Learn, Make, Learn
Learn, Make, Learn is two product geeks sharing qualitative & quantitative perspectives to help you make, better. Hosted by Ernest Kim and Joachim Groeger.
Learn, Make, Learn
A New Episode Format!
We introduce a new, shorter, more off-the-cuff format focused on recommendations that we hope you’ll enjoy. Also, our apologies for the audio getting a bit crunchy in spots—we’re working hard to improve our audio quality. Please do let us know what you think of this new format at LearnMakeLearn@gmail.com or on Threads @LearnMakeLearnShow.
ONE MILLION CHECKBOXES – 03:20
Are You a Checker or an Unchecker? (paywall)
The Secret Inside One Million Checkboxes
Nolan Royalty on X
‘Infinity Blade II: ClashMob’ Uses the Cloud, Crowd-Sourcing for Group-Based Gaming
ON KITCHEN FAUCETS & BRAND VALUES – 12:09
Generative AI x Product with Anmol Anubhai
That Much-Despised Apple Ad (paywall)
Design Thinking: Failure or Fall Guy?
Toolbox: How “Jobs To Be Done” Can Help You Make, Better
Touch vs Touchless Faucets
Are touchless faucets for the kitchen worth it?
Hansgrohe Select Technology
Axor Citterio Kitchen Faucet with Select Technology
Why is my LG Washing Machine using 3.6GB of data/day?
STEVE JOBS, CORNING & BEING UNREASONABLE – 29:07
The Science and History of the iPhone Screen
Founder Mode
NEUTRON JACK – 33:45
The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America―and How to Undo His Legacy
How Jack Welch’s Reign at G.E. Gave Us Elon Musk’s Twitter Feed
CLOSING – 39:14
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Rant, rave or otherwise via email at LearnMakeLearn@gmail.com or on Threads @LearnMakeLearnShow.
CREDITS
Theme: Vendla / Today Is a Good Day / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Drum hit: PREL / Musical Element 85 / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Hello, and welcome to Learn Make Learn, where we share qualitative and quantitative perspectives on products to help you make better. My name is Ernest Kim, and I'm joined by my friend and co host Joachim Gröeger. Hey Joachim, how's it going?
Joachim:It's good It's been so long We haven't done this in a while and I just realized that you know I felt like we were going to be like at episode 200 by this point, but It didn't happen. So what can you do? We're here now. we're going to try a little experiment to get talking again and recording those conversations. So I'm looking forward to it. How about you? How are you?
Ernest:Good. Yeah, I definitely feel quite rusty. We've had a bit of a summer hiatus, but it's funny you should say Episode 200. This is actually Episode 20. So we're Yeah, a factor of 10 away. But, um, and as you hinted at, we are going to bring you a new type of episode today that I'm really excited about. And Joachim, this was your brainchild. Can you share some of the thinking behind this new format?
Joachim:I like how you call it. I was like the brainchild. It wasn't a big revelation. It was just, Me realizing as I stumbled on lots of things that I was enjoying, like reading or finding little tidbits, I'd be like, Oh, I just add that to the end of an episode for learn, make, learn, but there were no episodes. So then I thought, you know, it's a lot of effort to have a big topic. So why don't we just do the last bit of the episodes as an episode and talk about more than one product each and have a little chit chat or anything that we've come across and basically make a recommendations episode, you know, Um, because I just missed these conversations and I missed, uh, having a, an outlet sort of where we could have a little back and forth. So here we are, we're giving it a try to just talk about recommendations. No big agenda other than here's some things that we stumbled on and we'll see where the conversation goes.
