Lessons - How To Build Unshakable Trust | Dr. Rajiv J. Shah - President at The Rockefeller Foundation

In this lessons episode, discover the power of zooming in and out to drive change, the art of building trust in a skeptical world, and the importance of simplifying complex issues to inspire action. Learn actionable insights to tackle big challenges, foster collaboration, and make a lasting impact at scale. So I'm aspirational. I want to make the world a better place. I'm an entrepreneur. What are the lessons you're going to teach me? How do I avoid this aspiration trap? Well, I think it starts by being able to zoom in and zoom out, right? So great entrepreneurs can zoom out, see the forest for the trees, understand how their vision is going to affect change at massive scale, whether that's transforming an industry or building a new one or innovating technology that changes the way people live. But then to make it practical, real, and to build the flywheel of progress, you have to zoom in tremendously and be super detailed oriented about as you point out, making payroll, delivering product, generating the next bit of revenue. And it's shocking. The same skill set is required in taking on big public sector or social sector efforts. You have to be able to kind of, I had teams at USAID that were leading and I was helping to lead the effort to overcome the earthquake crisis in Haiti right when it happened in 2010. And it was a massive tragedy. 250,000 people died very little visibility on the ground. You had to be able to kind of go all the way down to the ground and understand, okay, our women, is there enough lighting in a community to keep girls safe at night? Is there enough? Oh, Mike Road is such a micro. So micro, but then you had to zoom all the way out and say, okay, we've got 56 countries seeking to be part of this response. The whole thing might cost $4 billion. How are we going to allocate resources? How are we going to move fast? How are we going to set a results framework that allows us to measure and respond to that whole cohort of actors that are going to be part of what was the largest civil, military, cooperative, humanitarian response in history? So you just have to be able to do both. And I think that's a skill set for entrepreneurs. I think it's a skill set for people in charge of projects and in government. I think it's a skill set for people in the social sector that really want to make change happen at scale. When you were thinking of, you know, sort of compiling all your learnings and your knowledge into big bets, do you feel like it was knowledge that was based on, like, sort of retroactive responses? Or were you hoping to put this book out into the world in hopes of saying, this is more of a proactive framework that I want you to take on? Well, I think a little bit of both. When I, you know, I did the book in part because when, honestly, when I was a young kid kind of starting out in my career, I kind of knew I didn't want to be a practicing doctor. I'd, we'd lost a presidential election. I found myself unemployed and I just had no idea what to do with myself. And I didn't believe in a million years you could have a career where you help Bill Gates deploy billions of dollars and save tens of millions of lives and then have a career where you work with President Obama and large global humanitarian and development priorities. And then you run a kind of really historically unique foundation that kind of created the movement of philanthropy before any of it existed. So I wanted readers to have confidence that in fact, there's a path here if you want to take it and there are set of tools and skills you can hone to be someone who has a successful career making change happen at scale if you kind of learn and apply these lessons. And I wrote it largely because I didn't have that when I was starting out and I thought it would be helpful to others. I also want to ask a tough question that's going to set the framework for how we can be effective as people that want to give back, that want to take big bets for people to take big bets or to even bet in institutions that can take on these challenges. There's a very important thing that I'd like you to speak on because I think I was looking back like three years ago you made a very good point how people don't trust institutions as much as they should. They don't trust governments and trust is a big thing because a lot of the issues that are big bets that are taken on by the Rockefeller Foundation world governments the gates foundation these are things that should be nonpartisan. They are humanity improving initiatives. But for some reason there's a trust factor there's there's discord there. So I don't think trust in institutions has gotten better since COVID I'm pretty sure it's just gotten way worse. So how do we solve for this because right now I think trust is at an all time low across the aisle with any group that you speak to. Yeah trust is at an all time low in in almost any kind of institution. And so what I was hoping is that this big bet mindset you know gives gives people the capacity to trust others and to build trust and to be an optimist when it would be very very easy to be cynical. You know it's very easy to say well government government shuts down it's not effective it's not going to work. It takes more effort and you got to have a different kind of mindset to be able to say hey if we really want to tackle hunger at scale globally we need food companies working together with humanitarian partners working together with governments at scale. And here's a playbook for how to bring that partnership together one of the elements of building trust is reaching across the aisle and making your relationships really personal. And I write in the book about efforts we pursued after 2008 when there was a horrific food crisis around the world related to the financial collapse and the financial crisis 100 million people had pushed back into deep deep hunger kids eating mud cakes in in very poor communities just to feel satiety. And we built a bipartisan coalition in the United States to pass something called the Global Food Security Act and move 100 million people out of hunger and poverty. And that happened because I had the good fortune of getting to know some really conservative Republican senators who on television didn't quite seem like they were going to be our partners and friends but in private when you got to know their families and you got to know their values and you got to know their faith and you got to know what they really cared about. They became real champions for fighting hunger whether it was in Ethiopia or India or Indiana and they held hands with progressive partners and made it happen at scale during a really tough political environment and so I really think it's about building those personal relationships and you can only have trust if you know people and you know their values and to know their values you have to talk about your own you have to share what your vulnerabilities are and you have to be very real with people that sometimes you just met. I love that though I think that's so important because I think that everyone being locked away and assuming that somebody's entire personality is their Twitter feed is it's a very dangerous game to play right and I think that I mean some of these some of these ideas should not be partisan should not be polarizing then I think this is actually you know there's a few points I think that trust is is monumental I think the way you build trust across styles is very important another point it was literally your first point in in this book the ask a simple question but there's a there's a there's a quote a Bill Gates quote and the barrier to changes to little caring it's too much complexity I think complexity causes confusion and confusion creates distrust so talk to me about simplicity simplifying these issues educating on these issues that we can actually move the needle and stop worrying about the the banter back and forth. Yeah that's a great point I think it's very easy for people to be put off by complexity and it's super how many times of you asked a question well why are so many people homeless the answer is well it's very complex why do we allow 40% of American kids to grow up in child poverty well that's that's super complex you know why why are there still droughts and famines that are actually killing people in large numbers when food is relatively abundant and pretty cheap it's very complex complexity is a way to kind of keep people out and Bill actually told this great story once he was like you know Davos is something the world economic forum all these leaders private sector public sector go to the Swiss Alps and have this big conference and and he said you know you can go to Davos and sit and listen to a meeting about saving tens of millions of children's lives and it can feel a little dry like everyone's using big words and it's all very technical and complex and very low energy and then then you can go across the street where a software company is like launching a new game or a new piece of software and their lights and cameras and smoke and dancing and music and it's very lively and you're just like why why do we try to tackle the toughest problems in the world use with the language and a work style that is off putting to so many people like we have to make this simple to bring people in and I saw that over and over when we did the Haiti earthquake you know more than more American families contributed in some form to relief around the Haiti earthquake then watch the Super Bowl that year which shows you how good American families are how how much they want to be on the side of right morally and they did it because we created a text thread and you could text a small contribution very quickly they did it because lots of our partners had other ways to be a part of the solution instead of saying well it's very complex just just sit this one out you got to reach out and give people and trust that people want to be on the side of right if you make it possible and you make it easy for them to do so thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one