Ted Audio Collective Hi everyone, you're listening to HBS After Hours.
I'm Youngmi and I'm here tonight with me here and Felix, how are you guys doing?
Good, how are you? Yeah, so I'm glad to be here with you tonight because in a week or so, we are going to be taping a live version of this podcast with a bunch of alum who are going to be here on campus.
For their reunion, right?
Yes, so we need ideas for what we're going to do at that time.
So to anyone listening out there, if you have an idea for a topic you would like us to discuss in this live podcast, send it in.
Our email address is hbsafterhoursatgmail .com And by the way, we've got a bunch of emails.
At some point in this podcast, you know, we should go see them.
And thanks anyway for everyone who writes.
Yes, it's such a nice email.
But also some great ideas as well.
And so at some point we should go through and do all of that.
It's also for the alum thing, it's topics but also format.
Like, should we do something kind of weird, or I don't know, in a classroom setting?
Is there something that we could do?
You should sing. We should do karaoke.
Yeah, there you go.
Like, karaoke, podcasts.
Yeah, as long as everyone's doing it.
That's the evening program.
That's the super, that's the late night.
Okay, so I brought in a topic I want us to talk about tonight.
And the topic is vaping, believe it or not.
And then Mihir, you also brought in topic.
Okay Mihir, why don't you get us started?
So John Dickerson, who I think is an incredible journalist, has written this piece on the Atlantic.
Which basically argues that the job of the presidency, and it's not a political argument, it's not about who the president is, it's an argument that the job of the presidency has just expanded and become completely unwieldy.
We associate a set of expectations with that job that are emotional, that are commander in chief, that are healer in chief.
And inevitably the person in that job is getting crushed under the weight of expectations.
And the neat thing about the piece is it's got a lot of historical stuff, you know, like Grover Cleveland.
Yeah, interesting. You know, Grover Cleveland used to open his own door.
He used to open the front door at the White House, just completely imaginable today.
But the numbers are also staggering.
So there are 2 million people who work in the executive branch, and just in the office of the presidency there's several thousand.
It's a mammoth operation.
You go from campaigning into administrating in 90 days, you're now in charge of this massive budget, massive organization.
But I think that even thousands of positions, appointments, political appointments to make.
And so when you kind of think of it that way, you realize, wait, what are we expecting these people to do?
And is it a reasonable thing to expect?
If I'm totally honest, I didn't really buy it.
I mean, my starting position with Walmart has 2 million people, and they're a very global organization, which presumably adds to the complexity of managing the organization.
And I think at the heart of what we're seeing is a very strong political incentive to make it look like you're in charge.
Rewarded for activism, rewarded for being the person who's there when the catastrophe hits, the person who's there in the big trade negotiations, as a rule, we see the president all the time, right?
And that exposure, when you think about it, much of it is fabricated.
To the appointments, there's always the possibility to just leave people in place.
If you decide to replace hundreds and thousands of people, that's your decision.
So my sense is much of the activism that we see, what he describes as, oh my God, no one can do this job, is actually completely under the control of what the person wants to do.
I think the reluctance to delegate that he describes in the piece...
That is a choice. I'm the commander in chief.
Do I really need the daily briefing that he talks about?
You could easily imagine delegating that to someone and have really clear rules around when you want to be personally involved.
That is a choice that you want to spend that hour or however long the briefing takes every day.
Yeah. What did you think, Johanna?
I did buy the article.
I think the part that struck me the most was when they talked about the complete inability to construct strategy, when in fact you're always being forced to be reactive.
You're always reacting and you're moving from crisis to crisis.
Right. We would never run any other organization this way.
But let me take Felix's point.
Doesn't the CEO of Walmart have this issue?
Like there's a store that just went on fire or something?
There's a strike somewhere.
What's different about this?
So what's different about this...
So first of all, it's not that you come into office and you have a strategy.
You have to have multiple strategies.