Ernest:I really liked this idea because, our standard, I guess, episodes do take a bit of, production, especially if, um, as we're hoping to get some more folks in for interviews. So they can be pretty time consuming. Um, and I love this idea of sort of a unplugged format where we can continue to have these conversations, as you said, with, less of that, Production requirement. but will hopefully still be interesting to the audience. and I think will hopefully help us and enable us to be a bit more timely too with our conversations because we can be a bit more responsive to things that are happening out in the world. so I, I really loved the idea and It should allow us to publish more frequently as well, which, um, is something that, uh, I think we're both excited about. Yeah,
Joachim:That's, that's the, that's the hope that we can just hop onto a squad cast session and just share, edit, and then post. And also for the listeners, have a quick little tidbit, which would be
Ernest:Yeah. Yeah. And as you just touched on, of course, we want to know what you think about this new format too. So please do share your thoughts with us at LearnMakeLearn@gmail.com or on threads@LearnMakeLearnShow, all one word. All right. So with that setup out of the way, let's move on to our recommendations. Joachim, do you have, anything you want to get us started with?
Joachim:Yeah, so I, I really. I'm between two possible paths here. So, this was a tweet thread, or, I don't know, do we call it X now? What is a Twitter thread? It's like a X thread. That just sounds inappropriate. I don't know. Anyway, I saw a thread on social media, on the platform formerly known as Twitter, that I found really, really incredible. I would like to recommend it. It is from the maker of a game called One Million Checkboxes. But I would, I don't want to give anything away, but now I want to give it away because I think it's too It's too interesting not to have a conversation about here So I think everyone should read it there's also the creator also made a video where they walk through the logic of everything and there's a lot of subtlety and Uh a little bit of technical detail. That's very very interesting. But here's kind of the summary. So 1 million check boxes is a web based game um where you have a million check boxes And when you log on to the page You are seeing in real time other players Clicking and unclicking these check boxes. So all you can do on this thing is click and click a checkbox or switch it off. So if someone clicks one on and you unclick it, they will immediately see you having someone has unclicked that box. So it's a live, real time click checkbox game. Uh, and there is no game. There's no, there's actually no points or scores or anything. It's just a grid check boxes and everyone can click on and off and at the same time. So you can also just sit there. and watch people do this. You, you need not participate in the, in the game. So the creator wakes up one morning and he's trying to rewrite some bits in the in the backend of the system, he dumps the database as a text file. So he has, he's been logging all the check marks on off and he converts that into. text ASCII code, but he's been storing it basically as bits because it's just zeros and ones, right? On, off. So he wants it to be compact and he got it down to like 25 kilobytes or something tiny to store a million checkboxes. So he then converts it to text for some reason. He didn't even have an idea why he turned it into ASCII, but he did. And then he'd start scrolling through it and he sees URL embedded in the text. And so he's convinced that his site has been hacked. Uh, and it's like, I think the, the, the address has like catgirls. to4. It's like, so it sounds untoward. Everything's right. He freaks out, thinks he's been hacked, does his best to verify that everything is okay with his code base. No one else has been accessing stuff. He's been the only person accessing it. And then he starts. essentially going through his text file and trying to figure out how that text found its way into, you from the check boxes got turned into text. Well, it turns out if you basically read blocks of four check marks, you can convert that to a number, that number then becomes text. And that's how the text was getting embedded using those check boxes. And so he found like an H in his text file and he could say, okay, well, these are the check boxes that represent the H. And then he would, um, Click on them to get rid of the age and then within a second it would get clicked back on to have the age back In there. So someone had a bot that was ensuring that the age was maintained there all the time. So he's now now he understands that someone has built a bot that's hitting his Website and it's basically like doing these checkboxes. So he's super curious about why you would do that so he Visits the