In this episode, Stephen Goldsmith interviews entrepreneur Brad Keywell, about the importance of time. They discuss how urgency, efficiency, and trust are crucial in maximizing outcomes and resident satisfaction, highlighting the need for leaders to prioritize decisive action and leverage technology to optimize processes.
In this episode, Stephen Goldsmith interviews Brad Keywell, entrepreneur and co-founder of Groupon, about the importance of time. They discuss how urgency, efficiency, and trust are crucial in maximizing outcomes and resident satisfaction, highlighting the need for leaders to prioritize decisive action and leverage technology to optimize processes. They also explore practical strategies for instilling a culture of accountability and responsiveness within organizations, drawing from Keywell's experiences as a founder and Goldsmith's insights from his tenure in government.
Music credit: Summer-Man by Ketsa
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Data-Smart City Solutions, housed at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University, is working to catalyze the adoption of data projects on the local government level by serving as a central resource for cities interested in this emerging field. We highlight best practices, top innovators, and promising case studies while also connecting leading industry, academic, and government officials. Our research focus is the intersection of government and data, ranging from open data and predictive analytics to civic engagement technology. We seek to promote the combination of integrated, cross-agency data with community data to better discover and preemptively address civic problems. To learn more visit us online and follow us on Twitter.
Betsy Gardner:
This is Betsy Gardner, editor of Data-Smart City Solutions at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University. And you're listening to Data-Smart City Pod, where we bring on the top innovators and experts to discuss the future of cities and how to become data smart.
Stephen Goldsmith:
Welcome back. This is Stephen Goldsmith, professor of urban policy at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University, with another one of our podcasts. This one's particularly interesting, as we have as our guest Brad Keywell. Brad is one of America's leading entrepreneurs and has a great sense in how to produce products that help communities and grow businesses, as well as the theme of today, which is a story of time. And Brad, welcome.
Brad Keywell:
My pleasure.
Stephen Goldsmith:
You're an unusual guest for us because most of our work deals with cities and states and local officials. And I've been thinking for some time that we need to infuse urgency and a sense of time in government because government affects the opportunity costs of everyone else, in a permit, and a license, and how it builds. And we had a session in DC a couple of weeks ago where leading federal officials pointed out that every year you wait to spend your infrastructure money, that money's worth 15 or 20% less than it was the year before. So there's also a cost of time in how many miles of sidewalks, et cetera.
So I got a clock from you, and a clock that basically says now and the story of time. So let me start with just a minute or two, tell us a little bit about yourself for a minute. And then I want to go to why you sent this particular gift.
Brad Keywell:
I am a dad, I am an entrepreneur, and I am fundamentally a creator of businesses, of things. I started a museum, I started a number of ideas and convening platforms. Yeah, so I guess I would present myself or define myself fundamentally as an entrepreneur, you might say disruptor, because I'm much more interesting in creating something that doesn't exist or fixing something that's broken. I'm much more interested in that than I guess simply following the pack.
And a mentor of mine for 35 years was a man named Sam Zell, who passed away recently. But the inspiration of Sam, among others to me, was that Sam, for a number of years, sent out really thoughtful, quite remarkable annual gifts. And that gave me the idea about 10 years ago that I wanted to do the same and create something unique that reflected my thinking, my sense of the world, my sense of what matters every New Year's. And I've been doing that now for 10 years, which brings me to you, Stephen, being on my list, given my respect and engagement with you. And so, you're a recipient of these annual gifts.
Stephen Goldsmith:
Thanks. I want to ask you about the gift, but first I've got to tell you a story. I know we only have 15 minutes, but so for our listeners, Sam Zell was one of the country's leading real estate developers involved in cities. So I went to see Sam Zell, because he had some investments in Indianapolis when I was mayor. And I went back to my office and that next holiday, I received the only present of the type that was better than the one you sent me this week.
So I opened up this gift from Sam Zell. And when I opened it up, was a bureaucrat who pirouetted on a statute and tangled himself up in his own red tape. So in my office, in city hall in Indianapolis forever was the bureaucrat who tangled himself up in red tape, the gift from Sam Zell as a statement about what we shouldn't do. So what about time? Why time this year?
Brad Keywell:
Well, let's go back to the first year that I did this. The very first year that I sent out a New Year's gift to about 900 people, it was a book of napkins, of blank napkins. And the cover of the book said, "Start Now." And it fundamentally spoke to the idea that your ideas have to get going. And all it takes is a back of a napkin to get an idea out of your head into the world. And that was 10 years ago.
Every year, towards the end of the year, I suppose I start thinking about what matters most. And what came to me this year was the collective angst in our society around challenges, the future, the past, the situation. And you could apply all of those qualifiers to then any subject. And in all those cases, the only thing we can do about it is whatever we do right now. And a focus therefore on just let's just get out of the way, let's stop being fearful and stop being procrastinating or regretful. And the more we can notice that the only thing that we have full control over is our own time and our own activity right now, the more we can grasp that idea, the more we can be impactful in our activity.
