YouSaid · the spoken record

Geoffrey Garrett

lines on the record: 51
first: 2025-05-07
most recent: 2025-05-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“The thanks are all to you, Nicolai, not only for giving me this opportunity, but for all you're doing in the world and all you're doing with the podcast. I mean, something I said at the beginning, I really believe you have investment relationships with all the greatest minds in business. And the fact that you're now sharing all of that with all the people who consume your podcast, I just think that was a fantastic initiative. So thank you and congratulations for that. And thanks for having me.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where opportunity and preparation come together. You want to be prepared, but I think you want to go into decisions always thinking about opening up opportunities rather than closing them off. So having antenna up for option value, increasing option value, I think optionality just makes a lot of sense to me.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Aspiring leaders, I'll think about that in terms of students. So the first one we've already mentioned is my two C words. Be curious and really be aware of context. And for young people, I think the context begins with who they are and how they interact with others. And then, you know, I get asked all the time for have wise words of wisdom about planning your career. I just think that that's a folly, right? Life is not linear for many of us, any of us. I mean, I don't know whether you feel that way, but I certainly, you know, I've lived a life that I couldn't have planned because I didn't know it existed. So rather than trying to develop a five or ten year plan, I think you want to prepare yourself. This is the UCLA basketball coach, famous basketball coach John Wooden said something like, you know, good outcomes are.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe the highest level way to think about this for me is if we think about the 20th century, probably the internal combustion engine was the most important development of the 20th century. We could debate that. But if we then, in like a two decade period, do away with internal combustion engines, that'd be pretty amazing.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Effects of the fact that electric vehicles are so much simpler to assemble. You just need many, many fewer workers to put together an EV than a traditional combustion engine. So let's talk employment consequences and how we think about the value of manufacturing jobs and auto jobs, a European conversation, American one too. And then the third element, let's just go with the green energy side. So we know that the entire green energy supply chain now is dominated by China. We also know that a lot of stuff in the green energy supply chain is very dirty power intensive. You know, I've been spending a bunch of time in Indonesia. Indonesia thinks that nickel mining is their future. Nickel mining is not a pleasant business, but you need it if you're going to have longer range electric vehicles. So yeah, I do think.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Against Chinese electric vehicles, they're not going to have access to the Chinese market, which they need, right? So maybe back to YSEV's window into everything in the world. The geopolitical element is clear. But think about some of the other elements as well. I mean, employment. I didn't realize the employment.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Chinese EV and BYD above all, but maybe Xiaomi as well, that is going to be a transformative, I think this is not an exaggeration. That's a transformative force for the global economy, the rise of the Chinese electric vehicle. And the question in Europe, in the US, is what are we going to do about that, right? And the Trump answer today is maybe, maybe today, maybe tomorrow. I don't know when the podcast will come out. The Trump instinct is if I make tariffs high enough on imported electric vehicles, people have to make them in the United States. Let's see if that works. If I was in Germany today, you know, where VW for the first time in its history is thinking of closing some plants in this decade, the conversation is even harder because, of course, the German government and German citizens want to protect the German auto industry. But they know if they protect it.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And of course, lots of countries have created subsidies for electric vehicles but doesn't necessarily work. So in the US, the US is now a fossil fuel exporter. And as you know, petrol is cheaper in the US than anywhere else in the world. Norway is, you're the last person I need to say to that Norway's an oil superpower. So it's interesting that that logic, which I think is making EVs harder in the US, didn't obtain in Norway. But the second point about subsidies and regulatory stuff, I think is going to be so important going forward because”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I will, but you've got to tell me how and why Norway was able to essentially to eliminate combustion engines, particularly when we know electric vehicles don't do so well in cold weather. So can you answer that first and then I'll give you my perspective on EVs?”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Phrase. So it was in German and complicated German. So I just paraphrase, right? If countries know each other better economically, if they can join activities, they're less likely to go to war against each other. And I think both are true. So I'm a classic liberal and I just feel out of place given the dialogue today. If I was running for public office and I said global markets are good and they're reduced the prospect of war so we should let's embrace them. I'm not getting very many votes today. So I think the challenge for people who have my predilections about global is good is to engage with these new debates in a way that can maybe change some hearts and minds. But it's not going to be easy obviously.