website, it links to a Discord server, where there are about, I think he said like 20 people, he hops on, he says, hey guys, and one of the users immediately recognizes his handle and says, oh my god, you are the maker of 1 million checkpoints, he says, that's right, it's me. What is going on with the site? And they said, oh, we're just having fun. So imagine this game, it is just a screen with checkboxes. And they say to him, have you ever looked at your website on a 1000 by 1000 square square? Grid, like zoom out and make sure there's a thousand by a thousand on it. Why would I do that? Just do it. You'll see. And they have embedded images. They have embedded text. They have embedded QR codes, links. They've basically, they wrote these bots. That could translate the check boxes into anything they wanted to, including images. One of them even made the blue screen of death in honor of Microsoft, and they had basically. Use these checkboxes as a means to find other people, other like minded people who would think along the same lines and they left this cookie crumb trail for them to find each other. And I think he said when he left the Discord server there were about 60 people who had figured this out. And the website is hugely popular, got New York Times coverage and all of this stuff. But there's this very little tiny community of teenagers, they're all teenagers he figured out as well. That basically hacked his system to find each other and they used it as a communicator and he does all kinds of fun stuff Like he he doesn't throttle anyone for a bit and then they basically, um, they can animate the check boxes They had they put a full rickroll on there Like it's they're very clever and they're very funny kids um, and it's a really wonderful story and I you should still read it even though i've given away most of it, but Um, it just gives you hope I don't know. It's just really incredible, like, you know, no, the other people that find that Discord server won't have the text file format, they wouldn't be dumping it. So they would have to be thinking, I wonder if anyone has embedded a code inside of these checkboxes and I'm going to start figuring that out as an outsider. So they would have to write a script. to basically pull all the check marks and then pass that. It's just, it's just a lot of effort and they're teenagers who are having fun with this and finding each other. It's just incredible. I, I was so blown away by that story and it's, it just, I feel like it's the best of technology. It's the best of youth. It's the best of everything in this very, very constrained environment that this person knew could inspire people to do something clever. It felt very heartwarming to hear that people are still using technology for Finding each other.
Ernest:that's fantastic, I hadn't heard about this,
Joachim:Oh Yeah, um, and, Actually, broadly, there's actually a lot of other interesting stuff that emerges from this type of mechanic of getting many people to do one task, um, There was a much fancier version of that in a game called Infinity Blade 2 that was run on mobile, like on early iPhones, you know, like mid 2010s or something like that. And they had, they wanted to create these massive synchronous games where people could collaborate and do like what they do on their PCs. But mobile was nowhere near, their speeds were not what they could be. So, the creator, um, I think his name was Donald Mustard, he did a lot of work on Fortnite as well. He said, why don't we do this thing called a clash mob, where you have one mega enemy that no individual can beat and Everyone hops onto the game asynchronously and they just bash bash away try and cut this thing up and and you know There's only one life bar that everyone is contributing to driving down. So you get a sense of community But you're not having to get the full blown synchronous gameplay. It's asynchronous, but you're all linked to each other through this main big boss that you're trying to beat. So it kind of reminded me of that. This is the low fidelity version of that. So the lesson as well is like, The lower the fidelity, actually, the bigger the communication pathway can be. Whereas Infinity Blade had this, you graphics and all of that, so it was super intense. It had a very limited communication channel. It was just, I fight. But this was zeros and ones. once you give people zeros and ones, They can do magical stuff and this was proof of that. So yeah, everyone should read that and everyone should just like, remember the youth, they, they are okay. They, there are some of them out there that are really trying to do something exciting. So yeah, it's one of those that gave me a little bit of hope in the
Ernest:that's awesome, and like you mentioned, we'll provide links to the articles about this in the show notes as well,
Joachim:Yeah.
Ernest:oh, that's a great one.
