Transcript

Rapid Response: "Be confident enough to show your vulnerability," w/Ken Frazier (Merck/General Catalyst)

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You have to be confident enough to show your vulnerability. You have to be confident enough to show that you don't know the answer. The most important decisions are not all gonna be made at the CEO's desk. when you're eleven years old and your mother dies suddenly. Those were not great experiences, I wouldn't want to have to relive them, but some of the things that I've dealt with since then are by comparison.

They seem less troublesome. I think business has an important role. and addressing social equity issues. But you don't have to be a leader of a big company to make a difference. How can we be kinder to the most vulnerable people?

That's Ken Frazier, the longtime CEO of pharmaceutical giant Merc. Ken was one of the few black CEOs at the top of corporate America. Now as an advisor at General Catalyst and co founder of the social impact organization one ten Ken's pushing to remake how business addresses racial and health equity. I'm Bob Safian.

Former editor of Fast Company, founder of The Flux Group, and host of Masters of Scale Rapid Response. I wanted to talk to Ken because as we near the two year anniversary of the initial Covid lockdowns in the US, no one has a more insightful view of the societal and business lessons to draw from the journey we've been on. Ken talks about three distinct aspects of crisis adjustment, the positive side of fear, and the importance of vulnerability. He shares his own stories of challenge as an African American leader at a time of upheaval, and he points each of us toward the future. Stressing both risks in our current divisiveness and the hope he places in the next generation.

All right, you ready to play? I'm ready. All right. I'm Bob Safian, and I'm here with Ken Frazier, the former CEO of Merc and now advisor at Venture Capital Firm General Catalyst.

Ken, thanks for joining us. Bob, I'm looking forward to having a good discussion. So you remain the executive chairman At Merc. You're also co-founder and co-chair of One Tan, a nonprofit dedicated to closing the opportunity gap for black talent in America. I'm eager to get to that.

And you chair General Catalysts Health Assurance Initiatives. It's a pretty Daunting list of roles for someone who could just You know, take it easy after it

decade of running a Fortune five hundred company on top of a very busy career. Is this Host CEO life. For you any simpler? Or is it just as hectic as before?

Well, I have to say, Bob, it feels hectic. But it also feels like I'm able to make a contribution. The thing that I was most afraid of as I approached retirement at Merc. was that I wouldn't be of any genuine usefulness in the world. And so I want to make sure that I'm doing things that make me feel stimulated. Give me a reason to get out of bed every morning, which my wife insists is necessary.

for the success of our marriage going forward. But also You know, at the end of the day, I wanna feel like I'm making a contribution. So I'm happy to continue to do things and I'm looking for additional things to do. If I can make a contribution.

When people reach a certain perch and a lot of the listeners on this podcast are entrepreneurs and business people who are changing jobs all the time. And every time you change your function, you sort of worry about like What's my relevance gonna be next time? Yes, but that's what makes life an adventure. I was trained to be a lawyer. I used to try death penalty cases. That couldn't be more different than being a CEO.

Every time I did something very different. I actually was afraid to do it. I had a lot of anxiety about it. But over time. You realize that

That's what makes you feel alive. Right. The one thing about changing your responsibilities is you're learning and you're excited every day. Being a little bit fearful, I find, to be actually a positive thing in life. Well, we've had plenty of opportunity to be fearful over the last two years. The environment has given us that. I mean, you led Merc through the

Depths of the Pandemic. Guiding it as its chairman as we hopefully head toward the other side. How has this experience changed you? Do you look at the world differently?

I think that I had some experiences early in life. That allowed me to be adaptable. Too sudden. scary changes.

Ферстово, майондерсист с куз. Four. Racial Degregation. in the early nineteen sixties.

And so Having to leave one's neighborhood. having to go into a strange area, meaning not that the people were strange. And where were you? In Philadelphia. I was born and raised in the inner city of Philadelphia.

being a stranger in a strange land, so to speak. That was a big upheaval. The other thing that happened to me is that when I was 11 years old, my mother died suddenly. And That is a crisis when you're eleven years old and and your mother dies suddenly.

