Paul has a big idea: There's a strong case to be made that Queen Elizabeth II was the best CEO of the last century. So he makes it to Rich, outlining what makes a great CEO in the process. Rich buys in to the theory, then changes the conversation to chocolate.

Rich, how are you today?

I'm doing well.

How are you?

I'm doing good.

You ready to do more podcasting?

Let's do it.

My goodness.

We're here at the office working together, facing each other.

Good to see you.

So look, I opened my newspaper, my paper newspaper.

Imagine I don't, I open my web browser.

And here's an article in the New York Times and guess who's in Boston?

Oprah?

Yeah.

No.

Tom Brady.

No.

Tom Brady plays for Tampa Bay, but that was okay.

Okay.

I'm sorry I'm a little behind the times I watch the World Cup

Fine.

You don't get to the sports section in your newspaper, do you?

not in the times.

No.

FIne.

Who's in Boston?

you get the and just flip it over.

I can't tell which side is the front.

They made that so easy.

It's one of the great pieces of UX of all time.

Just " Hey, do you want to be outraged about something that

liberals did or flip-- do you want to be outraged about the Knicks?"

That's truly great user experience.

New York Post.

No.

So here I'm reading and the Prince and Princess of Wales are in Boston

and--that's William and Catherine, the bald one and the pretty one.

Mm-hmm.

. Mm-hmm.

They are giving away money for something called the "Earthshot Prize."

Like a "moonshot."

Yeah.

And you know, nice stuff.

Classic royal family move, right?

Like just appearances and awards and medals are given out,

sometimes money's given out.

Not a lot of apologies.

Mostly forward looking.

Yeah.

We're here to help.

We're here to help.

Those other things, certain things did happen with the family in the

past, but, just like German banking.

I have to ask Paul.

This is one of the least interesting things you've ever told me since

we've been working together.

I don't care about this at all.

Utterly fair, and that is my point, which is

these new ones -- so great.

Did you ever though-- have you ever found yourself running around Wikipedia

looking at Royal Family webpages?

Be honest.

I have.

It's a fascinating crew.

It's like human Pokemon.

It's a little bananas, right?

Just between the org charts or family trees, depending

on how you wanna look at it.

It's a bizarre remnant sort of, it's still the line-- it's a

through line to history, right?

And it's oh shit.

The Russians were somehow in the mix at one point.

Like it's wild.

Everyone is on Twitter talking about colonialism

and it's here are the people.

It was, It was them.

So I'm gonna argue something that I have come to believe.

I don't love monarchy.

I don't like monarchy.

I think that kings and queens are a bad old school retro idea.

Okay?

But I'm gonna give you something and I want you to push back.

Okay, here we go.

The mom, Queen Elizabeth, recently passed away.

She was, I'm going to argue this, the single greatest chief executive officer

of any company in the last hundred years.

Okay.

Interesting.

I, there's part of me that really agrees with you.

There's another part of me that doesn't agree with you, but let me

ask you a question in response to this preposterous statement that you've made.

What makes a great CEO?

This is what we're gonna get to.

The British Royal family, I'm gonna say, just come out let's set a baseline here.

Some of the most average human beings who've ever existed, just deeply average.

Not incredibly dumb or bad, not incredibly smart or talented.

Cuz if you hear 'em talk, they're, you know, by the way,

we come from the consulting world, consultants with British accents.

They're like 30% more expensive than everyone else.

And they're worth it.

Oh geez.

No because what is the purpose of consulting?

It's to sell more services, and there's just something about a British man

telling you that he's gonna solve it.

Yeah.

They're good.

They're good magazine editors too.

Yeah, totally.

So you've got a situation here where once you pierce through

the accent-- Pretty mediocre.

Isn't it?

Nobody's like, holy moly, that's a hell of an essay they wrote.

So here's this woman.

She's like in her twenties and they give her the whole thing.

Okay.

True.

And so let me ask you this.

Do you think she's brilliant?

No, but I think she's a good CEO.

I don't think you need to be brilliant to be a good ceo.

I think you need a few incredibly critical qualities, and I think they're

so rare that we don't, and because it's the British royal family, nobody's

noticed it because it's monarchy.

So I'm gonna give you the first thing.

She never said anything.

She never said anything substantive in her entire life.

That makes a great CEO?

