If you’re a regular listener of this podcast, you’ve probably heard of Bob Chapman and Raj Sisodia’s book, Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family.
Well, I am pleased to be able to finally tell this audience that a revised and expanded version of this seminal book will be released October 21st. It has 75 extra pages, catching readers up to Bob and Barry-Wehmiller’s journey since Everybody Matters was originally released 10 years ago.
There are many new stories and insights that point to the thing that we say at the top of each podcast: the way we lead impacts the way people live. You can find out all the particulars about the book and its release, download an excerpt and see more content at everybodymattersbook.com.
And on this podcast, we want to bring you a discussion that I moderated between Bob and Raj, where they talk about the new version of Everybody Matters. They have a wide-ranging discussion on the need for a new version, the impact of the original version and their hopes as this expanded edition is released into the world. The conversation is not really just about the book, but kind of where we are in terms of leadership, where we are in terms of business, where we are in terms of education and where we are in terms of a society.
You can listen to this episode through your favorite podcast provider or through the link in the header above.
Transcript
Bob Chapman: Let me begin by kind of going back a notch. The purpose of the book, clearly we feel that we had been blessed with a vision of what leadership could be in this country that would address a lot of the issues we face in this country, and we felt compelled to share it.
The idea, the original idea of the book, working with Raj was first of all to articulate my journey from kind of traditional management thinking to Truly Human Leadership. So, that's about the first third of the book, which to kind of captures the journey. And then for the book to become how-to. So, the second two-thirds, in theory, were how do you do that, how do you go from management to leadership, a how-to book, and so I think that was the idea of the original book. And then we've had 10 years of tremendous exposure to the world, to all parts of our society and the impact this message had. And we felt a need to capture that in this new edition, the tremendous learnings we've had from the reaction to the book and the ability to talk about this book in the world. So, I think our goal of the next edition is to capture the healing power of this message on really all aspects of the world, as opposed to use each other to achieve goals.
So, again, if you think of the evolution of this transformation from these revelations I had that just kind of naturally flowed through our leadership of Barry-Wehmiller, we didn't the power the we had. And it was people like Simon Sinek and Raj who've noted authors, thinkers in the world who've helped us understand we were blessed with something very special, and I think it was Srikumar Rao who said to me, Bob, you have to share this with the world. You have got Firms of Endearment, Conscious Capitalism, brought his experience and said this is a message that has to be written and I'm going to write it. And when you see the reaction in that we sold, you know, I was told by our publisher that five to 15,000 copies was a typical business book. The fact that this message has been validated by the sale of over110,000 copies in seven languages around the world is a statement that of genuine interest in this message as we search for kind of a North Star, something to guide us as we live in life, where we learn to care for each other.
My hope is for this next edition is this becomes virtually the textbook used to teach leadership in every part of our society, in every country in the world, where we learn the profound responsibility of leadership on the lives that you have the privilege to lead. You know, so I think the exposure the book gave us, the global exposure it gave us, simply amplified what Raj said when he first saw it, when Simon said that we have something here that virtually people have never seen before, OK, where people feel valued, OK, not to improve productivity, not to improve engagement, because that is the responsibility of leaders to send people home each night knowing that who they are and what they do matters. And we do that. We profoundly impact their relationship with their spouse, their kids, their health. So again, I think that a profound statement, true of every part of our society, from medical to military to government to nonprofit to business. The way we lead impacts the way people live.
Brent Stewart: Raj, it’s not often that authors get back, that authors get the opportunity to go back and revisit their work, and you've written 500 books and you have an idea, you execute it and you kind of move on to the next idea because you're always moving forward. And you actually are now getting the opportunity to revisit two of your books, not just ours, but you're also working on a new version of Conscious Capitalism What was it like for you to go back to the original book and do some revisions? Because you did get the opportunity to kind of rephrase things differently than you had done the first time around and then also to continue the story that had been set 10 years ago.