I tell those things to say that I think later on in life the ability to face up to things that are scary The ability to be adaptable. Those were not great experiences. I wouldn't want to have to relive them, but some of the things that I've dealt with since then are by comparison. They seem less troublesome or less difficult.

As we talked about leading through the pandemic, a couple of things strike me. We humans are very social. Creatures. And the pandemic has driven us into isolation. And you know, for me personally, the thing that I love most about being CEO of Merc

was interacting with my colleagues. It's not necessarily the Endless meetings. It's not necessarily all the PowerPoints that you have to read. It's interacting with people. And I think that what it really taught me as a leader is the importance of dealing with the whole person. Before the pandemic, you would interact with your colleagues.

As business people. You didn't have to think about providing people. With psychological Well being. You didn't have to

Approach every day with the level of self awareness or empathy. or caring or compassion. Now People were bringing There

Whole self to work. And their problems. My colleagues in Tokyo, for example. The apartments in Tokyo are extremely small. And yet those people had to work every day.

with their children in the same work. place. So they were headmaster and they were at the same time you know, the help desk on technology, they were also working at Merc, and so it was a challenge. to make sure that you were staying connected with people on a human level, being caring and compassionate.

Yeah, that phrase that we've long used about work life balance sort of applied to two separate spheres. And now of course we realize like it's all integrated and we have to approach them in an integrated way. Absolutely. There's no boundaries now. I know even for me. There's no boundary between work And home life now. Because so much of my work is being done.

In my house. We have to have some sense of order in our lives, and that all got disrupted. And we can see in our society the rate of diagnosed anxiety and depression. have gone up, they've been quadrupled since the pandemic. And we have to realize the impact that it's having on us psychologically. You mentioned the adaptability that you were sort of forced to learn as a young person

All of us are learning how to build adaptability. As organizational leaders, we want our teams to be able to be more adaptable. Can you Get to be adaptable without going through Pain or like is this something that, you know, that like the way to learn how to be adaptable is just to sort of Work through the muck of it.

Well, you know, there's three different ways to think about that question. One is Cognitive adaptability. I think that's the easiest one, right? I mean

Something's changed in the business and we have to now think about how do we build a new approach to our business, or how do we deal with a particular challenge in the marketplace or scientific challenge. So there's sort of the cognitive adaptability. Then there's the emotional adaptability, which is what we were just talking about a few minutes ago. is how do you adapt to something that happens in your life that shakes you to the core?

And that's not just a question of, you know, how do I think about how do I deal with this new challenge or opportunity. It is How do I as a human being continue to function well despite the fact that I'm facing these Fearful.

situations. And then the last thing which I think actually relates to leadership. is what disposition do you have? When you're going through that. Upheaval.

that crisis because the organization is looking at its leaders. And it wants to know whether those leaders can Make it through this. If you can't show confidence. in the face of the challenges that you face, you have to face reality. But you also have to give people a sense of optimism.

So I think stealing yourself emotionally And being able to show the positive disposition. I think that comes from having gone through this before. I don't think you could read that in a book. I have that taught in a course.

And you sort of can't really. fake it either, right? I remember having a discussion with a leader of a large organization. They said, What do I do if I don't really quite know what the next step is? And I was like, Well then you leave the job and you let somebody else do it. Like you have to know. Like when there were moments when you were sort of Unsure about what the next step is. How do you show confidence in the fact that You don't know. Do you know what they mean by explaining that the right way? Oh no, I agree. So let me start by saying before the pandemic, the one thing that I knew running a science-based company is that the most important decisions that were gonna be made at Mer were not gonna be made at the CEO's desk.

Right. I don't pick the proteins. I don't pick the peptides that we use in the research organization. So for me The answer to that question is what you want to be able to do is to expand the circle of people that you can rely on. And you can expand that circle. If you're disingenuous enough to pretend that you have all the answers. So I think being a leader in this situation requires a combination of two things.