Joachim:What do you have Ernest? Like, do you have, do you have thoughts about that or do you have something that's very product
Ernest:Well, I, the thing I wanted to share is actually very Very loosely tangentially related in
Joachim:I'm ready. Let's do
Ernest:well, just in that, I think another important aspect of that, of what enabled that is that it's allows you to get into the plumbing, that'd be another reason you can't do it on, I guess, the mainstream mobile platforms is that they're so locked down. Um, so the fact that. We have these wonderful technologies, um, that are still so open source and extensible and, um, allow for you to get behind the scenes on things. Um, it's what makes this whole experience possible. Um, and I, I, I guess I lament the loss of that because it, you know, these newer platforms are so locked down and are in so many cases just black boxes. Um, and, you know, you lose all. capacity for this creativity and the ability to tap into the creativity of people in the world. So it's this idea, uh, this thing I wanted to share is very tangentially related, but it's actually, um, a kitchen faucet, uh, And what, what made me think about it was actually this AI craze that we're in right now. We talked about that in our last episode where we had that fantastic interview with Anmol Anubhai about AI. And I thought she made some fantastic points. And, um, what kind of got me to it was We're on the eve of the, um, latest Apple event, actually, as we record this, we're recording on a Sunday. Tomorrow is going to be the event, um, where Apple is expected to announce the latest iPhones and share the latest on their, um, uh, latest version of iOS, which will incorporate, um, Apple intelligence as they've called it, features, um, and this is kind of coming on the heels of, um, the iPad ad that Apple had put out. Published, um, not too long ago that they actually had to pull back that featured lots of different musical instruments and artistic implements being crushed into this one, you know, slab of aluminum. Um, you know, they thought that was a good idea. And, um, It just kind of got me thinking about some of the frameworks we had talked about in the past around product creation and product innovation. You know, for example, we talked about the three lenses of innovation framework that IDEO uses where they talk about the need for human desirability, Uh, technological, uh, feasibility and then economic viability. You have to have all three of those things for a concept to be, to have a chance of being successful. Uh, we've also talked about jobs to be done, which is a framework, um, popularized by Clinton Christian, Christensen, which, um, can be very helpful. I've used both of those frameworks and I've found them to be very powerful. But What I think both of those frameworks, and I really all of the frameworks I've seen around product innovation and product creation, what they miss is the question of should we do it, you know, you know, you could say, um, IDEO's three lenses framework does help you to understand if a concept could be Be successful, right? If it delivers on those three things of this desirability, viability, feasibility, yes. Then, okay, it's, it's a potentially powerful concept, but then should we do it? We being, you know, the brand, whatever your company is, that's considering this. And if we do do it, then how should we do it? And I think the problem, what a lot of people miss is they don't bother asking that question. They just say, Oh, okay. It checks the boxes. So let's do it. And really, I think most companies don't even spend that much time thinking about it to just say, Hey, here's the successful concept. So let's do our version of it. Um, or really just a version of it that maybe costs a little bit less or just has some incremental difference around the edges, um, to justify, uh, some shelf space, at Retail. And, um, I find that really depressing because I think that's what leads us to something that I think it was Steve Jobs that talked about this, but you can just see it. So it's self evident if you go out to any retailer in this case of jobs, he was talking about the PC market, but he said, you know, we have so many options, but so little choice. And I think that's true of almost every industry. You have so many options on the shelf, but they're all just. Tiny little variations on the same exact theme. And it's because people just don't take the time to think about, okay, should we do it? And if we do do it, then what is the version of it that's true to us as a brand and that we can justify existing because we can offer some unique, uh, value on it, uh, version of it. So the, so the way that connects the faucets is, um, when we,, renovated our house a few years back and we had to, we kind of went down to the studs and we, so we had to kind of pick everything. And I'd never really spent much time thinking about kitchen faucets, but, um, I was forced to, and it ended up being pretty interesting because, um, I learned about this whole, um, category of, touch and touchless faucets. So, um, it started with touch, a company called Delta Faucets introduced the, the, first touch faucet in 2008, which was the idea behind it was instead of having to manipulate a handle, you could just touch the faucet with say the back of your hand. So if you had your hands full, something in your hands or your hands were dirty. That's probably the most common use case in the kitchen. And you've got stuff on your hands and you don't want to turn the handles and get them all gunky. So you can just touch the faucet and it'll turn the water on. Um, so Delta introduced this in 2008 and it was popular enough that their primary competitors, Moen, Kohler, et cetera, all introduced versions of that same concept. Um, and then, Just a few years later, Delta followed that up with the touchless faucet. So basically bringing the, probably the most frustrating technology in the world, which is, you know, the touch-free, uh, automated faucets that you encounter in every corporate and industrial environment that, you know, only work like half the time, brought that to the residential world. And, uh, much like the, uh, commercial versions, they use motion sensors to detect movement of your hands under the faucet. Um, and once again, all their. Competitors, um, kind of followed suit with their versions of the same products. What I