the leader has three sources of power: authority of office, knowledge, and personality and persuasive power, tact." So authority, that's your title, knowledge, and personality. Now, personality, persuasive power, and tact is more of a personal thing. It is something that is an attribute. Authority is the title you're given. I think the only thing that you can really work on is your knowledge. And he says that a successful manager of people develops knowledge and personality and persuasive power, does not rely on authority of office. He nevertheless has obligation to use his authority, a source of power, for him to bring changes. He says that maybe some drastic changes to equipment, to materials, to methods, and to reduce variation. 0:26:55.0 Balaji Reddie: So he attributes this to a gentleman, Dr. Robert Klekamp, or Klekamp, I don't know how to pronounce that. So he says, "He in authority, but lacking knowledge or personality, must depend on his formal power. He unconsciously fills a void in his qualifications by making it clear to everybody that he's in position of authority, his will be done." So I think he said if things needed to be done and if he's being guided the right way, then he has to bring his authority into power. I think this brings me to one of the interactions he had with... Was it James McDonald at Ford? When he made him stand up and asked him, "What is your job?" And he said, "I'm vice president, manufacturing," and he sat down. Deming said, "Stand up. That's your title, not your job." And then for the next half an hour, he grilled him on what his job was. And after half an hour, he still didn't get an answer. He said, "You don't know what your job is. Do you think other people in the company know what their jobs are? I think you're running a mess here." 0:28:02.2 Balaji Reddie: So Jim McDonald, instead of feeling insulted, took it in a very different way. Though he said, "I did feel that I wanted to resign and just walk out of there," but he said, "I knew this man was onto something." And that kind of thing of authority of office, I think he did not like if people used it for the wrong reason, but he wanted them to develop knowledge, personality. Personality, well, I think again, on the soft side, persuasive power tact. Not all of us have that, but I think we are living in a knowledge economy, so knowledge would be the key here. And he also says that if you're in a position of authority, use this to get the right work done. 0:28:47.3 Balaji Reddie: Then next he says "he will study the results with the aim to improve his performance as a manager of people." So when the system is not getting what it's supposed to do, then he does not put the blame on the people. He says, "I have... I may be going wrong somewhere." I'd like to share an example of my father in Japan. My father was in Japan in 1964, I said this last time. And he was on this Asian Overseas Technical Scholarship, AOTS. And they run these courses even today. They have three-month, six-month, nine-month, and one-year courses. And from what I remember my father telling me, it's integrated in the sense, I think he was there for six months. So during the morning sessions, they used to have classroom training, sitting in a classroom. And in the afternoon, post-lunch, they would go and work in a company, and that was like their intern. And so it was a combination of theory and practice taking place almost every day. 0:30:02.4 Balaji Reddie: Now, what happened there was on the first day... And that's where he started working with Showa Electric, and said they were called the interns. So on the first day, he was taken to the company and was introduced to his supervisor. The supervisor took him on the shop floor and introduced him to the team that he would be working with. And then, while he was leaving, that supervisor said, "I just need to tell you this, that we also form what is called as a quality circle." And this was... The quality circle movement started in 1962, so '64, the quality circle. And so my father said, "I don't know what you're talking about." And he said, "Well, this is something new. So would you like to be a part of it?" Because quality circle is voluntary, not mandatory. They make you a part of the quality, so if you want to be a part of the quality circle. It's not imposed on you. 0:31:05.0 Balaji Reddie: So my father said, "I need to talk to my teacher, my sensei, at the class." He said, "Yeah. You can talk to him." So he went back to the class the next day in the morning, he asked the teacher, the sensei, that this is what they said. He said, "Oh, it's a very good system. You can become a member of the quality circle." So on the second day, he said, "Yes, I'll be a member of the quality circle." "Great," he said. Now, on the third day, his actual work started. Now, they used to make television screens, CRO, et cetera. And one of the steps there was soldering. They had to solder. And the soldering was the dip soldering. You had to take the printed circuit board and dip it into the solder bath and take it out. Of course you were to... There was a technique. 0:31:52.8 Balaji Reddie: And so his job was that. His first job that he was assigned is to do soldering on these PCBs. And so the supervisor himself sat with my father and demonstrated 10 to 15 times how to do it. Then he told my father, "Now you do it." And then he was guiding him, and he made him make around 10 pieces until he said, "Okay. Now you're getting it right." Okay. Now he said the ground rules. If by any chance you press it down too hard or you keep it too long because of the extreme heat, there will be a superficial crack on the PCB. And that would not be something that affects the customer right away, but over a period of time, it can result in the board cracking and the radio not working. So when you see a superficial crack, you're supposed to pull the cord. There was a cord there. And when you pull the cord, the supervisor will come and help you. Fine. 0:32:56.1 Balaji Reddie: Now my father started doing his work, and his fifth or sixth piece developed a crack. Now, he said, I don't want to sound derogatory, but the Indian in me caught up. Should I report this? What would he think? I hardly left this man alone, and his fifth piece is a rejected piece. And he said, I did not want to pull that cord. But then... He said that, he told me, "Please pull the cord," I decided, let me go ahead and pull it. So when he pulled the cord, a red lamp went on there, and there's a big siren that went on. And the supervisor came running and turned off the siren and turned off that lamp and said, "What happened?" My father showed him the crack. So he said, "Okay, no problem." He put it aside. He demonstrated to my father 10 times again how to do it. And then he made him do it 10 times till he said, "Ah, see, you did this." And he got it right. Now he said, "Let's continue production." 0:33:58.8 Balaji Reddie: Now they went away and now my father got it right. After an hour or so, or maybe two hours, they had their tea break. And they were sitting around a table. Now, this was the quality circle. So the supervisor got up and started speaking in Japanese. Now, this was my father's third day there, so obviously he did not understand what was going on. The only thing he knew that they were referring to him because they could not pronounce his name properly. So instead of Reddie, he was being called Leddie. So Leddie-san, Leddie-san, Leddie-san. So my father said, "I knew he was talking about me." And he said, "I felt so ashamed, I was looking down at my cup of tea rather than looking up." And then when I looked up, he said, all of them were looking at him in admiration and the thumbs up sign. And he was wondering what the hell just happened. 0:34:51.0 Balaji Reddie: And at the end of it, when that supervisor stopped speaking, they all clapped. They clapped. And as they dispersed, each one came and held his hand and they went away. And now my father told the supervisor, "What did you tell them? Did you tell them I made a mistake?" He says, "Yes, yes, I did tell them that." He said, "Then why are they complimenting me? Why are they... Why did they clap? Why did they clap for me? Why are they shaking my hands?" He says, "They're shaking your hand, they're clapping, and they're complimenting because you pulled the cord." So he said, "What do you mean?" He says, "Well, we have a saying here, here in Japan, if after explaining to a person 10 times how to do something, if the person still makes a mistake, then there's something wrong in the way I explained it." So this bit over here is he will study results with the aim to improve his performance as a manager. Don't blame the other guy. What am I doing wrong? 0:35:54.0 Andrew Stotz: You hired him, you train him. 0:35:56.4 Balaji Reddie: Yep. So when Jack Welch used to say, "Sack the bottom 10% of the people every year," and he called them dead wood, well, I would say when you hired them, they weren't dead. You killed them. So that was principle number 11. Now principle number 12 is where he combined both variation and psychology together. He said "he will try to discover who, if anybody, is outside the system, in need of special help." So he draws a normal curve. I'll pass on this document to you so you could share it along with the podcast. And he says here that people belong to the system. These are people who need not be ranked. But a person outside the system on the lower side needs special help. People outside the system on the higher side, well, we need to take the system to that level to improve the system. 0:37:08.4 Balaji Reddie: So he talks about that. He says this can be accomplished with some simple calculations. If there be an individual with figures on production or on failures, special help may be only simple rearrangement of work. It might be more complicated. He in need of special help is not in the bottom 5%. He's clean outside that distribution. So he's trying to use the understanding of variation in a very different sense to understanding people. And he says that we try to reduce that variation in performance between people. That's the job of the system. So this is principle 11 and 12. 0:37:51.0 Balaji Reddie: Now you come to principle 13: "he creates trust." And that creates trust, I would believe, it's a two-way process. And he creates an environment that encourages freedom and innovation. That is the environment where people are unafraid to make mistakes. Because we learned that theory is not the opposite of practice; it's a guide to better practice. And we need all of us working together. And that trust, I think, has got a very funny meaning in my country. I keep joking about this. In India, trust is we will lie a little less to each other. But that's not what this is. We need to be straight honest with each other. And honest is you can only do that by example. Like what happened in my case. I remember when we had installed the ERP system in our company, and there are interlocks. And I remember there was a backlogged order. And I knew that because when we did not deliver the order on time, I negotiated with the customer and I got the delivery date postponed. 0:39:08.0 Balaji Reddie: Now I was trying to test the ERP that month. So I said, let me see if the ERP can capture this because it should show it as a backlogged order. But it showed it as an order that was to be delivered on the new adjusted date. And I said, "How did that happen?" Because that should not have changed. And so I called my assistant. I said, "This should be in backlog. Why is it showing me as a spillover order?" And he said, "No, I changed the date." I said, "Why did you do that?" And he said, "No, because the finance guy will get angry with me." And I said, "That is my problem." I said, "When I told you you're not supposed to change that date..." And I removed his administrative powers in changing the date so that he could not change the date in the system. 0:40:01.7 Balaji Reddie: I removed his powers. And he apologized profusely and said, "Please let me." I said, "No." So till the day I resigned, I kept it. I said, "You're not gonna be doing this because it's not a question..." I said... If I had succumbed to that Andrew, they would have lost my trust. They would have thought that, "Oh, Balaji just talks. He doesn't walk the talk." I said, "No, you're not supposed to do this. We are trying to go by a system. Let's go by the system." So I think you can only create trust through example, through demonstration, if I may say so, and especially under adverse circumstances that you need to demonstrate this. 0:40:46.1 Balaji Reddie: Principle number 14: he says "he does not expect perfection." I think that even he said it in principle of variation. Principle 15: he says "he listens and learns without passing judgment on him that he listens to." This is an extension of the previous points. Principle number 16: he will hold an informal, unhurried conversation with every one of his people at least once a year, not for judgment, merely to listen. The purpose would be development of understanding of his people, their aims, their hopes, and their fears. This meeting will be spontaneous and not planned ahead. So there should be no bias, like an audit. 0:41:41.5 Andrew Stotz: Right. 0:41:42.2 Balaji Reddie: And lastly, principle number 17: "he understands the benefits of cooperation and the losses from competition between people and between groups." So these were the 17 principles of leadership, the beginning of transformation. I think there can be nothing more to do than this. He was so clear in what he wanted us to do. I wonder why people say that there was no method. 0:42:16.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. He definitely outlined a lot of stuff there. One of the questions I had for you on that list is, what do you say to people that say that he's kind of a dreamer? The idea that you can sit down with your employees and have this time and everybody's so busy and just talk about your fears and your goals and all that stuff where we live in this age of, we've gotta get the result, we've gotta be focused. How do you respond to that? 0:42:51.1 Balaji Reddie: Well, I say give this a try. All right? You've done it your way, right? You've done it... Let's just forget about it, and you're seeing what's happening. You want a change, you gotta do something different. So why don't you go by what this man is saying? And if you say that, you know, a dreamer or whatever, well, I'd like to quote John Lennon here: "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." 0:43:16.8 Andrew Stotz: Yep. Yep. Yep. And what do you say for people that feel that you gotta have these targets and goals and KPIs to get the most out of people? And when we think about what Deming's talking about, we're talking about this intrinsic motivation. But it's scary for people to think. It's a lot more comfortable to have these goals and structures than what you could argue is a little bit more unstructured. And how do we balance that? And obviously Deming wasn't saying don't have goals. 0:44:02.1 Balaji Reddie: Yeah, yeah. I think Henry addresses this very well in his 12-day course where he has a specific section on goals, et cetera. And he talks about how Deming said that there are some things called facts of life. Facts of life is, okay, we need to turn out, we need to generate so much of revenue this year because we need to pay for all our salaries and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then we need to have some money for the future. So we need to make so much of money this year. Now that's not a goal, that's a fact of life. But when you are bringing that number out and showing that to everyone, please also indicate to them how we intend to achieve that. Don't just leave it to them and say we need to do this. 0:44:54.4 Balaji Reddie: Okay. I'll give an example here. I don't want to sound... It may sound a little self-serving, but okay, take it in the right spirit. I remember when we had our first strategic meeting at my company, and my boss... Okay, was... He said... I think 20 of us sitting in the room and he said, "Last year, our target was 30 million and we're getting there and we're doing a great job. So this year we're gonna aim for 45 million." Now when he said that, I just put my hand up and he said, "Yes." So I said, "Why 45 million?" And he just stared me down and he looked up at everyone and said, "That's it. Meeting dismissed." He just walked out. These are those days when you had... You know the OHP? You know the overhead transparencies, the projector? 0:45:56.9 Andrew Stotz: Oh, yeah. Overhead transparencies, yep. 0:45:58.8 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. So he had the transparencies, and he just took them and walked out. And all the guys came to me, "Are you mad? You're questioning the owner of the company? Are you nuts?" And I was thinking, "God, what did I say wrong?" And then we started going back to our cabins, and when I sat down at my desk, the phone rang, and it was boss. And he just uttered one word, "Come." So when I was walking towards his cabin, I was thinking to myself, "Nice company, nice friends." And then I knocked on the door, and he said, "Yeah, yeah. Come in." He said, "Sit down." And then he said, "Shut the door." He said, "What the hell were you trying to do today? Are you trying to mock me?" I said, "Please, why would I want to mock you, boss? I wouldn't want to mock you. I just wanted to know why 45 million." 0:46:52.9 Balaji Reddie: He says, "All right." And so he took out what is called the blue book, where we have the yearbook, what happened in our country in the last one year. We have these books that get written, right? So he said, "Look, this is growth in our country in industry. This is our... Sector that we are in, and we are in the organized sector in this industry. And the year-on-year growth for the last five years has been this, and this year the expected growth is so much. And can I expect at least 3 or 4% of that growth?" I said, "Of course, why not?" He said, "That, son, is 45 million." So I said, "Why didn't you tell me this? That's all I wanted to know." He said, "You think these asses..." He was referring to my other colleagues... "Would understand?" I said, "Boss, if I can understand, they can understand. It's one and the same." "Okay. Let's meet tomorrow." 0:47:52.1 Balaji Reddie: So the next day we met again. And he said, "Yesterday, when I uttered 45 million, this genius asked me why, and so I'm gonna tell you why." And he went on to explain. After he finished explaining, my sales guy... Sorry, my marketing guy got up and he said, "I have something to share." "Okay, please come forward." He put the transparency. And he had listed there the top 10 selling items in my company based on revenue, based on profits, and based on quantities. Top 10 for each. There were three products that were common to all the three. So obviously he was sending a message to us, that we had to attain our targets, at least by focusing. 0:48:44.8 Balaji Reddie: The moment he showed that, he underlined these three, the sales guy put his hand up and said, "Yes." "That second product you underlined, our competitor is selling it as a package with another product, but we don't seem to have that on our list." So the R&D guy got up and said, "Could you tell me what the part number..." And he says, "It's part number so-and-so." He said, "Hang on, I've already developed that." You know what was happening, Andrew? We were talking to each other. And that meeting went on for three and a half hours. And at the end of the three and a half hours, all of us knew how to attain 45 million. 0:49:23.8 Andrew Stotz: I thought you were gonna ask a question on the second day, "Hey, boss, so 45 million, why is there no market share gain of our business that we're growing faster than the industry?" [laughter] 0:49:41.4 Balaji Reddie: So anyway, but this was... This is what I think goals should be transparent in this sense, that why are we giving you this number? And more importantly is the discussion that happens is how are we gonna do this? It just doesn't happen by itself, right? And if you leave it to people, they start distorting numbers, right? 0:50:03.8 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. 0:50:04.2 Balaji Reddie: As Brian Joiner said, "Distort the data, distort the system, or distort both." 0:50:12.2 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And we're working on a growth plan for my coffee business. 0:50:19.0 Balaji Reddie: A growth. 0:50:19.6 Andrew Stotz: And really what it comes down to is three things. Number one, are we as the owners gonna hire more salespeople? Because salespeople bring in revenue. 0:50:36.3 Balaji Reddie: Right. 0:50:37.0 Andrew Stotz: Number two, are we as the owners going to develop together with the rest of the team a higher value-added offering... 0:50:50.6 Balaji Reddie: Wow. 0:50:50.8 Andrew Stotz: That we can bring more value than what we're bringing right now, which would bring potential customers to us and allow us to sell more easily. Or are we as the owners going to buy another company? 0:51:07.8 Balaji Reddie: Oh, okay. 0:51:09.2 Andrew Stotz: So those are the three things. And Dale and I have been discussing each one of those in a lot of detail, testing out and debating and discussing. But those are the type that... When it comes to growth, that's just... We know the growth we can produce with no change. And that's in line with the inflation rate or whatever the economic growth, for sure. But as long as we don't lose people on our team or something like that. But to go to our team and say, "How are we gonna grow faster?" Well, that whole point is we can see. Also the other thing is that we can see bigger about the industry sometimes. Sometimes they see something at a small level that they bring back to us and think, "Whoa, wait a minute, that's something valuable." And yeah, so we're getting ready for our final decisions on where we're gonna go with that. But yeah, without that type of change, we're not gonna reach the type of growth that we want to get. And really our idea is 5x growth in five years. 0:52:19.9 Balaji Reddie: Okay. 0:52:20.5 Andrew Stotz: And in order to do that, we have to have a completely different level of quality, service, product, thinking. And so, yeah, it's fun... It's challenging. Anyways... 0:52:32.9 Balaji Reddie: Right. 0:52:33.2 Andrew Stotz: So how do we wrap this up? What is it you want people to take away? You've shared a lot of different stuff. What would you like them to take away from it? 0:52:42.0 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. One, I'm trying to shatter that myth that Deming did not tell us what was to be done. I think he was very clear and we need to reread and reread. And we have to take these as guidelines. You may come up with your own method, but see these as a guideline by and large to put you on the right path. And once you do that, you may develop something which works for you, and that's what he wanted. But let us not just say that he only philosophized about things. I think he was very clear in his head. He just wanted us to do things our own way because nobody understood our problems better than we ourselves. And he was just showing us how to understand things around. 0:53:32.6 Balaji Reddie: He wanted us to know, to understand what we do not know. Through these principles, we can address some of the gaps. Perhaps we were getting a few things wrong. So point number 14, take action to accomplish the transformation. I think it begins with leadership. So point number seven comes into the picture. It begins with training and education. Point number six comes into the picture and it also brings in point number 13, which is learning and development. And education and training is different from learning and development. Training can be very company specific and you can measure the outcomes of training, but you cannot measure the outcomes of development because that takes time. 0:54:19.8 Balaji Reddie: So you need to have some things going in your favor. And for that you need to choose, and he told us how to do that. And yes, he wanted top management to be a part of this because he said those in authority need to do this. But that one sentence that middle management can commence, it can commence there, is a telling statement. So he knew it was possible. 0:54:45.0 Andrew Stotz: That's great. And I like that. Commence. That there's... It's not necessarily gonna be completed by middle management, but middle management can start right now, right where you are. So that's a great way, that's a great way to end with the start. So, Balaji, I want to thank you on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute. And it's an interesting discussion and I'm enjoying it very much. And for listeners out there, remember to go to deming.org and also there, jump on DemingNEXT to continue your journey. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and that is: "People are entitled to joy in work." 0:55:32.1 Balaji Reddie: Oh, yeah. Andrew, I think saying thank you on behalf of the institute, I am also a part of the institute. 0:55:38.5 Andrew Stotz: Of course. Of course. You are. I appreciate it. Okay.