That's a CEO because [Incomprehensible British mumbling]

and everybody's like, Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

,okay, I'm gonna, I know what I'm supposed to do.

Well, She said a lot.

What you're really saying is she never criticized anything.

No.

She took criticism.

She took it right across the head and she went, Mm.

Right.

Right.

I mean, there must have been times where she turned to her

corgis and like, you know, just said, I hate that son of a bitch.

But, but never, never in public.

Her job was to take it, just take the slap.

And she never tried to convey having an inner life.

No, no political interest professionally because whoever, if it's labor

or it's, whoever shows up...

She loved those dogs.

There's these dogs that like really should have been extinct.

They've got these little legs.

They're they look--

It's weird, is that whole family likes breeding

animals and it's hard to not think of them thinking of themselves.

No.

Like she really, she and her--

She loves her horses.

She loved her dogs.

There's a lot of that.

There's a lot of--

They're into breeding in a, it's not good.

That part, I don't like to talk about.

That.

Okay fair.

But okay.

So sense of duty, I think.

I think she was optimized to keep things stable.

Like anything that, any word that came out of her mouth that

would destabilize the monarchy.

Nothing

Nothing.

Gotta go right off

Because her true job is always to rep the brand.

Does that make a great CEO?

What is a great CEO?

A great CEO, what do they deliver?

They deliver two things, growth and stability.

Yes this is true.

This is true.

She's she's like abandoned growth.

She's she's not gonna say, you know what, I want Halifax back.

She abandoned colonial growth because that wasn't

really on the table, right?

She got an

SHip is sailed.

Yeah.

Institutions in decline.

You can't keep Zimbabwe.

They did fuck with the Falkland Islands.

They're [Argentina is] like, can we just have that one back?

And they're like, no, you can't.

And we're gonna bring in naval blockade.

Okay, so status quo.

So what does she do?

She keeps a laser focus on the firm, on the family, on the

Stability of the firm.

That's right.

The PR message.

And they cut their losses.

They're like, okay, we're losing the empire.

We're still gonna wear the hat.

You're right.

I think that is a great CEO.

I compare it to look the CEO of M&M Mars.

They can come up with new flavors once in a while, not, but don't mess

with the core recipes and just make sure the packaging doesn't get too

That's right.

If you give me pink M&Ms, those are Skittles.

Don't do that.

Yeah.

Yellow packaging for M&M peanuts has been the case for like-- their job is

to just maybe negotiate a little better with suppliers, but they can't really

Every now and then you need to take all those M&M characters and

get them to stand up for gay rights.

That is a part of the

That's the thing.

And there's a lot of different colors of M&M, so you can work that out.

It's not a big deal.

3% growth, no decline.

She is a world class now that I'm seeing it through that

lens--she is a world class.

Stabilizing mature ceo.

And actually given this thing that is obviously in terrible

trouble, it's transitioning from extreme imperialism to imperialism lite.

She said, okay, I got it.

I'm doubling down.

Give me my red box.

Let's go.

And, she accepted that power that she took that in.

She said okay, I'm gonna take the slaps, but I'm also gonna

ride around in the helicopter.

I'm gonna be the, I'll be the.

Queen.

And but always in the interest of the growth of the firm.

Yeah.

And there's another thing I think that's worth mentioning that she never did,

which I think was part of her skill set.

She never sought people's approval and love.

You get a lot.

You walk down the street and people go, oh, your highness.

And they bow when they see you.

So you get plenty of approval.

You get plenty of approval.

But she never herself said, My ratings are down, the polls are not great.

Let me go put on a show of some sort.

Steady as she fucking goes,

She delivers that Christmas message.

It's the most boring thing that's ever happened.

The only time that I know of that she truly broke was she gave a public

address because the entire country melted down after Diana's death.

She had to, right?

She tried the same protocol, but that was an extraordinary moment.

People were like "to hell with you, ma'am."

Yeah.

Yeah.

So she had to step.

That's a type of CEO, the stabilizing steady as she goes.

CEO is a particular, that's the CEO you want at M&M Mars.

That's the CEO you want at, like the company that makes the Denture

cleaning pills that you just need to sell 20 million of them every year

and just sell it again next year.

Don't mess up a good thing,

And a great planner, right?

Like even her own death was very orchestrated.

Yeah.

Succession planning, huge part of a monarchy.

It turns out kind of a limited.