Raj Sisodia: Yeah, no, it is an interesting process. You know, I did do a second edition of Firms of Endearment as well, actually. So, that was the first experience of that sort. You know, my friend Ed Freeman says you never really finish a book. You just at some point you abandon it to the publisher, you know. Because every time you look at it, you're going to make it better or you're going to add something to it because we're always evolving and our perspectives are enlarging. And so, it's not always that you get that opportunity. Usually, books are one-and-done.
But I think these books, because they did make an impact, there's a timelessness to these. You know, some books are timely and others are timeless. And this book I think is both. I think it's timely is even greater today, and the need for this message is more acute today than it was 10 years ago. It's always been important. And so I think framing it in the context of where we are, as we know, the world is shifting very, very rapidly. And we still need to keep a focus on the people and keep what's important at the center. And so, I think that is an important and timeless message.
The way I talk about this in my talks and interactions, I say everybody matters and everybody needs to win, right? In this world of business, everybody connected to our company should thrive and should be on a pathway towards growth and fulfillment because they're connected to our company. A not, then we have to go back and say what? Why is that, you know? So, I think that message again, very universal and achieved a certain level of visibility with the first book, way beyond what most books do. But I think there's a level even beyond that that we're, with this edition of the book to reach to even a wider audience that really needs it. You know, the world really needs this message.
Bob: Raj, I wanted to ask a question. You shared with me a couple of times when you got exposed to Truly Human Leadership, how it impacted your view of kind of Conscious Capitalism. With 10 years now of the evolution of Conscious Capitalism, the evolution of Truly Human Leadership, where do these align and where is there more power, if you could bring the two thoughts together? Conscious Capitalism. Truly Human Leadership. Where's the power of those two coming together?
Raj: When I first got to know you, Bob, and became exposed to the Barry-Wehmiller story, I realized that it was a deepening of the Conscious Capitalism pillars on at least two of the four dimensions, and maybe all four really. But certainly on purpose, you know, the traditional thinking about purpose is that it's always about something you're doing for the customer, right? You're solving a customer need in a compelling way, and that's, of course, important. That's how you know you achieve viability in the marketplace by solving a real problem that customers have.
But, what I realized through Barry-Wehmiller is that your people can be your purpose as well and that in fact every company has people. And you know if you have to choose between, you should not have to choose, but between a people-centered purpose and a product-centered purpose. Well, I think the people-centered purpose always matters more. Or it comes first, right? It's like I use the analogy of an airplane with two engines. There's the people engine and there's the product engine. Now, an airplane can fly on just one engine, but ideally you want both of those working together. But if you had to pick one, you would pick the people.
Because that's universal. And so, I think that was one that purpose can be very much embedded in your people because, you know, some companies make cutting-edge things that really change people's lives. Others make products that are essential necessities, but they don't necessarily excite or inspire just by virtue of what they are, the products themselves. And so, there are many, many companies in that part of the economy, but they all have people. And when you can root your purpose in your people as well, that I think universalizes this message. So that's a big impact of Everybody Matters and Barry-Wehmiller was to say Conscious Capitalism is not a luxury good for the Whole Foods and the Patagonias of the world, that this is something that is important and works in manufacturing, you know, and not just extremely high-tech manufacturing, but sort of mainstream manufacturing, smaller companies around the world, so many, so many countries that you're in. That was one. The second one was on leadership, the traditional view of leadership and even for us in Conscious Capitalism was that it's really about what happens during working hours and how we can make that a better experience all around. But what I learned at Barry-Wehmiller is that leadership is about what happens to people in their lives and what happens to their families and what happens to their children. And the phrases that you use, leadership is the stewardship of the lives entrusted to us. Everybody is somebody's precious child, right? We measure success by the way we touch the lives of people. I mean, these are all very profound statements, and they are reframing of the sort of sacred act of leadership that you do have people's well-being and their futures in your hands, whether you choose to acknowledge that or not, and therefore, you know, treating it as that as that sacred beauty deepens the role of the leader and the impact that the leader has on people's lives. So, really expanding the scope of leadership and what it impacts or the consequences of good or bad leadership for people.
