Homa Bahrami
Description: Homa Bahrami is a Senior Lecturer at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, where she researches organizational behavior and leadership in dynamic environments. Her work focuses on how companies and individuals can remain agile and adaptable in rapidly changing landscapes. In this episode, we dive into the concept of "super-flexibility" and how it's essential for navigating the modern business world, from startups to large enterprises. Homa shares insights on the shift from traditional, stable organizations to fluid, adaptable structures, the importance of a scientific mindset in entrepreneurship, and how the dot-com boom and the rise of AI have shaped Silicon Valley's unique culture. She also offers invaluable advice for young professionals building portfolio careers and the importance of cross-generational mentorship in an ever-evolving global landscape.
Websites:
Publications:
Super-Flexibility for Real-Time Adaptation
Adaptive DNA and Real-Time Leadership
Books:
Super-Flexibility for Knowledge Enterprises: A Toolkit for Dynamic Adaptation
Mentions:
Show Notes:
[0:04] Introduction to Professor Hama Barami
[5:28] Research Journey in Organizational Behavior
[9:27] Transition to Silicon Valley
[25:33] Exploring Super Flexibility
[29:34] The Impact of Size on Organizations
[36:02] Balancing Consistency and Adaptability
[47:07] Embracing Change in Leadership
[54:08] Advice for the Next Generations
[1:00:43] Insights from History and Culture
[1:05:05] Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Unedited AI Generated Transcript:
Brent:
[0:01] Welcome, Professor Homa Bahrami. Thank you for coming on today.
Homa:
[0:05] Thank you so much for having me.
Keller:
[0:07] We'd love to start off by hearing a little bit more about why you're passionate about organizational behavior and leadership in dynamic environments.
Homa:
[0:14] You know, it's a great question, and I've given it a lot of thoughts. There was no single event or moment that I just sort of woke up and thought, you know, I'm interested in this topic. But it was a series of coincidences, particularly during my time as a graduate student. When I was doing a summer internship, when I was working as a research assistant with some of the professors, I really became very, very interested in how you put together large numbers of people to work based on a common goal and a common direction.
Homa:
[0:53] The companies I looked at both for my field research, for my PhD work, and as an intern, but all large organizations. I was a very naive, young student with very little exposure and experience. And I just found it really fascinating how people interacted, the rise of conflict, political maneuverings. And it just sort of made me very curious about, how do you take a large group of people? Because as I said, at the time, I wasn't working in the startup ecosystem. It was mainly large established companies. And I became very intrigued with what does it take to put these large numbers of people to work on a common assignment with a common vision moving in the same direction, like a flock of birds moving in the same direction. So that sort of became a little seed in my mind that said, you know, this is kind of interesting. How do they do this? How does it work? What are the factors that contribute to this? And then my PhD work focused on how you organize these large systems and what are the contributing factors. So the companies I looked at, I did my PhD work in England and I looked at 21 multinational organizations and companies like BP.
Homa:
[2:21] Cadbury Schweppes, Shell, the industrial European giants of the age. And it really was fascinating because I was interested to see the balance between leadership choices and contingency factors. Size, industry, strategy, et cetera. And so it was those series of cumulative experiences, I would say, that really fascinated me. And it just became a sort of focal area of interest.
Brent:
[2:52] Yeah. And when you were doing the research on the public companies, you said you had the PhD was about 20-ish companies. How do you conduct that research without being in the boardroom or actually working with the companies?
Homa:
[3:05] Well, it's a really good question, Brent. I was very fortunate that I spent a lot of time communicating and touching base with a lot of senior leaders to get permission to do this research.
Homa:
[3:20] You know, it's not every day that they're going to open up their doors and say, please come in and take a look inside our company. So, a lot of my time was invested at the front end, interacting with them, telling them what the research is about, who I was, why this made sense. And then I basically said, you know, I'm happy to share the results of my findings, come here and give some seminars to whoever you choose. So there was a basis for kind of reciprocity that we also established. So I don't want to make it look like really easy because access for a researcher is a really important point. But I learned the value of persistence and sort of connecting with multiple players in the organization and not putting your eggs just in one basket. I typically would start with the CEO and say, I'm a PhD student. I'm trying to do this research. Who do you suggest amongst your leadership team I should connect with? And then they would typically give me several names and I would connect up with them and so on and so forth. So it would take quite a bit of time up front to really negotiate these access points. But as I said, I think persistence matters. And I think some of the times when I look at...
Homa:
[4:42] The younger generation today, I find that, you know, there's a sense of impatience. You know, I want this now. And, you know, if you really are interested in something, you should set your expectations that it's going to take a while to do this. And I also have many companies that said, no, this is not something we want to sign up for. So that's the other thing. You've got to be willing for many, many rejections and not go to pieces when you get a no. But that's how I basically went about doing it. And I had fantastic mentors who basically my PhD advisors, the faculty, really gave me good advice that, you know, this is going to be hard. So you really better start early and you better be patient and you better cover a lot of territory.
Homa:
[5:28] So that's really became the basis. Yeah.
Brent:
[5:32] We've experienced very similar things with the podcast. Certainly.
Keller:
[5:37] Could you describe the transition from working with large multinationals in Europe and especially said industry focused companies to working in the Bay and working on startups and any of the similarities, I guess, or differences between those two dynamics?