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is where I'm a classic liberal in all senses. As an economic matter, I think the shrinking of global markets is going is a big net negative. You know, I think the thing that the tariff debate in the US is showing finally is that there's a real cost to reshoring stuff, which as prices go higher. You know, I don't think Americans, for example, are sufficiently aware of the fact that globalization reduced prices and reduced interest rates in America for decades. So I worry, I understand the political and other maybe national security imperatives of reshoring, but it comes at an economic cost. And then the other liberal side of me is the Kantian one, you know, Kant said that if we to paraphrase”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Opportunities, yes, you want the business school to be good at all of the core things that business schools do, but the rest of USC was an opportunity and an opportunity that I hope is win-win. It's not only good for the business school, it's good for students in other parts of the university as well.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's a case. I always think that imitation is the highest form of flattery. And one of the things that I was just struck by at Wharton, and you know this, is that there were some great degrees with other penn schools. So there was a management and technology degree with engineering, a global business degree, the Huntsman program, the Lorder Institute. When I came to USC, I saw that the business school was really, really good, but it was pretty self-contained. And so I just wanted to adopt and adapt things that I saw it wouldn't. So, you know, we had a program with the film school. USC's got the best film school in the world. Gee, can we create a degree there called Businesses Cinematic Arts? Yeah, we could do that. The best part of the engineering school at USC is computer science. We were in an AIA age. We created a degree called AI for Business. I just thought those were leveraged.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It used to be the NBA used to be a passport to the next level of success. It was a career accelerator. I think now MBA is incredibly valuable, but it's incredibly valuable to people who want to change what they're doing in the jargon, the career pivot is what the NBA is best placed for. And of course, that then means that you've got to actually rethink your education at the MBA level because it's not somebody like you who's in finance and the way for you to get a promotion is to go back and get a finance MBA. No, that's not the story today. It's for somebody maybe who was in consulting who wants to move into entertainment or technology. That changes the way you do MBA education.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reducing that distance and putting pressure to do it all at once. The first one is the one I've already mentioned, which is undergraduate education is really, really expensive and not a lot of people can afford to spend four years just finding themselves. We have a responsibility to undergraduates to help them launch the next stage of their lives. But the second one at the MBA level is just the opportunity cost story. If you're a 27-year-old and you're doing really well in your career, you can't afford not only the price of an MBA, but stepping out of your career for two years. So, you know, I was a big champion of undergraduate at Wharton. I am at the Marshall School as well. By the way, it's important for me to say I don't think that means MBA is less important than it used to be. It's just important in a different way.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let me answer that question only in the business school context and then maybe generalize it. I do think that the traditional model in the US at least, you know, the one that you knew about when you went to Wharton, I think that model is changing. That model was do a very broad-based liberal arts degree and then three years later, five years later, go back and get an MBA or become a doctor or a lawyer or whatever it was, right? Broad-based undergraduate, job-oriented graduate degree. I think there are two forces that are...”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is looking through now inside the US is that the model of scientific research cannot rely 100% on government funding or on philanthropy. Corporate supported research. And there's going to be a lot of debates about guardrails around that. And is this applied research or pure research? Yes, I think that's a real issue. But if I just look at the financing of the research enterprise, corporations are going to be more involved and we're going to have to figure out how to do that in a way that allows universities to remain true to their values and allows for unfettered discovery of new stuff. Yes, we need all of that, but we also back to the return on investment point. Our students want return on investment. People who support us from a research standpoint also want return on investment.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm in a business school, so of course I would say yes. And let me give you two versions of why I think I wouldn't say reducing the distance. What I would say is more two-way. Conversation, collaboration with the private sector is important. So in a business school sense, let's think about the curriculum. Let's say you want to have the latest AI class. The normal way a professor would develop expertise is to spend five years studying at two years to get the articles published and maybe the class appears seven or eight years later. We're living in a world where, I don't know, the deep seek says they're going to come out with a version two of their AI next week. The real world is moving so quickly. The only way we can stay at the frontier is to be in constant dialogue with the private sector. So that's a business school answer. If I think more broadly at the university, the big question, which has been true outside the US, but is”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes, you know, we're speaking in late March in the US where the Trump administration is creating new challenges for universities almost on a daily basis. And the sort of temptation to say, hey, if we could just centralize power, we could react more effectively and more quickly. The temptation is there. But I just think in an academic context that that remains a non-starter because of the need to do hearts and minds campaigns. So, yeah, of course, in an instant, you're going to say, God, I wish I could, you know, I wish I could just handle this myself. But when you look more broadly, I think the model that we've got, even though it creates clearly big challenges for leaders in higher education, I think the upside of our model is not only clear, but it's one that's become More relevant to the private sector as well.