I think the culture element, as you mentioned, is pretty much in the foreground here, and of course, it's one of the four pillars, but I think recognizing that your employees are your first stakeholders and if you don't treat them well then your customers are going to be happy and nobody's going to be happy. So, I think that's an illustration that Barry-Wehmiller provides, of the power of doing that. You know, I say that traditional businesses put profit at the center and then people are somewhere in the orbit around that. Serving the well-being of people only matters if it serves profit. But I think putting people at the center and then aligning your business around that so that your financial performance also is rooted in the fact that people are well taken care of, they're empowered and they're innovative, they're creative, they're held accountable, they're cared for. All of that I think comes together very, very powerfully.
You know, I think many businesses they say, let's focus on the numbers and then we will figure out the people side of things. I think what you do is you focus on the people, and they say we are going to make sure that the numbers also work very well, you know, but starting with the people, I think. So those are some of the learnings that I've had through this experience with Barry-Wehmiller and with you, Bob. And then, as you know, also that it really inspired me to think about business as healing, which came out of a conversation with you, I think a few years after the book was out already and you were I think on your way to Europe for another one of your whirlwind eight-day trips of seeing 15 companies and potentially acquiring eight to 10 more companies that year. And I said, Bob, last time I looked, you had 108 companies, and you had 26 children and grandchildren. And when the number of companies exceeds the number of children and grandchildren, isn't that enough? You know, don't you feel like you've done enough and certainly you have enough. And I'll never forget what you said to me. You said, Raj, I don't know how much time I have left. And you know, at the end I will not be proud of the machines we built or the money we made, but the lives that we touched. And I want to touch as many lives as we can through this empowering message, this loving message. And then I said, Bob, you are not growing a business, you are spreading a healing ministry. You know, that there are towns and there are companies that are waiting for you to come because they don't have a future without that. You know, those companies could die and those people's lives would be uprooted.
And so, that's really the idea of business as healing, that when you have a way of doing business that really makes people's lives better, gives them a future, enhances the community, you know, does all of those wonderful things, that obligation to grow. You know, you're growing for the right reasons because you've got a healing morality and a message and a way of being that people need. The suffering is real out there. Many companies have a compulsion to grow. You know, we have to add, you know, 10-20% every year. We just have to keep doing it. We have to increase margins. We cut costs and you know. So, it just becomes like a, you know, a never-ending sort of a treadmill. People get more and more stressed out and burned out, and it's very ego-driven. It's like what I call empire-building energy. You know, there's no end to energy because it doesn't matter, you conquer the whole world, you still think you don't have enough. You know, whereas the healing ministry is very different than the empire building. You know, here you're spreading love and care and reducing suffering in the world. So that was a very, very powerful realization for me, which then led to the book The Healing Organization, where Barry-Wehmiller is one of about 22 stories of companies that are, in a way, following that. They're all, each of them, are doing it in somewhat different ways and some are focusing on healing the customers or their environment or whatever it might be but that meta frame of healing became very central to my thinking about business as a result of that experience.
Bob: Yeah. You know, Raj, thank you for sharing that. That was beautiful. And you know, because you come from a totally different background from us, but it so much aligns the fundamentals of your journey and my journey, you know, and as you know, we summarize it, you know, I remember and you captured it, but when I was interviewed by some organizational development professors for an hour and a half, and at the end of it, they said you're the first CEO that never talked about your product. And I said, I've been talking about our product for the last hour and a half. It's our people. I won't go to my grave proud of the machinery we built. I'll go to my grave proud of the people who built that machinery, which caught them completely off guard because we tend to define our companies as our product.
And to me, what we've done is change, you know, regardless of your economic model, whether you're the plumber, you're creating plumbing fixtures or et cetera, or life-saving drugs, you know, how do you inspire people to bring their gifts, share their gifts and go home at night feeling that who they are and what they do matters. It doesn't matter what your product is; it matters how you treat your people and give them a sense of meaning as they come together. So again, people, purpose and performance, it starts with people. Around a purpose that inspires them. And then we have to create value. If we don't create economic and human value, we'll hurt our people. And so, keeping those three principles in balance, OK, because it's not one at the expense to the other. They actually feed each . to me, it's not about meeting the customer's needs. I mean, obviously you need to do that to perform, OK, that's the vote of the market.