came to learn, you know, as I had to kind of think about what faucet we should use in our house was that these faucets, these touch and touchless faucets have a very high failure rate. Um, the folks at the, this is I think pretty unusual. The folks at the multiple stores where we looked to purchase these things said don't buy them because they're terrible and they're going to break. there's a lot of reasons to not like them. You know, one of one is that they require either connection into main, uh, mains power or a battery. They just add a lot of complexity, but What we heard over and over again is that they're just not particularly reliable. I'll include a link to a really great Reddit thread in the show notes. Um, it's, uh, it was posted just nine months ago. And the title of the, uh, subreddit is are touchless faucets for the kitchen worth it or more hassle than they're worth. And, um, it's just in the past, uh, nine months received 146 responses and the one with the most upvotes came from a user with the name shitty plumber. That's their name. Uh, and their reply was quote, I've removed more than I've installed if that says anything unquote. Uh, so that got the most upvotes. Another plumber responded, um, and also got quite a few upvotes and they, uh, their response was if you want more things that can fail early, sure. Resolving those issues is also more expensive as a plumber. I would not ever have one in my house unquote. Um, And so, you know, we heard that a lot, uh, from retailers and yet, you know, the reason that Delta's competitors followed suit is that a lot of people found the idea appealing, right? There is something there, you know, there are those use cases where you have things on your hands and you don't want to get your faucet handles dirty. So, um, you know, How can you solve for that? I think the problem is like we've just been talking about. Delta's competitors, they all just, instead of asking the question of one, should we do it? And if we do, then what can be our unique value proposition version of this? They just basically found the easiest way to get around whatever patents Delta had established to offer their version, maybe a little bit cheaper, but what, I found was there were just a couple of exceptions to this and one was, uh, the company we ended up going with. Um, I'm going to butcher the name, it's a German brand called, uh, I believe it's something like Hansgrohe. Yeah. It's something like that. I think Americans say Hansgrohe. Yeah. Yeah.
Joachim:Oh, oh, that's, that hurts. That one hurts.
Ernest:it's, uh, Hansgrohe and then they have a, uh, kind of, uh, upper tier version of their brand called, uh, Axor or Oxor.
Joachim:Oh, okay.
Ernest:Um, it's kind of like their version of Lexus to Toyota. So we have the Axor version of this, but you can get the same thing in, um, Hans, Hansgrohe faucets as well. They call their technology select. And the What's great about it is that you can tell they just took the time to look to, to take a more considered approach to this opportunity, right? So Delta showed that there is an opportunity here around, uh, solving for this problem. Um, but what Hans Grunewald said was, okay, one of our Core values as a brand is reliability. That's something that they talk about a lot in their, in their literature is reliability. And that's something we heard from plumbers was that their products are really reliable. So they looked at this, you know, challenge and said, okay, how could we do this in a way that doesn't break, you know, like all these other brands. And. they came up with a purely mechanical solution. And it's really simple. It's basically just, they put a button on the top of the faucet and, I'll include a link in the show notes so you can see what this looks like. But, uh, They included a mechanical button. There's no batteries, no power involved, but you, it satisfies that same use case. So you have a lot of stuff, gunk on your hands. You don't want to touch the handles of your faucet. All you have to do with the back of your hand or with your elbow is press this button and it starts the water and then just shut it off. You press the button, then it'll shut it off. So. I just thought that was such a great example of a company looking at an opportunity and instead of just copying what their competitors have done, actually taking a step back and thinking, okay, what's the unique value we can bring to this, uh, and doing it in a way that's true to who we are, um, and then, because of that results in a unique solution. And, um, I. You'll see the image, but the shape of the faucet is quite unique. It's quite different. And that's a function of the fact that they had to accommodate this button, but I think they've ended up with a solution that's just much more ergonomic and really pleasant to use and invites interaction. Uh, and we've had this faucet now for, um, four years and it's been rock solid, uh, and, uh, we've just really enjoyed it. And so. I just wanted to highlight that as kind of a shout out to any folks listening who are in the business of making products to, take that moment to, to step back, you know, like all these tech companies that are now in this AI craze, right? And just. Doing what everyone else is doing, just putting their logo on it, take a step back, think about how should we do this? And then if so, how can we do this in a way that's true to our brand and delivers value in a way that's unique to our brand? Um, I think, you'll end up with a much better solution, a solution that's differentiated, um, and can, can create competitive advantage for you and your brand, not only for that specific product, but for the brand overall, like for example, you know, this Hansgrohe solution has further cemented. The brands, um, you know, overarching proposition as being a brand that's super reliable. we bought it through a shop that sells fixtures, but then, um, the people who installed it were different people, the plumbers who installed it were different, but they said the same, they were like so excited to install it. They're like, yo, this stuff is great. It's so well made. Um, So it just was really cool to see that, um, and, uh, hopefully, uh, it's something that folks realize can be applied across domains. It's not just something specific to plumbing fixtures or faucets. Uh, it's, it's under the underlying concept is relevant, um, across industries.