Set of options.

Like, I wonder if there were points where some very tall British guy

on a horse rode by and she was like, what about him instead?

Nope nope.

Gotta go with, gotta go with Charles.

And you're right.

As, as far as that, Flavor of CEO, it's about as good as it gets.

There's a ton to learn there.

I think we should talk about Elon Musk and him stepping back into Twitter.

I'm sorry, because that is a turn.

We're in the middle of a turnaround CEO movie.

The drunken elephant in the room.

Drunken elephant in the room that's for some reason

wearing a Green Bay Packers jersey.

But we won't get into that.

I'm gonna make a suggestion.

Let's compare him to the Queen of England.

Okay.

So different project out of fairness.

Okay.

But this could be illuminating.

I'm gonna, why was she a great CEO?

She said nothing ever.

He says a lot.

All the time.

A lot of it is Pepe the frog alt-right nonsense.

Yes.

Yes.

I think here's my maybe slightly controversial take on this.

I think Twitter's a rough business period.

I think it's a phenomenal social invention, but a pretty rough business,

It may not be a business.

No, it's plenty.

There's plenty to make money off of.

Did it need to be a publicly traded grow, 30% a year business?

That's impossible.

But it's a phenomenal, like a true social phenomena, right?

Like to this day.

And you have someone that came in.

And I don't and I think it was, I think they were, they didn't know how to

make Twitter better or more profitable.

They just didn't know.

And there's thousands of people in this place and a lot of people be like,

oh my God, he fired all these people.

This.

I'm like, but honestly, like Twitter has not changed in like 10 years.

I'm just gonna say it as a user, it hasn't changed a whole lot.

Hey, pin tweets and cotweets.

Here's some stuff.

There's some stuff, but it hasn't changed in a long time.

But this guy comes in and I think there's a couple of things that.

That are worth highlighting.

I don't think he has a vision.

I don't think there's a vision here.

I think he, he reads like that dude snacks on pull quotes.

Like it's just the most delicious caramel popcorn you've ever seen.

So I don't think, I don't think he's if you told me that person is

chasing a vision, then everything they do is supportive of heading

towards that vision or damaging to it.

And clearly by his behavior, there's no vision because it's all over the map.

He seems to be thin-skinned, which has thrown me off like the whole,

like I think the whole woke thing is 2019 now, and it's behind us.

But God, he's a delicate executive.

He's a snowflake.

He's a snowflake.

Let me tell you something about a turnaround CEO.

What they cannot.

A snowflake.

They cannot be a snowflake.

Steve Jobs was a lot of things, not a very kind, warm person,

but he was laser focused on that end goal, and he just didn't see,

he saw everybody's a means to an

Listen as you look back on these things, you can say and be correct.

Steve Jobs shouldn't have been such a dick,

SHouldn't have been such a--

But here we are and I'm touching an iPhone as I talk to you.

You're stroking it from what I can see here.

THat's the world in which we live.

That's the world in which we live.

So everyone, look, I'm not gonna sit here and armchair, quarterback Elon Musk

who's built spaceships and electric cars and has seen incredible astronomical

success as [Literally.] But I do think that what you have here is someone that

is not thinking about, I think he got addicted to the actual platform that he--

That's right.

I think that's all it is.

Many signs are pointing to this being a very nerdy, chaotic

human being who had a little talent at putting structures around him that

he could go out, wave his arms, get the market interested, do all kinds of

things to bootstrap the organization.

Obviously, he should never execute on anything.

I think that's right.

not an operator.

He's a, something else.

he's a weather system.

I think his superpower is he just gathers

the team and says, you can do.

You could pretty much do anything.

And I will, I'm behind you.

And that's magical.

That is incredible.

No, that is what he does.

It's, they're afraid of him.

But boy does he get the rockets up in the sky.

He's also fucking annoying.

I'm just gonna say it just as an outsider, it's just shut up.

I don't care.

I don't care.

Like I see now he's upset at Apple, the largest company in the world.

As we record this podcast, he's like yelling at Apple.

I'm like, dude, just shut up.

Like just, it's just--

You know who is like the Queen of England?

Tim Cook.

He is that school now.

His number one criticism too.

It's like you're not an inventor, innovator type.

And meanwhile, that dude has created trillions in value.

Satya Nadella as well, right?