You have to have a strategy for healthcare, you have to have a strategy for the economy, and so on and so on and so on.
And some of these things I think you've probably spent some time thinking about at a relatively high level.
But once you're in office, on each one of these things, there's a learning that has to happen for you to figure out how you can actually begin to execute against that strategy.
As you begin to know how the institutions work and how the relationships work and all the rest of it.
And so it's hard for me to imagine how you can be effective and delegate from day one unless you just make the decision as the chief executive officer of the country to just focus on one or two things for your entire presidency.
But then we're essentially saying that we are comfortable with a system where every president we elect, we expect them to just move the needle on one or two things.
And it feels like right now our country has too many important problems across too many domains for us to be able to afford to do that.
But that's also true in a big corporation, right?
You worry about the different divisions.
You worry about the different product, the different countries.
There's just a lot to worry about.
And I think the way they deal with it is that they delegate.
Like one of my favorite examples, how much time presidents spend taking credit for what happens in the economy?
When we all know, you know, like that's just a waste of time.
You should not be doing that because A, it's not you doing it.
Yeah, but there's a political imperative.
There is political theater, but that's my point.
But that's not a choice.
That's not a choice in this setting, Felix.
That's the game they have to play, isn't it?
I mean, you can say don't do it, but then the reality is...
No, you could imagine a president who says, and by the way, we have a fabulous, fabulous federal reserve, and they do what needs to get done.
Even the reluctance of presidents to give credit to anyone else is just astounding to me.
Yeah, I agree. But I think you're conflating two things.
So one is, do we have a history of having presidents who are just ineffective managers, leaders, whatever you want to call them?
Yes. Do they maybe spend their time inefficiently?
Yes. Do they refuse to delegate?
Yes. All those things are true.
But imagine the ideal executive, someone who was really great at all of these things, and you put them in the role.
Could they do it effectively?
I'm not sure they could.
So there is another anecdote in there that they described this amazing document that Romney's transition team put together.
This is fantastic. Describing the process Romney would go through to make this transition beautifully efficient and bring all this corporate best practice.
And I remember when I read that anecdote, I was laughing internally, because I thought to myself, if he had been elected and they had gone in there with full confidence, with this beautiful plan, they would have been confronted with reality, I think, within the first week.
And it wouldn't have worked.
And I think they would have hit wall after wall after wall.
Yeah. So you buy this argument in part, right?
I do. So tell me what's your sense, me here.
I started with your point of view, and I found myself swayed to young me's, which is I don't find this place is different kind of argument.
It's very useful. Like, I think, look, this is a CEO, and what's different?
But I do think the political pressure that CEOs don't have to deal with, the public role that CEOs don't have to play, the unwillingness to delegate, because delegation has got to be the answer.
But he makes the case that delegation isn't possible.
You can't because every decision refracts back to you.
But those are choices, right?
Well, that is, I think, the core of the argument, which is this delegation question.
I think the other argument that I think is maybe true, which is the difference with the CEO's thing, I think, is think about a C -suite.
But I think about, like, a business unit heads, right?
So business unit heads are like cabinet departments.
But there is this C -suite.
And the C -suite is very helpful to the CEO, like a COO, right?
I mean, daily operations are happening in a certain way.
CFO is doing certain things.
CMO, whatever it is.
The thought that was triggered in my mind is, maybe that's the problem.
You know, which is we have these 24 cabinet posts.
There's nobody who is really...
But just think about this.
When you encounter a CEO who has 24 direct reports...
Yeah. I mean, come on.
That's ridiculous. I think we need that C -suite.
But don't you think we need it like a C -suite?
Could you imagine? But on top of that, a corporation is designed to enable the company to be led.
Whereas when you look at the presidency, we've set up a system of checks and balances.
Yeah. Which is essentially designed to make sure that executive office doesn't have too much power.
Right. And so we've built in a set of constraints on behavior.
And then you layer on top of that the complexity, the bureaucracy, all the rest.