Joachim:As you were talking, I was thinking to myself. I mean, there's obviously a mechanical solution to this, right? There has to be something that gets you the benefit without all the stupid stuff. And I guess, yeah, you remember the bathrooms, we have to like. Hit this very hard button mainly done so that the faucet switches off after a certain amount and they're terrible,
Ernest:Yeah.
Joachim:you don't you don't need things to automatically switch off in a private home. You will switch it off It's your water right? The essence of the innovation was what you were describing. I can use the tap without touching and then kind of whittle it down and get rid of all the stuff until you're left with kind of the essence of the problem. Um, this actually reminds me of, um, I, I, another Twitter thread that I stumbled on, uh, uh, maybe a year ago. Um, I, we were shared in the show notes. It's a guy who was watching Netflix. And it kept buffering. He was just watching it and it kept buffering, and he was so perplexed. He said, I have fiber optic for God's sake, why the hell am I having to wait for these movies to stream? So, he didn't let it just slide, and started digging around and trying to figure out what was consuming his bandwidth. He figures out that his washing machine His new washing machine that he had installed, uh, was consuming about four gigs of data a day. Yeah. And it was like these downloadable wash cycles. Each wash cycle was a program that was downloaded from the cloud onto the machine. And it was doing these kind of weird daily updates. You know, when some software engineer is trying to prove that they've done something like, Oh, I updated baby clothes, wash cycle here at a push that into prod and all these washing machines receive like. Five gigs of data because they changed one line of code. And so that is such an example of the total insanity of what we're doing. Like, just make a, work on making a really good cycle, load it on there and, and move on. And now we've put. full blown computers inside of washing machines that now need broadband internet access in order to operate. It comes back to some of the stuff we would talk about in that this period of excess, right, where there's just so much of everything we were able to just load up with everything and zero concern for the actual long run consequences of garbage. And I think, you know, as interest rates come up, as things get more expensive, as there's inflation, the true innovators are the ones that are quietly trying to figure out how to do the stuff that we've gotten used to. With less crazy technology, lighter weight, less resource hungry. Um, that would be nice, we should live in that world.
Ernest:Right, right. I mean it sounds so simple, and honestly, I think it is!