S16 E28: Josh Swihart on Zcash & ZODL

Bitcoin Takeover Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 13, 2026 114:41

Josh Swihart is the founder of ZODL: the Zcash Open Development Lab. Basically a for profit reincarnation of the old Electric Coin Company, which inherited the dev teams and projects. During his previous Bitcoin Takeover podcast appearance in November 2024 (S15 E62), Zcash was a struggling privacy project with very little support and a rather disappointing price action. In June 2026, Zcash is the rising star of the cryptocurrency market, with plans to scale to billions of users and ever-improving shielding technology. In this episode, we talk about the good, the bad, and the controversial moments in the recent history of Zcash... and why Bitcoin didn't activate Zerocash yet. Time stamps: 00:01:14 Intro: Josh Swihart returns after 20 months 00:02:07 Why Zcash is "in a class of its own" (and self-defeating) 00:03:28 Shielded note Q: the run on the Orchard pool before Iron Wood 00:05:22 What are shielded pools? Sprout, Sapling, Orchard explained 00:06:26 The Orchard vulnerability found by Taylor Hornby 00:06:48 Why Zcash matters to Bitcoin: Zerocoin, Zerocash, Halo 2 00:09:06 The secret: from near-delisting at $30 to near top 10 00:11:03 Governance battles, killing the dev fund, refocusing ECC 00:13:03 Peacemonger research and focusing on the first 100 users 00:14:09 Keystone, NEAR intents swaps, and shielded pool growth 00:15:23 Reflexivity and the macro case (Canadian truckers, seizures) 00:16:32 Cake Wallet, Vic Sharma, and the ZEC integration recognition problem 00:17:57 The Monero rivalry and the privacy renaissance 00:19:35 "Cypherpunk does not mean criminal": Samourai vs Wasabi 00:23:04 Railgun comparison and why fungibility matters 00:25:02 Zmap, Flexa, and spending shielded ZEC in stores 00:26:21 Buying lunch at Chipotle and a Ford F150 truck with Zcash 00:27:33 Giveaway setup + sponsors 00:30:32 Why is Zcash "lied about a ton"? 00:34:03 Debunking the low anonymity-set myth and DeFi integrations 00:35:48 "Main character syndrome," paid FUD, and the influencer claim 00:38:50 Uncorrelated price + maximalist FUD around the Orchard bug 00:40:40 The ethics of disclosure and Taylor Hornby's character 00:45:03 The security budget problem and Network Sustainability Module 00:46:56 Scaling Zcash: Tachyon, recursion, and off-chain services 00:49:35 Do shielded memos bloat the chain? 00:51:32 The shielded stablecoins / shielded assets debate 00:58:31 Last giveaway call + ZODL phone overheating 00:59:12 New user Q: where's the privacy when you spend? 01:01:02 Shielded vs transparent transactions explained 01:03:22 Number reveal and winners 01:06:39 Crypto Visa/Mastercard debit cards: winning or losing? 01:09:56 Has Bitcoin been co-opted? Adam Back and incentives 01:15:20 What stops Zcash from being co-opted like Bitcoin? 01:19:52 Decentralization and killing the trademark agreement 01:21:31 Many orgs now: Foundation, Shielded Labs, Tachyon, Valor 01:23:21 No funding from exchanges or mining pools 01:26:04 ZODL origin: Balaji, fundraising, and the ECC split 01:29:17 ZODL's business model: 50 bps on swaps 01:30:01 Hardware wallets: Keystone, Passport, Trezor Safe 7 01:34:07 How Slush discovered Bitcoin through Zooko 01:35:37 Zcash ASIC demand and decentralizing mining 01:38:51 ECC wind-down, the Bootstrap settlement, and dev funds 01:42:38 Thoughts on ZNS (Zcash Naming Service) 01:44:47 Living with the FUD and "Zionist coin" conspiracies 01:46:31 Why disclose the bug publicly? Transparency vs trust 01:48:18 Inside the emergency coordination with pools and exchanges 01:49:52 Echoes of Bitcoin's 2013 hard fork 01:51:49 Iron Wood and Tachyon upgrade timelines 01:53:31 Closing: the Zcash dance and where to follow Josh

K220. Alex G. Calvet. Tecnofeudalismo

Kapital

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 12, 2026 81:24

El individuo soberano visualiza un futuro en el que las ciudad-estado rompen el actual monopolio de los estado-nación. El inversor Balaji lanzó el proyecto de los network state con este preciso fin, su objetivo era el de trasladar una comunidad online de emprendedores a un territorio que buscaría en última instancia el reconocimiento diplomático de los estados preexistentes. Alex, que ha vivido en una de estas comunidades, te cuenta todo lo que siempre quisiste saber sobre la sociedad del futuro.Kapital es posible gracias a sus colaboradores:⁠TaxDown⁠. Tus impuestos bien hechos⁠.¿Declaras bien tus inversiones? Este año, si tienes inversiones, hay nuevos cambios y regulaciones que tienes que saber (DAC8, modelo 721, normativa europea), así que es clave hacerlo bien. Si inviertes, yo te recomiendo TaxDown por ser la forma más fácil de presentar la Renta. TaxDown se integra con la mayoría de brókers, te lo calculan todo, y además cuentan con expertos fiscales en inversiones que revisan tu caso. Así evitas líos y cálculos raros. Si quieres probarlo, puedes usar mi código KAPITAL para obtener descuento. O puedes entrar directamente desde este enlace.Página Internacional⁠⁠. Lo mejor de la prensa de todo el mundo.Página Internacional es un nuevo medio digital y papel que publica en español los mejores artículos de las principales revistas y periódicos del mundo. Con una sola suscripción, en Página leerás las piezas esenciales de The Economist, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Der Spiegel, Le Monde o The Atlantic. Página nace con el propósito de aportar filtro, acceso y selección, y reunir en un mismo lugar el mejor periodismo global. Como dice Toni Segarra, que estuvo en el podcast y que es socio fundador del proyecto: «Lo sorprendente es que Página Internacional no existiera hace ya tiempo. Lo importante es que exista ahora, en este momento». Puedes formar parte de Página suscribiéndote anualmente, ahora con un descuento de 30 euros si aprovechas el código KAPITAL30. También tienes la opción vitalicia, en la que te prometen una vida entera de buena lectura y sabiduría. ¡Feliz lectura!Patrocina Kapital. Toda la información en este link.Índice:0:32 Una misteriosa ciudad abandonada.7:48 La revolucionaria visión de Balaji.15:15 Las locuras de Bryan Johnson.27:51 El regreso de la ciudad-estado.36:05 Thiel te paga para que dejes la universidad.42:23 Superabundancia.47:49 El golem de arcilla.57:01 Soberanía cognitiva.1:01:55 Una economía sin trabajos.1:06:43 La realidad de los nómadas digitales.1:10:56 Prepara tu pitch para entrar en Network School.Apuntes:The network state. Balaji Srinivasan.Trilogía fundación. Isaac Asimov.El individuo soberano. William Rees-Mogg & James Dale Davison.El niño soberano. Aaron Stupple.De cero a uno. Peter Thiel.Propaganda. Edward Bernays.

ADMK -வை காலியாக்கும் VIJAY ANNAMALAI | மத்திய அமைச்சராவாரா EPS | சிக்கும் KN Nehru Senthil Balaji?

Let's Talk Money with Monika Halan

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 6, 2026 22:45

•⁠ ⁠டெல்லி: பரப்பரப்பான ஜந்தர் மந்தர்... CJP போராட்டத்தில் நடந்தது என்ன?•⁠ ⁠உலகை பாதித்திருக்கிறது எரிசக்தி நெருக்கடி... என்ன சொல்ல வருகிறார் பிரதமர் மோடி?* `So What?' - RN Ravi -ன் மகள் ஷாமிக ரவி அதிர்ச்சி பதில்!•⁠ ⁠தவெக-வில் இணைந்த அதிமுக முன்னாள் அமைச்சர்கள்!•⁠ ⁠திமுகவில் இணைந்த்த மாற்றுக்கட்சியினர்?•⁠ ⁠காங்கிரஸைக் கடுமையாக விமர்சித்த முரசொலி!•⁠ ⁠சிபிஐ, சிபிஎம் அலுவலகங்களுக்குச் சென்ற பிரவீண் சக்கரவர்த்தி... ஏன்?•⁠ ⁠இடதுசாரிகளை கூட்டணியில் சேர்க்கும் முயற்சியில் ப.சிதம்பரம்!•⁠ ⁠இந்தியா கூட்டணியில் தவெக! - சஞ்சய் ராவத்•⁠ ⁠தனி இயக்கம் தொடங்கிய லதா ரஜினிகாந்த்! ஆர்.எஸ்.எஸ் 2501 அமைப்புதான் அண்ணாமலை இயக்கம்! - பெ.சண்முகம்•⁠ ⁠தமிழ்நாட்டின் உணர்வுகளை பிரதிபலித்தால் வரவேற்போம்! - திருமா•⁠ ⁠அண்ணாமலையுடன் இணையும் கரு.நாகராஜன்!•⁠ ⁠கே.என்.நேரு மீது வழக்குப் பதிந்த லஞ்ச ஒழிப்புத்துறை... கேள்வியெழுப்பிய நீதிமன்றம்!•⁠ ⁠கே.என்.நேரு மீதான வழக்கு உள்நோக்கம் இருப்பதாகத் தெரியவில்லை! - திருமா•⁠ ⁠செந்தில் பாலாஜி பதறுவது ஏன்? - ஹார்டு டிஸ்க் விவகாரத்தில் நிர்மல் குமார் கேள்வி•⁠ ⁠மாமன்னன் படக் காட்சியை வைத்து உதயநிதியை விமர்சித்த ஆதவ்!•⁠ ⁠திருச்செந்தூர் கோயில் முறைகேடுகளை விசாரிக்க 6 பேர் குழு அமைப்பு!•⁠ ⁠717 டாஸ்மாக் கடைகள் மூடப்பட்டதாக அறிவிப்பு!•⁠ ⁠கும்மிடிப்பூண்டி: மூடப்பட்ட டாஸ்மாக் கடையை திறக்கக் கோரி பெண்கள் போராட்டம்!