Yeah. So what would you change?
You get to wave your magic wand.
Felix, what do you think?
Or do you not change anything because you don't think it's a problem?
Or you just get CEOs to...
I don't think it's much of a problem.
In fact, this is the, of course, the old discussion.
If I imagine a government that will get twice as many things get done, should I be optimistic about that?
Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not totally sure.
I grew up in a political system where it's even much more difficult to get things done.
And most people would say the reason why Switzerland is rich is because the politicians don't get anything done.
What do you say, young me?
I don't know. If this were a corporation, you could reorganize it?
No, no. You're in charge of the world.
You could do whatever.
Of the whole world?
No, of the presidents.
Meaning America. Yeah, whatever.
Sorry. I got carried away.
You get to redraw the organizational chart.
You get to redraw all the job descriptions.
What do you do? Can you break up America?
Well, that's a separate, interesting question.
Is that what you think the answer is?
Well, I mean, it would just create so many degrees of freedom.
That's a super interesting question.
If you had republics all under this larger, and you had a looser confederation of regions, and you could have...
So maybe that's the problem.
The northeast region, and you could have the west.
It's interesting, Mir, when you describe the analogy, you say, oh, it's the ministries that are the equivalent to business divisions, but you could think it's the states, or it's the communities that...
I would go bigger than states, though.
By the way, do you, out of curiosity, in 100 years, will the United States be a singular country?
Is this where we're going with the podcast?
Okay, sorry. I just saw...
It's an interesting question, because you're kind of saying that maybe the problem is...
I find it a really intriguing question, right?
Because there's movement in different parts of the country to...
I mean, these economies are so large, right?
I mean, California is just an enormous economy just by and of itself.
I thought where you were maybe heading is that maybe that's where we go, and I don't know the answer to that.
I'll give you my little solution.
I don't really have a solution.
I think the C -suite thing may be good, like these C -level officers.
The thing that made me think about is, in India, there is a presidency and there's a prime ministership.
And this also reminds me a little bit about the UK, where there's a monarch, and then there's a prime minister.
So, in a way... Trump would like being king.
Well, you know, in general, I'm an anti -monarch.
I don't believe in those things.
But there is this sense in which all the healing and the core emotional function that a leader has to provide in India is done kind of by the president, and in the UK, obviously, is kind of done by the monarch.
Big thoughts. Okay, guys, I want to talk to you about vaping.
So, as you probably know, smoking cigarettes has been on the decline in this country, and I think the decline has been most noticeable among adolescents.
So it's really gotten to the point where smoking, among adolescents, it's not even a thing, really, anymore.
On the other hand, e -cigarettes.
Vaping is on the upswing.
And in particular, a company called Juul, J -U -U -L, is currently regarded as almost sort of the apple of vapes.
This very cool, fashionable device.
It looks like a little USB stick.
That if you go into many high schools today, the kids are all vaping.
So I recently got a note from the school that my son goes to.
It went out to all the parents, and it's about vaping.
And my sense is that many, many schools across the country are getting these alarming notes about the prevalence of vaping.
And this note is all about how this thing is taking over, how dangerous vaping is.
So I got this letter.
I went to my son, and I said, so how common is this?
And he looked at me and he said, oh, everybody vapes.
You cannot walk into the school bathroom now without saying everybody vaping.
So first of all, I wanted to get your reactions.
Is this something that we should be worried about?
They're inhaling nicotine.
So there's nicotine in these vapes, but not a lot of the other toxins associated with cigarettes.
So can you say something about the side effects?
What do we know about the health implications?
So here's the thing.
I mean, the health community is really divided.
Because if you use cigarettes as a comparison point, vaping, I think it's universally agreed that vaping is much safer.
Because in fact, nicotine is not carcinogenic.
Nicotine does not cause cancer.
It's all the other stuff, and it's the tar and the other stuff in cigarettes that cause cancer.
So it's just highly addictive.
But it is addictive.