And you know, to me, you again, you mentioned also our overriding principle that came to s because we have a society that defines success as money, power and position. And it doesn't matter how you get it, as long as it's legal, because then you can write checks to charity and everybody will say you're a in your journey, because we have a society around money, power and position. A will profoundly impact their health and profoundly impact the way they go home and treat their families. And so, the healing power you helped us see of caring for people. Again, the business model you choose you need a good business model to give your people a good future. That's where I think it's important. In all my discussions since we wrote the book, I don't see many people thinking about: Is your business model giving your people a grounded sense of hope for the future? If you're not meeting the need in society, you will lose. You know, you will lose the economic opportunity, and you'll end up hurting people. OK, so in that the market values and then you've got to have a culture that inspires people to embrace that purpose. And again, it rises above that we make a life-saving or we repair tires. OK, it is about giving people a sense that who they are and what they do matters. And when you do that, it profoundly affects their life, which never occurred to me. Again, that is the biggest revelation.
My education never taught me that the way I would run Barry-Wehmiller would affect people's health or affect people's, you know, personal life. But 95% of the feedback, which astounds us yet today, 95% of the feedback we get in our journey is how our leadership model affects their marriage, their relationship with their kids, their health, their view of life. So, I think the healing power of Truly Human Leadership so aligns with your thinking. And it's much more, you know, again, the business model is the engine. You need a well-designed engine, but the culture is the premium fuel that allows that engine to perform to its potential. And I think that was a huge learning for us. And again, we have a society where we talk about economic prosperity, but we need an equal dialogue on human prosperity because I thought if I paid you fairly with a decent benefit package and you gave me your gifts for your particular role, that was the economic exchange. And that to me dramatically understates the significance of the relationship when you spend 40 hours a week in my care, the impact we make on you and your life.
So again, I think, Raj, we together we have learned so much that could every part of society, in every part of the world, we see the same issue. We just don't know how to care, which leads me because you're a professor, and I came to the realization and I think you agree with me. Until we change education, we will never solve this. We're going to constantly be putting band-aids on cancer. Foundation to cure these issues we face in the world is education needs to bring in human skills with academic skills from kindergarten through graduate s, so people learn to live together and see the beauty and diversity, not the conflict and diversity. To live in this beautifully diverse world and let that create the beauty of the world, not the conflict of the world. So teaching human skills, which we've learned, which you know is empathetic listening, how to see the goodness in others, recognition and celebration, and then culture of service, seizing the opportunity to serve others, When we began teaching those around the world, the impact was profound. So again, as you know, since we wrote the book 10 years ago, our major effort now is to motivate education to a higher calling, to create tomorrow's leaders who have these human skills to care for the people that they will impact in life, whether it's at home, at work, in the community and that will heal these issues we are seeing every day in our world of conflict.
Raj: Yeah. And that's been a very powerful addition, I think, to what Barry-Wehmiller has been doing in the world in the last decade. So, I think that's an important part of the story that we're adding into this second edition.
Bob: Yes. There was a presidential candidate who talked a lot about socialism and they found young people actually were interested in socialism. So, the CEO Roundtable came out with a very large statement in the Wall Street Journal and said, in essence, said, we need to think about more than just the shareholder, you know, the Milton Friedman shareholder supremacy idea. And these are, I know some of these gentlemen, they're But the problem is you can't ask people to care. You have to teach them how to care. So again, you can't say we as companies need to start caring about the people. OK, does that mean I need to pay them more? Does, you know, Caring is so important in every phase of our life, not just at work, at home, in our communities. And so again, when Bill Ury came and visited the world peace negotiator from Harvard and after two days of talking to our people said he saw the answer to world peace in our company. And I said, Bill, how could you possibly come to a manufacturing company and see the answer to world peace? And he said something that aligns to everything we're saying, he said, I saw a place where people genuinely care for each other That's a powerful statement of the healing power when people learn the skills of caring, because caring is contagious. When people feel cared for, it releases in them the capacity to care for others. So, I think Bill's statement has been an inspiration for me that then we look at the issues we face in the world today, we simply don't know how to care for others.