balaji nehru senthil cjp annamalai

What the FM told me about mis-selling

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 4, 2026 18:29

In this episode, Monika takes listeners inside a recent meeting with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman at the newly inaugurated Kartavya Bhavan. What begins as a visit to present the latest editions and translations of her books becomes a broader reflection on policymaking, public service, and the government's focus on financial consumer protection. She shares her impressions of the transition from the historic North Block to the modern Ministry of Finance offices, describes conversations around financial literacy, mis-selling, and her new online education initiative, and offers a personal glimpse into the people and institutions shaping India's economic policy. Along the way, she reflects on the importance of fiscal prudence and why India's economic foundations remain stronger than many people realise despite current global uncertainty.She then turns to a question from Balaji in Bangalore about one of the biggest challenges in personal finance: planning for retirement in a world where future expenses, inflation, healthcare needs, and even lifestyle expectations are impossible to predict with certainty. Monika explains why retirement planning has been described as one of the hardest problems in finance, discusses the role of inflation targeting by the RBI, and outlines her own framework for managing retirement income through a combination of cash, debt, and equity. The conversation explores how investors can build resilience into their retirement plans without relying on precise forecasts and why flexibility often matters more than accuracy.In listener questions, Saahil from Kolkata asks whether passive investors should trust a single index fund or diversify across multiple fund houses, leading to a discussion about the legal structure of mutual funds, operational risks, AMC failures, and the role of diversification for young investors; and Rama from Pune raises the often-overlooked question of how to actually use accumulated wealth after retirement, prompting a conversation about withdrawal strategies, retirement corpus adequacy, balancing equity and debt in later life, and the importance of preparing not just for the accumulation phase of investing, but also for the decades that follow.Chapters:(00:00 – 00:00) Inside My Meeting with the Finance Minister: Books, Consumer Protection and Mis-Selling(00:00 – 00:00) Retirement Planning Beyond Inflation: Building a Corpus That Lasts(00:00 – 00:00) Index Funds, AMC Risk and the Simplicity of Long-Term Investing(00:00 – 00:00) Managing Retirement Withdrawals: When and How to Use Your Investments(00:00 – 00:00) Listener Questions on Wealth Preservation, Insurance and Financial Freedomhttps://x.com/monikahalan/status/2059623668616249611https://x.com/monikahalan/status/2059838775619145737If you have financial questions that you'd like answers for, please email us at ⁠mailme@monikahalan.com⁠ Monika's book on basic money management⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.monikahalan.com/lets-talk-money-english/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Monika's book on mutual funds⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.monikahalan.com/lets-talk-mutual-funds/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Monika's workbook on recording your financial life⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.monikahalan.com/lets-talk-legacy/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Calculators⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://investor.sebi.gov.in/calculators/index.html⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠You can find Monika on her social media @monikahalan. Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@MonikaHalan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@MonikaHalan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@MonikaHalan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@MonikaHalan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Production House: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.inoutcreatives.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Production Assistant:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Anshika Gogoi⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

ministry finance selling insurance chapters simplicity amc listener questions rama bangalore calculator rbi pune kolkata index funds consumer protection balaji wealth preservation finance minister nirmala sitharaman

Balaji and Steven Glinert on Network States, Supply Chains, and Allied Coalition Strategy

america china strategy internet politics network states supply chains coalition networks allied alliances simplecast political power balaji global order balaji srinivasan network state

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 3, 2026 55:14

Theo Jaffee and Sophia Puccini speak with Balaji Srinivasan and Steven Glinert about the shifting balance of power between nations, networks, and technology. The conversation covers China's industrial rise, America's manufacturing challenges, the role of alliances in a multipolar world, and whether the internet is becoming a political force independent of traditional nation states. They discuss supply chains, technological sovereignty, decentralization, and competing visions for the future global order. Along the way, Balaji outlines ideas from the Network State and Network School, while both guests debate how technology, economics, and political power may evolve over the coming decades. Resources: Follow Balaji Srinivasan on X: https://x.com/balajis Follow Steven Glinert on X: https://x.com/stevenglinert Follow Theo Jaffee on X: https://x.com/theojaffee Follow Sophia Puccini on X:https://x.com/schisofrenia Stay Updated:Find a16z on YouTube: YouTubeFind a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Show on SpotifyListen to the a16z Show on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

#104 The Elite Private High School Where Students Earn A Million Dollars: [Nat Eliason of Founder School (via Alpha)]

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 2, 2026 71:25

Topics: (00:00:00) - Intro (00:03:27) - Nat joins Alpha School to launch Founder School (00:04:11) - The million-dollar business guarantee (00:04:44) - Why no program like this exists yet (00:09:09) - How AI tutors compress academics into three hours (00:13:00) - Teenagers are capable of real work (00:15:27) - The Alpha School platform and expansion model (00:25:35) - Founder School's September 2026 launch (00:29:21) - Reproducing Stanford's entrepreneurial advantages (00:38:00) - Year one curriculum: sales first (00:48:28) - Building expertise and avoiding hustle culture (00:53:42) - The institutional skin in the game (00:56:22) - Who's applying and the $150K tuition (01:01:04) - Ten-year vision: 10,000 students across ten campuses (01:08:04) - How to learn more and get involved Links: Eric Jorgenson LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/erjorgenson Twitter / X — https://x.com/EricJorgenson Website — https://www.ejorgenson.com/ Nat Eliason LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/nateliason/ Twitter / X — https://twitter.com/nateliason Website — https://www.nateliason.com/ Alpha School — https://alpha.school/ Founder School — https://founders.school To support the costs of producing this podcast: >> Buy a copy of the Navalmanack: www.navalmanack.com/ >> Buy a copy of The Anthology of Balaji: https://balajianthology.com/ >> Sign up for my online course and community about building your Personal Leverage: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage >> Invest in early-stage companies alongside Eric and his partners at Rolling Fun: https://angel.co/v/back/rolling-fun >> Join the free weekly email list at ejorgenson.com/newsletter >> Text the podcast to a friend >> Or at least give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners! Important Quotes from the podcast on Business and Entrepreneurship There is no skill called “business.” Avoid business magazines and business classes. - Naval Ravikant You have to work up to the point where you can own equity in a business. You could own equity as a small shareholder where you bought stock. You could also own it as an owner where you started the company. Ownership is really important. Everybody who really makes money at some point owns a piece of a product, a business, or some IP. That can be through stock options if you work at a tech company. That's a fine way to start.

founders business building students high school invest private elite alpha teenagers ip million dollars ownership earn anthology 150k balaji nat eliason

"ZODL is to Zcash What Coinbase Was to Bitcoin" | Josh Swihart on ZEC's Awakening

Bankless

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 1, 2026 56:55

What happens when every payment, wallet, and onchain interaction becomes searchable by governments, companies, adversaries, and AI? Josh Swihart, founder and CEO of Zcash Open Development Lab, joins David to explain why Zcash is having a major privacy comeback, how ZODL and the Zashi wallet helped unlock real shielded adoption, why the shielded pool may be the most important ZEC metric, and what it will take for private money to become too big to kill. ---

ceo ai bitcoin crypto awakening funding privacy earn compliance institutions coinbase undervalued product market fit balaji zcash zec personal privacy

A New Lens with Balaji Reddie (Part 1)