One is vulnerability. And the other one Is confidence, and most people see that as a paradox. But I see them as one and the same. You have to be confident enough to show your vulnerability. You have to be confident enough to show that you don't know the answer.

Because the fact of the matter is The most important decisions that are gonna be made in this company or in other companies are not all gonna be made at the CEO's desk. I think this concept of the pyramid that we think about In terms of corporate structures. It really ought to be inverted.

It's the people at the Manufacturing interface. It's the people at the customer interface. It's the people at the scientific interface. who gonna make the most important decisions. And so for me, it's about having the right network.

That's how you get the right decision. And by the way The other thing about this is you have to have the confidence when you're facing a tough decision not to make it immediately. You have to slow down. You have to make sure that the decision isn't the quick decision, it's the right decision for the long term.

As you're talking, it's getting me thinking about the kind of investments that you did As a CEO at Merck. And the kind of investments that you're working on now at General Catalyst. Investing is part of the mandate you're investing in research. You're investing in new companies.

You want to be patient. But impatient. Right? Like you don't want to waste resources, but we've seen some technologies like MRNA technology that you know, struggled for years to get traction and Then suddenly became critical.

How do you know what to fund? What not to fund, what to let go when you're looking at scientific research, or is it not different scientific research than anything else, any other funding decisions you're making? Well I have to say that the funding decisions at Merck that I was involved in were very different from the ones at General Catalyst, but to take a step back. You talked about M R and A. or for example immunoncology and cancer.

These were fields that for many, many years people were skeptical that they would ever produce anything. But The way that science progresses. Is it's almost in my analogies, it's like waves crashing against a beachhead. No one wave will cause that beachhead to give way, but wave after wave after wave often does cause that beachhead.

Actually crumble. In this case, the beachhead is obviously representative of some kind of disease state. COVID 19, in the case of mRNA. MRNA had been used in other disease contexts. Unsuccessfully. But for a single strand DNA, like COVID 19, it turns out to be perfect for that.

Same with immunocology. For years people were very skeptical about it. So People often say in the tech field, you want to fail fast. the rules of biology aren't that well understood. And so you want to continue to function Or to continue to invest in things that could produce value, but at the same time

When you've done what you believe is the definitive experiment. to test a hypothesis. You don't want to keep paying good money to chase after something that you think is Not gonna be useful. If I shift to the general catalyst side of things.

You know, versus Merc, where we were investing substantial money in late stage clinical trials. after we had proof of concept. For a molecule. And general catalysts, we're investing very early in the life cycle of businesses. These are generally startups.

And what we want are the kinds of people In terms of founders. Who really believe that they can change the world. It's very early in the company's life cycle. But we have to be able to

Invest in people. Who have a thesis as to how a particular, for example, technology can change the way healthcare is delivered. So it's much earlier. That we're focusing in general catalysts, then I was focusing as the CEO of Merc because my job here was to make really large investments and late stage programs. And so it it almost sounds like at Merck you're investing in the

science in a lot of ways. General catalyst in some ways you're investing in the person As much as the science. I think that's actually a very good way of saying it. You have to find These founders who have A vision

For how they can I don't want to exaggerate, but how they can change the world in some fundamental way. I know you have a particular passion about health equity, and I'm curious how you came by that and what part maybe that General catalyst.

Well the way that I came by to be blunt is I was born and raised in the University of Philadelphia. And so I saw All the unnecessary suffering people went through. I saw premature death. You know, you look at COVID nineteen and The lifespan of African Americans is declined by three years.

compared to one year overall. I lived in an area where I saw people being deprived of the right nutrition, deprived of the right health services. So that issue around health equity, and by the way, I'm talking about the inner city. It's also true in rural America, where people don't have access to health care and they end up in emergency rooms

When it's actually sort of too late to be treated. What made me so attracted to the people at Gerald Catalyst. Hamatanasia can She knows And others. is they had a vision around health assurance.