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is moving a bit in the hearts and minds direction, and that's because younger people are just different. They value meaning and purpose not only in their personal lives, but in their professional lives much more than prior generations do. And that creates a leadership and management challenge, right? Young people aren't going to do it because you tell them to do it. They've got to want to do it. They've got to buy into your vision. And I think that's a big challenge. But it's a good challenge because my sense of the, you know, it's hard to make change in universities because I can't just say, let's do this. But the flip side of that is if you make change, it's actually going to endure and probably work because people wanted to go on their journey with you. And so my sense is, again, that's the direction we're moving.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think historically university leadership and corporate leadership were very different, but my sense is they're converging a bit now. So the key, I think, to understanding academic leadership is that there's no command and control. I can't tell people what to do. What there is in universities is an ongoing set of hearts and minds campaigns. You have to convince people that they want to come together to do something. And, you know, when I think about that, I just have two words in my head. Aspire and inspire. You want to have an aspirational vision that's motivating to people. And then you want to inspire them to get there. So hearts and minds campaign, yes, command and control no. And my sense is that the core.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is there a trade off? I don't know. But you know, I always get asked the question I'm sure you do too about, you know, back to SWAT kind of analysis, challenges and opportunities. I say I don't see a lot of challenges. What I do see is a lot of challenging opportunities. And I'd say the same thing about humility and confidence, that you want to be humbly confident is the right place to be. And I think that means, you know, feeling good enough about yourself and understanding your role, but back to something you said a few minutes ago, just not getting captivated by the endorphin rush of, hey, I'm in charge, right? And because all the negative externalities that come from that in terms of crowding out other people.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you feel that you've just got to be so productive and it's really much easier to have all the meetings in your office, but it comes at a big downside.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and that's hard to do because something that I observed a long time ago that feels like an iron lore to me is if two people decide to have a meeting, the meeting by default happens in the more senior person's office. And that has a real negative to it, which is you don't get out. So again, you asked the question a little while ago about how do you start? How do you start a new position? That was also a good piece of advice I got from somebody a long time ago, and it's hard to live up to it just because of the time constraints. But the advice was when you first meet people, meet them where they work. First of all, it's respectful to do that. Second, you've got to get there. You're going to figure out the layer of the land physically. And third, you're probably going to bump into a bunch of people that you otherwise wouldn't see. So again, I think it's hard for us to do that.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but the time to, I mean, tell me about that too from your perspective. I mean, you know, I think the risk that we all run, if you've got a lot of people in your organization, is that these are just”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think it's what we talked about before. If you want to, you know, of course you can support, as you said, you can encourage and you can financially support people to get more education, to do leadership training programs. All that stuff is very, very valuable. But I think the most valuable thing is on the job, on the job learning, on the job training, back to the micromanagement point. As I said, I think there are two problems with micromanagement. One, too much stuff ends up on your desk and the pile gets higher. But the second one is you're just missing the opportunity to help people who work with you develop into being better at what they do, being better people, being better professionals. So I think that not micromanaging, but also providing enough support to allow people to grow without risking a lot personally and feel the”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Easy to say, really hard to do, as you know, but I think that probably the people who are the best leaders understand those three elements and they should understand their own strengths and weaknesses, right? You know, I said, I think I now know about myself. I'm just not as good operationally as maybe I can be at some of the other elements. But I know operations and implementation is critical. So I've got to think about how to compensate for my own limitations there.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So a very successful CEO whose name I won't mention, I once kind of threw this softball question to this person and said, what's it take to be a good CEO? And the person replied with a wry grin, oh, it's really easy. All you've got to do is be able to come up with a vision and communicate it really well, have a strategy and be in the room with all the strategists and be a good enough person that people want to go on the journey with you, right? So vision strategy implementation.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be proactive in making sure that the AI revolution looks like all the prior technological revolutions where there's a lot of job disruption and displacement in the short term, but in the longer term, everybody, there are new job opportunities that are created. So that's a very long-winded way of saying. I think ethics is everywhere. But maybe the simple term of ethics is a little bit misleading because it's got multiple dimensions.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ethics is everywhere. And just think about the latest example of this in AI, right? In AI, I think we need students not only to be aware of, I mean, let's think about three versions of ethics there, right? One would be, hey, can you use ChatGPT to write a better essay or do a better exam? Absolutely you can. We've got to be, but we've got to think about our attitude to that. Second version of ethics in artificial intelligence would be all of the somewhere between privacy and dystopia. Are robots going to not only to run the world, but be a challenge to us? And then the third version of ethics, which I think is, you know, we're seeing it on a daily basis there, is AI going to be a giant job destroyer or not? And how should we think about that?”