Play Episode Listen Later May 25, 2026 39:32

What if the problem isn't your strategy, your people, or your tools, but the lens you're looking through? In this first conversation with Andrew Stotz, quality educator Balaji Reddie explains why so many organizations chase Deming's 14 Points and prizes but miss the philosophy underneath. He also gets into what changes once you start seeing your organization as one connected system. There are a few surprises along the way, like why his employees actually celebrated the day he got rid of performance appraisals. 0:00:01.9 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm here with featured guest Balaji Reddie, who is an educator and trainer in teaching of Dr. Deming and quality management generally. Now the topic for today is a deeper perspective of the teachings of Dr. Deming. Balaji, how are you? 0:00:29.6 Balaji Reddie: I am fine. It's wonderful to see you this morning. I have been looking forward to this for quite some time now. 0:00:37.0 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. In fact, we've been talking back and forth in the past and then we had a meeting recently to get going on this because you've got so much to share. And one of the things I just said is a deeper perspective on the teachings of Dr. Deming. Maybe you could just give a little background of yourself for those people that have never heard of your journey. Maybe tell us a little bit about your journey, the Deming journey, as well as what you're doing now. 0:01:02.2 Balaji Reddie: All right. So I am an electrical engineer by profession and my first job which I got was in a lamp, a bulb manufacturing company which made automotive lamps. And that's where I chose to be in the quality department because I was being shunted around in all the different departments and the owner of the company asked me, "Where would you like to be?" and I said, "Quality." I don't know, when I look back why I chose. I think it appealed to me as an engineer and also the fact that I wanted to be a manager. It combined engineering and something to do with managing people. I don't want to sound dramatic, but I don't think I chose quality, I think quality chose me. But what I did after that was conscious. I did a postgraduate diploma in quality management, the first structured course in the country, and then went on to a Master of Science in quality management here in India. 0:02:00.2 Balaji Reddie: So that's been my journey here as far as working. I worked a lot. I used to teach part-time, but I made this switch 20 years ago to be an educator primarily and decided to put all my focus into creating the next gen of managers. At the same time, during the bit of a free time that I have, I do consult, but that's not the core profession of mine. So, yes, I'm an educator and a trainer. You can say that. I teach quality management, anything to do with operations, supply chain, et cetera, but there's always been a Deming slant to it. Along with that, I've also liked to... Because I went into the works of Dr. Juran, I got a good chance to meet with him and be in touch with him. It was only the last six years of his life, but I think he had very little time to give me, but he gave me time. So I have a good perspective of both these gentlemen. And if you know quality, they're the pioneers. 0:03:01.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And I'm curious, when you first started out with the degrees and the, as you mentioned, getting a diploma and then a master's, was Deming front and center in there or was that a secondary thing? What was it like in the beginning? 0:03:19.6 Balaji Reddie: Oh, my entire focus was actually Deming. I needed to be qualified in that. I wanted to qualify myself in quality, that's what I meant here, because there was no... I was looking for a structured course on the subject. You had these training programs, certificate courses, but this one caught my attention when they said we have a diploma in quality. And part of the course was we had to, there was a project like a dissertation, and we had to show how we implemented this in our companies where we were working. And for those who were not working, they were provided companies where you go and actually implement these. So it was a win-win. So the company gained and you gained. That's how it was. That's what I liked about that course. Same with the masters. It was a complete two-year course. This was a year-and-a-half or three semesters. That was more elaborate, the masters. So, yeah. 0:04:18.0 Andrew Stotz: And what is the state of Deming and the teachings of Dr. Deming in India? We know that many companies in India have implemented the teachings of Deming over the years. But of course, there's a lot of people that just know nothing. I'm just curious, what is the state right now as far as the teachings of Dr. Deming? 0:04:40.3 Balaji Reddie: Oh, I'd like to... Just a slight correction there. We have the highest number of Deming Prize winners, but that does not necessarily mean that they're implementing the teachings of Dr. Deming. In fact, many of them after having got the prize... I worked in a company, we were suppliers to one of them. And when they came to do a vendor assessment to our factory, obviously there's a lot of buzz. Everyone in the company, they called me the Deming man. They used to call me that. And so when these guys came down and they were talking and when they gave their business card which had the Deming Prize logo, so they said, "Oh, we have... You know, Balaji is here and he's our Deming man." So who's he and what is this? And so they came and met me and they said that, "We got the Deming Prize." I said, "Excellent." But I said, "Just because you got the Deming Prize, I mean, have you worked on the Deming philosophy?" "Isn't this the same?" And I said, "No." And I, of course, joked with them, and they said, "So how do we learn?" And I said, "Pay me." [laughter] Anyway, yeah, then we got talking and they realized that there was such a big gap in what they were doing. For instance, when I spoke to them about performance appraisals and having quotas and things like that, they were like, "What?" 0:06:04.9 Andrew Stotz: Interesting. And when we talk about the Deming Prize, when I asked you that, we're talking about the Deming Prize which is offered by the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers through their Deming Prize Committee. This isn't something done through the Deming Institute. 0:06:12.3 Balaji Reddie: No. 0:06:19.7 Andrew Stotz: Yep. Okay. And do people study Deming there in India anymore or is it fading out or... 0:06:26.7 Balaji Reddie: Well, yeah, that's what I said, they do know. The good part is that because of the fact that the Deming Prize winners are there, at least they know about Dr. Deming. And then they're curious to know, "Oh, what did he teach?" Because again, they've been given that perspective that he taught, well, wrongly, PDCA, and he focused on the 14 points. And then when they read the 14 points and then they get... Because when you read it just without understanding, you can actually... It can put off certain people. You may get a little repulsed and say, "Oh, my God, what's he saying?" But then there are certain people who get intrigued and say, "Wait a minute. This is challenging. He's saying that we need not have quotas? Then how are you going to get work done?" And that's where the questioning begins. And there have been normally these trends where some companies where they called me over, I shall not name one of them, one of the students I was teaching in class and I was talking about the 14 points, and then she comes up to me and she says, "I've spoken about you to my father, and he's working in this company, and they're going for the Deming Prize. He wants to meet you." And then she brings him to the college the next morning and then we had a lovely discussion. And he said, "We've been discussing the 14 points." And I said, "You know what? You're putting the cart before the horse. You need to discuss profound knowledge first." So he said, "I'll put you in touch with my HR, the human resource." And then that lady got in touch with me, then we had a good chat and I explained to her and she understood very quickly. Incidentally, Andrew, that's something very amazing, when I speak about these things to the HR people, they take to it like a fish takes to water. They say, "You're right. What can we do about appraisals? Appraisals are wrong." But they also know they're shackled. They do not have the authority to break and come out of it. There have been some cases where they've been bold enough, but many of them... That's one of the things I've seen over these last 20 years that I've been teaching, that everybody principally agrees, but they also say that we're bound by it. 0:08:37.6 Andrew Stotz: That reminds me when I attended my first seminar when I was 24, and I was very intimidated by all the people in the room. I was just fresh out of university, working at Pepsi in Los Angeles. I flew into Washington, D.C., and so I sat right in the front row and I just decided I'm not gonna look at anybody behind me because they're all bigwig executives. But then when I heard Deming really show no mercy and really be tough to them, I was like, "Wow, wow, this is interesting." And he was getting to the... As a factory supervisor, which is what I was at Pepsi, I could just see he was getting to the heart of the matter. And so, yeah, a lot of things are very obvious to people in the factory, but then it's the leadership that is an issue. I'm curious when we think about... Let's imagine that someone listening to this has never heard of Dr. Deming and it's their first time, they stumbled upon this, they're hearing you speak. They're gonna ask the question, "Why does this matter? What benefit do I get from this?" How would you describe that to someone who knows nothing about Dr. Deming and his teachings? 0:09:59.3 Balaji Reddie: Oh, well, when you start getting aware of what this man had to say, let me tell you, when you start actually getting to it, you'll find that what you've been missing all this time in life. And then when you actually get to implement this, it'll be way, way better than where you are right now, sometimes totally in a very, very different direction. And you begin to realize that you had an illusion of knowledge, that you thought you were correct, and then suddenly a new perspective comes in. Just to make a point here, I don't want to be boastful about this, but I'm really proud to say this, that in all the companies that I worked, I removed performance appraisal. None of the companies I worked in had performance appraisal. And the day we removed it in one of the companies, there were actually celebrations. [laughter] 0:10:56.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. Which for many people listening that don't know anything about the teachings of Dr. Deming may think, "That's crazy, because I thought that we run business through performance appraisals, KPIs, and the like." One of the ways I was thinking when you were just speaking was it's a little bit like Deming's... You're a fish, and Dr. Deming is a guy that's gonna come up and tell you, "Oh, by the way, you're surrounded by water." And you're like, "Wait, what do you mean? What's water?" And then all of a sudden he brings this awareness like, "What am I swimming in? I am swimming in something, and it's called water." And it's like everything that's going on, the concept of how we learn, the concept of variation, the concept of psychology, it's like all of these are foundational things that we've been swimming in, but we really haven't been paying attention to. And I think he woke me up to a lot of that. So what should we talk about today? What do you got on your mind? 0:11:55.7 Balaji Reddie: Well, I presume that the audience would be someone who's read about Deming, or if they have not read, I can go it either way. 0:12:05.9 Andrew Stotz: Yeah, I mean, I would say just let's go into what your learnings are and what you want to teach us today and share with us, and then people can follow along. 0:12:17.4 Balaji Reddie: All right. So let's begin with what he meant by Profound Knowledge, because that was something he put together only towards the end of his life. I'm reminded of a few things that led to me thinking about these things. One of the very first books that was written on him was by Mary Walton, The Deming Management Method. And with due respect, she was an excellent journalist, and so she followed him around. Everyone was intrigued to know who this man is because he had just gained popularity. If Japan Can... Why Can't We? And so she wrote this book, I think as early as '84, if I'm not mistaken. And she followed him around for almost three years before she actually published the book. So she attended four-day seminars, and she's trying to understand what this man was. So the biography bit of it was very nice. But if you go there in the preface and in one of the chapters, there's a very interesting conversation where she says, "I asked Deming that why don't you set up a body, an organization? Why are you doing this all alone?" And he didn't say a word to her, and he just mentioned to her, "I'm good." So I believe he was still looking for the answers to offer something to the world. He had it all in uncoordinated stuff here and there, but that came much later, I think in 1989, when he finally put it all together and called it Profound Knowledge. Because that was when a year, a month or so before he passed away, he set up the Deming Institute. I think he thought he was ready now to leave behind a legacy that others could build upon, right? 0:14:08.0 Balaji Reddie: And so that he called it... Again, I'm looking for the missing link here—. Apparently, when he wrote it, as he called it deep knowledge, but it was someone who gave him the word profound, and that's how the name stuck. So I'm still trying to find out who did that. I saw this in one of the letters to Henry Neave, where he was writing to all of his colleagues, he called them, and taking feedback from them. And in that, he said that, "I profess this is deep, this is wide." And somebody said, "It's profound." I forget. I really want to find out who it is. I asked Bill Scherkenbach, and he said, no, it wasn't him. Henry, of course, no. I asked Bill Latzko, and he said, "No way. I never said that." So I really don't know who said it, but he christened it "profound." And we all know now, it sounded very pompous to begin with when you hear profound, and then you say, "Wait a minute." When you start getting into it, you say, "He's right. There's no other word to describe this. It is profound." So what exactly is Profound Knowledge? Now, it's a different way of looking at things around you. And especially he designed this or created this for man-made systems, organizations that you and I work in, helping us to look at things differently, right? And that's why he said it's a different lens. And when you see things differently, you ask different questions, right? When you ask different questions, you get different answers. When you get different answers, you draw different conclusions. When you draw different conclusions, you take different decisions. And when you take different decisions, that's when you get different results. It's insanity to expect different results by asking the same questions every single time. All right. 0:15:53.8 Balaji Reddie: Now, what exactly is, again, what do you mean by this whole thing, the lens? He brought together four seemingly disconnected sciences, right? He never invented any single one of them, but he saw the interconnections. All right. And the four sciences, he felt that if you had good knowledge, working knowledge of these four sciences, you need not be an expert in them, just enough for you to understand what's going on around you. All right? And in no order of importance, he had his title for each of those sciences. One was he called it appreciation for a system, which I would like to say very simply is connectedness, right? Because when people say systems thinking, okay, then you have the systems thinking experts who jumped into the picture. And I think they were caught napping. To be quite honest, Andrew, I think the people from the world of management were suddenly caught napping, and the experts were completely caught napping because they realized they'd missed the bus. Here's this man who caught everything together and put it into place, right? And so when they were... When they said systems thinking, so the systems experts came in and started trying to find out, "Oh, but he missed out on this, and he's confusing this with that." That's where it is. Dr. Deming knew where to start. All right? He said, "Yes, of course, it's all about systems, appreciation for a system, the fact that nothing exists in isolation." So I would like to say connectedness. Everything's connected to everything. When you start having that systemic approach, you realize you're not dealing with events, you're dealing with eventualities, and that there are always a huge myriad of inputs that create the outputs that you see in front of your eyes, right? And there's so many other attributes that they're separated in time and space, et cetera. We can talk for this forever. But the short word here is connectedness. Second... 0:17:56.1 Andrew Stotz: And I would say that the systems experts retreated soon after because they're nowhere to be found when we look at it these days, because everything's divide and conquer. 0:18:07.6 Balaji Reddie: Yes. Yeah, because there were people like Russell Ackoff, Stafford Beer was mentioned many times, and then their books. Now, I went on to read their books and I found, yes, they were going deep, but Dr. Deming knew where to draw the line and said, "That's it. Please don't go beyond this," and it depends on where you are, what you want to study. So draw your line around that and say that's it. And I think that thinking came from the next science which I'm talking about, which is understanding of variation, right? Now, although we say understanding of variation and people talk about the control chart, I think that's just the manifestation. If you look at the philosophy behind it, what Walter Shewhart actually was trying to do was to draw a line between when to act on the process and when to leave it alone, right? He came out with... He demarcated, and that's where it turned into the control chart with data. But broadly, Deming started applying this everywhere, right? He said that there are some things which are in my control and some things out of my control, and so he drew a line. And same with systems thinking, that how big and how deep should I go? And that's why he said every system must have an aim. Without an aim... So the aim and the purpose decide where you're gonna stop. You can't just keep on saying, "Oh, yeah, finally, okay, the whole world is a system." Fine, great, I get that. But I'm trying to study this, okay? My company, my organization, this process, these people. So you draw the line and say, "This is my purpose, so let me restrict." Again, I repeat, he knew where to stop. People tend to go overboard. And so he always said, "Begin with the aim, begin with the purpose." The purpose is the reason the system exists, and the aim is the direction in which you're headed. So you keep going there, keep revisiting that to let yourself remind yourself that I need to stop right here. Okay, and that's it. When I come to it later, because he said... Coming to the third part of Profound Knowledge, where he said you must have a theory of knowledge. 0:20:13.4 Balaji Reddie: Now, when people hear the word theory they get very put off. At least in my country, the broad doctrine is that theory is the opposite of practice. And so they think that theory belongs to the books and theory belongs at home. And when you come into the company, we all believe in being practical, right? And as you go through what Dr. Deming had to say about theory, you realize theory is a guide to better practice. And all the great practitioners are actually theorists. It's just that they don't know it, and we need to remind them. I've had enough of experience on this in my own company. And I remember when I turned on the light bulb for one of the very, very senior people in my company, he went completely quiet. He did not say anything, but I loved the way he reacted or responded to this when he started doing things very differently after the interaction that we had once. So that's with theory of knowledge. And... 0:21:19.9 Andrew Stotz: And would you say that theory of knowledge, would you correct my description of it, which is that you need to have a method of... You need to understand how you acquire knowledge? 0:21:40.1 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. 0:21:40.2 Andrew Stotz: And you gotta figure out, because acquiring knowledge, for instance, as an individual, we can play around lots of different ideas and experiments and stuff like that, but acquiring knowledge within an organization is a much harder thing. And so first is the idea that there's a level of rigor that you need in an organization to make knowledge stick. 0:22:06.9 Balaji Reddie: I think it's more about awareness. When you become aware of how you're converting information into knowledge. When you... He makes you aware of that, right? Dr. Deming gets you aware, he makes aware, "Okay, okay, wait, what's happening here?" Now, that method and all turned out to be the Plan-Do-Study-Act, whatever you call it. But he helped you understand how you're doing this, right? And you become cognizant. You get your cognitive behavior, you get very aware of things happening around you, right? You start asking the question, "Why? Why is this happening?" And then you get to the bottom of it. "Oh, when I do this, I get this." And that's when it becomes powerful for you. And then you also, "When I do this, I do not get this." And the more the theory fails, the more powerful it gets for you, because you know where it fails. So that's the awareness thing. So connectedness, being aware of the fact that it's beyond just numbers. It's about where, the variation bit, the third bit is about awareness, like I said, about learning, and the fourth, of course, about people. And he said here that all of us are born with a learning system, right? Each one of us has a learning system, a system of learning, but every single one of us has a different system of learning. We learn differently, and we learn at different speeds, at different paces, right? And so understanding the learning process of a person and then putting that person on the right job, right? He said you have to stop that person from working, and that's where joy in work comes in. People enjoy their work. I think the bottom line there is empathy when you start understanding why people do what they do, whether it's your people in the company, the customers, your suppliers, the entire system. So he says the learning process of every person needs to be understood. You want to control the market, you need to understand what makes the customer tick. You want to keep the suppliers with you, you want to understand what makes the suppliers tick, right? And what makes them tick. 0:24:23.3 Balaji Reddie: So that's the fourth part, which I would put as the word empathy. Trying to empathize. So putting this all together, he said that's what he called as Profound. So if you look at it in a broad sense, connectedness and empathy are very philosophical, and the variation and theory are very scientific. So he wanted us to be scientific and philosophical simultaneously. It's not either-or, it's and. And that's difficult to do, right? You have the big divide. You have a set of people who say, "Oh, I believe only in data. Show me the data, show me the results." And then there's a whole other set of people who says, "You gotta feel. You gotta feel for the company. Motivate." Yeah, but neither is wrong, but neither is complete. And this is complete. So this is where I found that I think we could begin, that we need to look at all these four sciences together. And of course, then came the 14 points which he laid out for us. Now, these 14 points, now if you look at them, because I just discussed the four... Of course, I've not gone into depth of each of the sciences, but I think good enough to understand what we are trying to deal with here, then you'd see that the 14 points are actually 14 consequences of this way of thinking. That you don't try to do the 14 points. When you start thinking this way, you end up with the 14 points, right? And there are some things which need to be done, right, and we need to start somewhere with this. And one of the main things that he always said is that people need to be educated about this, that people need to learn about this. And so education and training is important even when it comes to profound knowledge. And he said someone has to take the lead, all right? Someone has to get things done. And so that was his point number 14, that create a critical mass of people in the company that understand, believe, and will work towards these 14 points, right? So I'm gonna begin right there. 0:26:43.1 Andrew Stotz: I was just thinking about his saying, "One need not be an expert in any one point, [chuckle] any one of these areas." With the System of Profound Knowledge, the more I've studied it recently, which I've been working on a project recently where I had to go back to the System of Profound Knowledge, you really see that he's trying to provide a coherent, holistic system. 0:27:16.1 Balaji Reddie: Yes. I call it as a theory of leadership and management. 0:27:23.6 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And then you start to realize that if you can understand these four things, which isn't that... It doesn't have to be that complex, it can be pretty amazing. And I know one part of my business is investing, which I do on behalf of my clients. And one of the things that makes me stand out as unique is that I don't get distracted by the random variation in the markets. And so that doesn't mean that I'm gonna get it right all the time, but what it means is that my mind is much more clear when I understand. And as I tell people about variation, I say, if you think about just your birth, the beginning of your life is a random event. You had no influence over that, who you were born of. And therefore we at least know that randomness plays one role in your life. But when you start exploring the possibility that randomness is all around you just like water, it just wakes you up and you start to realize, "Aha, I've been reacting to things," and punishing and rewarding and all of that stuff that's happening in companies. And what I'm really doing is I'm just chasing my tail. Or as Dr. Deming would say, putting out a fire. A man could run... A manager could run... Could put out fires their whole career and never improve the system. 0:29:02.8 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. A lot of activity, no work. 0:29:04.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. 0:29:06.2 Balaji Reddie: Okay. Incidentally, when you said about investing, one of my students who did something fascinating, I've yet to get to the bottom of it, I never sat down and asked him how he did it, but he used control charts for the stock market. And one day he explained to me, he was trying to rather, because I never... I'm not into all of that investing. That's done by my wife. I just sign the papers and she puts it in. So I... I mean, I might as well be shown the Constitution and say, "Okay, this is what it is," you know? But yeah, so he... I remember sharing with him and he said, "Can I use this for stock market?" I said, "Look, son, I don't know how this works, but I presume what you can do is this. If you had yesterday's Sensex numbers and you have today's, then you can draw a control chart for the differences, you know? And then you get an upper limit and a lower limit. And then if today's closing is so much, it can rise up to the upper control limit, that is the difference. You can add the difference to today's closing and say it can rise to so much, it can fall by so much, and likewise to the lower control limit." And then his eyes just lit up and he said, "I know what to do." And that was it. And I didn't meet him for a week. And a week later, I meet him and he says, "I want to show you something." And he opened his laptop and there were control charts all over the place and I just couldn't figure out, "So what was all this?" And then he said, "I've been following these. There are some blue chip companies and there are some..." I don't know, I don't understand these things much, but he said that, "I'm drawing a control chart for these and so I know that when it crosses the upper control limits, that's the max I can get for the share, so I sell." 0:30:55.7 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. I mean, the hard part... The stock market is purely random most of the time and it's a challenge. But one of the things... I gave a speech to my investors and I did control charts and I did it as a way of helping them understand the markets. 0:31:04.2 Balaji Reddie: Okay. 0:31:12.7 Andrew Stotz: To predict the markets is hard. 0:31:15.7 Balaji Reddie: It's hard. 0:31:16.4 Andrew Stotz: But the control chart allows us to kind of.. It allows us to understand that most of the variation is just normal ups and downs. 0:31:24.8 Balaji Reddie: Yes. 0:31:26.5 Andrew Stotz: And so don't freak out about it. That's the first thing that really helps me. So that area of variation I find very fascinating. 0:31:34.7 Balaji Reddie: Very fascinating. I used it for COVID data, by the way. And there was a lot of criticism about that, but I knew I was going in the right direction because I was plotting the charts for the percentage positive and not the number of cases that were being tested positive every day. And so if the percentage positive lay within limits, then we were safe. I mean, everyone wants a zero, I get that. But I'm just saying here, having said that we're collecting the data and we are turning out so much of positive every day, then it should lie within certain controllable or predictable limits. And when it crosses the limit is when we get a little worried. And that's what I used this for initially. I remember it was Lloyd Provost who stood by me, whereas the other practitioners were saying, "No, you cannot use control chart for COVID and for data and for epidemic and pandemic." Whereas Deming himself used it for an epidemic of cholera somewhere. I read it in his work and where he used the c-chart and he saw that areas where the points were outside limits and then they tested the water and well, well, whatever it was, it turned out to be that he found the special cause and blah, blah, blah. So that's what gave me the idea of using the control chart for COVID and it was quite fascinating. 0:32:56.5 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. Yeah, unfortunately there wasn't a lot of independent thinking during that time. 0:33:02.5 Balaji Reddie: Yeah. [laughter] 0:33:03.0 Andrew Stotz: Real serious groupthink at that time. So I had my experience in my PhD research and my job as an analyst all my life where... And I teach my students believe nothing, believe no one, demand evidence. And so I'm constantly digging and that's just the heart of being an analyst. But when I go back... I want to go back to when I was starting at Pepsi. The reason why my boss recommended me to go to the Deming seminar was simple because I knew how to work a computer. And that was 1989 when I went to work at Pepsi. And what I had, all of these loaders that were loading up trucks with Pepsi each night. We would load about 80, 90 trucks each night. And in the heat of the summer, we would work till 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, but generally we would finish at 11:00 or midnight. But they were just... I would go to the drivers in the morning and then the drivers would come back in the afternoon and complain that the product that they needed was not on the truck. And there was just... And I went to the loaders, they go, "I put it on the truck. I don't know what you're talking about." And so there was this battle between the night loaders and the truck drivers. And so what I just did originally was I just started... I did inspection. The first thing I did is I said, "Look, before you close the doors on the trucks at night, I just want to count myself to understand what's happening here." And then I started keeping a record of that and I put that in Excel, it was Lotus 1-2-3 at the time, and then I put up charts of each person's error rate each night. And so we had a long chart. And I never actually even told them what I was doing, I just put up on the wall. And then they started looking at it over time and talking about it and then asking me questions. And it wasn't for the purpose of blaming, it was the purpose of just understanding. 0:35:01.2 Andrew Stotz: But then what we really started to see was that some people were much more accurate than others. And then we started to ask the question, "Well, how are they doing it?" And then they explained how they kept records of what they were doing and all that. And so we started to see that we could improve this. And we started to improve those numbers quite dramatically until we got to the point where I told the loaders when they were done that they were to lock the trucks and seal them and the drivers were not allowed to open them. They had to take them as is. And when everybody realized we really have to build from the beginning that this is loaded right, then we started to have massive efficiency. In the number of... Let's say you have 50 or 100 truck drivers that come in at 5:00 in the morning. It could take you till 9:00 AM to get them out the door if they've got problems and they're checking their trucks and all that. But if you've got it set right and you've done it right, we were able to rush people through the door and the drivers would get out to the LA freeways much earlier and that makes a difference for the whole day. So that was my first experience with it all. And then my boss just said, "Well, seems like you know about statistical quality control." I said, "I have no idea. I have no idea what that is." But he said, "You should go to Washington, D.C. And study with Dr. Deming." And that's my little story. 0:36:20.4 Balaji Reddie: Oh, wow. Okay. 0:36:21.6 Andrew Stotz: So how would we... What's the best way to wrap this up and think about what somebody who doesn't really necessarily have experience with the System of Profound Knowledge, you've given them some good overview. What would you like them to take away from this? 0:36:39.2 Balaji Reddie: Well, if you have now come to know about what this is, I think you could go to the W. Edwards Deming Institute website and you could subscribe and start looking into the learning pathways, systems thinking, there are a lot of catalogs available there and they've done a great job of putting things together. So they could do that reading, of course, you need to start reading, but the danger in reading Dr. Deming's work is it could put you off sometimes. And I would recommend a good place to start reading and understanding the Deming philosophy would be Henry Neve's book, The Deming Dimension. It's a very good start, one of the best introductions. You could always build upon that. So along with having Out of the Crisis, The New Economics, and Essential Deming, which was put together by Joyce Orsini, these are the three essential Deming books which contain papers, his own works, and then use Deming Dimension as a guide, so to say. You could read the books together and you could read profound knowledge to begin with. And once you get a good idea about what there is, then the question comes is where do we start? And that's where I just ended by saying that we start at point number 14 about creating a critical mass and take on leadership, right? So somebody has to take the lead. So what we could do is, I think the next time we meet, we could begin with that, how do we start? So we'll talk about the principles of leadership that W. Edwards Deming spoke of and what did he expect the leaders to do once you've decided or you've started seeing things differently and you say, "No, I need to do something about this. I need to start somewhere." And so we'll start with the principles of leadership. That's the way I look at it. 0:38:44.5 Andrew Stotz: Fantastic. Well, I look forward to our next conversation, how we can start to think about how we take this information and make a better world and make a better company, feel better. And so from everybody at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org and jump into DemingNext to continue your journey. 0:39:09.7 Balaji Reddie: Yes. 0:39:11.1 Andrew Stotz: It's an exciting tool. And this is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, and that is: "People are entitled to joy in work."