Joachim:yeah, I think, yeah, I think that's it, right? It's not like this really crazy, cool, over the top thing. Um, just another tidbit that that reminds me of was, uh, CorningWare's contribution to the iPhone, since we're just before the eve of, uh, developers, uh, well, the iPhone event. Um, it reminds me of that, the story where Steve Jobs famously walked into the offices and said, this is unacceptable, holding up the phone saying that his keys had scratched up the plastic everywhere. And he says, you should be putting glass on this thing. And they said, well, we thought about doing that. It doesn't work. And then they got the guy from Corningware, he just called, the CEO got called in to meet Steve, and Steve Jobs says, this is how glass gets made, and you should be making glass that can do this thing, and then, so allegedly, Corningware's CEO said, Steve, let me teach you some fucking science. He said it that coarsely, and then they talked about, The complexity of making glass that was transparent, strong, all of those things. But he said, then he said, that's great. Six months. Can you give me glass that could be durable enough? And they combined two separate processes that got them this. It's a fascinating story. I think, I read it's a Trung Phan kind of post as his Substack. So again, we'll add that to that, but that's one of those things where, you know, the, it's a question around innovation around glass. It's an old material. We've seen it forever. It is the best material for this type of like scratch resistance, but hard to work with and requires a lot of innovation. but it turns out that they had actually the bits and pieces of that technology lying around since the 60s. It's just that they never thought to apply it in this setting. So again, it was an idea ahead of its time or didn't have an application. Which speaks to doing something right, innovative and interesting. The payoff is going to come. Yeah. Potentially past the life cycle of the CEO who was there when they said it was okay to do that work, but you should still give them kudos for having tried to do that. Right. So yeah, so it's nuts to think that Glass has enabled our high tech world right now and simple, complex, yeah.
Ernest:One, one last thing that reminds me of is a conversation I had recently with a friend who, um, is a founder of a company. You know, there's been all this talk about founder mentality going on around, which I think is so stupid, but
Joachim:Oh wait, is this founder mode versus manager mode? Is that the thing? Oh my god, we have to link to that. That's such an irritating post by Paul
Ernest:this might feel a little bit like founder mode, but I think there's a, there's truth to it and it is connected to what you were just talking about in that he said he's, he was, uh, is the founder of this company. You know, he can't be fired, so he can be unreasonable in a way that no one else can in that even a traditional CEO. And you know, that was the case with Steve Jobs too. He was the founder, co founder of Apple, and he could be unreasonable in a way that no, you know, product manager could be. So no product manager could insist, Oh, we've got to call in the CEO of Corning and, you know, get them to make this new glass. So there is something to that, that. Uh, person at a level who's able to be disruptive, um, and also willing to ask these very simple fundamental questions, um, that, that really is essential to creating some of these, um, fundamental innovations.
Joachim:I would rotate the statement just a little bit Your friend was pointing out that he can't get fired. It's the safety, right? It's that security, right? That allows you to take that risk. And I think it's safe to say back in the sixties, I'm sure the employees at Corning were probably felt very secure. They understood that If you showed up at work, you did your job and honed your craft at your job, people would respect you and you'd get on with it. And sometimes stuff works out, but that's the nature of work is that you go there, you give everything and then you go home. Um, and so I, I can imagine that that culture allows. Always innovation. I think this was one of the earliest things we talked about. I think like safety, security and insurance for creative people is that's what you need. There's nothing worse than feeling stressed out about your safety and your ability to provide. And so you won't get creative. I mean, the golden eras of civilizations are marked by incredible amounts of wealth because there's enough money for everyone. So you start contemplating bigger questions other than just raw survival. Um, jack Welch is the exact perfect example of someone who created a company built on fear and we can see now the consequences of that type of thinking. I mean, it's permeated most every corporation around the world, but what he left behind in GE is just a shell of a company that has nothing to do with where their innovation lay in the 60s and 70s. I think if you give people safety, security, and the ability to just take a risk and really take a risk, cause everyone says, Oh, we should all show ownership and blah, blah, blah. That's not true. Like you don't, you don't think of me as a co owner in the innovation process in your company, or even as part of the daily grind of keeping the lights on, you just, just a number on a spreadsheet of people. So where's the reality of you actually providing that security that we can actually try stuff, you know? Oh yeah. Tough times.
Ernest:I love, I'm glad you brought that up though, cause I, that's a pet peeve of mine too. The whole like act like an owner foolishness, it's, it's just such a gibberish corporate gibberish.
Joachim:Yeah, it really is.
Ernest:All right. What did you, did you want to talk about any of the other recommendations?
