Alex: I think that it’s a mindset shift that so many people don’t think through. Ironically, this show that my wife and I are currently binging, and we’re just in love with this, that new Apple plus series with Jason Sudekis, Ted Lasso. It’s an American college football coach who goes to England to coach soccer – football. And he’s a southern gentleman, and he is a nice guy, and he doesn’t curse or yell and you know, he has no idea what he’s doing in terms of soccer. And he walks into a situation where everyone is actually out to get him. I mean, even people he doesn’t fully expect and whatever.
He kind of bumbles his way through to teach a bunch of these people that nice guys don’t always finish last. They do in the small moments. Nice guys do finish last, because it’s easy to walk over you. But if you are the way he is, and you go the long term, eventually you build an organization that’s highly effective and highly functional, because everybody actually cares about each other.
So it’s the same mentality, John. And I think that that’s something in my mind that I’m leaning on really heavily, and I’m saying more openly and talking about it with my team and in our organization. And we’ve gone through some shifts in terms of our leadership and some of the styles of our leaders are more open or accepting of that sort of approach versus the other. It’s easier for me to do that these days. And I’m seeing it shift some of the team’s attitude. And I think it’s really important that we have those kinds of conversations in the era of, “Hey, you can’t be that dis-inclusive, and mean, and stereotypical.” It’s just not going to work in this day and age. The me too movement, all this stuff going on with gender equality, voting rights, race stuff, I mean, you just can’t. And I don’t pretend to understand any of that. And the other thing I say is “I don’t understand what it’s like to be anything other than a white male, and pretty freaking privileged. So I own that. And if I step on your toes, please tell me, because I’m not trying to.” I think my reputation is that I’m trying to be a nice guy, a funny guy – somebody that people want to be around – but tell me. But at the same time, why can’t we all just treat each other with respect.