#103 How to Destroy Bad Ideas Without Killing Relationships [The Dionysus Program with Sean Devine]

learning ai opportunities shifting longtime suggestions young people c suite backstory social impact wrap up last word new tech balaji public good speed round tata consultancy services

Play Episode Listen Later May 19, 2026 128:43

Topics: (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:23) - Reading the forward to Sean's new book (00:09:30) - What problem were you experiencing that sparked these ideas? (00:12:30) - Sean's early arrival to AI (00:23:15) - Identity (00:27:55) - Defining Apollo and Dionysus (00:34:47) - Understanding and uncertainty (00:38:26) - Tools to deal with uncertainty (00:50:27) - Tools for metabolism (01:03:25) - Ritual time and run time (01:11:30) - Building trust to have hard conversations (01:13:40) - The key pillars of the Dionysus Program (01:37:09) - Applying this thinking across organizations and life (01:45:28) - Applying Apollo/Dionysus to investing (01:57:10) - Observing the learning rate of an organization (02:03:08) - Closing thoughts Links: The Dionysus Program - https://www.dionysusprogram.com/ To support the costs of producing this podcast: >> Buy a copy of the Navalmanack: www.navalmanack.com/ >> Buy a copy of The Anthology of Balaji: https://balajianthology.com/ >> Sign up for my online course and community about building your Personal Leverage: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage >> Invest in early-stage companies alongside Eric and his partners at Rolling Fun: https://angel.co/v/back/rolling-fun >> Join the free weekly email list at ejorgenson.com/newsletter >> Text the podcast to a friend >> Or at least give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners! Important Quotes from the podcast on Business and Entrepreneurship There is no skill called “business.” Avoid business magazines and business classes. - Naval Ravikant You have to work up to the point where you can own equity in a business. You could own equity as a small shareholder where you bought stock. You could also own it as an owner where you started the company. Ownership is really important. Everybody who really makes money at some point owns a piece of a product, a business, or some IP. That can be through stock options if you work at a tech company. That's a fine way to start.

relationships ai business building identity reading tools killing invest ip ritual destroy ownership observing anthology bad ideas dionysus balaji sean devine

Purpose is the New Tech with Balaji Ganapathy

Purpose 360

Play Episode Listen Later May 19, 2026 36:16

Balaji Ganapathy returns to Purpose 360 as a leader with decades of experience shaping one of the world's most purpose-driven organizations and a renewed vision for what comes next. Longtime listeners will recognize his journey from building impact at Tata Consultancy Services to scaling global social initiatives. Now, he is launching his own venture, Social Positive. But throughout his career, one throughline remains: purpose is not a side effort. It plays the same role technology once did, serving as the ultimate driver of innovation, growth, and long-term relevance.We invited Balaji to share the insights he's gained from more than two decades of leading purpose at scale, and to unpack what it truly takes to turn intention into impact. He challenges leaders to rethink purpose as a growth engine while outlining the four critical gaps holding back progress today: from misaligned funding and execution challenges to measurement limitations and barriers to scaling proven solutions. He also introduces Social Positive's approach, including a practitioner-led community, data-driven insights, and an AI-enabled decision tool, all designed to help leaders better align resources, strategy, and action.Listen for insights on:Why “purpose is the new tech” still holds trueCreating shared measurement across partnersLeading with a “society first” mindsetUsing AI to accelerate social impact work Resources + Links:Watch this episode on YouTube!Balaji Ganapathy's LinkedInSocial PositiveThe CollectiveImpactScapeRika (00:00) - Welcome to Purpose 360 (00:13) - Balaji Ganapathy (02:47) - Balaji's Backstory (05:12) - Learning from Previous Roles (08:20) - Is Purpose Still the New Tech? (10:53) - Shifting the C-Suite (13:17) - Partnership Success (16:29) - Social Positive (23:01) - AI Native Impact Consulting (28:18) - Opportunities in Asia (30:34) - Suggestions for Young People (31:37) - Speed Round (33:13) - Last Word (34:51) - Wrap Up

ADMK பொதுக்குழு: தயாராகும் EPS - CVS அணி?| TVK அரசுக்கு ED கடிதம் -சிக்குவாரா Senthil Balaji | VIJAY

Sri Sathya Sai Podcast (Official)

Play Episode Listen Later May 19, 2026 20:31

* மீண்டும் உயர்ந்த பெட்ரோல், டீசல் விலை!* எரிபொருள் விலை உயர்வு - கார்கே கண்டனம்!* டாலருக்கு நிகரான இந்திய ரூபாயின் மதிப்பு 96 ரூபாயை எட்டியது!* செய்தியாளரின் கேள்விக்கு பதில் சொல்லாத மோடி... விமர்சனம் செய்த ராகுல்!* மோடி செய்தியாளர்கள் சந்திப்பு... நார்வே தூதரகம் சொல்வது என்ன?* நார்வே அரசின் உயரிய விருது பெற்ற பிரதமர் மோடி!* அம்மா உணவகங்களை மேம்படுத்த முதல்வர் விஜய் உத்தரவு!* திருநங்கைகள், மாற்றுத் திறனாளிகளுடன் உரையாடிய முதல்வர்!* இருமொழிக் கொள்கைதான்... பி.எம் ஸ்ரீ திட்டத்துக்கு அனுமதியில்லை! - ராஜ் மோகன்* ராகுல் காந்தியின் முடிவாக இருக்காது! - திமுகவில் இணைந்த அலீம் அல் புகாரி பேட்டி* அதிமுக மா.செ கூட்டத்தில் நடந்தது என்ன?* பொதுக்குழுவை கூட்டுங்கள்... - சி.வி.எஸ்* பொய்க்கால் குதிரை அரசு! - தவெக-வை சாடிய இ.பி.எஸ்* செந்தில் பாலாஜி மீது விசாரணை நடத்த தமிழக அரசிடம் அனுமதி கோரிய அமலாக்கத்துறை!* பொன்னாடைக்கு பதில் நிதி கொடுங்கள்! - செளமியா அன்புமணி* முள்ளிவாய்க்கால் கூட்டத்தில் சீமான் பேசியது என்ன?* புதுக்கோட்டை: மாற்றுத்திற்னாளி பெண் கூட்டுப் பாலியல் வன்கொடுமை!* மருத்துவர் சுப்பையா கொலை குற்றவாளிகள் விடுதலையை ரத்து செய்த உச்ச நீதிமன்றம்!

balaji senthil

My 'B2B' Connection with Swami | Sai Sri Balaji Lenka | Satsang from Prasanthi Nilayam

Play Episode Listen Later May 7, 2026 43:45

The 100th Birthday: A Defining Moment of My LifeThough Mr Sai Sri Balaji Lenka currently serves as a Director in a reputed multinational firm, he says that the true Director of his life has always been Sri Sathya Sai.Having known Bhagawan for over five decades, it was Swami's darshan that drew him unfailingly to Prasanthi Nilayam year after year. For him, every darshan session was akin to a personal interview with Bhagawan—each glimpse of Swami brought answers to his questions, clarity to his dilemmas, and renewed direction to his life's journey.One of the defining moments of his life was being present in Prasanthi for the Centenary Celebrations and having the privilege of playing a small role in the spectacular drone show offered to Bhagawan on the evening of November 23, 2025.In this satsang, he fondly recalls that memorable episode along with many other cherished experiences which have become the eternal treasures of his life.

director swami satsang balaji centenary celebrations

#102 The Next Renaissance, AI Reality vs Hype, and a Movement of Hope with Zack Kass

Play Episode Listen Later May 5, 2026 79:29

Topics: (00:00:00) - Intro (00:02:40) - Being the “tech for middle America” translator (00:06:00) - Who are your heroes? (00:13:40) - Zack's unique approach to AI (00:57:35) - The market for identity transformation (01:11:08) - Writing the next renaissance (01:15:31) - Using AI in the writing process (01:18:25) - Final thoughts Links: The Next Renaissance by Zack Kass - https://a.co/d/07VwLrg4 Zack's website - https://www.zackkass.com/ To support the costs of producing this podcast: >> Buy a copy of the Navalmanack: www.navalmanack.com/ >> Buy a copy of The Anthology of Balaji: https://balajianthology.com/ >> Sign up for my online course and community about building your Personal Leverage: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage >> Invest in early-stage companies alongside Eric and his partners at Rolling Fun: https://angel.co/v/back/rolling-fun >> Join the free weekly email list at ejorgenson.com/newsletter >> Text the podcast to a friend >> Or at least give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners! Important Quotes from the podcast on Business and Entrepreneurship There is no skill called “business.” Avoid business magazines and business classes. - Naval Ravikant You have to work up to the point where you can own equity in a business. You could own equity as a small shareholder where you bought stock. You could also own it as an owner where you started the company. Ownership is really important. Everybody who really makes money at some point owns a piece of a product, a business, or some IP. That can be through stock options if you work at a tech company. That's a fine way to start.

america ai business reality writing movement invest hype renaissance ip ownership using ai anthology balaji

Balaji and Taylor Lorenz on AI and Media

ai media building identity artificial intelligence journalism privacy simplecast decentralization cryptography taylor lorenz balaji balaji srinivasan

Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2026 51:38

Theo Jaffee speaks with Balaji Srinivasan and Taylor Lorenz about how AI is reshaping media, trust, and online communication. Building on prior public disagreements between the two, the conversation revisits core tensions around media, technology, and power in a rapidly changing information environment. They discuss the breakdown of traditional information systems, the rise of AI-generated content, and why new models for verifying identity and truth may be necessary. The conversation lays out competing visions for the future of media, from decentralized “webs of trust” and cryptographic verification to the role of journalism, privacy, and public accountability. Resources: Follow Balaji on X: https://x.com/balajis Follow Taylor Lorenz on X: https://x.com/TaylorLorenz Follow Theo Jaffee on X: https://x.com/theojaffee Stay Updated:Find a16z on YouTube: YouTubeFind a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Show on SpotifyListen to the a16z Show on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