Homa:
[5:51] So after I finished my PhD, I was very fortunate. I came over for the first time ever to the U.S. To go to Stanford Business School and I became a visiting scholar and a research associate, if you like, a postdoc. And I really was very, very curious at the time about Silicon Valley. This was the very early days of Silicon Valley. Apple was just a few years old. Apple, Oracle, many of the industrial giants of today. And so I was very curious. I was very fortunate. I had the opportunity to do that. And that brought me over to California and to Silicon Valley. And it was like arriving on a different planet. I thought I knew something about organizations and how you organize them and how people behave. And I came here and it was it was this sort of entrepreneurial Petri dish, you know, that really was fascinating. Just to give you an example, one of the early people I met, Sandy Lerner, she became the co-founder of Cisco, but she was the IT manager at the time at Stanford Business School. And she gave me my first email account. So I kind of remember talking to her about the rise of Cisco. I mean, Cisco at the time was just an idea.
Homa:
[7:15] And so it just was an incredibly exciting time. I describe it as being in a ringside seat and watching two great boxes, you know, box and, you know, seeing all these investors and startups and entrepreneurs and new ideas, new thinking was just incredibly stimulating. So I thought I would be here for just a short time do the postdoc and then go back to England but you know then I ended up staying and going to Berkeley and during the time I was a.
Homa:
[7:53] Research associate at Stanford. There were many, many research seminars at Berkeley. And there's a very close relationship between the two schools in the sense of faculty exchange, PhD students, exposure to different ideas. So I used to go to some of these seminars at Berkeley. And of course, I met some of the Berkeley organizational behavior faculty, and particularly the chair of the department, Barry Storr. He's a very well-known social psychologist, and his work had really impacted me during my time as a PhD student. And so, one day, Barry called me and said, I don't know if you're interested or not, but there's an opportunity. We're looking for someone to teach our introductory organizational behavior class at Berkeley. At the time, it wasn't called Haas. It was Haas School of Business Administration.
Homa:
[8:52] And I thought, what a fantastic idea. You know, this is a great opportunity. At the time, I was also working on the fifth edition of a seminal textbook with Professor Harold Levitt, who was my mentor at Stanford Business School. And so I thought, how exciting. I can test drive some of these ideas that we're writing about in this textbook. And so that became the basis of joining the Berkeley faculty. And I started teaching these introductory organizational behavior classes to undergraduates.
Homa:
[9:28] So that was a really fascinating opportunity for me, as I said, to test drive a lot of the textbook ideas, some of the things I'd learned, and just getting some feedback from students, seeing what resonated, what didn't resonate. That became the, the origin if you like yeah of going to berkeley and for a couple of years i had a joint appointment between the two schools i continued my work as a research associate at stanford and then i was teaching at berkeley so that's how the whole thing unfolded.
Keller:
[10:00] Yeah that's amazing you talk about like the early days of silicon valley as a lot of excitement do you think that same energy has continued today, when you think about Silicon Valley now, do you still feel that same way? Or is it more exciting now?
Homa:
[10:17] It depends how you define excitement. In those days, it was a little bit like the Wild West. It was early days. They won so many industries, so many companies. So it was a different set of people's different attitude different way of looking at things it was you know you met a lot of those original pioneers you know I would imagine if you think about the original pioneers who came out west versus people who sort of followed later you know I would use that similar analogy a big inflection point honestly came with the internet and particularly the dot-com boom, because the dot-com boom in the sort of 99-2000 timeframe really changed this landscape and moved it from being very sort of, if you like, more of a regional phenomena to becoming a global phenomena. Suddenly, everybody from all over the world, all over, you know, the United States would come here because they felt, you know, I'm going to start a business and there's plenty of opportunity, there's plenty of money, so I'm going to go to Silicon Valley. So, the culture changed. It's the way I would imagine a small village growing into a big city.
Homa:
[11:42] You started having many more people, as I said, people coming from very different parts of the world, different ecosystems. It also was a time when things moved from essentially B2B, business-to-business innovation, beginnings of B2C. This was the early days of the internet, and I think it was fascinating to see the different types of entrepreneurs that were focusing on B2C, for example, business-to-consumer, compared to the earlier generation, if you like, who were more B2B business to business. So it just became a bigger, more complex, multi-layered ecosystem.
Homa:
[12:35] And I think that was the way I would, I can remember it sort of thinking, wow, everybody's coming here. You know, in the early days, there were people who were really passionate about an idea. Oh, I want to change the world. I want to make a difference. We also started seeing people who came and said their motivation was different. It was like, hey, I want to make a lot of money. And, you know, this is the place where gold, you know, streets make paved with gold. So you also started seeing different motivational elements coming into the picture from different entrepreneurs. And it became, as I said, much more global, much more multicultural. So that's what I remember from that key inflection point.
Brent:
[13:19] Yeah. And before we dive into the idea of super fluidity, had that term or that idea been resonating with you since your PhD work and early research work? Or how did that come about?
Homa:
[13:35] It's a great question. A number of different factors. So one of the first things I realized when I came here from England to Silicon Valley was the biggest difference between these two ecosystems was attitude towards change, risk, and uncertainty.
Homa:
[13:57] Many of the companies I was looking at in the UK were more the backbone of the industrial age. There were older companies, older industries that'd been around for a while. And change was something that, you know, you dealt with once in a while. You know, once in a while, you launched a new product and launched a new service, you reorganized.