And we don't even know how highly addictive.
Yeah, we don't know how highly.
But the argument is that it creates a dependency, and in particular, adolescents might be more vulnerable because their brains are still developing.
I had a strong reaction to this article you circulated, this Gia Tolentino article from The New Yorker.
I think it sounded absolutely fantastic.
I mean, this is like a massive public health innovation, which is, it is our best chance at wiping out cigarette smoking.
And the number of deaths per year is still incredible, by the way.
And this is like the best technology from cigarette smoking, right?
Yes, from traditional tobacco products.
So first, I'm like, this is like a huge public health boon.
And then second, if I think by analogy, the natural things to think about are marijuana and sugar.
So marijuana, we're legalizing.
You can agree with that or disagree with it, but we're legalizing it.
And then second, I don't know how different this is than sugar.
Sugar is highly addictive.
It's got a lot of problems.
Health -wise, it has massive consequences.
We don't do anything about that.
And so I did not come away from that article or other articles with a sense of like, oh my God, there's a problem.
To the contrary, I felt like we could screw this up by demonizing something that could just be wonderful.
So I don't know. I was surprised because when I first talked about vaping, I was like, oh, this is bad and bad for my kids and blah, blah, blah.
But as a society...
So even as a parent.
Well, I don't want my kids to vape, just to be clear, but that doesn't mean...
No, no, seriously, look, I don't want my kids to like do a lot of different things, but I get to control that or try to control that.
But do I want it banned, which by the way, will only have the perverse effect of wanting...
making kids want it even more.
I don't know. So I came out of this reading like feeling like, oh my God, vaping is the best chance we've ever had to wipe out smoking.
And we're going to screw it up because of some paranoia on ill -founded science, which is not clear or conclusive.
So my reaction was twofold.
One was, I looked at some pictures online, it's both an activity and it's a cultural moment also.
I had to laugh because it reminded me in a way, the 1950s Marlboro Man.
It was also smoking, but it was not just about the smoking.
It was about this entire culture and how people think about themselves and think about their lives.
And so I think in part, I'm not surprised that it's growing so quickly because it has all these ingredients also, which then says you are really, really uncool if you don't do it in high school and so on.
So that was one reaction.
The second reaction that I had, maybe a little similar, but with a different conclusion to what you said, imagine we're doing something even better than wiping.
So we come out with something that is addictive, the cool thing to do, but literally there's zero health effects other than addiction.
Would I be in favor of making the substance available and have people enjoy it?
And that's the sense in which even if something was perfectly healthy, like no health concerns whatsoever, but it's addictive, it takes away that moment of choice because it's addictive.
And that's the sense in which I think addiction in and of itself is problematic, even if I completely agree with you, Mihir, the faster we can move towards addictive substances that don't have health side effects, fabulous.
I think so a couple of things.
One is your point about this being a cultural moment, I think, is so true.
The branding and the marketing around this particular device captures the adolescent zeitgeist in just such a perfect way.
The device itself, it's beautiful, it's elegant, it's simple.
You charge it by plugging it into your laptop, which is brilliant.
They're about to release an Android app that goes with it.
There are these flavors.
It's so Instagramable, Snapchatable, so you can go onto just about any kind of social media and you will just see kids essentially advertising the product to one another.
So I think you're right about that.
I think your second point about imagine a perfect version of this thing where there's no harm other than addiction.
And then the question is, should we be troubled by that?
And my answer to that, I am.
I'm not sure. I am troubled.
Because one of the interesting ironies about Jules specifically, but vaping more generally, is that on the one hand, to your point, it's going to save, you know, if you could...
It's huge. It's like 1 ,300 people a day.
1 ,300 people a day die from smoking.
On the other hand, what you're taking is a generation of young people who have no intention of smoking and in fact, most of them would say smoking is disgusting, and you're teaching them a new habit.
And so how do you sort of balance those two things?
I think this is a really, really hard question.