REPOST | Make Money by Writing Books with Eric Jorgenson

Build Your Network

Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2026 36:38

Eric Jorgenson is the CEO of Scribe Media, the industry's largest professional publishing service, dedicated to helping entrepreneurs, executives, and experts write, publish, and market their books. Eric is also the bestselling author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant and The Anthology of Balaji, with over a million copies sold. Beyond his publishing expertise, Eric is an investor in deep tech startups and an influential blogger and podcaster. His unique journey from author and curator to CEO-especially after helping revive Scribe Media from bankruptcy-makes him a fascinating guest with deep insights into the evolving world of book publishing, authorship, and leveraging books for business growth. On this episode we talk about: – The origin story behind The Almanack of Naval Ravikant and why Eric created it – The rise, fall, and rebirth of Scribe Media-and Eric's path to CEO – Key differences between traditional publishing, hybrid, and self-publishing models – How books can serve as powerful business assets beyond just royalties – The critical importance of quality and professionalism in publishing – Navigating advances, control, and intellectual property as an author – Why marketing and personal networks now drive book sales more than ever – The realities of bookstore placement, bestseller lists, and the modern publishing landscape Top 3 Takeaways 1. A book is more than a business card-it's a credential. A well-written, high-quality book can serve as a lifelong asset, building trust, authority, and opening doors for speaking, consulting, and business opportunities. 2. Control and flexibility matter. Traditional publishing can offer credibility and advances, but often at the cost of creative and financial control. Many authors now succeed by self-publishing or using hybrid models, retaining rights and maximizing ROI. 3. Marketing trumps distribution. In today's landscape, personal networks, podcasts, and word-of-mouth drive more book sales than traditional media or bookstore placement. Demonstrated demand online is what gets books into stores-not the publisher's logo. Notable Quotes “A good book is much more like a PhD. It's a credential you should be proud to put in front of whoever the most important person in your network is.” “Half-professional is unprofessional. If you're not proud to put your book in front of someone, you didn't invest enough time and effort.” “What really matters most is a great book. Your readers don't care who published it-they care about the value inside.” Connect with Eric Jorgenson: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erjorgenson Website: ejorgenson.com Scribe Media: scribemedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

ceo marketing navigating phd roi traditional make money anthology repost demonstrated naval ravikant writing books balaji jorgenson almanack scribe media

தேர்தலில் வாக்களிக்காத Senthil Balaji - பின்னணி?| Vijay Or SIR - Vote Percentage அதிகரித்தது எப்படி?

vote percentage balaji senthil

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2026 19:51

* வாக்களிக்காத செந்தில் பாலாஜி... ஏன்?* சென்னை, திருவள்ளுர் உள்ளிட்ட மாவட்டங்களைச் சேர்ந்த வேட்பாளர்களைச் சந்தித்த ஸ்டாலின்?* சினோரா அசோக் Vs சேகர் பாபு... நடந்தது என்ன?* கொங்கு மண்டலத்தில் அதிகம்... தென் மண்டலத்தில் குறைவு... வாக்கு சதவிகித விவரம்!* சென்னையில் சதவிகிதம் அதிகம்... வாக்குகள் குறைவு?* வருச நாட்டில் ஐந்தில் 4 வாக்குகள் பதிவு?* வாக்குச்சாவடியில் கவனம் ஈர்த்த பிடிஆர், திண்டுக்கல் சீனிவாசன்!* விஜய்யா... எஸ்.ஐ.ஆரா... வாக்கு சதவிகிதம் அதிகரித்த பின்னணி?* வருமான வரித்துறை சோதனை நடத்தினர்! - சிசிடிவி காட்சிகளை வெளியிட்டு செல்வப்பெருந்தகை பேட்டி* சாத்தான்குளம் வழக்கு: 9 பேரின் மரண தண்டனையை உறுதி செய்ய சி.பி.ஐ. தரப்பில் முறையீடு!* மேற்குவங்கத்தில் இரவு 1 மணிக்குக் கூட பெண்கள் வெளியில் செல்லலாம்! - அமித் ஷா* Priyanka Mohan: "தென் கொரியா அதிபர் என் படத்தை பார்த்து..." - ராஷ்டிரபதி பவனில் பிரியங்கா மோகன்* இந்தியா - நியூஸிலாந்து இடையே தடையில்லா வர்த்தக ஒப்பந்தம்!* ஹோர்மூஸில் தீராத பிரச்னை... என்ன நடக்கிறது?

Senthil Balaji -ஐ குறிவைக்கும் IT? | RSS நூற்றாண்டுக்கு அரசு நிதி? | Delimitation | DMK BJP TVK

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 17, 2026 17:14

* அமலுக்கு வந்த மளிகர் இடஒதுக்கீட்டுச் சட்டம்?* மக்களவையில் ராகுல் காந்தி பேசியது என்ன?* சத்தியம் செய்கிறேன்... மோடி பேச்சு!* வாய்மொழியாகச் சொன்னாலும் ஏமாற்று வேலை! - ஸ்டாலின்* தமிழ்நாட்டுக்கு 59 எம்.பிக்கள்! - அமித் ஷா* தொகுதி மறுவரையறை... விஜய்க்கு நன்றி! - ப.சி* சர்ச்சையைக் கிளப்பிய தேஜஸ்வி சூரியா... சந்திர சேகர் ராவ் காட்டம்!* ஆர்.எஸ்.எஸ் நூற்றாண்டுக்கு அரசு நிதி!* வெடிகுண்டுகளை வைக்க பா.ஜ.க திட்டம் - மம்தா பகீர் குற்றச்சாட்டு!* மோடியைவிட ராகுல் பிஸியானவரா? - அண்ணாமலை கேள்வி* நாளை தமிழகம் வரும் ராகுல்?* தபால் வாக்களித்த ராமதாஸ்... அன்புமணிக்கு எதிராக பேட்டி!* ராமதாஸை ஏன் வந்து பார்க்கல... ஜி.கே.மணி கேள்வி!* கரூரில் வருமான வரித்துறை சோதனை... செந்தில் பாலாஜிக்கு செக்?* லெபனான் போர் 10 நாள்கள் நிறுத்தம்!

balaji senthil

சென்னையில் ADMK - கோவையில் DMK -காட்சிகள் மாறுமா?| Annamalai Vs Senthil Balaji | IRAN US BJP TVK NTK

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 11, 2026 24:28

⁠சந்தீப் மிட்டலை டிஜிபி ஆக்கியதற்கு திமுக எதிர்ப்பு?•⁠ ⁠சென்னை காவல் ஆணையர் மாற்றம்!•⁠ ⁠சென்னையில் அதிமுக குறிவைக்கும் தொகுதிகள்?•⁠ ⁠கோவையில் திமுக குறிவைக்கும் தொகுதிகள்?•⁠ ⁠வானதி சீனிவாசன் மருத்துவமனையில் அனுமதி!•⁠ ⁠அண்ணாமலை Vs செந்தில் பாலாஜி!•⁠ ⁠தனித்துக் களம் காணும் கிருஷ்ணசாமி, வேல்முருகன்... தாக்கத்தை ஏற்படுத்துவார்களா?•⁠ ⁠“காசு வாங்கி சீட்டை கொடுத்தார் கார்க்கே” - ஹசீனா சையத் பதவி பறிப்பின் பின்னணி!•⁠ ⁠``அரசு எங்களை கண்டு கொள்ளவில்லை”- தஞ்சாவூரில் ஸ்டாலினுக்கு கருப்பு கொடி காட்டி போராடிய விவசாயிகள்!•⁠ ⁠முதல்வருக்காக மூடப்பட்ட தஞ்சாவூர் பெரிய கோயில் கோபுரம்!•⁠ ⁠பிடிபட்ட விசிட்டிங் கார்டு, மாடல் இவிஎம் மெஷின்... வைத்தியலிங்கத்தின் விளக்கம் என்ன?•⁠ ⁠“எடப்பாடி தொகுதிக்கு... விஜய் போட்ட புதிய ஸ்கெட்ச்” - விரைவில் அதிரடி அறிவிப்பு?•⁠ ⁠உங்களுக்கெல்லாம் ஆல் பாஸ் போட்டது நானு... - விஜய்க்கு எதிராக பிரசாரம் செய்த இபிஎஸ்•⁠ ⁠இபிஎஸ்ஸுக்கு வழங்கப்படும் அஜித் படங்கள்!•⁠ ⁠`யார் வந்தாலும் கவலையில்லை...' - விஜய் குறித்து ஸ்டாலின்!•⁠ ⁠கடலூர் விஜய் பிரசாரம் ரத்து?•⁠ ⁠ஜனநாயகனுக்கு ஆதரவளித்த கமல், ரஜினி, சூர்யா..!•⁠ ⁠சிபிஐ விசாரிக்க வேண்டும்! - நடப்பு தயாரிப்பாளர் சங்கம்•⁠ ⁠ஏப்ரல் 13, தமிழ்நாடு பாஜக பூத் கமிட்டி உறுப்பினர்களுடன் உரையாடும் மோடி!•⁠ ⁠தமிழிசைக்கு ஆளுநர் பதவிதான் சரி... - உதயநிதி•⁠ ⁠விடாமுயற்சியுடன் களத்தில் நிற்கிறேன்! - சீமான்•⁠ ⁠`ரெண்டு பெட்டி கொடுத்தா அன்புத் தம்பி...' - அண்ணாமலை பிரசாரம்•⁠ ⁠`மிஸ்ராவை மிஸ் பண்ணீடாதீங்க...' - கம்பம் தவெக வேட்பாளருக்கு வாக்கு சேகரித்த பொன்னம்பலம்!•⁠ ⁠தேர்தலை ரத்து செய்யக் கோரி மனு!•⁠ ⁠சாதி என்பது இல்லாத ஒன்று... - உயர் நீதிமன்றம்•⁠ ⁠யமுனை ஆற்றில் படகு கவிழ்ந்து 9 பேர் பலி!•⁠ ⁠ஈரான் - அமெரிக்கா அமைதிப் பேச்சுவார்த்தை!

balaji iran us senthil annamalai

Balaji on Why AI Raises the Cost of Verification

united states ceo ai china chinese cost artificial intelligence ceos proof saas raises simplecast verification balaji balaji srinivasan erik torenberg

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 7, 2026 67:07

a16z general partner Erik Torenberg speaks with Balaji Srinivasan, angel investor and entrepreneur, about why AI simultaneously reduces the cost of creation and increases the cost of verification, and what that tension means for the shape of the AI economy. They discuss why AI drives companies toward the "trusted tribe" model of the Chinese internet, why physical world tasks are easier to automate than digital ones, why shortcuts only work for experts, and why AI makes everyone a CEO rather than making CEOs obsolete. Resources: Follow Balaji Srinivasan on X: https://twitter.com/balajis Follow Erik Torenberg on X: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Stay Updated:Find a16z on YouTube: YouTubeFind a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Show on SpotifyListen to the a16z Show on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

387: His Parents Demand Answers... Did OpenAI Cover-Up Suchir Balaji's Death?

Mile Higher Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 2, 2026 89:57

RocketMoney: Start saving today at https://rocketmoney.com/milehigher and keep track of how you spend your money!988 LifelineCall or text: 988Chat online: 988 Lifeline Chat https://988lifeline.org/Available: 24/7, free, and confidentialIntro 0:00Suchir's Early Life 7:31A Promising Early Career 14:090Troubles Arise 18:51Leaving OpenAI 21:40The Issue with AI Copyright Infringement 31:55Death of Human Creation? 35:24Suchir Goes Missing... Then Found 47:40Suspicions Abound 53:34The First Interview 1:02:57Straight Up Accusations 1:08:10Stoking the Flames 1:16:47Lack of Conclusions 1:20:34Final Thoughts & Outro 1:24:11Mile Higher Media website: https://milehigher.com/ Higher Hope Foundation: https://www.higherhope.org/ Mile Higher Merch: milehighermerch.comCheck out our other podcasts!The Sesh https://bit.ly/3Mtoz4XLights Out https://bit.ly/3n3GaoePlanet Sleep https://linktr.ee/planetsleepJoin our official FB group! https://bit.ly/3kQbAxgMHP YouTube: http://bit.ly/2qaDWGfAre You Subscribed On Apple Podcast & Spotify?!Support MHP by leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcast :) https://apple.co/2H4kh58MHP Topic Request Form: https://forms.gle/gUeTEzL9QEh4Hqz88You can follow us on all the things: @milehigherpodInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/milehigherpodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MileHigherHosts:Kendall: @kendallraeonytIG: http://instagram.com/kendallraeonytYT: https://www.youtube.com/c/kendallsplaceJosh: @milehigherjoshIG: http://www.instagram.com/milehigherjoshProducers:Janelle: @janelle_fields_IG: https://www.instagram.com/janelle_fields_/Ian: @ifarmeIG: https://www.instagram.com/ifarme/Tom: @cinematomgrapherIG: https://www.instagram.com/cinematomgrapher/Podcast sponsor inquiries: adops@audioboom.com✉ Send Us Mail ✉Kendall Rae & Josh Thomas 8547 E Arapahoe Rd Ste J # 233Greenwood Village, CO 80112Music By: Mile Higher BoysYT: https://bit.ly/2Q7N5QOSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0F4ik...Sources: https://pastebin.com/0mwkqYrqThe creator hosts a documentary series for educational purposes (EDSA). These include authoritative sources such as interviews, newspaper articles, and TV news reporting meant to educate and memorialize notable cases in our history. Videos come with an editorial and artistic value.

tv spotify death parents fb videos apple podcast openai flames cover up conclusions early life sesh balaji josh thomas edsa

Is the Union About to Break? Blue vs. Red, China & the $1 Trillion Pivot | Impact Theory w Tom Bilyeu & Balaji

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 28, 2026 53:31

We're back for part two of this mind-altering deep dive with Balaji, and if you survived part 1, brace yourself—because this is where things get absolutely WILD. What if I told you that every price you're paying—the rent, the hospital bill, the college tuition—is powered, not just by “market forces,” but by a bureaucratic tug-of-war that's reshaping the world order? Balaji's connecting the dots on how inflation, big bailouts, and the Fed's “Money Printer Go Brrr” actually hollowed out economies, and why the next meltdown is already baked in. We break down how “blue” and “red” Americas are literally pulling the country apart—right down to who you marry, where you can move, and why both sides are turning to foreign allies (yes, including China and Russia!) over each other. Today's conversation is all about the “soft secession” happening under our noses and what it means for the future of democracy, prosperity, and PEACE. PLUS, Balaji reveals his eye-of-the-hurricane strategy—where the smartest, most nimble people are heading, and who'll thrive as today's systems break down. What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business: join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER: https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business: see if you qualify here.: https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox: sign up here.: https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast, Tom Bilyeu's Mindset Playbook —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter: https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impactQuince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/impactpodDuck.Ai: Protect your privacy at https://duck.ai/impactBlinkist: Start your free trial at https://blinkist.com/impactQuo: Try for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months at https://quo.com/impactPique: 20% off at https://piquelife.com/impactMonetary Metals: Future-proof your wealth at https://monetary-metals.com/impactCozy Earth: code IMPACT for 20% off https://cozyearth.comSumm: code TOMVIP20 for 20% off your first year at https://summ.com?via=tombilyeu&coupon=TOMVIP20 Follow Balaji:X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/balajisWebsite: https://balajis.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/balajis/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

tiktok trust starting china peace russia wild impact union pivot scaling americas fed trillion tom bilyeu impact theory balaji a6 red china

Is the Union About to Break? Blue vs. Red, China & the $1 Trillion Pivot | Impact Theory w Tom Bilyeu & Balaji

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 28, 2026 57:01

tiktok trust starting china peace russia wild impact union pivot scaling americas fed trillion tom bilyeu impact theory balaji a6 red china

Balaji: The Fed Does Invisibly What Lenin Did With Guns — And You're Not Supposed to Notice | Impact Theory W/ Tom Bilyeu & Balaji