Homa:
[14:21] But stability was fundamentally the norm. The biggest difference with Silicon Valley, as I envisioned it at the time was attitude towards change. Change was something to be embraced. Change was an opportunity here. And this is what differentiates entrepreneurs from others. You know, they view change as an opportunity to be grasped. So that was one key element. The second one was my co-author, Stuart Evans, who is now at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley campus. He had done his PhD work at the same time as me in the UK, but looking at the notion of flexibility in organizations and particularly in developing strategies. And so he and I sort of combined our joint interest in this topic of change, adaptation, flexibility. I looked at it more through the lens of organization people. He looked at it more through the lens of technology and strategy. And so that became the original genesis of this work.
Homa:
[15:36] And I would say, if it weren't for Stuart's original work, I'm not sure if I would have called it super flexibility, but that became such a natural thing to say. And this is why I always recommend to my students as well, I just say creativity a lot of the time comes from cross-pollination. When you have two different people, three different people, a whole team of people with multiple ideas, different points of view coming together and brainstorming, and out of that comes something new. And I would say that was the basis for the work on super flexibilities when the two of us started joining forces and sort of looking at this topic through different lenses and different disciplinary perspectives. And in fact, Stuart had a working paper, a white paper that was published. He was working at SRI, Stanford Research Institute at the time. And his working paper, I think, was called Flexibility in Business or something along those lines. And so, that really intrigued me and that gave me the original kernel of the idea that perhaps it is, you know, we have to look at this topic through this lens.
Brent:
[16:52] Yeah. So, could we define it now?
Homa:
[16:56] You know, I would say that one of the things, I hear so many people say, oh, we need flexibility, we need flexibility, but people don't actually describe what it means in practice. You know, we're used to too many generalities and abstract concepts and to make them really practical and actionable, which is my goal. You know, one of the things I really feel passionate about is to link field research theory with practice and application. I think that's one of my big passions is how do I do that? And so, when you look at flexibility and you try to say, okay, how do I explain to an entrepreneur? How do I explain to an executive? How do I explain to a professional what this means for them? That became the origin of this word super flexibility because flexibility has been studied in so many different disciplines.
Homa:
[17:57] Psychology, strategy, operations research, finance, military strategy, you name it. This topic of economics, this notion of flexibility has been examined research in these very different disciplines. And each one of them has come up with a sort of a nuanced way of describing being flexibility. So, for example, in child psychology, the notion of resilience, as a form of flexibility is very paramount. If you go to the field of finance, we talk about hedging, hedging your bets, for example, you know, spreading your risk, diversifying your asset base. If you go to the field of operations research, robustness is viewed as a really important principle. So, really, our goal was to look at all these different descriptions and nuances of flexibility and translate them, if you like, reinterpret them for practical application in the world of business. And that became the genesis of the word super flexibility.
Homa:
[19:17] So, and we can talk about that, you know, specifically what they mean. For example, the notion of agility, very important in software development. You know, the Agile Manifesto came about in the early 2000s. So, they focused on agility in that context. As I said, resilience in the field of psychology, hedging in finance, robustness in operations research, plasticity in neuroscience. So, I think we have to really become much more rigorous in our definition of flexibility and not just throw this word around without exactly defining what it means. So that became, the platform, if you like, the foundation of that word.
Keller:
[20:03] And when you were conducting field research with the startups, especially around like organizational dynamics, I would think, and this could be a very naive perspective, that a lot of these startups are really focused on the tech or making their processes efficient. They're not really thinking first about how they're organizing themselves. Is that something that you've found? Or did you see that a lot of these startups actually were being really diligent about how they're breaking out different leadership roles or dynamics among themselves?
Homa:
[20:30] It's a great question. Back in 1988, I think one of our first papers was very much about strategy making in these startup high-tech sort of environments. And one of the things that struck us about how they do that, yes, they're developing products, but they're dealing with pioneering spaces. A lot of them are dealing with technologies others haven't developed or are at very early stages of invention. So to commercialize it, you need to really test drive it, develop it, prototype it. And as you do that, you get feedback. And as you get feedback, you have to recalibrate. In fact, we use the notion of recalibration as a way, one of our very first observations of how these companies developed strategies. The word recalibration became pivot. People use the word pivot all the time when they talk about startups. But that is the origin of it. I'm doing something nobody's done. I'm entering a market nobody's been to before, or I'm having a new angle on this market. I go in there. I test drive it. I get some feedback.
Homa:
[21:44] Some things work. Some things don't work. I've got to pivot and recalibrate. So, So we basically, yes, you're developing technology. Yes, you're developing a new market. But as you get feedback, just like a good scientist, you have to take that feedback and revise your hypothesis, revise your approach, revise the way you think about it. And that, I think, is a really important principle of strategy making, decision making in the tech world. And it really struck us. As I said, that was one of our early papers was, wow, these entrepreneurs think more like scientists because they're exploring new spaces. And, you know, as they get feedback, they need to revise their approach. By the way, that's why failure is highly accepted in these entrepreneurial ecosystems, because failure should be viewed as a temporary setback. Yes, we tried this approach. It didn't work. Customers didn't go for it. Early adopters didn't show up. So what do we do next? You know, how do we take what we know and revise it?
Homa:
[22:54] And even today, a big company like Amazon in their decision-making has what they call one-way door and two-way door. One-way door is where you have to be perfect before you roll it out, you implement it. Whereas a two-way door is when you can recalibrate, you can course correct, you can learn from your failures and evolve and adapt. So...