I mean, so, you know, we laud business models where consumers get locked in and there are switching costs, and we talk about why sticky consumers is great, and in a world where there's nothing self -destructive, there's literally, your hypotheticals is useful.
And by the way, I don't think there's that much on the vaping side that is that harmful, as far as I can tell.
I mean, there's some popcorn lung stuff, but it doesn't sound real.
And so there's a lot of...
I agree with you. ...the faux science going on there.
I mean, I'm sure we've all taught cases where we say, like, look, you can lock in the consumer, and this is like...
Locking in the consumer?
Yeah. And so, like, what is it that's really going on here that's substantively different?
And I think what addiction is that's different is there's an irrational component to it.
But there's a physical component as well.
I'm sorry, you're right.
There's a whole physiological response that you're triggering as well.
But, you know, we also know that's true for iPhones.
We know that there's an addiction to iPhones, and it's got a physiological basis, and there are serotonin hits that you get from these things.
Once you go into this land of, we can't let people involuntarily like our product.
That's a crazy place to end up.
And so my greater fear is that this is just an incredible technology and that we should proliferate it.
Now, arguably, the teens are a problem, but, man, we should be proliferating this technology everywhere we can.
How about regret as a yardstick?
So you asked about company responsibility, and one way to think about the responsibility of companies, if I know I get consumers to consume something, like I provide some experience that seems appealing in the moment, and then to know whether or not that is really okay or not, use the consumer's regret,
right? When you look back and you say, boy, like, it happened again.
I did it. I don't feel good.
I don't feel good about myself.
I don't feel good about that decision.
That, to me, feels different from, I'm collecting frequent flyer miles on some airline, and so I can't really switch easily.
Well, do you regret checking your phone that much?
I mean, a lot of people are regret checking their phone that much.
Yeah, yeah, and I think it's an issue.
And so the producer of the iPhones should take that into account?
So I think there's a case to be made that, if you build and change products over time, I think in particular on social media, I think you can now make an argument that the companies are systematically investing in ways to make their products more addictive.
And I think that's problematic.
But again, in all these other situations, antidepressants is an interesting example.
I mean, people are now addicted to antidepressants, and it's a serious problem for some people, but antidepressants are fantastic for a whole set of people.
And I'm really worried about producers self -regulating in some ways, which is, man, if you create too addictive an experience, we're worried about that.
So this New Yorker article about vaping, it included an interview with this guy, Jonathan Winnikoff.
He's a pediatrician at Mass General Hospital, and he's a faculty at Harvard Medical School.
He called it a massive public health disaster that we are letting happen right before our eyes.
And our senator, right?
She's active. And there are a lot of states who are imposing massive taxes, like 50 % taxes on vaping, trying to shut it down.
And it's obviously moving just to different areas.
I mean, the weird thing to me about this product is the ideal treatment would be for young buyers, we'd like tax the hell out of it.
And for older smokers, we'd subsidize it like crazy, right?
I mean, we should be giving this away.
That's the health policy.
Or alternatively, we should craft marketing messages that are really targeted older people and completely against younger people.
And you look at Instagram and it's exactly the opposite.
It has everything around this youth culture.
Even if you're an older smoker, you look at it and go, oh my God, this product's not for me.
Exactly. In fact, if kids see someone older vaping, they think it's completely weird.
It's just so... That's like you buying a skateboard and going off to the park.
It's just mom, no, no, or dad, no.
I have to say, as a parent, on the one hand, I intellectually agree with everything we've just said.
On the other hand, there's something disturbing when I see 13 year olds vape.
It's just very disturbing.
And I think as we see these things proliferate.
So for example, there are people who sneak their vapes and vape on planes or in restaurants or in public spaces and in all the places that we've conditioned ourself to think that's not a good thing.
We're going to just start to see it.
In airports, everywhere we go...
Is there any smell or anything?
There is an odor, but it's more...
It's like candy because there are different flavors.
Not just for the user, but for the surrounding people?