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 26, 2026 44:27

Today's guest is Balaji, the one-and-only, infamous entrepreneur, tech visionary, and macro-thinker who's never afraid to say what everyone else is just… whispers about. Whether you're worried, inspired, or just plain confused about where America is headed (or if it's headed anywhere at all), this conversation with Tom Bilyeu is the crash course in modern chaos you didn't know you NEEDED. Balaji isn't here just to talk about the future—he's laying out the collapse of the current world order, how technology AND tribal politics are shredding America into pieces, and why every “side” thinks it's losing (and what no one is seeing about the bigger picture). Whether it's debt, AI, China, or why California wants to tax billionaires out of existence—girl, WE ARE GOING THERE. Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impactQuince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/impactpodDuck.Ai: Protect your privacy at https://duck.ai/impactBlinkist: Start your free trial at https://blinkist.com/impactQuo: Try for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months at https://quo.com/impactPique: 20% off at https://piquelife.com/impactMonetary Metals: Future-proof your wealth at https://monetary-metals.com/impactCozy Earth: code IMPACT for 20% off https://cozyearth.comSumm: code TOMVIP20 for 20% off your first year at https://summ.com?via=tombilyeu&coupon=TOMVIP20 What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business: join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER: https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business: see if you qualify here.: https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox: sign up here.: https://tombilyeu.com/ FOLLOW TOM: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter: https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu You know that feeling something is majorly shifting beneath the surface? Here, Balaji explains why America is breaking apart—not just government, but at the soul level. We lay out why the internet is upstream from every disruption, and how AI isn't just killing jobs—it's targeting entire TRIBES inside the US. Are you blue America, red America, or tech America? Listen as Balaji supports his claims with real data and charts: from solar in Africa to the gold “singularity,” from collapsing media to the “wokeness” arms race post-2010. He pulls back the curtain on why California became a one-party state, how Democrats and Republicans are at war with each other AND the internet… and what it all means for the future of your money, your job, and your freedom. SHOWNOTES [00:00] America doesn't exist? The rise of “sub-tribes” and why labels are now meaningless [00:11] How digital and physical AI are disrupting “blue” and “red” jobs [01:06] AI, solar panels, robots, agents—the multiple “singularities” taking over every industry [05:48] Collapse in religiosity, skyrocketing gender/ideology gaps, and why parties are now split male vs. female [06:28] Why the internet is the root force changing everything (the “force diagram” of disruption) [07:39] HOW AI targets Democrats vs. Republicans—what jobs are actually threatened [10:32] Blue states go anti-AI, legal workarounds, and the “asymmetry” in who fights back [11:43] How America disrupts the West (and why Western Europe may be doomed for a bad century) [13:44] America is over, but the internet is just beginning—understanding “debt” and the end of empires [15:16] Keynesianism = Communism (but for wimps), the invisible theft by the Fed, and how inflation really robs you behind closed doors [22:10] Why technological deflation is GOOD (and why the system wants you to fear it) [25:03] Drawing parallels with the Soviet collapse, how “asset seizure” works in modern economies [29:05] The Cantillon Effect—who really gets rich off the money printer? [35:00] The chart: When blue America lost the media game, and red America lost manufacturing [38:04] Wokeness, the Techlash, and using morality as a weapon: How both parties went “scorched earth” on each other Major eye-openers, right? Make sure to breathe… and yes, he's just getting started. Follow Balaji: Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/balajis Website: https://balajis.com Book: The Network State (https://thenetworkstate.com) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Balaji: The Fed Does Invisibly What Lenin Did With Guns — And You're Not Supposed to Notice | Impact Theory W/ Tom Bilyeu & Balaji

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 26, 2026 47:57

The Book of Elon launches today

success elon musk invest launches anthology amazon kindle balaji

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2026 8:51

The Book of Elon: A Guide to Purpose and Success is now available! “All of Elon Musk's Most Useful Ideas, In His Own Words.” I've invested five years of effort and tens of thousands of dollars into making this book as useful as possible for you. Order the book now on Amazon: Kindle: https://amzn.to/4uEf0pO Paperback: https://amzn.to/47avSuh Hardcover: https://amzn.to/4by5VWL Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Book-of-Elon-Audiobook/B0G3B4SJPQ To support the costs of producing this podcast: >> Buy a copy of the Navalmanack: www.navalmanack.com/ >> Buy a copy of The Anthology of Balaji: https://balajianthology.com/ >> Sign up for my online course and community about building your Personal Leverage: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage >> Invest in early-stage companies alongside Eric and his partners at Rolling Fun: https://angel.co/v/back/rolling-fun >> Join the free weekly email list at ejorgenson.com/newsletter >> Text the podcast to a friend

The Ultimate Masterstroke! How Balaji Won the Rebel Naval Chief | नवा मास्टरस्ट्रोक

ai san francisco openai nyt unraveling whistleblowers prescription arriving gaslight adderall mysterious deaths balaji

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2026 2:40

१७१२ हे साल स्वराज्यासाठी साक्षात मृत्यूचा सापळा बनून आले! चंद्रसेन जाधव फितूर होऊन मुघलांना आणि निझामाला जाऊन मिळाला. पण सर्वात भयंकर आणि डेंजरस संकट आले ते थेट कोकणातून! मराठा आरमाराचे सम्राट कान्होजी आंग्रे यांनी शाहू महाराजांच्या विरोधात भयंकर बंड पुकारले... त्यांनी तत्कालीन पेशवे बहिरोपंत पिंगळे यांचा दारुण पराभव करून त्यांना चक्क अंधाऱ्या तुरुंगात टाकले! एवढेच नाही, तर ते स्वतःची मोठी फौज घेऊन थेट साताऱ्याच्या दिशेने चालून येऊ लागले. संपूर्ण साताऱ्यात आणि महाराजांच्या गोटात जीवघेणे टेन्शन पसरले! राज्याला आता कोण वाचवणार? नोव्हेंबर १७१३ मध्ये शाहू महाराजांनी बाळाजी विश्वनाथ यांना बोलावून त्यांच्या गळ्यात थेट पेशवेपदाची माळ घातली! नवीन पेशवे बाळाजींनी तलवारीपेक्षा बुद्धीचा आणि संवादाचा एक ऐतिहासिक मास्टरस्ट्रोक खेळला. ते स्वतः कान्होजी आंग्रे यांना भेटण्यासाठी लोणावळ्याजवळ गेले. अत्यंत पॉवरफुल आणि लॉजिकल शब्दांत त्यांनी कान्होजींना समजावले... "तुमचे वडील तुकाजी यांनी शिवाजी महाराजांची अत्यंत प्रामाणिक सेवा केली होती... मग तुम्ही आता शाहू महाराजांशी बंड का करत आहात? जर तुम्ही महाराजांना राजा मानले, तर संपूर्ण कोकणचे सरखेल म्हणून तुम्हाला मान्यता दिली जाईल!" बाळाजींच्या या अचूक संवादाने कान्होजींचा राग पूर्णपणे शांत झाला. कालचा भयंकर शत्रू आज स्वराज्याचा सर्वात ताकदवान मित्र बनला! शत्रूला मित्र बनवण्याचे हे रहस्य अफलातून होते! पण स्वराज्याच्या या प्रवासात... एक अत्यंत क्रूर आणि नीच गद्दार बाळाजी आणि बाजीरावासाठी मृत्यूचा सापळा रचून बसला होता! तो गद्दार कोण होता? ... [Music Fades Out]... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

chief rebel naval balaji

Unraveling the Mysterious Death of OpenAI's Whistleblower, Suchir Balaji

Epoch Philosophy Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2026 36:52

This is a re-upload due to YouTube demonetization, requiring more censorship than expected. Suchir Balaji, an AI researcher at OpenAI, believed the company violated copyright laws. After resigning and sharing his insights with the NYT, he was found deceased in his San Francisco apartment. Updates/Clarifications:1. No forced entry was found in Suchir's apartment.2. No cameras were present on Suchir's floor (4th floor), and one elevator camera was disabled. However, the main, first floor had one operational camera.3. Suchir suffered a maxillary fracture, with a puncture on his tongue, raising suspicions of a second incident.4. Correction: Wellbutrin does not contain amphetamine. Prescription bottles of D-Amphetamine (generic for Adderall) were found in Suchir's apartment, likely the source of amphetamines in his system. Sources are sensitive, but here are some available resources:Suchir's AI Fair Use write-upNYT Interview Socials:Bluesky ► Bluesky ProfileInstagram ► Instagram Profile Music Credits:Looplicator: LooppelgangerMidwhich Music: Brief Calmdrackfreeee: Living NightmareLuba Hilman: ForsakenSurvival Spheres: Forbidden Trip, Gaslight 0:00: The Backdrop1:56: Who was Suchir Balaji?5:47: Arriving on the Scene7:22: Oddities13:42: The Site17:04: Circumstances26:09: Questions32:38: A Message #SuchirBalaji #OpenAI #ChatGPT #whistleblower #AIresearch #copyrightlaws #SanFrancisco #mysteriousdeath See show notes: https://inlet.fm/epoch-philosophy/episodes/69c1fe4c25f17a4fd83755e5 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Zero to Hero! How Balaji Vishwanath Built the Mighty Maratha Empire | शून्यातून शिखर

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 22, 2026 2:45

कोकणच्या त्या जीवघेण्या अंधारातून निसटून बाळाजी विश्वनाथ देशावर तर आले... पण इथेही मृत्यूचे तांडव सुरूच होते! १६९० च्या दशकात औरंगजेबाची लाखोची मुघल फौज स्वराज्याचे अक्षरशः लचके तोडत होती. छत्रपती राजाराम महाराजांना जीव वाचवण्यासाठी थेट दक्षिणेत जिंजीला पळून जावे लागले होते... अशा जळत्या वातावरणात बाळाजी विश्वनाथ सासवड नावाच्या गावात एक निर्वासित म्हणून पोहोचले. त्यांच्याकडे ना पैसा होता... ना कोणती फौज! पण या माणसाच्या डोक्यात एक अत्यंत शार्प सुपर-कॉम्प्युटर दडलेला होता. युद्धाच्या या काळात केवळ तलवार चालवून भागत नसते, तर फौजेला रसद पुरवणे आणि पैशांची उभारणी करणे अत्यंत महत्त्वाचे असते. बाळाजींचा महसुलाचा अभ्यास इतका दांडगा होता की सासवडचे अंबाजी पुरंदरे त्यांच्यावर पार फिदा झाले! लवकरच ही चर्चा स्वराज्याचे महान सेनापती धनाजीराव जाधव यांच्यापर्यंत पोहोचली. कागदपत्रांचा अचूक हिशेब ठेवून राजकारण फिरवणारा बाळाजींसारखा कूटनीतीज्ञ संपूर्ण दख्खनमध्ये दुसरा नव्हता! १६९६ मध्ये पुणे प्रांताचे सभासद... आणि १६९९ मध्ये ते थेट पुण्याचे सरसुभेदार बनले! याच काळात १६९७ च्या सुमारास त्यांची भेट महान आणि गूढ तपस्वी ब्रह्मेंद्र स्वामींशी झाली. स्वामींनी बाळाजींच्या डोळ्यांतील ती धगधगती आग अचूक ओळखली आणि त्यांना आपला विशेष आशीर्वाद दिला... आणि याच यशाच्या काळात, १८ ऑगस्ट १७०० सालात त्यांच्या घरी एका नव्या आणि भयंकर वादळाचा जन्म झाला... ज्याला जग पुढे बाजीराव म्हणून ओळखणार होते! पण स्वराज्यावर आता औरंगजेबाच्या मृत्यूनंतर कोणते नवे आणि भयंकर संकट कोसळणार होते? शाहू महाराज परत आल्यावर काय होणार? ... [Music Fades Out] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

hero built mighty balaji vishwanath maratha empire

The Ultimate Masterstroke! How Balaji Won the Rebel Naval Chief | नवा मास्टरस्ट्रोक

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 22, 2026 2:41

१७१२ हे साल स्वराज्यासाठी साक्षात मृत्यूचा सापळा बनून आले! चंद्रसेन जाधव फितूर होऊन मुघलांना आणि निझामाला जाऊन मिळाला. पण सर्वात भयंकर आणि डेंजरस संकट आले ते थेट कोकणातून! मराठा आरमाराचे सम्राट कान्होजी आंग्रे यांनी शाहू महाराजांच्या विरोधात भयंकर बंड पुकारले... त्यांनी तत्कालीन पेशवे बहिरोपंत पिंगळे यांचा दारुण पराभव करून त्यांना चक्क अंधाऱ्या तुरुंगात टाकले! एवढेच नाही, तर ते स्वतःची मोठी फौज घेऊन थेट साताऱ्याच्या दिशेने चालून येऊ लागले. संपूर्ण साताऱ्यात आणि महाराजांच्या गोटात जीवघेणे टेन्शन पसरले! राज्याला आता कोण वाचवणार? नोव्हेंबर १७१३ मध्ये शाहू महाराजांनी बाळाजी विश्वनाथ यांना बोलावून त्यांच्या गळ्यात थेट पेशवेपदाची माळ घातली! नवीन पेशवे बाळाजींनी तलवारीपेक्षा बुद्धीचा आणि संवादाचा एक ऐतिहासिक मास्टरस्ट्रोक खेळला. ते स्वतः कान्होजी आंग्रे यांना भेटण्यासाठी लोणावळ्याजवळ गेले. अत्यंत पॉवरफुल आणि लॉजिकल शब्दांत त्यांनी कान्होजींना समजावले... "तुमचे वडील तुकाजी यांनी शिवाजी महाराजांची अत्यंत प्रामाणिक सेवा केली होती... मग तुम्ही आता शाहू महाराजांशी बंड का करत आहात? जर तुम्ही महाराजांना राजा मानले, तर संपूर्ण कोकणचे सरखेल म्हणून तुम्हाला मान्यता दिली जाईल!" बाळाजींच्या या अचूक संवादाने कान्होजींचा राग पूर्णपणे शांत झाला. कालचा भयंकर शत्रू आज स्वराज्याचा सर्वात ताकदवान मित्र बनला! शत्रूला मित्र बनवण्याचे हे रहस्य अफलातून होते! पण स्वराज्याच्या या प्रवासात... एक अत्यंत क्रूर आणि नीच गद्दार बाळाजी आणि बाजीरावासाठी मृत्यूचा सापळा रचून बसला होता! तो गद्दार कोण होता? ... [Music Fades Out] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

chief rebel naval balaji

Mastermind Balaji Vishwanath Wins Bloodless War Against Dhanaji! | खेडचा रणसंग्राम

mastermind balaji bloodless vishwanath

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 22, 2026 2:37

शाहू महाराजांवर धनाजीराव जाधवांसारखे भयंकर सेनापती चालून येत आहेत... हे जीवघेणे टेन्शन आपण मागच्या भागात पाहिले! धनाजीराव जाधव म्हणजे साक्षात मृत्यूचे दुसरे नाव. त्यांच्या घोड्यांच्या टापांचा आवाज ऐकून मुघल सरदारही थरथर कापत असत. आणि आता हेच धनाजीराव शाहू महाराजांना संपवण्यासाठी खेड नावाच्या गावाजवळ येऊन थडकले होते! संपूर्ण स्वराज्याचा श्वास रोखला गेला होता. दोन मराठा फौजा एकमेकांच्या रक्ताला तहानल्या होत्या. जर हे युद्ध झाले असते, तर मराठ्यांचे अतोनात नुकसान झाले असते... पण इथेच बाळाजी विश्वनाथ यांनी आपला ऐतिहासिक मास्टरस्ट्रोक खेळला! बाळाजी त्यावेळी धनाजीरावांचे कारभारी होते. त्यांनी आणि खंडो बल्लाळ यांनी स्वतःचा जीव धोक्यात घालून अंधाऱ्या रात्रीत धनाजीरावांची गुप्त भेट घेतली. त्यांनी अत्यंत पॉवरफुल शब्दांत धनाजीरावांना सांगितले... "आपण ज्यांच्यावर तलवार उगारत आहात, ते साक्षात शिवाजी महाराजांचे रक्त आहेत!" बाळाजींच्या त्या भेदक संवादामुळे धनाजीरावांसारख्या पोलादी योद्ध्याचे मन पिघळले. दुसऱ्या दिवशी खेडच्या मैदानावर युद्ध सुरू झाले खरे... पण ते फक्त एक दिखाव्याचे युद्ध होते! धनाजीरावांनी आपली तलवार म्यानातच ठेवली आणि ते शाहू महाराजांना जाऊन मिळाले! एकही थेंब रक्त न सांडता बाळाजींनी हा सर्वात मोठा विजय मिळवून दिला. जानेवारी १७०८ मध्ये शाहू महाराजांचा राज्याभिषेक झाला आणि त्यांनी बाळाजींना 'सेनाकर्ते' अशी पदवी दिली! समोरच्याचे मन जिंकून लढाई जिंकण्याचा हा स्वॅग भयंकर होता! पण... हे सुख फार काळ टिकणार नव्हते. एका क्षुल्लक हरणाच्या शिकारीवरून राजकारणाचा असा भडका उडणार होता की... ... [Music Fades Out] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are We In The Middle Of A Global Economic Collapse?