Homa:
[23:18] A very famous example of this is, of course, this is a sort of historical example, Macintosh, which was a very, very successful computer for Apple, a very successful product for Apple, launched in 1984. But Macintosh was born on the back of, if you like, a failed product, which was called Lisa. You may or may not have heard of it, but it was a computer that Apple introduced back in 1983. I remember it was like $10,000, which was a huge amount of money at the time. Many, many bells and whistles. It didn't really find a niche in its market. But then the Apple team went back and looked at what people liked about these features they liked and things they didn't like, and they revised it and they relaunched it a year later under the name Macintosh. So a very sort of early example of how this notion of pivoting, recalibrating really works in this ecosystem.
Brent:
[24:24] Would you say that experimental mindset, the ability to pivot, is the central backbone to creating a super flexible organization?
Homa:
[24:32] I would say there are, you know, and you use a keyword here, which is mindset, how you think about things. And I think there are basically three elements that are really important in thinking about entrepreneurial mindset. Number one is a spirit of curiosity.
Homa:
[24:55] You know, wanting to know, having a passion for solving a problem. It's, you know, what is commonly called a growth mindset, you know, but I call it curiosity. The second one is thinking more like a driver rather than a passenger. You know, when you work in a very big organization, a lot of the time you can feel things are happening to me. I don't have a lot of agency. I don't have a lot of control. Whereas in these entrepreneurial environments, having that driver's mindset
Homa:
[25:29] is really, really key because that's what keeps you going. You face so many different setbacks that if you don't have that mindset, you can't think as an entrepreneur. And then the third one, which brings us to a point, is what I call think like a scientist, this opportunity to learn from trial and error. The ability to take feedback and pivot your approach. Don't fall in love with your own idea too much because then, you know, if you don't get the right feedback, you might need to pivot. And I think it's really important. So I call it the scientific mindset, spirit of curiosity, and thinking like a driver. I think those three are really important ingredients of an entrepreneurial mindset.
Keller:
[26:19] And do those three ideas play into the idea of surfing fluid reality, or is that distinct in some way?
Homa:
[26:27] You know, it's interesting. Surfing fluid reality, that actually came one of my former students. We were talking about super flexibility and some of these ideas. And, you know, one day he came to me with an image of a person with a briefcase and a suit. I still remember it. This is going back several years. Riding a big sort of wave on a wave. And he said, you know, your ideas are kind of like this individual surfing this wave. Do you agree with that? And I thought that was a very powerful metaphor and a very powerful image. And so that's where I originally sort of came across that idea. It was sort of this visual of multiple waves coming in. And even today, actually, when I open some of my classes on this topic, my first slide is the image of a raft.
Homa:
[27:23] With a team in it. And, you know, I start the session by saying, you know, you can be in the raft, you have a sense of direction where you're going, which is your vision. You have a team who's there to help you basically get there. But a lot of your success depends on your flexibility, your willingness to adapt as conditions change. It may be lovely and sunny to begin with. You know, there's hurricane winds approaching, you know, an hour into your trip. So how do you pivot? How do you adapt? How do you evolve as reality changes? So when you say surfing fluid reality, that's where the idea came from. And that's the image that's sort of embedded in my mind as I think about that.
Keller:
[28:05] Yeah. I mean, we're both from Southern California, so that definitely resonates with us.
Homa:
[28:09] Yeah. And you can imagine, you know, in today's world, you know, the wave after wave comes, you know, this week it's a good week, next week is a bad week. And you've got to really basically ride the ups and downs of life, the business cycle, and organizational life. I think in the past, it was much more of a sort of linear way of thinking about things. And now it's much more of a sort of yo-yo effect. You've got to make the most of the uptimes. You've got to be resilient during downtimes and recover. So this sort of ability to go up and down and bounce back and surf, different types of waves becomes really important.
Brent:
[28:54] Throughout the life cycle of a business, like, say, since, like, VC worlds are easy to, like, example, like, going from, like, seed funding, Series A, like, going all the way up to, like, IPO, now a public company, do you advise those companies approach their flexibility differently? Because I would assume the larger companies need a bit more stability than especially at the young startups.
Homa:
[29:17] That's a really good point. You know, if you're a brand new, size basically makes a difference. You know, and there's been a lot of research that, you know, increasing size leads to three things.
Homa:
[29:31] It leads to more formalization. You know, now we have documents, we have processes. I can't just talk to you and say, hey, let's go do this. It leads to standardization. One size fits all. This is how we recruit. This is how we compensate. This is how we promote. This is how we do our performance reviews. And then the third thing that it does, it leads to specialization. So now, instead of wearing multiple hats, when you're a series zero and you are, you know, five people, you know, everybody's doing everything. You're wearing multiple hats. As you get bigger and you go through these different stages, you become more specialized. Oh, we need a marketing specialist here. We need a financial specialist there. So that specialization naturally starts creating silos.
Homa:
[30:25] You know, and as I said, formalization is no longer enough for me to talk to you. Now we have to refer to the policy. We have to refer to this process. We have to follow these rules of the game. I would say those three encapsulate a lot of the changes that basically happen. And of course, the other analogy I use is when you're brand new, it's like a brand new baby. You know, you need to do everything. Parents need to do everything for this baby because you don't have, you know, there's nothing that the baby can do. That's why founders become so important, by the way, because you are the parents and you gave birth to this baby and now you really need to take care of it. As you go through these different stages, it's like going through the toddler phase, and now you're a child, and now you're a teenager, and now you're a young adult, and you're a mature adult. And so, the nature of the beast changes. Now, it doesn't mean you can't leverage some of the same principles, but fundamentally, you have to adapt how you operate, how you lead, how you participate in decisions, how you come to decisions, how you organize. All of these elements of daily life become more specialized, if you like, more targeted, more complex.