Yeah, but it's very subtle.
So the thing is to exhale into your shirt or into your sleeve or something.
There's very little smoke.
There's a little bit of an abdomen.
There's got to be a business where you get special clothing that facilitates vaping in public places.
Okay, guys. I have a pick for you.
What is it? Oh, I'm ready.
So I'm a basketball fan.
I'm an NBA basketball fan.
I don't watch much baseball.
I watch a little football, but I really love basketball.
And this NBA season has been one of the funnest seasons around.
So I have a book. It's called, Basketball and Other Things.
And it's by a guy named Shae Serrano.
And New York Times bestseller, by the way.
You should read it for two reasons.
One, the book is comprised of 33 questions about basketball.
And each chapter answers one of these questions, but they're not your typical questions.
It's not like, who was better, Magic Johnson or Larry Bird?
These are really fun questions.
Like what? Like which version of Michael Jordan was the best version of Michael Jordan?
What is the most disrespectful kind of dunk?
Oh, nice. I mean, just really fun.
And it's hilarious.
But the second reason, I think he has one of the most interesting pop culture voices around, just his voice.
It's not even his writing, but the way he weaves in pop culture references and so witty.
He's great on Twitter.
You should follow him on Twitter as well.
The name again is? It's called Basketball and Other Things.
If you follow basketball, this is just the thing to get you in the mood.
So that's my recommendation.
Good. Perfect. Felix.
My recommendation is actually a service that I used a little while ago and then stopped.
Now I'm back and started using Spotify Radio again.
And my first experience was so disappointing because you might remember Pandora was sort of the company, you know, that invented the algorithms and the whole classification of music.
And then even though Spotify was fabulous for many other things, when you use the radio, it was just not as good.
What's more irritating than a radio picking the wrong kind of song?
You didn't understand what the 60s were all.
So it was like everything with it was basically wrong.
Now I went back. I was like totally surprised.
And I guess in part, there's sort of the AI that gets better, that gets faster, that gets more responsive and it's a really different experience.
So what's your favorite genre?
Oh, right now I'm into Turkish pop music.
I'm like... So I don't want to read a whole book about Turkish pop music, but the radio just delivers exactly what I need.
A little violin, a little melancholy.
Turkish pop music has...
Wait, don't ask him to follow up.
Oh, Turkish pop music is like the pinnacle of...
He wants to follow up.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
I'm a state anthropologist.
Okay, Meir, what do you have?
I'm going to talk about David Byrne, who is the lead singer from Talking Heads.
Talking Heads is the band I think is being...
He's still making music?
Not only is he still making music, young me, it's incredible music.
He's championed world music.
In fact, I would argue that some of his solo stuff...
He had a Latin American phase, right?
He had a Latin American phase.
I thought he was biking all the time, wasn't he?
He's doing that too.
He is a true Renaissance man.
I mean, I think he's amazing.
I mean, he's making music and he's biking.
That's too serious.
That's not exactly a Renaissance.
He championed world music.
He's a writer. Anyway, so I love this guy.
So he's come up with a recent new album.
It's called American Utopia.
And the lead song is called Everyone's Coming to My House.
And he performed it on Stephen Colbert.
And it is in that video of him performing on Stephen Colbert.
So everyone's coming to my house.
That is one of the most catchy, fantastic songs I've heard in so long.
Does he have a full band?
Oh my God. And it's all this weird people and they're marching around the stage.
And it's, you know, he really pioneered with Stop Making Sense.
Stop Making Sense. That was the best concert.
With the kind of theater of those shows.
And this has got incredible theater to that show.
Yeah. So David Byrne, Everyone's Coming to My House, especially the version on Stephen Colbert.
I think he's completely inspiring as an artist who's reinvented himself over whatever 40 plus 50 years.
Yeah. I think he's absolutely fantastic.
A Renaissance man. All right.
Thanks, everyone. Thank you.
This is HBS After Hours.