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If we can do all of that, I think we're giving our students the best chance to succeed in their lives, not just in their professional lives”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I've mentioned two of the things. I think you've got to nail the technical fluency side. And again, in business schools, I think that doesn't mean all of our students have to be super coders, but they've got to be able to use and leverage the insights that come from the great software engineers. Plus develop the leadership muscle. And then I think all that comes together, it might sound a little glib, but for me, it's really important. I would call it real world learning, that yes, you know, what's in a textbook is foundational, but it really comes alive when you apply it and you apply it in a real context, in real time that has real impact. And typically you do that in a world of real constraints too, which means typically means group work. So if it's a triangle for me, technical skills, human leadership, and real world learning, if you can.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Turning our back on the creative side because we know that both are not only important to being a good person, but they're really important to being a successful professional too.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, right. It's ROI in a different sense than you think about it. But I think for our students, it's very real, right? If you have the opportunity cost of being a full-time student, plus the financial cost, you've got to make a calculation of is it worth it? And in the American context, and you know this, you came from Norway to the US, there was this old idea that people could afford to go to college to find themselves and do really cool stuff and, you know, I don't know, be a protester or a musician or whatever it is. The pressure today, because of just the cost side, is this return on investment. So I think that the challenge for us, but the opportunity is to really respect that ROI position and take careers and launching our students into careers really, really seriously without”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“World in which machines are doing lots of the technical things that humans used to do, what's left for the humans? I think it's to be human. That's what we do best. And so I would say kind of technical fluency plus human leadership, that's the combination that we're always looking for in people. And it's what we try to develop while students are in school.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, we are looking for different things. And not only in MBA students, in undergraduates, in all business school students. And the way I think about it is there are two tracks and students need to be really good on both of them. And you want to make sure that the tracks run in parallel and don't diverge. So the first track is technical skills, right? So it used to be statistics and econometrics. Now data science is everywhere. You've got to have students who can be, even if they're not geeks, they've got to be able to talk to the geeks. They've got to be able to use AI tools. So the whole kind of technical skills track, I think, has been dialed up. You look at Wharton or you look at Marshall and the data finance used to be the biggest thing by far. Now data science is rivaling it. And so you have these two different versions of technical skills that are incredibly important. But, you know, in an AI,”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I can see how much you enjoy that, right? In terms of the interviews that you do with the people who come on the pod.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's interesting that you responded there with very personal stuff as well as professional. I mean, I think the merging of personal and professional is something that's happening, particularly with younger people today. But I'm wondering how you think about that. I mean, I know from your personal background that you're super interested in really diverse stuff, right? You have an art history degree. You have a psychology degree. Of course, you went to business school at Wharton. But how do you think about your employees as full people? And, you know, are there any difficult trade-offs there? Is it positive some? What's your approach?”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fail. So, the way I try to balance that is to allow people lots of opportunity to grow, but have some guardrails around that so that if somebody, look, and we all do, make mistakes, if you make a mistake, you don't want it to be really damaging for your organization or for the individual. You want people to grow, but in an environment in which some of it has been de-risked a little bit. Can I ask you, Nikolai? I mean, you're in this world where you've got, you literally, as the podcast shows, you have access and real investments in the biggest companies in the world, in every sector. I mean, what's the discipline that allows you to manage that?”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'd love you to tell me how you think about it in terms of your managing these massive global investments that you have. But in a managerial sense, what I feel all the time is that I don't want to micromanage the people who work in my organization for two reasons. One, if I micromanage stuff, it ends up on my desk and the pile just grows higher because I've got limited bandwidth. But the second reason not to micromanage, I think, is that it doesn't give people an opportunity to grow in their job. So I want to support people, but I want to support them to become bigger, richer people, not just do their job narrowly. Now, of course, that comes with a risk, which is if you delegate a lot of authority, somebody might.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And I think we just have to be, anyone in a leadership position has to be aware of that. You know, the thing that I've learned is that if I ask questions of anybody who works for me, they view it as a leading question. If I throw out a thought bubble, people take it really seriously, even if I'm just trying to provoke conversation. So I think you've got to have a, you need to have some kind of balance between confidence and humility to make that work. And, you know, one thing that somebody said to me 20 years ago with a kind of wry grin on their face was something that just sounds right to me, which is if you're in leadership position, you know, there's a chance you're the smartest person in the room, but you should do everything you can not to show that because if you just strut your stuff, you're going to crowd out.