Taking a More Fluid Approach to Problem Solving with Charles Conn

Intro: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. Each day we welcome transformational executives to share their real world experiences and practical advice about scaling yourself, your team and your business.

Matt Blumberg: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. I'm Matt Blumberg, co- founder and CEO of Bolster. And I'm here today with Charles Conn. Charles is the co- author of a new book called The Imperfectionists: Strategic Mindsets for Uncertain Times. He's the author of another book as well called Bulletproof Problem Solving, which I definitely need to go read. He is a life sciences venture investor, and he's the chair of the board of one of the most iconic companies of our generation, I would say, which is Patagonia, the vest that everybody wears, whether you're in tech or in banking. So Charles, welcome to The Daily Bolster.

Charles Conn: Thanks, Matt. It's really great to be here.

Matt Blumberg: Yeah. I have a question for you coming out of your book, although if we go quickly enough, I've got to sneak some question in about Patagonia. I'm not sure what it's going to be yet. But my question for you is why do you feel like the world needs a new approach to developing strategies in uncertain times, right times of fast change, times of high uncertainty, and why the traditional models we've learned for strategies don't work anymore?

Charles Conn: Yeah. So we were all taught during a time when industry boundaries were very clear and industries changed relatively slowly, Michael Porter's five forces. With artificial intelligence, programmable biology and all the other changes that are occurring now, none of those founding conditions are true anymore. In fact, your industry is more likely to be disrupted by a super competitor like Amazon than any other kind of player. And so it means that old way of thinking about structure, conduct, strategy no longer works anymore. We need a much more fluid problem solving approach to strategy rather than a game approach to strategy.

Matt Blumberg: Yeah. I mean, that certainly makes sense. So give me a couple points on how it works.

Charles Conn: Yeah. So I'll give you three. One, before you launch off into senior management strategy, stop, because strategy should now be pushed down much closer to front lines and should be seen through multiple lenses. We like to call it dragonfly eye. So rather than just thinking about your industry from your company's perspective, start thinking about it from the perspective of your customers, your suppliers, and ideally other entrants. My favorite example here is Invisalign, which are these clear braces that people have.

Matt Blumberg: Was the strategy done by my teenage kids?

Charles Conn: Yes, exactly right. It wasn't done by orthodontists, it was done by kids who didn't like wearing braces, and they saw this through the perspective of the patient, of the user of them, and that's what made it brilliant. Second comment, I'd say is experiment like crazy. Now, we're used to hearing about experimentation, but principally in the context of web businesses. We can also experiment in heavy industry, and we don't think of ourselves that way. Look at SpaceX, and we don't need to go through the whole example, whether you like Elon or don't like Elon. After 60 years of NASA playing around SpaceX in 15 years lowered the cost of launching a kilogram into space by 95% because it was willing to experiment and fail. Number three, crowdsource. People think that they have the smartest people in their organizations and they don't. You often have great people, but you don't have people who've got skills that you don't have that you need. The Nature Conservancy crowdsourced a computer vision- based technology for sorting out fish you could keep. These are tuna fish versus fish that are endangered and should be let go, and didn't have any of those capabilities internally, and now has this rolling out across the entire tuna fishing fleet. Fantastic stuff, so those three things. And then companies should lean into risk by making small moves that are relatively low consequence and relatively low cost, the way Amazon enters new businesses, not by using its balance sheet to buy some giant existing player, but by doing lots of experimentalist approach.

Matt Blumberg: Yeah. I mean, the whole notion, your whole framing here, which is that disruption now doesn't just happen from below. It happens from above, really sets the tone for the framework in the book. So I have both of your books on my Kindle. I'm definitely going to read them. Now, I'm going to ask you two questions about Patagonia before I let you go. The fun one and the serious one. So I've got to start with the fun one. Do you all wear vests to the board meetings?

Charles Conn: We all wear Patagonia for sure. Very few vests, I have to admit.

Matt Blumberg: Very few vests, okay.

Charles Conn: Very few vests.

Matt Blumberg: But the more serious question, we're a student of boards here at Bolster. We help founders build boards. We help them lead their boards more effectively. One of the things that Patagonia is so admired for is being really one of the pioneers in the world of corporations around stakeholder management as opposed to shareholder management. So I'm wondering if there's any kind of a quick anecdote you can share about a decision that the board was faced with over the years where that principle of stakeholder management really drove a different decision than if you had been a C Corp as opposed to a PBC.

Charles Conn: That's easy. I mean, almost every decision that we make is driven not by short- term profitability, but by what would it take for Patagonia to continue to be here in 50 years, and what does it look like if the earth is your only shareholder, not some private equity fund. So every decision we take is a decision taken with a long- term in mind and with the planet in mind. The family never cared about money. They do care about making great gear and about making sure there's a planet for their kids 50 years from now.

Matt Blumberg: That is a very simple and elegant way of explaining it. Charles Conn, author of Imperfectionist, thank you so much for joining me.

Charles Conn: It's a great pleasure. Loved it.