Like over at Microsoft, there is a narrative for taking these giant

organizations and making them more giant and repping the brand.

Repping the brand.

Repping the brand.

Okay, so Queen, Queen of England takes her criticism, doesn't convey her

inner life, has no political interest.

Elon Musk, polar opposite in every way.

I don't think it's going well.

I think he should shut his mouth.

It's, you know what it is?

I think you have this platform that blasts a press release to the entire earth many

times a day, and he can't get enough of.

If you are a true narcissist, you're the source of news.

And so this is what's exciting.

This is why Trump loved it, because he was the source of news and

this was the newspaper about him.

Fucking exciting.

It's incredible for someone that's seen all the money he will ever need,

he can't consume enough to eat into all his wealth and is just sitting

around and the whole world seems to react to every subtle gesture he makes.

That's incredibly addictive.

For someone that's seen that kind of success, that's just not a CEO.

I just don't think that's what that is.

He's not repping the brand.

That's another great, who repped the brand

better than Queen Elizabeth?

Tim Cook, Steve Jobs, like there are people, I think Satya Nadella

is repping the Microsoft brand, right?

But it's, it is a quiet, long term grind in which you convey through diplomacy.

Yes.

What you stand for over and over again.

And he's in there instead.

He's just yelling at Apple, telling them, if you don't advertise

with me, I will bully you.

Yeah.

And in many ways there is no dotted line between that and some

vision, like you need to pause.

Actually make a five minute YouTube video and tell people,

here is my vision for Twitter.

Look, he keeps talking about free speech, which is by the way, slight

of hand bullshit, as an attorney.

Like just speaking to that like it's a fucking company.

Yeah.

That's me yelling at McDonald's for not having certain flavors of something.

It's comical.

But if that is your vision, if that is your vision, then you

have to use that as the way to interrogate every decision you make.

But it's clearly reactive.

It's clearly a shit show.

Also, my God, what a perfect storm of just absolute human nonsense

in all directions on Twitter.

Like to see Twitter do this to itself is a fascinating thing.

It really, the--

Twitter trending on Twitter is just the dumbest

It's bad.

It's just him.

It's his show.

And then he's also got this fantasy of something called the X App,

which will be the Do Everything for everyone application.

Which I love because--

Like WeChat.

Yeah.

Or maybe they need to make their own phone and people are already

saying it might work on Mars.

Like it's woo.

Yiu, I know it's.

You gotta have patience and you have to be resilient through the turbulence.

To chase a vision like it took Apple 10 years to figure out how to put

their own chips in their own devices.

I don't know everything about Elon Musk, Richard, but I

don't think he's gonna wait 10 years.

No exactly what is that?

But Nadella is brilliant at that.

He will tell you, here is our goal for five years from now, and off we go.

And we have to keep ourselves honest about whether we've stayed on that track or not.

He's actually amazing that way.

As a leader, I, you could argue that Nadella and Cook are truly great CEOs.

The thing that Queen didn't have to.

She needed to not break it, but she didn't have to grow it.

And what Nadella and Cook did, they're not innovator CEOs.

They're not entrepreneur like, I'm gonna invent something out of thin air.

But they, boy, did.

They take brands that there's way more paths to failure

than there are to growth and--

True.

The Queen of England, the Queen of England, did not have to create an

R&D lab in order to figure out what Queening is gonna be 15 years from now.

God.

That would be an interesting laboratory,

See now I I would go work for that.

Although, I will say they were heavy adopters of social tech, like always

a good Instagram presence, good websites, nice standards, compliance,

partnered with the government.

So there is that.

But yeah, no, not an innovative organization by design.

Yeah.

Very heavy investment in horses.

So Paul, this is Ziade and Ford Advisors.

Okay.

I wanna thank you for bringing Queen Elizabeth to the forefront.

She doesn't get enough attention, in my opinion

She doesn't get enough attention.

She's very under attentioned.

So let's share a piece of advice, and this is a good piece

of advice, whether you're a manager in a small company, middle manager,

or you're the CEO of a company.

When you are managing and interacting with people.

People can't help but rope in personal friction and personal

conflict to everything you're doing.

That is human nature, and it's not to pick a fight, it's just humans diverging.

They're not robots.

They tell stories in order to understand what they're supposed to do.

That's right.

And the number one thing, one of the most important things you can

do as a leader is to pick a path.