Homa:
[31:52] That would be, you know, in a nutshell, what I would say.
Brent:
[31:56] Do you have any favorite examples of companies that have held on to their flexibility throughout that adaptation and growth period?
Homa:
[32:07] You know, I define super flexibility as this balancing act, the ability to be consistent, predictable, and stable on the one hand. As human beings, we need that. We need consistency. We need predictability. We want to know where we're going. But on the other hand, when you live in today's world, which we call the VUCA world, volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, like the surfing analogy or the raft, you have to be able to adapt and evolve and transform. So, how you deal with this balancing act is really, really important. So, I'll give you a couple of examples that a lot of viewers might be already familiar with. Let's take the example of Apple. I remember back in the 80s, Steve Jobs used to say, the vision for Apple is technology for the rest of us.
Homa:
[33:09] Which means that, you know, we are going to develop products that are so easy and intuitive to use that even, you know, my grandmother can use it. And if you look at Apple today, 40 years later, this is exactly, you know, cornerstone of how they operate. Technology, products that are intuitive, easy, simple to use. So, that hasn't changed. If you think about it, so the vision hasn't changed, the core vision or the mission of, you know, what we want to represent to the world. But on the other hand, you know, Apple's evolved, grown, the leadership, the people, processes, organizational structure, a lot of the other elements of how we operate has adapted, changed, evolved. Because obviously today it's a very different company than it was 40 years ago in terms of size, scale, diversity of products and services that it offers. Another example is Netflix. Reed Hastings, he founded the company back in 1997 with a single vision that one day the internet will be so strong that you and I can sit in our living room and with the click of a button, we can see streaming movies. But this is back in 1997. The internet was in its infancy. And how did he start the company?
Homa:
[34:39] DVDs, licensed from major studios, sent in the mail. Just think about that. So that was the initial execution strategy, although the vision was, stayed the same. I would say in general, your vision and your values, your core values of what you really care about, tend to remain consistent. And then how you organize yourself, the skill set you need, the talent pool you need, the processes you use, how you organize yourselves, all of those elements have to adapt and evolve and change. So this balancing act between the two becomes really critical for success. If you change your vision all the time, people sort of don't know where you're going. Where are we heading? It's like getting in a car or a bus, and you change your destination every two minutes. Well, the passengers are completely confused. You know, oh, I thought we were heading north. No, we're now heading east or south or west. So I think we have to, and for every leadership team, this is a key question. Where should we be consistent and stable and where should we adapt and evolve
Homa:
[35:58] and that balancing act to me is the secret source of super flexibility.
Keller:
[36:03] Yeah brett and i were talking before the the interview about a lot of these concepts reminded us of d hawk's kind of chaotic organization format i'm not sure if you're familiar but there's a lot of of consistencies we're seeing between them especially around values kind of remaining constant, but evolving around the other things that can change and really maintaining an identity through that.
Homa:
[36:27] Absolutely. I think D. Hawk's work is really interesting. I think there's a lot of relevant work that's been done in this space. As I said, my focus has been really to try to understand, the totality of this approach. I don't look just at the strategy. I don't look just at the organization. I don't look just at the teams and collaboration models. I don't just look at leadership. I try to sort of take a holistic view of this because, you know, just like when you go to the doctor, you know, they look at your totality. Who are you? You know, yes, you know, I may have a kidney problem or a liver problem or a skin problem, but they need to understand me as a whole first before they sort of zoom in and delve into the specific. And, you know, I try to look at it in that way. And I'm honestly, I think Stuart Evans and I have been very fortunate to have been based here over the past few decades. You know, we've had a very unusual opportunity to look at the evolution of this ecosystem, the evolution of startups, the evolution of venture capital, different technologies, different product and services. And so we see it through more of a sort of longitudinal lens over time, rather than taking a sort of a quick snapshot at a given moment.
Homa:
[37:55] So I just feel we've been very fortunate to have had this opportunity. And that's why we really want to share it, whether it's through our teaching or research or publications or podcasts like this that, you know, really help others benefit hopefully from this learning.
Brent:
[38:13] Yeah and do you think right now with the dominance of ai are we going do you feel like we're going in a new shift where it's like hyper flexibility hyper experimentation or just like how do you view this or contextualize it especially like looking back to 99 2000 with the dot-com boom do you see it as like a further expansion a pivot or just like how do you approach this yeah.
Homa:
[38:40] I mean honestly it's early days. You know, a seminal individual in my field, Jim March, who was at Stanford, he came up with this idea of there's two types of situations we deal with, those where we need to explore and those that we need to exploit. Those were sort of his terminology. If you're exploring things, there's a great deal of uncertainty. There's a lot of risk. There's a lot of unpredictability. That's where the scientific model really works well. It's trial and error, try it out on a small scale, experiment, learn from failure, and then exploit is opportunities that are really well-defined. And you're going in with a lot of predictability and certainty. Um, I think now we are in a very early stages of AI. I mean, obviously AI has been around for a long time in different forms, but this whole notion of gen AI, I think is really transformational. Um.