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think the piece of advice that I give to people in a university context is don't read management books that tell you you've got 100 days to change everything. And the reason for that in an academic context, and you can tell me if you think it generalizes, the reason you don't do that in an academic context is even if you think you know something about your domain expert, right? You know, I'd been in a business school dean for 10 years when I became the dean here, but I didn't know the way Marshall worked in a cultural sense in terms of the individuals. There are always those nuances. So I think the, you know, the... But in your own head, you're asking questions, and the way to do that is just to be a very active listener so you can get up the knowledge curve as quickly as possible.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Los Angeles. And what I learned is there's something unique about three-dimensional humans. You know, you and I can have, I think, a very good conversation remotely today because we know each other. If this was the first time you and I had ever met, I think the tenor of our conversation would be different. It would be much less rich. So, you know, on the one hand, I think all the gains in technology that help us do Zoom meetings and do this kind of podcast incredible, but there's still something about in person. Now, I think the bar to that clearly is much higher than it used to be. And we should be, particularly since it's much more costly in all senses, to do stuff face-to-face, we should have a higher bar to doing it. But the value to me, the intrinsic value I just felt in COVID, I was missing so much trying to get to know people in a two-dimensional world rather than.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm older than I've been around, so I've had lots of experiences, but I can tell you that COVID really had a big impact on me. In maybe three senses. The first one is that I learnt about myself that I'm probably better suited to strategy and strategic thinking than I am to instantaneous operational challenges. The whole COVID world was constant fire drills. And I wasn't as well suited to that. So that was the first observation. But the second one, which really struck me was that In an environment like COVID and maybe in any crisis, it kind of crowds out strategy. It's inappropriate to be thinking about the medium term if people are concerned about tomorrow. So operations crowded out strategy for me in COVID. And then the third thing was, as you know, I was doing a job transition from Wharton to Marshall, from Philadelphia to LA. And I had to get to know a whole bunch of people.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, you know, I think the admissions answer these days in higher education would be that we kind of use objective indicators, you know, test scores, grades, exam results. They're the first filter. But the reason that most of elite higher education now focuses on essays and interviews is that we really want to know the full person. So you're looking for more than test takers when you're looking for people who you want to be emerging leaders. And I think this is also a one-two, right? What do employers want? Employers want people who on day one can do the job but can grow into becoming leaders in year five or year 10. And that's going to be hard to find if you just look at objective indicators.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Person, those are incredibly important too. You can't think you know everything and you can't live in your own little world. You've got to be more externally oriented and really externally aware, I think.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything is much harder, right? And if you think about that, I think what we're saying these days is that agility has become a very important skill, right? You can't just be on some standard operating procedures pathway because the world can change in an instant. That, of course, just begs the question, how do you develop agility? And for me, there are two C words that matter a lot. And I think you embody both of these, by the way. The first one is curiosity. I don't, you know, yes, there are a whole bunch of technical skills that people need to succeed in a technology-enabled world, but you've got to be curious about broader stuff. And the second C word for me is context. I think context really, really matters. You know, culture, history, language, all the things that, as I said, you embody as a...”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, again, maybe this is a bit heretical to say, but I think a lot of the value of business education has always been outside the classroom. And I think that's more true. It's probably more true of leadership and entrepreneurship than anything else. Those are both learning by doing skills. And so you've got to do them a lot. And you know how this works in business schools. Not only do we do a lot of team-based work, but our students run a lot of clubs. They're involved in not-for-profits. They do lots of things outside the classroom that, sure, it might add another line to your CV, but what it's really doing is building your leadership muscle.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Experiential, I think, means in the first instance learning about who you are as a person, who you want to be, then second, how do you interact with others, become self-aware and self-reflective? And then once you've done those two things, you can think about leading organizations. But for me, it's very much inside out these days. Start with the human and go from there.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Classic Business School question. My classic answer to that is you might not be able to teach leadership, but our students can certainly learn to be leaders. And I think that means that leadership education has to be very experiential.”
2025-05-07 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Geoffrey Garrett: Modern Leadership, Business Education and Perspectives on Global Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source