Stephen Goldsmith:
It's a great statement. Let's try to apply that statement to organizations. So you're the founder of Groupon, which a lot of folks know, and Uptake, which I know. But before we get specific about them, as a company grows, as a place grows, it builds processes and processes often are the enemy of time, right? People have to approve things. So as you think about urgency and time in places you built, how did you get the folks that worked for you, how did you focus them on do something good now, don't put it off? Time matters.
Brad Keywell:
First, let's start about the concept of time relative to money, process, et cetera. Which is an interesting conversation because when in, I went to both law school and business school, in business school, we were taught about the time value of money and how interest rates are relative to time matter a lot because they have compounding effect. So the time value of money. In law school, you start to realize how time either worked for or against you. It was a weapon, if you will, in certain situations and it could be used or misused.
And then as an entrepreneur, what I would propose is an absolute truth, time kills all deals, which is often repeated in my world. But even moreso, time can kill anything. It certainly kills people, but it really can kill opportunity if you delay or create friction that adds time to the results. All of which is to say time relative to our world, progress moving forward is a fundamental necessity. Let's get moving. Let's stop thinking and let's figure out everything that takes away from action or progress and get rid of it. It's especially true when you think about cities and our governmental entities, that a common complaint is things take too long.
Stephen Goldsmith:
Can you create a culture around that inside an organization? And I know you could say it as CEO, how do you drive action?
Brad Keywell:
Well, Mike Bloomberg is a good example of someone whose sense of urgency and impatience for delay slash too much time creates a respect for time and a decisiveness of movement, of forward progress. And the answer is you can create a culture. And unfortunately it doesn't happen organically. The human nature is for timidity, if that's the appropriate word. It's for consensus, which is not the best way to take action. Action is best taken by a person, not by a committee.
And unfortunately, that culture that you're talking about, Stephen, really has to start with the lead, the leader, who has to basically be impatient for waste of money, among other things, but certainly a waste of time, and create the conditions that anything other than crisp dialogue or debate and decisive, quick decision-making without fear and with efficacy of thought and rationality, that that must be the way everything operates, and anything other than that is unacceptable. And that only actually becomes culture when there's consequence. And those who don't have the courage to act with decisiveness and refuse delay, that those people are not invited back the next day to work. That's the only way this culture can be truly effective.
Stephen Goldsmith:
As you know, Mike Bloomberg, he worked in this open office concept, as I was deputy mayor and I sat near him. And one day, I came into work, the conference rooms were just conference tables, and they surrounded places where we worked in this open office concept. And that morning, every table had a clock set to 30 minutes. And you were not allowed to have a conference that exceeded 30 minutes because time was valuable. So I like your reference to Mike Bloomberg, it fits in with my experience.
Brad Keywell:
When you see organizations, be them nonprofit, governmental, or for-profit, you see organizations that are quick, that are agile, and ultimately, you see some practices, some rituals, whether it be Mike Bloomberg and a 30 minute clock, whether it be Jeff Bezos, and here's the way meetings work here. And if you don't need to be in this meeting, leave the room. The question is must everyone be here? Do you have to be here for us to have this conversation?
And one other ritual that pretty effective, and now a number of my friends use it is if you ask me a question that my answer involves someone else, get that other person in the room before I answer. Meaning if I'm here to resolve the conflict, let's resolve it once and for all and not create even more waste of time. All these rituals help everyone create the framework of do it once or make a decision or let's get the best facts on the table. Let's wait until we have the best facts, I suppose, but then let's learn what we can learn and make a decision.
Which comes back to the gift that I sent. The idea of what's the opposite of effective use of time? My proposition. So this year, my New Year's gift was not just an object, which is a clock, and all it says is the word now. Where otherwise it would say 12, 3, 6, and 9. It's now, now, now, and now. But it was also a book that I wrote called The Story of Time, which basically was a story about people living in fog, focused on their phones and not focused on each other or what's going on around them, and just living in this gray fog of nothingness. And often, the distance is this ray of sunshine at the top of a mountain. And what you learn later in the book is the reason that the sun is hitting the top of the mountain is because in that small house are people that live with a clock that says the word now on it. They're just here now.
It was my way of, through analogy, saying, "Stop wasting your time staring at phones and clocks and scrolling in a malaise, and just focus more on your sense of agency and capacity to do, think, create." Which requires you getting out of fear and regret, which means get out of the future, get out of the past. Just be more active and present in your life right now.
When you think about behavioral economics and you think about Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler and others and talking about that normal economic theories, at least historically, didn't incorporate the anomalies of human beings and their idiosyncratic behavior. That comes to mind when we talk about government and the externality of time. How often do those who govern us in America, how often do they consider the cost of time when we think about regulations, rules, activities, processing, et cetera?
It's an interesting question because to me, time, especially when the customer, AKA the citizen, doesn't understand why things take so long, it's not just time. Of course, there's cost, whether it's a project or an opportunity, but it's also frustration. It's also skepticism and doubt. And I believe that the externality cost, the friction actual cost to our society of delay and unnecessary procedure, let's say, that gets in the way of a government, city, state, municipality that is crisp and customer-centric, customer-facing, the cost is a really interesting question because I think the cost is a lot.