Homa:
[39:48] I have hypotheses about where we might be going, but of course, I don't have the data or the proof points because we are in these early stages. I would say right now, we're at the very early stages of exploration and experimentation, and there is so much going on. Last week, I hosted a group of Norwegian executives from a big Norwegian company who were here in Silicon Valley to learn about innovation and leading in this VUCA world. And we went to a major venture capitalist, a venture capital company, and they showed us a few of their portfolio startups that are working on AI transformations. And it was just fascinating to see the range of different options and possibilities. So I would say we're in very early stages. My prediction is that absolutely, it is going to be transformative. We're going to see the impact of it over time. I think it's going to be particularly transformative in information-intensive sectors.
Homa:
[40:57] If you think of biotech, for example, where you're looking through a massive amount of data, financial services, where you're looking at a massive amounts of data. So anything that is data-centric, and I think every business has got elements of data, but some are, you know, the core of their business is data-driven. So I think you will see a lot of that, a lot of experiments and opportunities for exploration in those sectors. I also think the other question people ask me is, will it replace us as humans? Everything will be automated. We'll have a company of one.
Homa:
[41:45] I'm not going to go there. I don't think, perhaps this is my hope that there's always a role for humans, but I think that where AI will have a big impact is in the sort of IQ or the information intensive side of the equation. But I think when we look at EQ, emotional intelligence, interpersonal skills, And that is where I think the human element basically comes in. As I said, I don't know if this is a hope or a prediction, but those are some of the ideas running through my head. I do think it'll free us up in so many ways so that we can really focus on higher value-add contributions and areas of work. But I think, honestly, it's going to be transformative. But in what ways, I think time will tell. I think this is where we need to really watch the developments really carefully. And, you know, one of my predictions, you know, one of my active areas of research right now is how technology and AI in particular are going to change organizational structures.
Homa:
[43:00] And I think it's definitely going to have a huge impact on what we call integration capability of organizations pulling together large amounts of data to create simple dashboards that whether you're the CEO or you're running a team you can easily look and see where are we at how are we doing what's working what's not working so I think it's going to have a big impact but this is an active area of research for me. In fact, I teach a course to our executive MBAs on creating effective organizations. And this is their class project, is find, go to an organization, a real organization, this is not desk research, and find a very specific AI use case and talk about how it's impacting their organizational system, how they communicate, how they do performance reviews, how they short-circuit decision-making, how they delay hierarchies, many, many different facets of how they organize. So this is their active area of research. That's why this is front and center for me right now.
Brent:
[44:16] Yeah. And one good thing I've seen to back up the fact that you might be hoping or like that some of the humans don't get replaced. A good example I saw once was the like mental health chatbots. When the user discovered it was an AI like LLM that they were talking to, the efficacy of the benefits they reaped from that chatbot went away. Right. So it's still like, so like for the mental health, like AI space, I know there's already been pushback and just, we need to keep therapy talking about human to human because like that connection is critical. So I would agree.
Homa:
[44:58] That's a great example. I mean, I think we're still human. We still have emotions, and we relate to other humans. And so, again, I don't know if this is a hope, a prediction, a combination, but I think that we really need to be very thoughtful about how AI can help humans upskill and also really automate some routine tasks that free us up to do more creative work, more interpersonal interaction, and really basically get rid of some of the routine grunt work that frees us up, hopefully. But as I said, time will tell where this is going.
Keller:
[45:48] How do you think leaders should go about, I guess, encouraging the use of AI or other types of exploration, given the fear that you mentioned that people think that it might take away their job, like if they made an AI that could do their IQ work or their grunt work really well, they don't have certainty over kind of that next stage afterwards. How should leaders navigate that and, you know, try to, while still pushing efficiency, show that this EQ or this transition, potential transition to a more EQ-centered workplace is going to happen?
Homa:
[46:20] It's a great question. And it reminds me of a CEO founder I met back in the 90s. And his motto or his strategy was, we need to make our own products obsolete before others do, before competition or newcomers or disruptors basically disrupt us. And that has always stayed with me. So my advice to those individuals is learn about AI, educate yourself, experiment with AI, and in the process, upskill yourself. Because I think at the end of the day, it's better that.
Homa:
[47:07] I disrupt myself and say, yes, I'm doing this job, but let me learn about this new technology. Let me experiment with it. Perhaps this aspect of my work that AI can really help me with today. But in the process of using it, I'm also building new skill sets that hopefully upskill my capabilities, take me up the food chain, and then I open myself up to other options and other possibilities. Don't get stuck and say, oh, I'm really good at this. This is what I do. This is what I always want to do. And as I said, the words of this founder entrepreneur, he built a very successful company, really have stayed with me.
Homa:
[47:53] Basically, disrupt yourself before others do. Because that way, again, it's that driver's mindset rather than thinking that things are happening to me.
Brent:
[48:05] Yeah and then we've talked a good amount about ai now and just kind of to get a little bit of a step back like what do you think some of the biggest challenges are right now for leaders leading organizations uh i don't know if you want to take it from like a startup perspective to a larger organization but i'm just kind of thinking through like the ai disruption is it the distributed workplace like people trying to work from home or trying to be in the office again because i know that's making a comeback or just like the general attitudes of the younger workforce needing to understand like what's my career path why am i important to this step like how is the landscape changing right now like how would you advise leaders?