Brent: You know, Raj, do you feel like there's an impact being made right now to change the way business education is taught and to bring in some of these skills that are quote unquote soft skills to train the leaders of tomorrow?
Raj: Yes, I mean that conversation is ongoing and there are multiple parallels efforts and groups of people that are working on those kinds of things. And we're part of the effort with Michael Person and Fordham, as you know, with the humanistic leadership. And then of course, there's the Club of Rome, there's the Jesuit business schools. So, my focus has been more on business schools changing the way that we teach business students, and that includes economics, management and even law. I mean, there's some statistic that 20-30 million people graduate every year with degrees in one of those subjects. And they're all learning a very narrow and ultimately harmful way of thinking about work, about business, about economics and about leadership. And so, yes, teaching people how to care is a very important piece of that. But also, what is the purpose of business, right? And what is the understanding of what is a human being? That the understanding of economics is that we are just purely individual, self-interested, materialistic and short term, right? And that all decisions we make are rooted in that understanding of human beings, and that's how we get profit maximization as the purpose of business.
So again, as Conscious Capitalism, you know, we've got a much broader view of that, and that's I think aligned with human nature. And I think what Barry-Wehmiller is doing as well is also aligned with the better angels of our nature, right? We're bringing out that altruism, we're bringing out that love, we're bringing out that sense of shared, you know, destiny. Because you can do the opposite. You can create a climate of fear, and everybody is out for themselves and nobody is helping anybody else. And, you know, that can happen too. We are, as human beings, susceptible to that as well. So yes, we are very focused on that, but we are part of these different movements that are trying to fundamentally reinvent, in our case, business education, because I think we're doing a lot more harm than good with the way that we are teaching people, and it's not aligned with what the world needs. And it's not aligned with human nature, you know. So, those are two pretty fundamental things.
So, it's a large hill to climb because the status quo is always well entrenched in the top business schools. Certainly the top 20 business schools, you know, tend to be somewhat complacent in that they have plenty of applicants. And they don't see a problem. But, I was just with a Harvard Business School professor last weekend at a retreat in California, and she said half the graduating class last year does not have a job. And this is Harvard Business School. OK, so there is, there's a problem for a variety of reasons. I mean, there's AI and there's everything, tariffs and whatever it is. But still, you know, maybe there'll be a sense of urgency all around, even with the top tier business schools to say, yeah, we do need to fundamentally re-examine what we're doing, and it's not just about teaching people how to get the highest possible paying job, but how to ultimately align what we are doing with what's good for the world and what's good for people. That's I think ultimately what our goal should be in all education. And certainly in business education. So yeah, it's a big, big part of our priorities now, even for Conscious Capitalism, Inc. CCI also is now focusing more on the education side of things because, as you've recognized, Bob, that's where the problem begins, where we plant the seeds. It's very hard to get people to unlearn something that they learned for many, many years, you know, people have a tougher time doing that. So, we have to start. And now you're also going into the high schools, you know, we haven't gotten to that all, you know, at this point, but that's also important.
Bob: Raj, again, given the wisdom of what you've learned and can talk about, one of the things that I think is driving this is we have a society where success is money, power and position. OK, that's how we define success. So, our education system wanting people to be in quote successful and their parents want their kids to be successful, and we send them to schools so that they can be successful, which is a monetary position definition. OK, it's not whether they're living life fully in service of others. It is defined by this singular focus on I became president of this or I became chancellor of that or I became a doctor. And so, when our society defines success as money, power and position and when writing checks to charity is viewed as a tremendous act of charity overpowering the way that you’ve treated people to get that money, power and position. It really is a total shift in our society about what does a life of meaning and purpose really mean? Is it that you became president of a large organization and we, and you now give to the cancer society. Is that really success in life?