And it shows up ultimately at the polls for reelection because it doesn't feel good when you have to delay because the counterparty is not ready or capable of acting with a speed that you know is possible. And I don't know, Stephen, how you think about that, but just strikes me as a really interesting question. I'm not sure it's ever been studied or captured, the cost of delay on citizen confidence in their leaders.
Stephen Goldsmith:
I'm so glad you brought this up. We have been thinking about the fact that lack of a customer orientation equals lack of responsiveness, and lack of responsiveness equals an erosion of trust. Which is essentially what you're talking about, that there are costs other than time and money, and one of the huge costs is trust. So perhaps government should just measure everything agency by agency, time by time, process by process.
And the other interesting thing that maybe you want to comment on just before we end, given even your work at Uptake, is one about using data to keep machines working on time, is the fact that digital systems make these government sequential systems obsolete, where you took a file from agency one to agency two to agency three to agency four, there's no reason why all those processes can't be combined today. So maybe just a final word on how you began to think about machine learning and machines in terms of their uptime.
Brad Keywell:
Let's take that in two parts. One is the idea of using data or some elements of AI or just technology in general to facilitate good governance or good government and be more customer-centric, be a more pleasant experience for your citizens as they interact with cities, mayors, et cetera. And the idea of time transparency, not just cost and process transparency, and a very explicit, renewed, rehabbed way of governing so that your constituents now not only know the process, but know the expected amount of time for it to take.
I think for a mayor to have that as part of what they do in their tenure would be a very interesting test to see how much it matters to citizens, because I think all government is fundamentally hyper local. And the idea of a mayor being able to say to that person, city, "Everything now makes sense for you because we tell you exactly what's going to happen and also how much time it should take."
And by necessity, if a mayor does that, it will expose all the things that don't make sense anymore. Things that you find out, well, 20 years ago, some random person decided that we needed to do that, and I have no idea why we do it. If you start exposing how much time things take to a mayoral mandate of we have to provide our customers clarity on time of every process that they might undertake with us, the municipality of the city, I think it would really be an interesting way to create trust and equity, if you will, in the eyes of the citizens looking at that mayor and that leader.
So theoretically, technology lets you separate all the things that happened in a given process and allow a city to start assigning time and to start looking at the accountability of it didn't get done. Why? And that backlog of that person or that department that's not getting it done, let's address that. And then all kinds of technology tools open up.
In terms of cities, technology and time, I guess I feel strongly about the inefficiency that generally exists and how exciting it might be if a mayor took a stand and said, "We are not going to let things just slow down and not figure out why, and we're not just going to kill bad statutes and regulations, we're going to kill the bad cogs in the wheel. We're going to stop doing things that just don't make sense anymore." That'd be a thrilling way to govern, just to say, "It's time to clean up the," not just the books, let's say, but the processes that make the books, what's in the books.
Stephen Goldsmith:
A good example of where good government equals good politics too.
Brad Keywell:
A hundred percent. And then in terms of what I've learned through Uptake. Uptake, as a company, provides actionable insights to operators of things. So if you're operating a machine, whether it be a train or a dump truck for a city, a wind turbine, if you're Berkshire Hathaway, those machines fundamentally can benefit from insight, such that the insight comes off the machine itself because there are now sensors on nearly all machines. And the sensor can tell you how close to breaking that snow plow truck is, that garbage truck. And also can tell you whether the operator of that machine is doing what it takes to be in the right gear, run the machine at the right speed, to really optimize its effectiveness, its performance.
And that simple addition of insight, which the data already exists, that data, that dump truck or the garbage truck already has all this data. Just taking that data and putting it in the hands of the mechanics and the operators at the city level can allow more effective delivery of services, can allow less disruption of services because of breakage. It helps planes run more on time. That idea, which is what Uptake does, can be therefore applied to lots of different things in a city, in a government, so that the citizens can understand more effectively, is everything being optimized? Why are we wasting money on more things when the things we already own can do more with the existing investment?
That's why I think it shows up most specifically at city and state and federal government, non-military situations. It can help those in charge say, "We are actually making the most of what we have. We're actually doing what a business would do," which is optimize the efficiency and the outcomes and the productivity of what we've already invested in versus, "Oh, it's not doing so great, let's just buy more." And I feel strongly that the amount of efficiency and productivity we can get out of our installed machine base in this country is five to 10%, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it's an enormous amount of additional productivity without any investment other than using these insights.
Stephen Goldsmith:
This is Steve Goldsmith of Harvard Kennedy School with Brad Keywell, thinking about the applications of his story of time to government. And Brad, thank you for focusing on the fact that there is an opportunity cost, and that government in particular, not only has an internal opportunity cost, but they cost other folks money and time as well. And this clarity of now and the moment is important. And thank you so much for taking your time to share your thoughts with us today.
Betsy Gardner:
If you liked this podcast, please visit us @datassmartcities.org. Find us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast was hosted by Steven Goldsmith and produced by me, Betsy Gardner. Thanks for listening.