Homa:
[48:51] Yeah, I mean, I think if we take your question, the last piece of your question, which is what would be my advice to young professionals charting their careers, um, First of all, I would say don't panic. There is a great set of opportunities unfolding whenever we have new anything coming about. And now we're at this key inflection point in society, I would say, where we're dealing with new technologies, including AI. We're dealing with the rise of remote work, post-COVID, a younger generation that's grown up with completely different expectations and tools and techniques.
Homa:
[49:32] Societal challenges, global tensions. So there is so much happening that I would say step number one is try to understand the big picture. Don't just zoom in on A or B or C or D. Understand, it's like looking at a jigsaw puzzle. Don't just look at this piece of the jigsaw puzzle. understand the totality. Educate yourself. Have a point of view about the state of the world, you know, as opposed to, oh my God, my job's going away. Oh, AI is taking away my job. So that would be step number one, understand. Understand the big picture. I would say secondly, realize that careers for your generation are going to be more along the lines of portfolio careers rather than a single trajectory. You know, you may start by doing A and then you may shift gears and do B. And so if you're working for a big company, don't just think of advancement as promotion up the vertical ladder. Think about horizontal, rotational opportunities. I get asked this question all the time, is, you know, what does success look like? How should I think about my career? And I would say leverage horizontal opportunities. You know, you may, as somebody was telling me the other day.
Homa:
[50:58] You know, I'm an engineer, I've been in an engineering role all my career, and I want to really learn about sustainability. So I took a lesser position in my company, because I'm not an expert on sustainability, you know, with less pay and, you know, a lesser title because I want to learn about this new space. So, that is an example of horizontal opportunity. I'm not saying take a demotion or pay, but to the extent that you have the opportunity to explore different sectors, try to take advantage of it because as companies have de-led, There's fewer vertical opportunities, but there's plenty of horizontal opportunities, especially if you're in a big company. Try to leverage if you're with a startup, you know, use the experience of a startup to build your entrepreneurial muscles. Don't just say, oh my God, this is hard work. Yes, you're in a startup. You may only be there for 18 months. Yes, you might have to work really hard during those 18 months. So make the most of any unique opportunity you have in a big company. Those horizontal opportunity in a startup, the ability to wear multiple hats and do different things and building your network in the process. So I would say it really starts with that mindset. How do I think about this? How do I think about my career? So.
Homa:
[52:24] So that would be my advice, you know, really be clear about your non-negotiables. Be clear about what you don't want to do. And, you know, what may work for your friend may not work for you because you're two different people. I think sometimes we pay too much attention to, you know, what's happening with my peer group and, oh, so-and-so did this and they got a 50% raise or they made so much money and I need to do exactly the same thing. Well, no, you're a different person. You'll have different motivations. You'll have different likes and dislikes. You'll have different strengths and improvement opportunities. So be self-aware and really think more portfolio and make the most of these basic opportunities. But I would say, you know, your earlier part of your question, we are sitting at this societal inflection point. And, you know, it's a little bit after World War I.
Homa:
[53:18] I'm a big student of history. After World War I, it was the end of empires. It was the beginning of the rise of, not the beginning, but the rise of nation states, for example. So you'll have to think and act differently if you're dealing with nation states compared to if you're dealing with empires. And I would say now it's the same thing. I would say the bottom line is change is going to be a constant as opposed to something that happens episodically. So make the most of it. Embrace it. view it as a growth opportunity, as a learning opportunity, as a development opportunity, rather than resist it because I'm outside of my comfort zone. That would be my.
Homa:
[54:02] In a nutshell, we're playing a new game and we need to embrace new rules.
Homa:
[54:09] We can't use old rules to play a new game. And that's basically what I'm seeing today.
Brent:
[54:15] Yeah. I think you may have just answered it, but is that what your advice would be to the older generation that's about to leave the workforce as they still have to transition us in this like kind of turbulent time?
Homa:
[54:28] Absolutely. I mean, my advice to the older generation is mentor the young people, help them benefit from your wisdom and experience, and learn from the younger people. So it's a two-way street. You know, the young know about the technology, the digital world that we live in today, how to navigate it. I see it with my own son, you know, and, you know, what I learned from him is incredible. He and his wife, as part of the younger generation, they're digital natives, so they kind of really are benefited enormously from being their student in that realm. But on the other hand, hopefully the younger generation can benefit from the wisdom, the experience, the pattern recognition of the older generation. So I don't think, I don't tend to think about either or, I think about and both. And, you know, my goal is how do we make the most of our respective capabilities and value-add contributions? Not this is good and this is a has-been. That is not my point of view.
Homa:
[55:38] And i have benefited by both you know when i was young you know my my older mentors you know helped me enormously um and i think now we we really need to start collaborating together and not seeing each other as oh my god they're so different and they think differently yes they think differently but let's make the most of it um as we adapt and evolve move.
Brent:
[56:02] Definitely.
Keller:
[56:03] And I really like your advice on, you know, having an opinion on the state of the world and understanding and kind of stepping away and having, you know, a viewpoint that maybe isn't so centered on yourself or your local region. Do you have any tips or kind of like fundamentals of developing that? Because I think, at least in my perspective, a lot of students tend to narrow in and they might think they have an opinion on the state of the world, but they're really only looking about, you know, 20 years in the past or regionally still in the United States or with a Western philosophy. Very few and myself included take the time to really go that far back into history or really think about how other cultures are seeing this shift and i think especially you know in the u.s like we're seeing that transition away from us being the dominant power we have to be able to position ourselves not only in understanding but also working with completely different cultures Very.