Like how can we? Through data. How can we through technology give people access? True. What they need.

to maintain their health. As opposed to having to come to a sick care system. When things were too late. How do we ensure that consumers Uh

Access to the ability to Ensure that they are protecting their health over the long term. How do we improve the quality of the health care that they get? At the perch of Merc, some of the biggest breakthroughs, it's like a single drug or a single choice can radically change the landscape.

in a particular area. When you talk about health equity, it's harder to see that there's gonna be like one thing that's sort of changes everything. Your whole philosophy about it has to be a a little different. So I don't think there is ever gonna be a silver bullet. My philosophy is

How do we marry Entrepreneurs. with the people in the healthcare system who actually deliver healthcare today. In a way that we can start to solve some of these problems. How come it is that if you

born in the inner city of Philadelphia, you're born in rural Pennsylvania, you don't have access to the kinds of health care services that you need in order to maintain your health. Those things are not going to be done overnight. But I do think that the combination of technology and data on the one hand And compassion and empathy.

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Before the break, we heard former Merc CEO Ken Frazier talk about adaptability, vulnerability, and why failing fast doesn't fit every situation. Now he shares how the nonprofit he co-founded last year, one ten, has changed the lives of twenty five thousand families. He also offers a lesson in how to make diversity practices more intentional and explains why the lawsuit against the NFL by Coach Brian Flores is a courageous act. Plus, he addresses the rising divisiveness in American culture and the special and important role that business can play by stressing our commonality and emphasizing kindness. You join your friend and colleague Ken Shnel at General Catalyst. He was on this show last year and among other things we talked about

One tenth the organization that you co-founded together to address the opportunity gap that many black Americans face. After George Floyd's killing There was a surge of commitment. from different businesses, but as time passes There's sort of concern that

Is anything really changing? I'm curious what you think whether Efforts on the parts of businesses are bearing fruit. Is one ten having the impact you'd hoped at the pace you'd hoped? I do think

That Business is making a difference in this country. Our country is incredibly separate and our politics are very divided. If you look at The big sort of social scene in our country.

People live in certain enclaves where they're not around people who are different from them. They go to church or synagogue or mosque with people who think like them. Social media divides us. We can go hear the opinions that we want to hear. I think business is the last place in this country other than maybe the military where people can't choose who they associate.

So I think business has an important role. And addressing social equity issues. The reason why we created one ten was that as businesses were looking post George Floyd at what they could do. The thing that was really clear that is in our wheelhouse, so to speak. Is hiring people.

And The fact of the matter is something like seventy five percent of African Americans in this country at age twenty six don't have a four year degree. And so the purpose behind one ten is to get companies to examine The hiring criteria and be less credential space and be more skills base so in our first year we hire promoted twenty five thousand

African Americans into family sustaining wages. Based on their skills. Our goal is a runway rate of a hundred thousand. So the pace isn't where we want it to be yet. But in our first year, we changed the lives of twenty five thousand families.

I was raised by a single parent father. And because I was bust to school, I had to get up earlier than my siblings. And the enduring memory I have of growing up was the smell of my father's shaving cream. And what that really showed was every morning my dad got up. Shape.

went down the stairs and went to work and he held his head high and he had dignity. And self esteem. And so growing up in a house where your parent had that. changes your perspective on the world. And I think business needs to do that. I think the fact of the matter is

Too many people who work full time in this country. Don't get a family sustaining wage. They have to work two or three jobs. So I think we have to address those issues. And when you mention that the pace

was not maybe what you wanted it to be for one ten in the first year. Is that because like there aren't enough jobs? The training for the skills isn't there? Like what's the disconnect? There are a number of organizations in the country that train people at our target audience to do jobs. But they're subscale.

And so the challenge for us is how do you scale up? and be able to train a hundred thousand people a year. Most of the big organizations that do that train five thousand or six thousand people a year. The analogy I would use is With respect to education in my hometown of Philadelphia, you can find charter schools at private schools.