Because again, we have the most prosperous economy in our history. And this path we've been on has created the highest level of depression, anxiety and suicide, where 80% of all people feel they work for a company that doesn't care about them. To me, education has got to look back at what is the purpose? OK, the purpose should be to create leaders with the skills and courage to care at home, in their community, at work, giving people, yeah, what we've learned almost accidentally is that the human skills of listening without judgment, seeing the goodness in others and moving from me to we that we actually care for others creates the foundation of a society that we all want for ourselves and our kids. But we're on this. It's really about position, money and power. If you get that, you've led a successful life. That's what we hold up and introduce people to. OK, can somebody who is a machinist who does an exceptional job of running a machine tool and is good to the people that he worked with, isn't that an incredibly successful life?
OK, so again, I think the foundation of education, which was originally just simply so people would have the ability to have a democracy that they had the ability to vote with wisdom, you know, and inform society to have a democracy missed the point. We needed to give people these skills to live together in the beauty of society and to see others, you know as they want to be seen themselves. So again, what we've learned in the last 10 years is the way we see people affects the way we treat people. If we see people in our organization as engineers, accountants, machinists, receptionists, you know, marketing team members. We may be nice, but we treat them as functions. Key thing that our book hopes to do is to reverse that lens, which happened to me at a wedding, and to see the people in our span of care as somebody's precious child who simply want to know they matter and they want to feel safe in your care, that they have a future. That is the ultimate degree of success. But our society does not do that. It celebrates financial power and position, not the way we treat people. And we need a foundational shift in the way we see what does the successful life look like.
Brent: You know, Bob, how would you say that the book, this new version of the book, helps to accomplish redefining success in business and changing the game of business?
Bob: Dramatic change the game is the way we see people. I can use an example in sports. Steve Jones, high school football coach in Wisconsin, read my book, wanted to meet me. We met in Green Bay, discussion about his high school football coaching and I said to him, Steve, the only thing that concerns me is in sports, we have winners and we have losers. How do you coach young men, in this case football, about winning and losing? And without a hesitation, Steve said something I will never forget. We don't. We teach them play your position well for your fellow team members, and they won 72 games in a row and five out of six state championships. OK, that is Truly Human Leadership. So, I always thought, and that was a big one. I thought you played your position well for your career, for your advancement, for your reviews, for so you become the leader, the manager. That's why you did it, for you. If we want to move from a me centric world, it's all about me to what should be it's all about we that we actually care for each other as Bill talked about. That metaphor in sports, play your position well for your fellow team members. If everybody in all 12,000 of our team members shows up each day and they look at Bill on one side and Mary on the other side and said, I need to play my position well because it will give a future for Bill and Mary. And that is a profound difference in the way we see the world.
One of the things that's going on today in our society that is incredibly destructive is using people to achieve financial results, the layoffs occurring in very profitable companies, tens of thousands of people told one day, sorry, but we're gonna have to let you go because we need to improve our profitability. OK, that is a horrible message. The psychological damage is on to people when we do that, because if we see people as functions and our goal is profitability. I mean, honestly, I was taught that's just what you do. You downsize, right-size, you know, and it's healthy to do that occasionally. And I see it every day today, and even the government, the way we treat people as functions, not somebody's precious child results in a destruction of human value to create economic value. There's a higher calling to business than profitability, share price growth. You know, it's the human side that needs to be in balance. Again, you can create economic and human value in harmony. Right now one is at the expense of the other, and we are destroying our cultures because people feel used, not cared for. And they go home, that stress and they're not the best husband, wife, mother, father, citizen and the anger we see.
And again, Tom Friedman said it beautifully, more than a poverty of money in this country, we have a poverty of dignity. And when people don't feel valued, they feel used, which is what we do with people in companies. We use people to achieve goals, they feel a sense of humiliation, and when they feel a sense of humiliation, you'll see anger and unrest like you've never seen before. What are we seeing in all parts of the world in our society? Anger and unrest. And we can't, and we don't know what to do about it. Is it more law enforcement officers, OK? Or is the foundation is we simply don't know how to care for each other?
We have a very me-centric world, and what we've been blessed with is a way to go from me-centric to we-centric and to create human and economic value in harmony, not one at the expense of the other. OK, in harmony. But again, you can only be good to your people if you have a good business model. It's not about being nice any more than parenting is about being nice. It's about profoundly giving those people in your care a grounded sense of hope for the future. And letting them know that the role they play matters and who they are matters. And we could heal this brokenness we're feeling in the world, and the foundation is education. But again, education is oriented towards the traditional thought that success is money, power and position, and you need a good education to have that, but true success is living life fully, sharing your gifts in service of others.