Homa:
[56:59] It's a very thoughtful question, Keller. So, number one, I'm a big fan of history. And honestly, in my spare time, people ask me, what business books do you read? I don't read business books. I like to read historical biographies because I like to understand history through the lens of individuals.
Homa:
[57:21] So, I would say dig into history. You know, there's a lot that we can learn. Your point about multiculturalism, I've always been a big fan of learning from the experience of others and not having an ethnocentric view of the world. That, hey, we're the dominant power. Our point of view is the only thing that counts. No, we're a human society made up of different cultures, different languages, different races, different assumptions, different ways of operating. And we need to cross-pollinate and learn from each other. Every time I travel anywhere, my favorite thing to do, I like to do two things. I like to people watch. I like to go in a cafe and hang around for a couple of hours. And I just like to watch people. I was in Japan for work last December, and I had one afternoon off, three hours off, one afternoon. And I thought, okay, what should I do? And a lot of people say, okay, go to a museum or do sightseeing, I found, you know, I walked around and found a cafe in a non-touristy part of Tokyo where I felt it was sort of more localized. And...
Homa:
[58:36] I just sat there and I watched people and it was fascinating because it gives you a lot of insights how they interact with each other. The other thing I like to do is I like to go to a bookstore when I'm traveling and look at not just the titles out there, if I can understand the language, but I also like to go to the children's section.
Homa:
[58:57] And I'd like to look at children's books because children's books are sort of, they have pictures rather than words. So, even if you don't speak the language, you can see the imagery and you can see how they tell stories to their young people. And I just find that fascinating. And of course, conversation, curiosity. This is where curiosity comes in. And not sort of saying, oh, you know, we are superior because we've been very successful. That mindset is, quite frankly, going to be very, very inhibiting as we enter this new world. So those are just some personal things I like to do. And I would really encourage young people to get outside of their comfort zone. Don't just go to places and talk to people that are within your circle. Within, you know, do you have a diverse set of people that really you don't have normal associations with? Again, just to give you another example, some of my most interesting conversations come whether I'm traveling or I'm here in an Uber or a Lyft, you know, I talk to the drivers.
Homa:
[1:00:13] And, you know, these may be people I don't normally see on a day-to-day basis. And, you know, during the course of a 20-minute ride or a 45-minute ride or whatever it may be, it's fascinating to get their point of view on what life is like for them, what's happening, how they see the world. So I use all of those eclectic sources of information and insight and then try
Homa:
[1:00:40] to connect the dots in my own head and sort of make sense out of it. But tapping into those very different sources, for me, has been a huge, huge source of creative insights.
Brent:
[1:00:54] Do you have any favorite biographies?
Homa:
[1:00:56] Yeah, I've just finished a biography of the last surviving grandchild of Queen Victoria. Her name was Princess Alice. She was born in 1884, and she died in 1981. So think about that time frame. She was 97 when she died. And of course, her life covered the Victorian age, the Edwardian age, World War I, post-World War I, the Depression, World War II, etc., the welfare state, post-World War II.
Homa:
[1:01:35] Fascinating. And of course, she was obviously it belonged to the elite class so you know you you learned about the experience through that lens but again i found it really fascinating um oppenheimer another one um that i read a while ago um so i it's very eclectic it just depends what grabs my attention um i also love listening to a BBC podcast called In Our Time, which is a fascinating podcast. It covers, you know, philosophy, science, history, eclectic range of topics. And again, because it's eclectic, it really exposes you to such different points of view and such different topics that I would normally not have a chance to think about or read about. So, one of the episodes I was just listening to not long ago was about Machiavelli and the Prince, the book, The Prince, written by Machiavelli back in 1500s. And I was just sort of thinking about parallels to today's world, the world we live in today, which was fascinating.
Homa:
[1:03:03] And, you know, the thing I like about In Our Time, this particular podcast, it brings together three scholars around the topic. So again, it taps into very different points of view. And those different points of view give you a really eclectic sense of, you know, how people are thinking. Basically, I think we need to avoid groupthinker.
Brent:
[1:03:26] Well, we share the same idea.
Homa:
[1:03:28] Have a wide-angle lens on a situation or a problem rather than a tiny, narrow-angle lens, because that is a supreme barrier to flexibility. How can you adapt and evolve if you only have this range of ideas or thinking?
Keller:
[1:03:46] Well, this has been a lovely conversation. As we wrap up, do you have any other advice to the listener?
Homa:
[1:03:52] You know, I have a lot of things I have to say, but let me just distill it by saying that, you know, we started with the notion of, you know, my interest in the topic and flexibility and Silicon Valley. And I would like to really end with a quote that comes from Charles Darwin, from his book, The Origin of Species, 1858, a long time ago, which I think is just as relevant, if not more relevant today. It is not the strongest or the most intelligent that ultimately survive. It's the most adaptable. So I hope your viewers, your readers, your listeners use the opportunity to really think about who they are, what makes them tick, and showcase a sense of curiosity and interest about the world that we live in and develop this sort of wide-angle lens that can help us think about problems and opportunities through different perspectives.
Homa:
[1:05:02] And I really appreciate your questions. Thank you so much.
Brent:
[1:05:05] Perfect. Thank you.
Keller:
[1:05:06] Thank you.
Homa:
[1:05:07] Thank you.