That are little islands of excellence in the inner city. But the challenge is how do you scale that up so that every child has that opportunity. That's what one ten is trying to do is they're trying to scale up the job training. So that we can supply Larger numbers.

to these companies there's sixty four or so companies that have joined us in this effort. Twenty five thousand is not where we want it to be, but From a standing start, it's a pretty good start. Okay. Ken Shault when he was on, he shared a bit about what he experienced as a black American in the work world. I mean, you and he were

Among a handful only of Black CEOs. I can imagine you're used to maybe too used to being one of the only black people in the room in too many meetings. Being one of a few black CEOs was part of what I was used to from the time I graduated law school and joined a big

prominent law firm. I was The only black associate lawyer in that law firm. When I made partner, there were only two black partners out of 200. So I think for many people in my generation who are African Americans who strive to be successful.

That isn't a new thing at all. And you know, it gets back to my comment about Us living in our own enclaves in our society. You know, one of the things that's most important for people to be developed. Is

Be able to take advantage of social networks. So if you're an African American and my career shows it. I was Brought into Merk by the then CEO of Merc. He mentored me. He sponsored me.

It's not just The question of whether there are enough talented people to take these roles. I think it's a question of People being more intentional

About things like diversity and inclusion. That the systems that exist in this company, including the social networks, often disadvantage people of color. And they often disadvantage women. And I think that companies that are very intentional about

Hiring Promoting Developing African Americans and other minorities tend to do better than companies that rely on the systems. that have always produced outcomes that are not diverse.

If you're not getting what you're asking for, you have to ask yourself, how can I be more intentional about diversity and inclusion. There's a a high profile lawsuit right now against the NFL, charging that that system's still stacked against black coaches. Some observers are praising the suit. Others think it's gonna be counterproductive. Do you have any thoughts? About it, about what that kind of

Action means does I think Brian Flores. The coach who filed a lawsuit is an enormously courageous person. It's going to hurt his career, no question.

But Just as if you follow baseball there was a African American player named Kurt Flood. fifty years ago who challenged The rules against free agency.

So all of these guys are making a lot of money today, they owe it to Kurt Flood, who sacrificed his career. to go to the Supreme Court of the United States challenging the fact that baseball players were, in effect, indentured servants to their owners. And I think what Mr. Flores is doing is he's pointing to the fact that the league adopted This

Rooney rule, as it's called. That said that every team had to consider black coaches. But that became sort of Something that people did without really intending to make a difference. And I think the most important thing that has happened in the last few weeks. is that the commissioner of the NFL himself, Roger Goodell,

As publicly said. We are not doing What we should be doing. As it relates to the hiring of black coaches. I can't

Comment on any individual coaching decision. But in a league that is seventy five percent black. to have had such a small number of black coaches. On it. Raise the question of

Is there really an open opportunity for everyone? I'm asked about diversity and often people say to me, Can you make the business case for diversity? And I always make the point. No one's ever made the business case for homogeneity.

Nobody's even asked that question. And that's because The homogeneity. is the normative state in this country. When I walk into

A conference room, I expect to be the only black person in that. And the reality of the world is the other people in the room, by and large, don't think that there's anything wrong with that picture because it's consistent with the norms that we have. In this country. Again, coming back to Brian. Yeah. I credit him.

with challenging The processes and systems in the NFL that have produced a very small number of black coaches. Mm. And the fact that the Head of the NFL needed a lawsuit to

Get him to say, Oh yeah, we're not doing things the right way. think back to the civil rights movement, it's sort of Interesting. that today we have a holiday for Martin Luther King. But

I remember How many people thought Martin Luther King was a troublemaker. You know the marches in cities. Like

Birmingham and Montgomery. To integrate those cities. If you go back and you listen even to the people who were sympathetic to the civil rights movement, People said Why are all these people breaking the law?

Why are they getting arrested? Why can't they be more patient and wait for the changes to occur in society? Martin was the king. Many of his contemporaries considered him nothing but a troublemaker. But to use Congressman Lewis's comments.