Joachim:I mentioned Jack Welch just briefly there. I actually finished a book by Jack Welch, uh, pardon me, not by Jack Welch. Oh my God. I finished a book. That would be terrible. I finished a book about Jack Welch and it's the title of the book is called The Man Who Broke Capitalism. Uh, David Geller, I will put a link in the show notes of that. It's a great book. I will only briefly, uh, give the brief summary, which is, uh, It tracks the history of American corporations, um, from kind of the 50s, post World War II era, period of prosperity, success, innovation, all the big stuff, you know, the big ideas were being formulated then. GE was at the forefront of a lot of that. Its leadership viewed itself as having a duty to its workers, mostly. It had a duty to exist. As a company for them to work at and it had a duty to make good stuff, um, be good to the community, very hippie, dippy stuff. But you have to imagine like these are these super conservative 1950s businessmen who believe this stuff like this wasn't, this was just the way you operated. Um, and Jack Welch kind of rises to fame in, in, uh, in GE by being this abrasive person. His biggest, the way he made his big splash was he took over one of the plastics divisions. Pushed the scientists so hard to deliver something on ridiculous time scales, typical like Welsh thing, like do this within two months, right? We would recognize this as, that's a great leader pushing these crazy constraints. So like, do this crazy thing in two months. The process was so unhinged that it blew up the lab. Like people got injured, you know, and this is how he operated. Um, and that's kind of his calling card, like a wrecking ball through the place. And in the end he figured out the easiest way to make things profitable is fire people, buy other companies, fire those people, essentially hollow out everything and then go into financial services. That's the worst best way. So the book just plots the whole thing. But what's. kind of scary about it is if you've ever wondered why corporations worry about quarterly results, why the cadence of your meeting schedules peaks when the quarter is coming up, why um, you have to set Goals and KPIs against OKRs and all of this stuff, and you gotta stack rank the crap out of everything. It's Welch. Welch is like the person. And when you see how it was weaponized by him, you can kind of see it's like the echoes of what's happening right now. So, I recommend reading that book so that you, as a person who has to operate in corporations, have a sense of the lineage of ideas that you're, you know, taking. And how many ex GE people infiltrated other companies. And I say it in that way because it's really awful. Steve Ballmer was an ex GE guy who ran Microsoft terribly. We now know. Satya Nadella, we don't know really what he's going to do. It's a bit strange. It seemed good at the beginning, but now this Gen AI stuff is a bit crazy. Um, but also, uh, various Boeing heads were, from GE. Um, and so they, we know where that's going. So there's so many alumni of GE or people who look to GE as great management style, um, in fact. The person whose name, their name escapes me now. Maybe you remember, um, the Discovery HBO,
Ernest:Oh, Zaslav.
Joachim:Zaslav. He spoke at Welch's funeral and said, Welch saw the world for what it was going to be, and shaped the world. Like, he's one of those people. He's the guy who takes creative output and puts it, locks it away, you know, locks it away in a vault so they can get the tax writers. Like, that's, that's the guy. That, that financialization accounting shenanigans way of running a business as opposed to run the business. Yeah, you make movies. I'm sorry, you got into this industry. It's uncertain. Freaking do it. You know, that's what your job is. But instead of doing that they're just like, oh, no, no We'll just do like mergers and acquisitions and firings and we'll play these financial shell games to to make it look like we're growing so Welch, um, so yeah, the the man who broke capitalism is the book. Um, Well worth a read easy to read chock full of interesting stuff.
Ernest:Wow. That's a great recommendation. Really, really timely as well.
Joachim:Yeah feels that way doesn't it?
Ernest:Well, all right. I think that does it for our first Recommendations minisode. I guess maybe not so mini, but episode,
Joachim:Yeah
Ernest:um, as I mentioned earlier, we want to hear from you. What did you think of this new format and, um, how about our recommendations? Do you agree? Disagree? Or maybe they've brought to mind recommendations that you'd like to share with us. Whatever the case, we want to hear from you, so please share your thoughts at LearnMakeLearn@gmail.com or on threads at@LearnMakeLearnShow, all one word. Thanks for listening, and we hope you'll join us for the next Learn Make Learn.