Brent: What's your hope for Everybody Matters as it re-enters the world?
Raj: As I said earlier, I think the message is universal, applies to every industry, every context, every sector of the economy, every size of organization, and therefore I hope that the book breaks through to that level of consciousness and wide awareness, because I think the content within the book was already powerful and now it's even more honed and expanded. So, there's a lot there for everybody to use, and it's very practical. That's one of the things people have always loved about this book is you can take it and right away start doing things. You know you can start applying a lot of those lessons.
So, that is my hope, and I think it's, I also wanted not only to educate but to awaken and I think the book is effective at opening people's hearts. You know, I think what I say is in my business education, I know, Bob, you had an undergrad and a grad. So, you also had about six years of business education, and I had an MBA and a PhD, also six years of business education. And in all those years, it was all about the head and the wallet, right? It's all the numbers, the theories, the frameworks, right? And everything goes to the bottom line. And you completely bypass the heart and your soul and your spirit, the human in between.
And my hope is that this book connects to the human in between. Yes, we need the head, right? We need the financial intelligence, right? And we need the analytical intelligence, but we also need our hearts and our souls, right, to be connected. And so, I want this book to awaken people and to connect them to their hearts, to, in a way, go through the journey that Bob had when he went through the wedding experience and the church experience. And those, you know, wonderful thing about human beings is that we don't have, we can learn from each other's journeys and experiences. So that could potentially awaken somebody else's heart to that realization that, yes, everybody is somebody's precious child, you know? And I think Bob's own journey of living life and leading in a way that he was taught, but that wasn't him. And I think a lot of that came from Bob's mother, right? Leading with love. And he started to become more of himself over time, you know? And I think, so, I have a book coming out in January, which is about know yourself, love yourself and be yourself. And I think Bob was, in a way, without realizing it, on that journey as well, when he became himself and when he started to lead with his heart and authenticity, that's when the power opened up, right? Before that it was all analytical and you know, numbers based. And so, I think this book has the possibility to do that. It’s emotionally grounded and resonant and capable of moving people. You know, I've seen of course Bob speak many times and he's in tears every time he speaks, and I hope that the book will also touch people's hearts indirectly in that way. And that ultimately, I think is where transformation happens. You can get all the ideas in your head, but ultimately, until you're touched in your soul, in your heart, you're not really going to shift very much, you know? So, I think that's what
this book is capable of doing, and that's what I'm hoping that will happen this time.
Bob: So Raj, I think that's absolutely beautiful. You know, cause we come from two totally different journeys, but we've ended up in the same place, which enriches it, validates each other. But you know, I think my hope for the new addition, a
nd I couldn't be more proud of this new edition and how we've articulated our journey in the last ten years to add to the original book. But there's no question in my mind, with all the speeches I've given around the world and the reaction I've, that some higher power has blessed with the vision of the way the world was meant to be. People genuinely care for each other, to take this blessing I've been given and make sure that we share it in the world in a way in which they can embrace it. OK.
And again, this transformation is going to begin with education to give people those human skills and those academic skills that together they can be good leaders in every part of their life, bring those gifts to the world in a way that impacts others, not just your success. My hope is that the wisdom that you have brought, that our team has brought, that our journey has brought captured in this book equally become a book that will lay the foundation to transform from using people to achieve results that we're not giving people a theory of the way it should be, we're sharing people what we've been blessed with, OK, that we're actually doing and the feedback.
It still amazes me to this day that every visitor we get to our operations from all over the world, from McKinsey, Simon, to you and Bill Ury, the overwhelming statement is I've never seen anything like this. And as Simon said, I'm no longer a nutty idealist. I've just seen what I dream of. And if it exists, it must be possible. All we're trying to make sure is that A. that we continue to live and advance our stewardship of the people in our care, and to start healing this poverty of dignity. Not poverty of money, but poverty of dignity so that we can live in a society where everybody matters.