He was A person who created good trouble in the world. Being a an accomplished leader. People turn to you for All kinds of things.

Constantly. Just think it exhausting. Being looked to for answers. It can feel exhausting. But for people who are pioneers.

Again. I'm sitting in This position. because people before me made it possible.

I tell my kids. that when I'm sitting in a room, when I'm in a business council meeting surrounded by a hundred other CEOs. I feel it is my responsibility to share my perspective with them. They're all people of goodwill. And I think one of the challenges we have around race in this country is that

When we talk about it, people are automatically made to feel defensive about the conversation. So I assume Good intent. From other people. But I also know

That Unlike me, they don't know what life is like on the other side of the tracks. I grew up on the other side of the tracks, and it is my responsibility, I feel. To help people become much more aware. This business around intentionality, the key to that is awareness.

If you're not aware of what somebody else's life is like then you can't be expected to address the issue. So In order for me to get to where I have gotten in life as a lawyer and as a business person, I'll be blunt. I had to learn.

how to get along with people who are different from me. If I wasn't really skilled at that. We wouldn't be having this conversation. Okay. For most of my colleagues, they haven't had to do that.

I had to learn how to get along. Frankly, with people For whom I was generally their only black business associate or Black French. And

I'm not criticizing them, I'm simply saying that If I'm going to be in that room, one of my Personal responsibilities is to help people See the world through a different lens. It's tough to have to do that in every room you're in, though, right? Like

All the time. Over and over. Well, it's not easy, on the other hand. I can't complain because my dad had a third grade education and scrub floors for a living. As a janitor. And if he could hear me complain about the burden of being the CEO of Merc.

He would say, Boy, you're out of your mind. So the last two years, this crisis, you sort of alluded to this, you know, the hope of the crisis is that it brings us together. The risk is that it kind of drives us apart. Where do you think we're netting out with this crisis in this time?

So I have to say that I am somewhat worried. That our country is getting over time more divided. Unless unified.

I don't mean to criticize social media as the main problem, but I think it has created a situation where People are less understanding. You know, at least In the old days, you know, we all came home and watched the same news broadcast and had the same facts. Now we argue about what the facts are. You know, we see it in the division over Masking.

for Covid nineteen. Right. We see it around The division around vaccines and the misinformation that's out there about vaccines. As it relates to social issues. There's a huge amount of division in our country around

issues of gender and race. I mean the Supreme Court of the United States next term is all gonna be about race. It's gonna be about voting rights. It's gonna be about education. Our country is more divided. I think we haven't had the kinds of leaders like Dr. King Who stress our commonality.

But I am still optimistic. And ultimately the reason I'm optimistic is You know, when I talk to my children. I think their generation. S.

The mess that my generation of baby boomers left behind. And I think they're not wanting to go down the same road. So the reason to be optimistic, I think, is the values of younger people. Well, Ken, this has been great. Is there anything that I haven't asked about that I should have? Anything that we haven't Touched on?

I just would close by again coming back to the idea that we are going through A massive change with the pandemic. And all the social upheaval in this country and around the world. I think that

You don't have to be a leader of a big company or a country to make a difference. I think we all have an opportunity in our own social circles. To help bring people together. And I think these issues around awareness. And empathy for our fellow human beings.

are really important right now. The number one thing that I hope that we will think about in this country. As individuals en as society. Is

How can we be kinder to the most vulnerable people? Because You know coming through the pandemic, we've seen So many people suffer.

And so many of those people do work that we depend on them to do. So I hope that we're more kind and thoughtful about the most vulnerable in our society. And I want to thank the audience for their generous listening. Well, thank you, Ken. This has been great. Thanks so much for doing it. I enjoyed it. I could keep talking with you all day. I hope we'll get a chance to talk more again in the future. Same here, Bob.

All the best. Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's gonna be two types of companies. Those were great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered.

I'm Rana El Chayubi. And on my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in.

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