The Cārvāka Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2026 158:47

In this podcast, Kushal speaks with Balaji Srinivasan about the ongoing global economic crisis that has been triggered by the Iran war against Israel and America. Balaji made a few observations on "X." This podcast will be around those 7 points. (https://x.com/balajis/status/2034400690345484612?s=20) Buy my book "Blasphemy: Let me Speak": https://amzn.in/d/0bS2pOTc Follow Balaji: X: @balajis Website: https://ns.com/ #iranisraelwar #iranunrest #tehranprotests #iranrevolution #iranprotest #donaldtrump #ayatollahalikhamenei ------------------------------------------------------------ Listen to the podcasts on: SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/kushal-mehra-99891819 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1rVcDV3upgVurMVW1wwoBp Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-c%C4%81rv%C4%81ka-podcast/id1445348369 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-carvaka-podcast ------------------------------------------------------------ Support The Cārvāka Podcast: Buy Kushal's Book: https://amzn.in/d/58cY4dU Become a Member on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKPx... Become a Member on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/carvaka UPI: kushalmehra@icici Interac Canada: kushalmehra81@gmail.com To buy The Carvaka Podcast Exclusive Merch please visit: http://kushalmehra.com/shop ------------------------------------------------------------ Follow Kushal: Twitter: https://twitter.com/kushal_mehra?ref_... Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KushalMehraO... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecarvakap... Koo: https://www.kooapp.com/profile/kushal... Inquiries: https://kushalmehra.com/ Feedback: kushalmehra81@gmail.com

america israel global speak iran soundcloud member c4 inquiries economic collapse balaji balaji srinivasan kushal

Balaji Srinivasan: The Digital Investor's Guide to American Anarchy

Bitcoin Magazine

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 18, 2026 74:51

Balaji Srinivasan explains why America's political system is swinging further left and further right until it breaks apart entirely. In this conversation with Brandon Green, he lays out why Bitcoin serves as the fire alarm for a failing system and why your location matters more than your portfolio. Balaji shares his "liquidate, emigrate, accelerate" framework, and reveals why Latin America and El Salvador may be the smartest destinations for Bitcoiners. Read more about the Network School Here: https://ns.com/Click here to get 10% off bitcoin 2026 Conference in Las Vegas: https://tickets.b.tc/event/bitcoin-2026?promoCodeTask=apply&promoCodeInput=YT10

Unraveling the Mystery of Suchir Balaji's Death at OpenAI

Epoch Philosophy Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 11, 2026 36:52

Suchir Balaji, a former AI researcher at OpenAI, voiced concerns about copyright issues surrounding ChatGPT. He reported these to the New York Times, but tragically, he was found dead in his San Francisco apartment a month later. Updates: Suchir suffered a maxillary fracture and a tongue puncture, fueling speculation of a second injury. Music Credits: Looplicator: Looppelganger Midwhich Music: Brief Calm drackfreeee: Living Nightmare Luba Hilman: Forsaken Survival Spheres: Forbidden Trip Survival Spheres: Gaslight 0:00: I. The Backdrop1:56: II. Who was Suchir Balaji?5:47: III. Arriving on the Scene7:22: IV. Oddities13:42: V. The Site17:04: VI. Circumstances26:09: VII. Questions32:38: VIII. A Message #SuchirBalaji #OpenAI #ChatGPT #AIresearcher #deathmystery #copyrightissues #whistleblower #SanFrancisco #NewYorkTimes See show notes: https://inlet.fm/epoch-philosophy/episodes/69b1adad09752a4f55e76b99 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

death ai san francisco new york times mystery chatgpt iv openai unraveling viii arriving vii balaji

My Conversation with Naval Megasode

conversations invest audible naval anthology naval ravikant balaji almanack megasode

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 24, 2026 215:01

It's been five years since the Almanack of Naval Ravikant was published. I spent the day with Naval expanding on key ideas from the book. We recorded hours of that conversation to share with you. You can purchase the new expanded edition with nearly 4 hours of new material on Audible here: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Almanack-of-Naval-Ravikant-Audiobook/B0FBCP1JWJ Chapters: 00:00 - Building Wealth 37:49 - Building Judgement 01:12:30 - Learning Happiness 02:15:17 - Saving Yourself 02:50:17 - Philosophy To support the costs of producing this podcast: >> Buy a copy of the Navalmanack: www.navalmanack.com/ >> Buy a copy of The Anthology of Balaji: https://balajianthology.com/ >> Sign up for my online course and community about building your Personal Leverage: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage >> Invest in early-stage companies alongside Eric and his partners at Rolling Fun: https://angel.co/v/back/rolling-fun >> Join the free weekly email list at ejorgenson.com/newsletter >> Text the podcast to a friend

Balaji and Dan Wang: The Engineering State vs Lawyerly State

america china engineering simplecast balaji balaji srinivasan breakneck dan wang

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 13, 2026 63:46

Balaji Srinivasan speaks with Dan Wang, author of Breakneck, about China's industrial rise, America's competing strengths in software and finance, and what happens when an engineering state and a lawyerly state collide. The conversation covers manufacturing dominance, the future of the dollar, why both superpowers keep making costly mistakes, and where builders fit into what comes next. Resources:Follow Dan Wang on X: https://twitter.com/danwwangFollow Balaji on X: https://twitter.com/balajisSubscribe to Network State Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@nspodcast Stay Updated:Find a16z on YouTube: YouTubeFind a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Show on SpotifyListen to the a16z Show on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Balaji & Benedict Evans: When Tech Breaks Industries

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 6, 2026 126:25

This episode originally appeared on the Network State Podcast. Balaji Srinivasan and Benedict Evans sit down in Singapore for a wide-ranging conversation on the mechanics of disruption. Evans, a former Andreessen Horowitz partner who now writes one of tech's most-read newsletters, argues that the conversation about any technology peaks during the transition—not at 0% or 100% adoption. They cover AI's real capabilities and limits, the politics of technological disruption, why crypto's killer metric is block space, and what smart glasses, elevator attendants, and the elephant graph reveal about how change works. Resources:Follow Benedict Evans on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benedictevans/Check out Benedict's Newsletter: https://www.ben-evans.com/newsletterFollow Balaji Srinivasan on X: https://x.com/balajisCheck out Network State Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@nspodcastHigh Output Management: https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove-ebook/dp/B015VACHOK/eHang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUTu4_8QznEThe Deep Research Problem: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2025/2/17/the-deep-research-problemARC AGI: https://arcprize.org/arc-agiUber and Airbnb didn't sell software: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2025/3/14/what-kind-of-disruptionAI Use cases: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2024/4/19/looking-for-ai-use-casesStablecoin surpasses Visa & Mastercard: https://crypto.news/ark-invest-stablecoin-transaction-value-in-2024-surpasses-visa-and-mastercard/Senate passes stablecoin bill: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/us-senate-passes-stablecoin-bill-milestone-crypto-industry-2025-06-17/ Stay Updated:If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends!Find a16z on X: https://twitter.com/a16zFind a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16zListen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYXListen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenbergPlease note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see http://a16z.com/disclosures. Stay Updated:Find a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Show on SpotifyListen to the a16z Show on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

#101 Tesla War Stories, Self-Driving at Waymo, and Building the Salesforce of BOM (Spencer Penn of LightSource)

chinese elon musk model heroes tesla invest speed transitioning conclusion quotes salesforce penn anthology erp selfdriving waymo war stories balaji light source

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 3, 2026 61:17

Topics: (00:00:00) - Intro (00:03:43) - Heroes and inspirations (00:07:14) - The rise of Chinese electric vehicles (00:12:13) - The Tesla experience (00:31:04) - Tesla's rapid development and industry impact (00:32:54) - The culture of speed and frugality at Tesla (00:34:10) - Elon's leadership and pressure tactics (00:37:22) - Transitioning from Tesla to Waymo (00:39:43) - Waymo's organizational structure and challenges (00:43:35) - The future of autonomous vehicles (00:54:34) - Founding Light Source and addressing procurement issues (01:00:23) - Conclusion and final thoughts Links: LightSource - https://lightsource.ai/ Spencer on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/spenpenn/ Preorder the Book of Elon - https://a.co/d/02huhEee To support the costs of producing this podcast: >> Buy a copy of the Navalmanack: www.navalmanack.com/ >> Buy a copy of The Anthology of Balaji: https://balajianthology.com/ >> Sign up for my online course and community about building your Personal Leverage: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage >> Invest in early-stage companies alongside Eric and his partners at Rolling Fun: https://angel.co/v/back/rolling-fun >> Join the free weekly email list at ejorgenson.com/newsletter >> Text the podcast to a friend >> Or at least give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners! Quotes from Spencer: “It was the most fun I never want to have again.” (Describing his time at Tesla during the Model 3 production ramp) “The Model 3 seat feel is attuned directly to Elon's butt.” “I'm not an Elon fanboy, but I'm also not a critic. I'm an optimist.” “Speed wins. After seeing both Tesla and Waymo, that's my belief.” “We were the underdog. Eventually, it does end up feeling like you're on the winning team.” “You couldn't go into a meeting with Elon and show up empty-handed.” “This opportunity we're pursuing at LightSource should have disappeared 20 years ago.” “ERP is the finance system of record. What's Salesforce in reverse? That's LightSource.” “The thing that surprised me: every company still runs procurement on spreadsheets and email.” “Tesla built their own ERP system from scratch. That's not normal.” “There are things that are just core to the P&L of every business… and yet completely orphaned in the tech stack.”

Ben Horowitz and Balaji Srinivasan on Netscape and Network States

spotify ai china drawing network code artificial intelligence states crypto regulation coding simplecast shenzhen netscape ben horowitz balaji balaji srinivasan network state

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 28, 2026 42:59

Can a country be built from the internet up? Not as a metaphor or an online community, but as a system that replaces institutions we usually think of as fixed, money, law, and governance.In this conversation taken from The Network State Podcast, a16z cofounder Ben Horowitz joins Balaji Srinivasan to explore how internet native institutions are beginning to mirror and challenge traditional state structures. Drawing parallels to China's early special economic zones, they discuss how constrained experiments like Shenzhen tested new rules without rewriting the entire system, and why similar experimentation is now happening online.The discussion examines crypto, digital identity, and network states as attempts to turn code into coordination and coordination into legitimacy, while grappling with a core tension. Code is deterministic, but societies are not. Ben and Balaji explore where these systems work, where they break, and whether network states are a curiosity or the next phase of governance. Resources:Follow Ben on X: https://x.com/bhorowitzFollow Balaji on X: https://x.com/balajisListen to more from The Network State: https://ns.com/podcast Stay Updated:If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends!Find a16z on X: https://x.com/a16zFind a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16zListen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYXListen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg](https://x.com/eriktorenbergPlease note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see http://a16z.com/disclosures. Stay Updated:Find a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Show on SpotifyListen to the a16z Show on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

#100 Interviewing Your Parents, Writing Through Fear, and One's First Book (Kyle Thiermann)

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 20, 2026 85:28

Title: #100 Interviewing Your Parents, Writing Through Fear, and One's First Book (Kyle Thiermann) Topics: (00:00:00) - Intro (00:01:47) - The birth of a book: from idea to reality (00:04:01) - A pandemic epiphany: interviewing my dad (00:07:51) - The journey of a professional surfer and journalist (00:10:48) - Writing a book: challenges and insights (00:17:04) - The emotional depth of interviewing parents (00:22:40) - Balancing humor and vulnerability in writing (00:34:39) - Creating unique value in a book (00:41:59) - The power of a good title (00:44:31) - The importance of a book title (00:49:10) - Balancing writing and marketing (00:57:56) - Long-term marketing approach (01:10:16) - Navigating the publishing process (01:19:45) - Unexpected outcomes and reflections Links: One Last Question Before You Go - https://amzn.to/49JVWg2 Scribe Media - https://scribemedia.com/ To support the costs of producing this podcast: >> Buy a copy of the Navalmanack: www.navalmanack.com/ >> Buy a copy of The Anthology of Balaji: https://balajianthology.com/ >> Sign up for my online course and community about building your Personal Leverage: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage >> Invest in early-stage companies alongside Eric and his partners at Rolling Fun: https://angel.co/v/back/rolling-fun >> Join the free weekly email list at ejorgenson.com/newsletter >> Text the podcast to a friend >> Or at least give the podcast a positive review to help us reach new listeners! Quotes from Kyle: “The interview process can be a kind of empathy drug.” “Write as if you are already dead.” “The ideas that won't go away are the ones worth chasing.” “I wanted to write the book that only I could write.” “Most people live their lives being rewarded for having the right answer, not the right question.” “Books are like malaria nets—people use them in ways you never expect.” “If I tell you to interview your parents, I have to show you what happened when I did.” “Marketing is an act of consideration and generosity.” “A lot of how-to books could be a one-page PDF. I refused to do that.” “Live events aren't about selling books. They're about making you feel like a winner as an author.” “The best advertisers I know create a mood shift immediately.” “Make fun of yourself. That's how you earn the right to critique others.”

fear live marketing books navigating parents writing write balancing invest unexpected quotes anthology first book balaji kyle thiermann

#099 Jonathan Swanson: Scaling Thumbtack, 10x Delegation, and Designing an Ideal Life