Share the path with your team or with your company, and then not let those

conflicts and that friction tangle it up.

And it is literally the opposite of what's happening at Twitter right now,

but the thing you want to do is not get caught up because they will try to rope

you into camps and positions and whatnot.

If you do get roped into all the conflict and gossip and backstabbing and all

the games that go on, you have to pause and say you're hurting the vision.

You're hurting where we're going by with this behavior, and a lot

of times you can't get in the fray.

You just ignore it.

You just keep going.

You just, it's turbulence.

But you know what?

The airport's 48 miles away and you're then steady as she goes,

Here we go.

We're about to land.

We're gonna land this thing,

then we're gonna take the plane out again.

Yes, we're gonna land this thing.

So there it is.

Queen Elizabeth II.

If you're wondering what to do, if you're suddenly in

management, think of the queen.

Think of the queen.

Long, live the queen.

Oh.

My British accent.

something.

Thats something else.

Ziade and Ford Advisors.

I'm enjoying podcasting with you again, Paul.

' Paul Ford: It's good.

to be back on the wagon.

Rich, do you have something good for.

I have two good things

you.

All right?

I like good things.

The first is if you happen to be in New York City, which is

where we are recording this podcast you should go to a shop called Coco.

Cocoa.

What do they sell there?

Oh wow.

They're not a chocolate maker.

They sell chocolate bars and they are at 873 Broadway.

Okay.

Just North of Union Square.

The thing about Cocoa, you ever go downtown and there's that store that

has six shoes in it, and that's it.

And each shoe is a fancy

Very spare boutiques.

What this is for.

It's really cool.

Not everything is wildly priced.

You're gonna spend $80 on chocolate if you go in there.

You might.

It is what?

It's a great place to buy gifts.

Great place to buy gifts.

Here's the rub though.

You might walk right by it.

It's on the sixth floor.

You're taking a fucking elevator to buy a chocolate.

But if you take somebody with you, you seem really cool.

You have some inside knowledge.

Oh, here, hold on.

We just gotta go upstairs.

Okay.

Wow.

Two tips.

Small aside, we once came out of Cocoa and watched a guy

stuff like a $30 chocolate bar into his face in the elevator as if he

was eating like Halloween Kit Kat.

I never saw anything like it.

You spent $35 on a chocolate bar.

He rips the wrapper open, jams it in his mouth.

You're not supposed to chew this chocolate.

You're supposed to put it on your mouth like,

Yeah, it's like wine.

Like you sniff wine, you eat the chocolate, you listen to jazz.

No, this guy just feasted like a wild animal.

And then he got on the elevator with us and he looked at

us like we were despicable.

I never, it was a wild feeling.

Anyway,

Second tip.

Second tip.

Cadbury chocolates.

Ever heard of him?

Go to the drugstore.

$2 29 Fruit and nut.

Beautiful purple

Yeah, it's a classic

Slightly above average.

Chocolate.

Cadbury.

Part of Mondelez International or Mandalay?

I don't know.

I don't know how you pronounce that.

Don't buy it in America.

Okay.

Why not

They jam it with sugar because we're animals In the United States.

Americans put sugar in things.

That's what we do.

That's what we do.

If you buy it in the UK or like a duty free store at the airport,

there's more, there's less sugar in it, there's more fat and cocoa butter

in it, and it's much, much better.

See there's a scene in The Simpsons where they go to England and

the kids eat British chocolate and then they run around as and riot as "Lust

for Life" plays in the background.

Pretty great.

for the British Chocolate,

Chocolate Tips on this week's Ziade, Ford Ziade and Ford Advisors.

bet there'll be more chocolate tips in the future.

there sure will

It's

Learned a lot here.

I think at your read is right about how to be and how not to be.

I'm not saying you should be a monist rich.

I really am not.

I'm not saying that you should be excited about the royal family.

I'm just saying when we talk about what makes a effective

leader, we gloss over this person because of the role that she had.

But she really, she ran that firm.

She ran the firm.

No doubt.

Hit us up.

Hello at ZiadeFord.com.

Topic, ideas, questions, things you want advice on.

We're glad to help Also.

On Twitter, snicker @ZiadeFord.

And give us five stars everywhere on your favorite podcast platform.

We're a brand new, young little podcast trying to make it in the world.

Just two guys doing the best they can.

Ha ve a lovely day.